At seven Anthony and his friend Maury Noble are sitting at a corner table on the cool roof. Maury Noble is like a large slender cat. His eyes are narrow, his hair is smooth and flat. This is the man whom Anthony considers his best friend. This is the only man whom he admires and envies.
They are glad to see each other now. They are drawing a relaxation from each other’s presence, a serenity. They are engaged in one of those conversations that only men under thirty indulge in.
ANTHONY: Seven o’clock. Where’s the Caramel? (Impatiently.) Still writing? I’m hungry.
MAURY: He’s got a new name for his novel. “The Demon Lover “ – not bad, eh?
ANTHONY (interested): “The Demon Lover”? No – not bad! Not bad at all – do you think?
MAURY: Rather good. What time did you say?
ANTHONY: Seven.
MAURY: He drove me crazy the other day.
ANTHONY: How?
MAURY: That habit of taking notes.
ANTHONY: Me, too. One day I said something that he considered important but he forgot it. So he said, “Can’t you try to concentrate?” And I said, “How do I remember?”
MAURY (laughs noiselessly.)
ANTHONY: Do you remember him in college? He was just swallowing every writer, one after another, every idea, every character.
MAURY: Let’s order.
ANTHONY: Sure. Let’s order. I told him -
MAURY: Here he comes. (He lifts his finger as a claw.) Here you are, Caramel.
Richard Caramel is short and fair. He has yellowish eyes. When he reaches the table he shakes hands[11]with Anthony and Maury. He is one of those men who invariably shake hands, even with people whom they have seen an hour before.
ANTHONY: Hello, Caramel. Glad you’re here.
MAURY: You’re late. We’ve been talking about you.
DICK (looking at Anthony): What did you say? Tell me and I’ll write it down. I cut three thousand words out of Part One this afternoon.
MAURY: And I poured alcohol into my stomach.
DICK: I don’t doubt it. I bet you have been sitting here for an hour talking about liquor.
ANTHONY: So what?
DICK: Are you going to the theatre?
MAURY: Yes. We intend to spend the evening thinking over of life’s problems. The thing is called “The Woman.”
ANTHONY: My God! Is it?
DICK (As though talking to himself): I think – that when I’ve done another novel and a play, and maybe a book of short stories, I’ll do a musical comedy.
MAURY: I know – with intellectual lyrics that no one will listen to.
ANTHONY: Why write? The very attempt is purposeless.
DICK: Well, I believe that every one in America should accept a very rigid system of morals – Roman Catholicism, for instance.
(Here the soup arrives and Maury’s words were lost.)
Afterward they bought tickets for a new musical comedy called “High Jinks[12].” In the foyer of the theatre they waited a few moments to see crowd.
After the play they parted – Maury was going to dance, Anthony homeward and to bed.
He found his way slowly over the evening mass of Times Square. Faces swirled about him, a kaleidoscope of girls, ugly, ugly as sin – too fat, too lean, floating upon this autumn. Anthony inhaled, swallowing into his lungs perfume and the not unpleasant scent of many cigarettes. He caught the glance of a dark young girl sitting alone in a taxicab.
Two young Jewish men passed him, talking in loud voices. They were wore gray spats and carried gray gloves on their cane handles.
An old lady borne between two men passed. Anthony heard a snatch of their conversation:
“There’s the Astor, mama!”
“Look! See the chariot race sign!”
“There’s where we were today. No, there!”
“Good gracious!”
He turned down the hush, passed a bakery-restaurant. From the door came a smell that was hot, and doughy. Then a Chinese laundry, still open, steamy and stifling. All these depressed him; reaching Sixth Avenue he stopped at a corner cigar store.
Once in his apartment he smoked a last cigarette, sitting in the dark by his open front window. For the first time he thought New York was not bad. A lonesome town, though. Oh, there was a loneliness here.
Crispness folded down upon New York a month later, bringing November and the three big football games. Anthony, walking along Forty-second Street one afternoon under a steel-gray sky, met unexpectedly Richard Caramel emerging from the Manhattan Hotel barber shop. It was a cold day, the first definitely cold day, and Caramel stopped Anthony enthusiastically, and, after his inevitable hand shake, said:
“Cold as the devil, I’ve been working like the deuce all day till my room got so cold I thought I’d get pneumonia. That darn landlady is economizing on coal.”
He had seized Anthony’s arm and drawn him briskly up Madison Avenue.
“Where to?”
“Nowhere in particular.”
“Well, then why?” demanded Anthony.
They stopped and stared at each other. After a moment they began walking again.
“You know,” Dick was looking and talking emphatically at the sidewalk. “I have to talk to someone.”
He glanced at Anthony apologetically.
“I have to talk. I do my thinking in writing or conversation.”
Anthony grunted and withdrew his arm gently.
“I mean,” continued Richard Caramel gravely, “that on paper your first paragraph contains the idea you’re going to enlarge.”
They passed Forty-fifth Street. Both of them lit cigarettes and blew tremendous clouds of smoke into the air.
