U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [550]
"Tel ing tales out of school, eh?" said Dick, picking up a breadstick and snapping it into his mouth.
"But you know, Dick, Jo and me . . . we talk about everything . . . it never goes any further.
. . . And hon-estly al the younger guys in the office think it's a damn shame J. W. didn't use your first layout. . . . Griscolm is going to lose the account for us if he isn't careful . . . it just don't click. . . . I think the old man's getting soft-ening of the brain."
"You know I've thought several times recently that J. W. wasn't in very good health. . . . Too bad. He's the most bril iant figure in the publicrelations field." Dick heard an oily note come into his voice and felt ashamed in front of the youngsters and shut up suddenly.
"Say, Tony," he cal ed peevishly to the waiter. "How about some cocktails? Give me a bacardi with a little absinthe in
-482-it, you know, my special. . . . Gosh, I feel a hundred years old."
"Been burning the candle at both ends?" asked Reggie. Dick twisted his face into a smirk. "Oh, that candle," he said. "It gives me a lot of trouble." They al blushed. Dick chuckled. "By God, I don't think there are three other people in the city that have a blush left in them." They ordered more cocktails. While they were drinking Dick felt the girl's eyes serious and dark fixed on his face. She lifted her glass to him. " Reggie says you've been aw-ful y sweet to him at the office. . . . He says he'd have been fired if it wasn't for you.""Who could help being sweet to Reggie? Look at him." Reggie got red as a beet.
"The lad's got looks," said the girl. "But has he any brains?" Dick began to feel better with the onionsoup and the third cocktail. He began to tel them how he envied them being kids and getting married. He promised he'd be bestman. When they asked him why he didn't get mar-ried himself he confusedly had some more drinks and said his life was a shambles. He made fifteen thousand a year but he never had any money. He knew a dozen beautiful women but he never had a girl when he needed her. Al the time he was talking he was planning in the back of his head a release on the need for freedom of selfmedi-cation. He couldn't stop thinking about that damned Bing-ham account. It was beginning to get dark when they came out of
"63". A feeling of envy stung him as he put the young people into a taxi. He felt affectionate and amorous and nicely buoyed up by the radiating warmth of food and alcohol in his bel y. He stood for a minute on the corner of Madison Avenue watching the lively beforechristmas crowd pour along the sidewalk against the bright show-windows, al kinds of faces flushed and healthylooking for
-483-once in the sharp cold evening in the slanting lights. Then he took a taxi down to Twelfth Street.
The colored maid who let him in was wearing a pretty lace apron. "Hel o, Cynthia.""How do you do, Mr. Dick." Dick could feel the impatient blood pounding in his temples as he walked up and down the old uneven par-quet floor waiting. Eveline was smiling when she came out from the back room. She'd put too much powder on her face in too much of a hurry and it brought out the drawn lines between her nostrils and her mouth and gave her nose a floury look. Her voice stil had a lovely swing to it. " Dick, I thought you'd given me up."
"I've been working like a dog. . . . I've gotten so my brain won't work. I thought it would do me good to see you." She handed him a Chinese porcelain box with ciga-rettes in it. They sat down side by side on a rickety old-fashioned horsehair sofa. "How's Jeremy?" asked Dick in a cheerful tone.
Her voice went flat. "He's gone out west with Paul for Christmas."
"You must miss him . . . I'm disappointed myself. I love the brat."
" Paul and I have final y decided to get a divorce . . . in a friendly way."
" Eveline, I'm sorry."
"Why?"
"I dunno. . . . It does seem sil y. . . . But I always liked Paul."
"It al got just too tiresome. . . . This way it'l be much better for him." There was something cool y bitter about her as she sat