Three people came straggling out from Jack O’Leary’s Bar: a tall, loose-jointed man in evening clothes who seemed to be in no particular hurry, two girls with long gowns trailing the sidewalk, both of them talking at once, looking back over their shoulders into the lighted bar.
The man waved his hand at the driver of the automobile. The horns pulsed into a cacophony.
The man walked leisurely across the sidewalk, stepped out into the street, and gallantly stood by the rear door, holding it open. After a few seconds, one of the women came over to join him. The other one turned back toward the bar. A fat man in a business suit, holding a glass in his hand, came out to talk with her.
The two people who were holding up the procession seemed completely oblivious of it all. They talked earnestly. The man pulled out a pencil, fished a notebook from his pocket, then looked around for a place to set the glass. When he could find none, he tried to hold glass and notebook in one hand while he scribbled.
Eventually it was completed. The young woman pulled up her long skirt, strolled leisurely across the sidewalk to the curb, and got into the car.
Then followed the slamming of car doors. The driver of the automobile seemed to feel that he could best minimize the delay he had caused by starting in low gear with the throttle wide open. He clashed into second gear at the corner. The stream of congested traffic started flowing by.
I looked at my wrist watch. Three-forty-five.
I stood by the window for half an hour because there was nothing else to do. I couldn’t go back to sleep. Bertha Cool was due to arrive on the 7:20 train. I’d told her I’d be at the station to meet her.
During the half hour that I stood, watching the breaking-up of the parties over at O’Leary’s Bar, I got so I could just about classify the potential disturbances before they exploded into noise.
There was the battling foursome that would stand out in front and argue at the top of their voices where they should go next. These usually divided into two people who wanted to go home, and two who insisted that it was just the beginning of the evening. There were the people who had made new acquaintances at the bar. Apparently it never occurred to anyone to try and get names, addresses, and telephone numbers until they reached the sidewalk. There the defect was remedied with much laughter, shouted farewells, and some last bit of repartee which could only be remembered when the parties were almost out of earshot. There were the parties-breaking-up-in-a-brawl type of thing — the women who wouldn’t be seduced — the wives who weren’t going to go home yet.