He rushed out into the hallway and across to the parlor pinkly lit with velours, even through the rainy day, and so inflexibly calm. Sara might have measured the distance between the chairs, so regimental they stood. The pink-velour curlicue divan with the two pink, gold-tasseled cushions, carelessly exact. The onyx-topped table with the pink-velour drape, also gold-tasseled. The pair of equidistant and immaculate china cuspidors, rose-wreathed. The smell of Sunday.
"Nicky, that you?"
It was his mother, from the dining room.
"Yes, mother," and sauntered in.
There were two women sitting at the round table, shelling nuts. One of them his mother, the other Miss Ada Berkowitz, who jumped up, spilling hulls.
Nicholas, in the velveteen dressing gown with the collar turned up, started to back out, Mrs. Turkletaub spoiling that.
"You can come in, Nicky. Ada'll excuse you. I guess she's seen a man in his dressing gown before; the magazine advertisements are full with them in worse and in less. And on Sunday with a headache from all week working so hard, a girl can forgive. He shouldn't think with his head so much, I always tell him, Ada."
"I didn't know he was here," said Miss Berkowitz, already thinking in terms of what she might have worn.
"I telephoned over for Ada, Nicky. They got an automobile and she don't need to get her feet wet to come over to a lonesome old woman on a rainy Sunday, to spend the day and learn me how to make those delicious stuffed dates like she fixed for her mother's card party last week. Draw up a chair, Nicky, and help."
She was casual, she was matter-of-fact, she was bent on the business of nut cracking. They crashed softly, never so much as bruised by her carefully even pressure.