U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [358]
. . . he's a good scout. The ladies want to see a real flying aviator with palms.""You're sure I won't be buttin' in, Ol ie?""My dear boy, say no more about it." At the club everybody seemed to know Ol ie Taylor.
He and Charley stood a long time drinking Manhattans at a darkpaneled bar in a group of whitehaired old gents with a barroom tan on their faces. It was Major this and Major that and Lieutenant every time anybody spoke to Charley. Charley was getting to be afraid Ol ie would get too much of a load on to go to dinner at anybody's house. At last it turned out to be seventhirty, and leaving the final round of cocktails, they got into a cab again, each of them munching a clove, and started uptown. "I don't know what to say to
'em," Ol ie said. "I tel them I've just spent the most delightful two years of my life, and they make funny mouths at me, but I can't help it." There was a terrible lot of marble, and doormen in
green, at the apartmenthouse where they went out to din-ner and the elevator was inlaid in different kinds of wood. Nat Benton, Ol ie whispered while they were waiting for the door to open, was a Wal Street broker.
-13-They were al in eveningdress waiting for them for dinner in a pinkishcolored drawingroom. They were evi-dently old friends of Ol ie's because they made a great fuss over him and they were very cordial to Charley and brought out cocktails right away, and Charley felt like the cock of the walk.
There was a girl named Miss Humphries who was as
pretty as a picture. The minute Charley set eyes on her Charley decided that was who he was going to talk to. Her eyes and her fluffy palegreen dress and the powder in the little hol ow between her shoulderblades made him feel a little dizzy so that he didn't dare stand too close to her. Ol ie saw the two of them together and came up and pinched her ear. "Doris, you've grown up to be a raving beauty." He stood beaming teetering a little on his short legs. "Hum . . . only the brave deserve the fair. . . . It's not every day we come home from the wars, is it, Charley me boy?"
"Isn't he a darling?" she said when Ol ie turned away.
"We used to be great sweethearts when I was about six and he was a col egeboy." When they were al ready to go into dinner Ol ie, who'd had a couple more cocktails, spread out his arms and made a speech. "Look at them, lovely, intel igent, lively American women. . .
. There was nothing like that on the other side, was there, Char-ley? Three things you can't get anywhere else in the world, a good cocktail, a decent breakfast, and an American girl, God bless 'em.""Oh, he's such a darling," whispered Miss Humphries in Charley's ear.
There was silverware in rows and rows on the table and a Chinese bowl with roses in the middle of it, and a group of giltstemmed wineglasses at each place. Charley was relieved when he found he was sitting next to Miss Hum-phries. She was smiling up at him.
"Gosh," he said, grin-ning into her face, "I hardly know how to act." "It must
-14-be a change . . . from over there. But just act natural. That's what I do."
"Oh, no, a fel er always gets into trouble when he acts natural." She laughed. "Maybe you're right. . . . Oh, do tel me what it was real y like over there. . . . Nobody'l ever tel me everything." She pointed to the palms on his Croix de Guerre. "Oh, Lieutenant Anderson, you must tel me about those."
They had white wine with the fish and red wine with the roastbeef and a dessert al ful of whippedcream. Charley kept tel ing himself he mustn't drink too much so that he'd be sure to behave right.
Miss Humphries' first name was Doris. Mrs. Benton
cal ed her that. She'd spent a year in a convent in Paris before the war and asked him about places she'd known, the church of the Madeleine and Rumpelmayers and the pastryshop opposite the Comédie Française. After dinner she and Charley took their coffeecups into a windowbay behind a big pink begonia in a brass pot and she asked him if he didn't think New York was awful. She sat on the windowseat and he stood over her looking past her white shoulder through the window down at the traffic in the street below. It had come on to rain and the lights of the cars made long rippling streaks on the black pavement of Park Avenue. He said something about how he thought home would look pretty good to him al the same. He was wondering if it would be al right if he told her she had beautiful shoulders. He'd just about gotten around to it when he heard Ol ie Taylor getting everybody together to go out to a cabaret. "I know it's a chore," Ol ie was saying, "but you children must remember it's my first night in New York and humor my weakness."