User blog:Inconsistency/The Great Veeny- Chapter 2

Late as heck but that's how I do.

About half way between The TLH Wiki Server and New York the motor road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of blocked users — a fantastic farm where blocked users complain to the admins about their blocks; where blocked users take the forms of little babies and brainless fools and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the sad air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight. But above the gray land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Froggy. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Froggy are blue and gigantic — their irises are one yard high. They look out of no face, but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness, or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days, under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.

The valley of blocked users is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and, when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute, and it was because of this that I first met Timey Marey’s mistress.

The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known. His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew. Though I was curious to see her, I had no desire to meet her — but I did. I went up to New York with Timey on the train one afternoon, and when we stopped by the river of tears he jumped to his feet and, taking hold of my elbow, literally forced me from the car.

“We’re getting off,” he insisted. “I want you to meet my girl.”

I think he’d tanked up a good deal at luncheon, and his determination to have my company bordered on violence. The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do.

I followed him over a low whitewashed railroad fence, and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Froggy’s persistent stare. The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it, and contiguous to absolutely nothing. One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night restaurant, approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage — Repairs. Beter B. Briffin. Cars bought and sold. — and I followed Timey inside.

The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner. It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind, and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead, when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste. He was a blond, spiritless man, anaemic, and faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes.

“Hello, Beter, old man,” said Timey, slapping him jovially on the shoulder. “How’s business?”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I can’t complain,” answered Beter unconvincingly. “When are you going to sell me that car?”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Next week; I’ve got my man working on it now.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Works pretty slow, don’t he?”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“No, he doesn’t,” said Timey coldly. “And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I don’t mean that,” explained Beter quickly. “I just meant ——”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">His voice faded off and Timey glanced impatiently around the garage. Then I heard footsteps on a stairs, and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was in the middle twenties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty, but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and, walking through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Timey, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips, and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Oh, sure,” agreed Beter hurriedly, and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity — except his wife, who moved close to Timey.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I want to see you,” said Timey intently. “Get on the next train.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“All right.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I’ll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level.” She nodded and moved away from him just as Beter Briffin emerged with two chairs from his office door.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">We waited for her down the road and out of sight. It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a gray, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the railroad track.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Terrible place, isn’t it,” said Timey, exchanging a frown with Doctor Froggy.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Awful.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“It does her good to get away.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Doesn’t her husband object?”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Beter? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He’s so dumb he doesn’t know he’s alive.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">So Timey Marey and his girl and I went up together to New York — or not quite together, for Mrs. Reg sat discreetly in another car. Timey deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">She had changed her dress to a brown figured muslin, which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Timey helped her to the platform in New York. At the news-stand she bought a copy of Town Tattle and a moving-picture magazine, and in the station drug-store some cold cream and a small flask of perfume. Up-stairs, in the solemn echoing drive she let four taxicabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with gray upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glowing sunshine. But immediately she turned sharply from the window and, leaning forward, tapped on the front glass.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I want to get one of those cars,” she said earnestly. “I want to get one for the apartment. They’re nice to have — a car.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">We backed up to a gray old man who bore an absurd resemblance to John D. Rockefeller. In a basket swung from his neck cowered a dozen very recently made cars of an indeterminate breed.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“What kind are they?” asked Mrs. Reg eagerly, as he came to the taxi-window.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I’d like to get one of those police cars; I don’t suppose you got that kind?”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“That’s no police car,” said Timey.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“No, it’s not exactly a police car,” said the man with disappointment in his voice. “It’s more of an Oldsmobile.” He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back. “Look at that coat. Some coat. That’s a car that’ll never bother you with catching cold.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I think it’s cute,” said Mrs. Reg enthusiastically. “How much is it?”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“That car?” He looked at it admiringly. “That dog will cost you ten thousand dollars.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">The Oldsmobile — undoubtedly there was an Oldsmobile concerned in it somewhere, though its feet were startlingly white — changed hands and settled down into Mrs. Reg’s lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked delicately.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“That car? That car’s a boy.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“It’s a pile of junk,” said Timey decisively. “Here’s your money. Go and buy ten more cars with it.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Hold on,” I said, “I have to leave you here.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“No, you don’t,” interposed Timey quickly.