Dust of New York

BONI & LIVERIGHT New York 1919
Copyright, 1919, By Boni & Liveright, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
Acknowledgment is hereby made to the New York World, for permission to reprint a number of the stories included in this volume.
TO JOHN O'HARA COSGRAVE

New York is an orchestra playing a symphony. If you hear the part of only one instrument—first violin or oboe, 'cello or French horn—it is incongruous. To understand the symphony you must hear all the instruments playing together, each its own part, to the invisible baton of that great conductor, Father Time.
But the symphony is heard only very rarely. Most of the time New York is tuning up. Each voice is practising its part of the score—the little solos for the violins to please the superficial sentimentalists, and the twenty bars for the horn to satisfy the martial spirit in men.
But don't, oh sightseers, don't think you know New York because you have sauntered through a few streets and eaten hot tamales in a Mexican restaurant, or burnt your tongue with goulash in some celebrated Hungarian palace. Only to very few privileged ones is it given to hear the symphony—and they have to pay dearly for it. But it is worth the price.
They called her the Vampire, or Vamp for short. Her name was Theresa, and she was born somewhere on Hungarian soil in Tokai, where flows the dark blue water of the Tisza, not far from the Herpad Mountains on which grows the grape for the luxurious Tokai wine.
Now, when and why Theresa came to New York nobody knew. But all were glad she was here ... here, at a little table in a corner of the Imperial on Second Avenue. When one met a friend on the street and asked: Anybody at the 'Imperial?' and the answer was Nobody there to-night, it simply meant that the Vamp was not there. The other two hundred or more guests did not count.
She spoke very little. She smoked all the time, and her fiery dark eyes hid behind the thin smoke curtain from her cigarette. Young men had no chance at her table. They seldom came near her at all. They were afraid of her. Only married men dared approach her, relying on their experience to extricate themselves when in danger.