Pleasure to meet you,” Fields said.
“I’ll write to my husband and tell him I met you,” she said. “He thinks you’re funny.”
“Armstrong takes Beau Jack, ten bucks straight up,” I reminded her.
Violet nodded solemnly; Fields and I left.
“Note,” he said as we closed the door and stood on the railed landing of the sixth floor of the Faraday Building, “she said her husband likes me. It has been a source of irritation that women, as a gender, are not particularly responsive to my wit. They prefer a popinjay ballet dancer like Chaplin to honest misogyny.”
“Hard to understand,” I said, remembering that my former wife, Anne, had refused to see Fields movies with me, claiming that they made no sense, weren’t amusing, were nasty to women and small children. I had agreed with her, but I still thought he was funny.
