Looking to close the Giscard deal, Sherman takes an extremely important phone call from France. He has managed to stifle his paranoia enough to read the news of the world in the Times instead of rushing instantly for the local crime news in The City Light. In Chapter 11, Sherman has regained some of his focus and concentrates on the upcoming Giscard deal. Larry escapes into fantasies of the Girl with Brown Lipstick. He acts like a macho prosecutor from the tough Bronx, but this backfires and he feels that Rhoda is patronizing him. Larry, consumed with jealousy for his friend, watches for a chance to one-up him or make eyes at his girlfriend. As their last chance to go out before the nurse's four-week tenure is up, Rhoda and Larry go to lunch with friends in SoHo. Celeste and John are very uncomfortable.īack in Manhattan we join the Kramers. Campbell cries and in retaliation Sherman mocks Judy's interior decorating business.

The implication is that Sherman, though he makes a lot of money, doesn't make anything himself - he doesn't produce anything. Judy chimes in, likening the profits of a bond salesman to the gathering up of crumbs when a big cake is cut up. His daughter's friend teases her about what her father does for a living, so Campbell asks Sherman what he does at work he is hard pressed to answer her.

Sherman, still fretting about the accident and the Giscard deal, gains some relief as he watches his daughter play in the sand in a location he remembers well from his own childhood. Sherman, Judy, and Campbell, vacationing at their home in Southampton, Long Island, sit at an outdoor table at their beach club with Sherman's parents, John Campbell and Celeste McCoy ('Sixty-five years old and still beautiful,' thinks her son).

Wolfe bonfire of the vanities