Emerging from his bath he polished himself with the
meticulous attention of a bootblack. Then he
wandered into the bedroom, and whistling the while
a weird, uncertain melody, strolled here and there
buttoning, adjusting, and enjoying the warmth of the
thick carpet on his feet.
He lit a cigarette, tossed the match out the open
top of the window, then paused in his tracks with
the cigarette two inches from his mouth—which
fell faintly ajar. His eyes were focussed upon
a spot of brilliant color on the roof of a house farther
down the alley.
It was a girl in a red neglige, silk surely, drying
her hair by the still hot sun of late afternoon.
His whistle died upon the stiff air of the room; he
walked cautiously another step nearer the window with
a sudden impression that she was beautiful. Sitting
on the stone parapet beside her was a cushion the
same color as her garment and she was leaning both
arms upon it as she looked down into the sunny areaway,
where Anthony could hear children playing.
He watched her for several minutes. Something
was stirred in him, something not accounted for by
the warm smell of the afternoon or the triumphant
vividness of red. He felt persistently that the
girl was beautiful—then of a sudden he
understood: it was her distance, not a rare and
precious distance of soul but still distance, if only
in terrestrial yards. The autumn air was between
them, and the roofs and the blurred voices. Yet
for a not altogether explained second, posing perversely
in time, his emotion had been nearer to adoration than
in the deepest kiss he had ever known.
He finished his dressing, found a black bow tie and
adjusted it carefully by the three-sided mirror in
the bathroom. Then yielding to an impulse he
walked quickly into the bedroom and again looked out
the window. The woman was standing up now; she
had tossed her hair back and he had a full view of
her. She was fat, full thirty-five, utterly undistinguished.
Making a clicking noise with his mouth he returned
to the bathroom and reparted his hair.
“To ... you ... beaut-if-ul lady,”
he sang lightly,
“I raise ... my ... eyes—”
Then with a last soothing brush that left an iridescent
surface of sheer gloss he left his bathroom and his
apartment and walked down Fifth Avenue to the Ritz-Carlton.
At seven Anthony and his friend Maury Noble are sitting
at a corner table on the cool roof. Maury Noble
is like nothing so much as a large slender and imposing
cat. His eyes are narrow and full of incessant,
protracted blinks. His hair is smooth and flat,
as though it has been licked by a possible—and,
if so, Herculean—mother-cat. During
Anthony’s time at Harvard he had been considered
the most unique figure in his class, the most brilliant,
the most original—smart, quiet and among
the saved.
This is the man whom Anthony considers his best friend.
This is the only man of all his acquaintance whom
he admires and, to a bigger extent than he likes to
admit to himself, envies.
