U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [111]
hen Paul English cal ed up and asked her to go to a matiné with him one Saturday, she was very thril ed. They'd written a few letters back and forth but they hadn't seen each other since Washington. She was al morning putting on first one dress and then the other, trying out different ways of doing her hair and was stil taking a hot bath when he cal ed for her so that Ada had to entertain him for the longest time. When she saw him al her thril dribbled away, he looked so stiff and stuckup in his dress
-263-uniform. First thing she knew she was kidding him, and acting sil y going downtown in the subway so that by the time they got to the Astor where he took her to lunch, he looked sore as a pup. She left him at the table and went to the ladies' room to see if she couldn't get her hair to look a little better than it did and got to talking with an elderly Jewish lady in diamonds who'd lost her pocketbook, and when she got back the lunch was standing cold on the table and Paul English was looking at his wristwatch un-easily. She didn't like the play and he tried to get fresh in the taxicab driving up Riverside Drive although it was stil broad daylight, and she slapped his face. He said she was the meanest girl he'd ever met and she said she liked being mean and if he didn't like it he knew what he could do. Before that she'd made up her mind that she'd crossed him off her list.
She went in her room and cried and wouldn't take any supper. She felt real miserable having Paul English turn out a pil like that. It was lonely not having anybody to take her out and no chance of meeting anybody because she had to go everywhere with those old maids. She lay on her back on the floor looking at the furniture from under-neath like when she'd been little and thinking of , Joe Washburn. Ada came in and found her in the sil iest posi-tion lying on the floor with her legs in the air; she jumped up and kissed her al over her face and hugged her and said she'd been a little idiot but it was al over now and was there anything to eat in the icebox.
When she met Edwin Vinal at one of Ada's Sunday eve-ning parties that she didn't usual y come out to on account of people sitting around so prim and talking so solemn and deep over their cocoa and cupcakes, it made everything dif-ferent and she began to like New York. He was a scrawny kind of young fel ow who was taking courses in sociology. He sat on a stiff chair with his cocoacup balanced uncom-fortably in his hand and didn't seem to know where to put
-264-his legs. He didn't say anything al evening but just as he was going, he picked up something Ada said about values and began to talk a blue streak, quoting al the time from a man named Veblen. Daughter felt kind of attracted to him and asked who Veblen was, and he began to talk to her. She wasn't up on what he was talking about but it made her feel lively inside to have him talking right to her like that. He had light hair and black eyebrows and lashes around very pale grey eyes with little gold specks in them. She liked his awkward lanky way of moving around. Next evening he came to see her and brought her a volume of the Theory of the Leisure Class and asked her if she didn't want to go skating with him at the St. Nicholas rink. She went in her room to get ready and began to dawdle around powdering her face and looking at herself in the glass.
"Hey, Anne, for gosh sakes, we haven't got al night," he yel ed through the door. She had never had iceskates on her feet before, but she knew how to rol erskate, so with Edwin holding her arm she was able to get around the big hal with its band playing and al the tiers of lights and faces around the balcony. She had