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Reg’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment. Won’t you, Reg?”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Come on,” she urged. “I’ll telephone my sister Vulture. She’s said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Well, I’d like to, but ——”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds. At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment-houses. Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs. Reg gathered up her dog and her other purchases, and went haughtily in.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I’m going to have the Jace Norman Fans come up,” she announced as we rose in the elevator. “And, of course, I got to call up my sister, too.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">The apartment was on the top floor — a small living-room, a small dining-room, a small bedroom, and a bath. The living-room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it, so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles. The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a car with a rather large tail. Looked at from a distance, however, the car resolved itself into a pile of scrap, and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room. Several old copies of Town Tattle lay on the table together with a copy of Simon Called Peter, and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway. Mrs. Reg was first concerned with the car. A reluctant elevator-boy went for a box full of paint and some petrol, to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large, hard car-parts — one of which decomposed apathetically in the saucer of petrol all afternoon. Meanwhile Timey brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon; so everything that happened has a dim, hazy cast over it, although until after eight o’clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun. Sitting on Timey’s lap Mrs. Reg called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes, and I went out to buy some at the drugstore on the corner. When I came back they had disappeared, so I sat down discreetly in the living-room and read a chapter of Simon Called Peter — either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things, because it didn’t make any sense to me.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">Just as Timey and Reg (after the first drink Mrs. Reg and I called each other by our first names) reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment-door.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">The sister, Vulture, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty, with a solid, sticky bob of red hair, and a complexion powdered milky white. Her eye-brows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle, but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face. When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jingled up and down upon her arms. She came in with such a proprietary haste, and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud, and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">Mr. Jace Norman Fan was a pale, feminine man from the flat below. He had just shaved, for there was a white spot of lather on his cheekbone, and he was most respectful in his greeting to every one in the room. He informed me that he was in the “artistic game,” and I gathered later that he was a photographer and had made the dim enlargement of Mrs. Reg’s mother which hovered like an ectoplasm on the wall. His wife was shrill, languid, handsome, and horrible. She told me with pride that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times since they had been married.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">Mrs. Reg had changed her costume some time before, and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream-colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room. With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment, and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her, until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“My dear,” she told her sister in a high, mincing shout, “most of these fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I had a woman up here last week to look at my feet, and when she gave me the bill you’d of thought she had my appendicitis out.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“What was the name of the woman?” asked Mrs. Jace Norman Fan.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Mrs. Jacob. She goes around looking at people’s feet in their own homes.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I like your dress,” remarked Mrs. Jace Norman Fan, “I think it’s adorable.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">Mrs. Reg rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“It’s just a crazy old thing,” she said. “I just slip it on sometimes when I don’t care what I look like.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean,” pursued Mrs. Jace Norman Fan. “If Chester could only get you in that pose I think he could make something of it.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">We all looked in silence at Mrs. Reg, who removed a strand of hair from over her eyes and looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr. Jace Norman Fan regarded her intently with his head on one side, and then moved his hand back and forth slowly in front of his face.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I should change the light,” he said after a moment. “I’d like to bring out the modelling of the features. And I’d try to get hold of all the back hair.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I wouldn’t think of changing the light,” cried Mrs. Jace Norman Fan. “I think it’s ——”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">Her husband said “sh!” and we all looked at the subject again, whereupon Timey Marey yawned audibly and got to his feet.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“You Jace Norman Fans have something to drink,” he said. “Get some more ice and mineral water, Reg, before everybody goes to sleep.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I told that boy about the ice.” Reg raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. “These people! You have to keep after them all the time.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ecstasy, and swept into the kitchen, implying that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I’ve done some nice things out on Long Island,” asserted Mr. Jace Norman Fan.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">Timey looked at him blankly.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Two of them we have framed down-stairs.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Two what?” demanded Timey.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Two studies. One of them I call Montauk Point— The Gulls, and the other I call Montauk Point— The Sea.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">The sister Vulture sat down beside me on the couch.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Do you live down on Long Island, too?” she inquired.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I live at The TLH Wiki Server.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named Veeny’s. Do you know him?”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I live next door to him.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Well, they say he’s a nephew or a cousin of Satan’s. That’s where all his money comes from.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Really?”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">She nodded.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I’m scared of him. I’d hate to have him get anything on me.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">This absorbing information about my neighbor was interrupted by Mrs. Jace Norman Fan’s pointing suddenly at Vulture:

