U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [387]
a cigarette, watching the sky go dark outside the window, when the jangle of the phone startled him. It was Ol ie Taylor's polite fuddled voice. "I thought maybe you wouldn't know where to get a drink. Do you want to come around to the club?""Gee, that's nice of you, Ol ie. I was jusy wonderin' what a fel er could do with himself in this man's town.""You know it's quite dreadful here," Ol ie's voice went on. "Prohibition and al that, it's worse than the wildest imagination could conceive. I'l come and pick you up with a cab.""Al right, Ol ie, I'l be in the lobby." Charley put on his tunic, remembered to leave off his Sam Browne belt, straightened his scrubby sandy hair again, and went down into the lobby. He sat down in a deep chair facing the revolving doors.
The lobby was crowded. There was music coming from
somewhere in back. He sat there listening to the dance-tunes, looking at the silk stockings and the high heels and the furcoats and the pretty girls' faces pinched a little by the wind as they came in off the street. There was an ex-pensive jingle and crinkle to everything. Gosh, it was
-12-great. The girls left little trails of perfume and a warm smel of furs as they passed him. He started counting up how much jack he had. He had a draft for three hundred bucks he'd saved out of his pay, four yel owbacked twenties in the wal et in his inside pocket he'd won at poker on the boat, a couple of tens, and let's see how much change. The coins made a little jingle in his pants as he fingered them over. Ol ie Taylor's red face was nodding at Charley above a big camelshair coat. "My dear boy, New York's a wreck.
. . . They are pouring icecream sodas in the Knicker-bocker bar. . . ." When they got into the cab together he blew a reek of highgrade rye whiskey in Charley's face.
" Charley, I've promised to take you along to dinner with me. . . . Just up to ole Nat Benton's. You won't mind
. . . he's a good scout. The ladies want to see a real flying aviator with palms.""You're sure I won't be buttin' in, Ol ie?""My dear boy, say no more about it." At the club everybody seemed to know Ol ie Taylor.
He and Charley stood a long time drinking Manhattans at a darkpaneled bar in a group of whitehaired old gents with a barroom tan on their faces. It was Major this and Major that and Lieutenant every time anybody spoke to Charley. Charley was getting to be afraid Ol ie would get too much of a load on to go to dinner at anybody's house. At last it turned out to be seventhirty, and leaving the final round of cocktails, they got into a cab again, each of them munching a clove, and started uptown. "I don't know what to say to
'em," Ol ie said. "I tel them I've just spent the most delightful two years of my life, and they make funny mouths at me, but I can't help it." There was a terrible lot of marble, and doormen in
green, at the apartmenthouse where they went out to din-ner and the elevator was inlaid in different kinds of wood. Nat Benton, Ol ie whispered while they were waiting for the door to open, was a Wal Street broker.
-13-They were al in eveningdress waiting for them for dinner in a pinkishcolored drawingroom. They were evi-dently old friends of Ol ie's because they made a great fuss over him and they were very cordial to Charley and brought out cocktails right away, and Charley felt like the cock of the walk.
There was a girl named Miss Humphries who was as
pretty as a picture. The minute Charley set eyes on her Charley decided that was who he was going to talk to. Her eyes and her fluffy palegreen dress and the powder in the little hol ow between her shoulderblades made him feel a little dizzy so that he didn't dare stand too close to her. Ol ie saw the two of them together and came up and pinched her ear. "Doris, you've grown up to be a raving beauty." He stood beaming teetering a little on his short legs. "Hum . . . only the brave deserve the fair. . . . It's not every day we come home from the wars, is it, Charley me boy?"
"Isn't he a darling?" she said when Ol ie turned away.