“Telling 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 honestly all 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 softening 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 brilliant 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 called peevishly to the waiter. “How about some cocktails? Give me a bacardi with a little absinthe in 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 all 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 awfully 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 tell 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 married 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. All the time he was talking he was planning in the back of his head a release on the need for freedom of selfmedication. He couldn’t stop thinking about that damned Bingham 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 belly. He stood for a minute on the corner of Madison Avenue watching the lively beforechristmas crowd pour along the sidewalk against the bright showwindows, all kinds of faces flushed and healthylooking for 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. “Hello, 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 parquet 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 still 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 cigarettes in it. They sat down side by side on a rickety oldfashioned 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 finally decided to get a divorce… in a friendly way.”
“Eveline, I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“I dunno… It does seem silly… But I always liked Paul.”
“It all got just too tiresome… This way it’ll be much better for him.”
There was something coolly bitter about her as she sat beside him in her a little too frizzy afternoondress. He felt as if he was meeting her for the first time. He picked up her long blueveined hand and put it on the little table in front of them and patted it. “I like you better… anyway.” It sounded phony in his ears, like something he’d say to a client. He jumped to his feet. “Say, Eveline, suppose I call up Settignano and get some gin around? I’ve got to have a drink… I can’t get the office out of my head.”
“If you go back to the icebox you’ll find some perfectly lovely cock tails all mixed. I just made them. There are some people coming in later.” “How much later?” “About seven o’clock… why?” Her eyes followed him teasingly as he went back through the glass doors.
In the pantry the colored girl was putting on her hat. “Cynthia, Mrs. Johnson alleges there are cocktails out here.” “Yes, Mr. Dick, I’ll get you some glasses.” “Is this your afternoon out?” “Yessir, I’m goin’ to church.” “On Saturday afternoon?” “Yessir, our church we have services every Saturday afternoon… lots of folks don’t get Sunday off nowadays.” “It’s gotten so I don’t get any day off at all.” “It shoa is too bad, Mr. Dick.”
He went back into the front room shakily, carrying the tray with the shaker jiggling on it. The two glasses clinked. “Oh, Dick, I’m going to have to reform you. Your hands are shaking like an old greybeard’s.” “Well, I am an old greybeard. I’m worrying myself to death about whether that bastardly patentmedicine king will sign on the dotted line Monday.”
“Don’t talk about it… It sounds just too awful. I’ve been working hard myself… I’m trying to put on a play.”
“Eveline, that’s swell! Who’s it by?”
“Charles Edward Holden… It’s a magnificent piece of work. I’m terribly excited about it. I think I know how to do it… I don’t suppose you want to put a couple of thousand dollars in, do you, Dick?”
“Eveline, I’m flat broke… They’ve got my salary garnisheed and Mother has to be supported in the style to which she is accustomed and then there’s Brother Henry’s ranch in Arizona… he’s all balled up with a mortgage… I thought Charles Edward Holden was just a columnist.”
“This is a side of him that’s never come out… I think he’s the real poet of modern New York… you wait and see.”
Dick poured himself another cocktail. “Let’s talk about just us for a minute… I feel so frazzled… Oh, Eveline, you know what I mean… We’ve been pretty good friends.” She let him hold her hand but she did not return the squeeze he gave it. “You know we always said we were just physically attractive to each other… why isn’t that the swellest thing in the world?” He moved up close to her on the couch, gave her a little kiss on the cheek, tried to twist her face around. “Don’t you like this miserable sinner a little bit?”
“Dick, I can’t.” She got to her feet. Her lips were twitching and she looked as if she was going to burst into tears. “There’s somebody I like very much… very, very much. I’ve decided to make some sense out of my life.”
“Who? That damn columnist?”
“Never mind who.”
Dick buried his face in his hands. When he took his hands away he was laughing. “Well, if that isn’t just my luck… Just Johnny on the spot and me full of speakeasy Saturday-afternoon amorosity.”
“Well, Dick, I’m sure you won’t lack for partners.”
“I do today… I feel lonely and hellish. My life is a shambles.”
“What a literary phrase.”
“I thought it was pretty good myself but honestly I feel every whichway… Something funny happened to me last night. I’ll tell you about it someday when you like me better.”