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Chester, I think you could do something with her,” she broke out, but Mr. Jace Norman Fan only nodded in a bored way, and turned his attention to Timey.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I’d like to do more work on Long Island, if I could get the entry. All I ask is that they should give me a start.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Ask Reg,” said Timey, breaking into a short shout of laughter as Mrs. Beter entered with a tray. “She’ll give you a letter of introduction, won’t you Reg?”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Do what?” she asked, startled.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“You’ll give Jace Norman Fan a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can do some studies of him.” His lips moved silently for a moment as he invented. “Beter Briffin at the Gasoline Pump, or something like that.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">Vulture leaned close to me and whispered in my ear: “Neither of them can stand the person they’re married to.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Can’t they?”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Can’t stand them.” She looked at Reg and then at Timey. “What I say is, why go on living with them if they can’t stand them? If I was them I’d get a divorce and get married to each other right away.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Doesn’t she like Beter either?”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">The answer to this was unexpected. It came from Reg, who had overheard the question, and it was violent and obscene.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“You see,” cried Vulture triumphantly. She lowered her voice again. “It’s really his wife that’s keeping them apart. She’s a Catholic, and they don’t believe in divorce.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">Incon was not a Catholic, and I was a little shocked at the elaborateness of the lie.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“When they do get married,” continued Vulture, “they’re going West to live for a while until it blows over.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“It’d be more discreet to go to Europe.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Oh, do you like Europe?” she exclaimed surprisingly. “I just got back from Monte Carlo.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Really.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Just last year. I went over there with another girl.” “Stay long?”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“No, we just went to Monte Carlo and back. We went by way of Marseilles. We had over twelve hundred dollars when we started, but we got gypped out of it all in two days in the private rooms. We had an awful time getting back, I can tell you. God, how I hated that town!”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the blue honey of the Mediterranean — then the shrill voice of Mrs. Jace Norman Fan called me back into the room.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I almost made a mistake, too,” she declared vigorously. “I almost married a little bugger who’d been after me for years. I knew he was below me. Everybody kept saying to me: ‘Lucille, that man’s ‘way below you!’ But if I hadn’t met Chester, he’d of got me sure.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Yes, but listen,” said Reg Briffin, nodding her head up and down, “at least you didn’t marry him.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I know I didn’t.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Well, I married him,” said Reg, ambiguously. “And that’s the difference between your case and mine.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Why did you, Reg?” demanded Vulture. “Nobody forced you to.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">Reg considered.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I married him because I thought he was a gentleman,” she said finally. “I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn’t fit to lick my shoe.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“You were crazy about him for a while,” said Vulture.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Crazy about him!” cried Reg incredulously. “Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">She pointed suddenly at me, and every one looked at me accusingly. I tried to show by my expression that I had played no part in her past.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“The only crazy I was was when I married him. I knew right away I made a mistake. He borrowed somebody’s best suit to get married in, and never even told me about it, and the man came after it one day when he was out. ‘oh, is that your suit?’ I said. ‘this is the first I ever heard about it.’ But I gave it to him and then I lay down and cried to beat the band all afternoon.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“She really ought to get away from him,” resumed Vulture to me. “They’ve been living over that garage for eleven years. And Timey’s the first sweetie she ever had.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">The bottle of whiskey — a second one — was now in constant demand by all present, excepting Vulture, who “felt just as good on nothing at all.” Timey rang for the janitor and sent him for some celebrated sandwiches, which were a complete supper in themselves. I wanted to get out and walk southward toward the park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">Reg pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly her warm breath poured over me the story of her first meeting with Timey.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off him, but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head. When we came into the station he was next to me, and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm, and so I told him I’d have to call a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn’t hardly know I wasn’t getting into a subway train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live forever; you can’t live forever.’”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">She turned to Mrs. Jace Norman Fan and the room rang full of her artificial laughter.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“My dear,” she cried, “I’m going to give you this dress as soon as I’m through with it. I’ve got to get another one to-morrow. I’m going to make a list of all the things I’ve got to get. A massage and a wave, and a collar for the dog, and one of those cute little ash-trays where you touch a spring, and a wreath with a black silk bow for mother’s grave that’ll last all summer. I got to write down a list so I won’t forget all the things I got to do.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">It was nine o’clock — almost immediately afterward I looked at my watch and found it was ten. Mr. Jace Norman Fan was asleep on a chair with his fists clenched in his lap, like a photograph of a man of action. Taking out my handkerchief I wiped from his cheek the remains of the spot of dried lather that had worried me all the afternoon.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">The little dog was sitting on the table looking with blind eyes through the smoke, and from time to time groaning faintly. People disappeared, reappeared, made plans to go somewhere, and then lost each other, searched for each other, found each other a few feet away. Some time toward midnight Timey Marey and Mrs. Reg stood face to face discussing, in impassioned voices, whether Mrs. Reg had any right to mention Daisy’s name.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Incon! Incon! Incon!” shouted Mrs. Reg. “I’ll say it whenever I want to! Incon! Inc ——”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">Making a short deft movement, Timey Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">Then there were bloody towels upon the bath-room floor, and women’s voices scolding, and high over the confusion a long broken wail of pain. Mr. Jace Norman Fan awoke from his doze and started in a daze toward the door. When he had gone half way he turned around and stared at the scene — his wife and Vulture scolding and consoling as they stumbled here and there among the crowded furniture with articles of aid, and the despairing figure on the couch, bleeding fluently, and trying to spread a copy of Town Tattle over the tapestry scenes of Versailles. Then Mr. Jace Norman Fan turned and continued on out the door. Taking my hat from the chandelier, I followed.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Come to lunch some day,” he suggested, as we groaned down in the elevator.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Where?”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Anywhere.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Keep your hands off the lever,” snapped the elevator boy.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Jace Norman Fan with dignity, “I didn’t know I was touching it.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“All right,” I agreed, “I’ll be glad to.”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">. . . I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">“Beauty and the Beast. . . Loneliness. . . Old Grocery Horse. . . Brook’n Bridge. . . . ”

<p style="margin:0cm0cm2.4pt;text-align:justify;text-indent:24pt;line-height:18pt;background:rgb(252,255,246);"><span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Georgia",serif; color:black">Then I was lying half asleep in the cold lower level of the Pennsylvania Station, staring at the morning Tribune, and waiting for the four o’clock train.

<p class="MsoNormal">