“I’m all right,” I said. “Don’t come. I’ll see you all later.”
I walked away from the café. They were sitting at the table. I looked back at them and at the empty tables. There was a waiter sitting at one of the tables with his head in his hands.
Walking across the square to the hotel everything looked new and changed. I had never seen the trees before. I had never seen the flagpoles before, nor the front of the theatre. It was all different. I felt as I felt once coming home from an out-of-town football game. I was carrying a suitcase with my football things in it, and I walked up the street from the station in the town I had lived in all my life and it was all new. They were raking the lawns and burning leaves in the road, and I stopped for a long time and watched. It was all strange. Then I went on, and my feet seemed to be a long way off, and everything seemed to come from a long way off, and I could hear my feet walking a great distance away. I had been kicked in the head early in the game. It was like that crossing the square. It was like that going up the stairs in the hotel. Going up the stairs took a long time, and I had the feeling that I was carrying my suitcase. There was a light in the room. Bill came out and met me in the hall.
“Say,” he said, “go up and see Cohn. He’s been in a jam, and he’s asking for you.”
“The hell with him.”
“Go on. Go on up and see him.”
I did not want to climb another flight of stairs.
“What are you looking at me that way for?”
“I’m not looking at you. Go on up and see Cohn. He’s in bad shape.”
“You were drunk a little while ago,” I said.