LITMIR.BIZ

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week; I’ve got my man working on it now.”

      “Works pretty slow, don’t he?38”

      “No, he doesn’t,” said Tom coldly. “And if you feel that way about it, maybe I’d better sell it somewhere else after all.”

      “I don’t mean that,” answered Wilson quickly. “I just meant —”

      His voice faded off and Tom looked 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 door39. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly fat, but she carried her overweight body sensuously as some women can. Her face contained no shade of beauty, but there was an immediate vitality about her that you couldn’t miss. She smiled slowly and, walking through her husband as if he were a ghost, shook hands with Tom, looking him right in the eye. Then she wet her lips, and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:

      “Get some chairs, why don’t you, so somebody can sit down.”

      “Oh, sure,” agreed Wilson hurriedly. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity40 – except his wife, who moved close to Tom.

      “I want to see you,” said Tom imperatively. “Get on the next train.”

      “All right.”

      We waited for her down the road and out of sight.

      “Terrible place, isn’t it,” said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg.

      “Awful.”

      “It does her good to get away. Wilson thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He’s so stupid he doesn’t know he’s alive.”

      So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York. She had changed her dress to a brown figured muslin, which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York41. At the news-stand she bought a copy of Town Tattle42, and in the station drugstore some cold cream and a small flask of perfume. Upstairs, she let four taxicabs drive away before she chose a new one, lavender-colored, and in this we climbed into. But immediately she turned sharply from the window and tapped on the front glass.43

      “I want to get one of those dogs for the apartment,” she said imperatively.

      We backed up to a gray old man who was selling very recent puppies of a doubtful breed.

      “What kind are they?” asked Mrs. Wilson eagerly.

      “All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?”

      “I’d like to get one of those police dogs; I don’t think you got that kind?”

      The man looked doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up44.

      “That’s no police dog,” said Tom.

      “No, it’s not exactly a police dog,” said the man with disappointment in his voice. “It’s more of an Airedale45. Look at that coat. That’s a dog that’ll never catch cold, so you don’t need to worry about it.”

      “I think it’s cute,” said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. “How much is it?”

      “That dog?” He looked at it admiringly. “That dog will cost you ten dollars.”

      The Airedale (without any doubts, there was an Airedale among the dog’s ancestors, though its feet were surprisingly white) changed hands and settled down into Mrs. Wilson’s lap, where she fondled the weatherproof coat with rapture46.

      “Is it a boy or a girl?” she asked delicately.

      “That dog? That dog’s a boy.”

      “Here’s your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it,” said Tom decisively.

      We drove over to Fifth Avenue.

      “Hold on,” I said, “I have to leave you here.”

      “No, you don’t,” said Tom quickly. “Myrtle’ll be hurt if you don’t come up to the apartment. Won’t you, Myrtle?”

      “Come on,” she said. “I’ll telephone my sister Catherine. People who ought to know say she’s very beautiful.”

      “Well, I’d like to, but —”

      The cab stopped at one of apartment houses. Throwing a homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and other things she bought, and went haughtily in.

      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 it47, so that to move about was to stumble continually over. The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph of what seemed to be a hen, but when you saw it from a distance it transformed into a bonnet with an old lady looking from under it. Several old copies of Town Tattle lay on the table. Mrs. Wilson was first busy with the dog. A lazy elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door.

      I have been drunk just twice in my life, and the second time was that afternoon; so everything that happened was like in the mist. Sitting on Tom’s lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes, and I went out to buy some. When I came back they had disappeared, so I sat down discreetly in the living room. Just as Tom and Myrtle (after the first drink Mrs. Wilson and I called each other by our first names) reappeared, company began to arrive at the apartment door.

      The sister, Catherine, was a slim, chatty girl of about thirty, with a solid, sticky bob of red hair, and a complexion powdered milky white48. She had plucked her eyebrows and then drew them again at a more frivolous angle but nature tried to return their previous form so her face looked indistinctly. When she moved about there was a continuous clicking thanks to pottery bracelets that jingled up and down upon her arms.

      Mr. McKee 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 everyone in the room. Later I got to know that he was a photographer and had made the photo of Mrs. Wilson’s mother – the old lady in the bonnet – which was 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.

      Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before, and was now dressed in an elegant afternoon dress of cream-colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she walked about the room. With the influence of the dress her personality had also changed. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage turned into impressive arrogance. Her laughter, her gestures became more violently feigned moment by moment.

      “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 take care of my feet, and when she gave me the bill I was shocked.”

      “I like your dress,” remarked Mrs. McKee, “I think it’s adorable.”

      Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in contempt.

      “It’s just a crazy old thing,” she said. “I just put it on sometimes when I don’t care what I look like.”

      “But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean,”

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