U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [563]
"Hadn't I better stick around until we've had a special-ist look you over?"
"Dr. Gleason fil ed me up with dope of some kind so that I'm pretty comfortable. I've wired my sister Hazel, she teaches school over in Wilmington, she's the only one of the family I've seen much of since the old people died.
. . . She'l be over this afternoon. It's her Christmas vaca-tion."
"Did Morton get you the opening quotations?"
"Skyrocketing. . . . Never saw anything like it. . . . But do you know, Dick, I'm going to sel out and lay on my oars for a while. . . . It's funny how an experience like this takes the heart out of you."
"You and Paul Warburg," said Dick.
"Maybe it's old age," said J. W. and closed his eyes for a minute. His face seemed to be col apsing into a mass of grey and violet wrinkles as Dick looked.
"Wel , take it easy, J. W.," said Dick and tiptoed out of the room. He caught the eleveno'clock train and got to the office in time to straighten things out. He told everybody that J. W. had a light touch of grippe and would be in bed for a few days. There was so much work piled up that he gave Miss Hil es his secretary a dol ar for her supper and asked
-510-her to come back at eight. For himself he had some sand-wiches and a carton of coffee sent up from a delicatessen. It was midnight before he got through. In the empty hal s of the dim building he met two rusty old women coming with pails and scrubbingbrushes to clean the office. The night elevatorman was old and pastyfaced. Snow had fal en and turned to slush and gave Lexington Avenue a black gutted look like a street in an abandoned vil age. A raw wind whipped his face and ears as he turned uptown. He thought of the apartment on Fiftysixth Street ful of his mother's furniture, the gilt chairs in the front room, al the dreary,objects he'd known as a smal boy, the Stag at Bay and the engravings of the Forum Romanorum in his room, the birdseyemaple beds; he could see it al sharply as if he was there as he turned into the wind. Bad enough when his mother was there, but when she was in St. Augus-tine, frightful. "God damn it, it's time I was making enough money to reorganize my life," he said to himself. He Jumped into the first taxi he came to and went to
"63." It was warm and cozy in "63." As she helped him off with his coat and muffler the platinumhaired checkgirl carried on an elaborate kidding that had been going on al winter about how he was going to take her to Miami and make her fortune at the races at Hialeah. Then he stood a second peering through the doorway into the low room ful of wel groomed heads tables glasses cigarettesmoke spiraling in front of the pink lights. He caught sight of Pat Doolittle's black bang. There she was sitting in the alcove with Reggie and Jo. The Italian waiter ran up rubbing his hands. "Good evening, Mr. Savage, we've been missing you.""I've been in Washington." "Cold down there?"
"Oh, kind of medium," said Dick and slipped into the red-leather settee opposite Pat.
"Wel , look who we have with us," she said. "I thought you were busy poisoning the American public under the dome of the Capitol."
-511-"Wouldn't be so bad if we poisoned some of those west-ern legislators," said Dick. Reggie held out his hand. "Wel , put it there, Alec Borgia. . . . I reckon you're on the bourbon if you've been mingling with the conscript fathers."
"Sure, I'l drink bourbon . . . kids, I'm tired . . . I'm going to eat something. I didn't have any supper. I just left the office."
Reggie looked pretty tight; so did Pat. Jo was evi-dently sober and sore. I must fix this up, thought Dick and put his arm round Pat's waist. "Say, did you get my
'gram?""Laughed myself sick over it," said Pat. "Gosh, Dick, it's nice to have you back among the drinking classes."
"Say, Dick," said Reggie, "is there anything in the rumor that old doughface toppled over?"
"Mr. Moorehouse had a little attack of acute indiges-tion . . . he was better when I left," said Dick in a voice that sounded a little too solemn in his ears.
"Not drinking gets 'em in the end,"