“Let’s walk up to the Plaza,” suggested Anthony. “Come on – I’ll let you talk about your book all the way.”
“I don’t want to if it bores you. I mean you needn’t do it as a favor.”
Anthony protested:
“Bore me? I say no!”
“I’ve got a cousin,” began Dick, but Anthony interrupted.
“Good weather!” he exclaimed, “isn’t it? It makes me feel about ten. Murderous! Oh, God!”
“I’ve got a cousin at the Plaza. A nice girl. We can meet her. She lives there in the winter – with her mother and father.”
“I didn’t know you had cousins in New York.”
“Her name’s Gloria. She’s from Kansas City. Gloria Gilbert. She goes to dances at colleges.”
“I’ve heard her name.”
“Good-looking – in fact attractive.”
They reached Fiftieth Street and turned over toward the Avenue.
“I don’t care for young girls as a rule,” said Anthony, frowning.
This was not true. Any nice girl interested him enormously.
“Gloria is nice – and not a brain in her head.”
Anthony laughed.
“You mean that she can’t talk about literature.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Dick, you like earnest young women who sit with you in a corner and talk earnestly about life. When they were sixteen they argued with grave faces as to whether kissing was right or wrong – and whether it was immoral to drink beer.”
Richard Caramel was offended.
“No,” he began, but Anthony interrupted ruthlessly.
“Oh, yes; who sit in corners talk about the latest Scandinavian Dante available in English translation.”
Dick turned to him.
“What’s the matter with you and Maury? You talk sometimes as though I am a fool.”
Anthony was confused.
“Dick,” said Anthony, changing his tone, “I want to beg your pardon.”
“Why?”
“I’m honestly sorry. I was talking just for fun.”
Mollified, Dick rejoined:
“I’ve often said you’re a boaster.”
A clerk announced them over the phone, and ascending to the tenth floor they followed a winding corridor and knocked at 1088. The door was answered by a middle-aged lady – Mrs. Gilbert herself.
“How do you do? Well, I’m awfully glad to see you. Mr. Pats? Well, do come in, and leave your coat there.”
She pointed to a chair.
“This is really lovely – lovely. Why, Richard, you haven’t been here for so long! Well, do sit down and tell me what you’ve been doing. Are you a writer too, Mr. Pats? Gloria’s out,” she said. “She’s dancing somewhere. Gloria goes, goes, goes. She dances all afternoon and all night. Her father is very worried about her.”
She smiled from one to the other. They both smiled.
“I always say,” she remarked to Anthony, “that Richard is an ancient soul. We all have souls of different ages, at least that’s what I say.”
“Perhaps so,” agreed Anthony.
“Gloria has a very young soul – irresponsible, as much as anything else. She has no sense of responsibility.”
“Aunt Catherine,” said Richard pleasantly. “A sense of responsibility would spoil her. She’s too pretty.”
“Well,” confessed Mrs. Gilbert, “all I know is that she goes and goes and goes.”
Mr. Gilbert entered. He was a short man with a mustache resting like a small white cloud beneath his nose. His ideas were popular twenty years ago. After graduating from a small Western university, he had entered the celluloid business, and he did well for several years.
He disapproved of Gloria: she stayed out late, she never ate her meals. His wife was easier. After fifteen years of war he had conquered her. Mrs. Gilbert introduced him to Anthony.
“This is Mr. Pats,” she said.
The young man and the old shook hands. Then husband and wife exchanged greetings-he told her it had grown colder out; he said he had walked down to a news-stand on Forty-fourth Street for a Kansas City paper. He had intended to ride back in the bus but he had found it too cold, yes, yes, yes, yes, too cold.
“Well, you are the hero!” she exclaimed admiringly. “I wouldn’t have gone out for anything.”
Mr. Gilbert He turned to the two young men and began to talk to them on the subject of the weather. Then he rather abruptly changed the subject.
“Where’s Gloria?”
“She will be here any minute.”
“Have you met my daughter, Mr…?”
“I haven’t had the pleasure. But Dick spoke of her often.”
“She and Richard are cousins.”
“Yes?” Anthony smiled with some effort.
Richard Caramel was afraid they’d have to leave.
Mrs. Gilbert was tremendously sorry.
Mr. Gilbert thought it was too bad.
Would they come again soon?
“Oh, yes.”
Gloria would be awfully sorry!
“Good-bye!”
“Good-bye!”
Smiles!
Smiles!
Two disconsolate young men are walking down the tenth-floor corridor of the Plaza in the direction of the elevator.
Maury Noble was purposeful. His intention, as he stated it in college was: to use three years in travel, three years in leisure – and then to become immensely rich as quickly as possible.
His three years of travel were over. Back in America, he was searching for amusement. He taught himself to drink as he taught himself Greek – like Greek it would be the gateway to new sensations, new psychical states, new reactions.
He had three rooms in a bachelor apartment on Forty-forth street, but he was there. The telephone girl[13]
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