At last they came to a dance hall. As much as she liked the glitter of the square it was a relief to go inside the red-upholstered, mirror-walled dance hall where the only odors were of perfume and cigarette smoke.
“I haven’t been here for so long,” she said.
Mr Heywood came out of the theater. He had left in the middle of the last act. It was his personal strategy to do this because it meant that he missed the crowd and the long wait for his car to find him.
The play had been dreary and he had seen it only because a friend of his knew the girl in it. Besides, Mr Heywood did not like to go to plays alone. His wife no longer went with him and he was afraid of taking other women around with him because people talked. He did not like any men at all.
The street was almost deserted. The theaters still were full and their chaste white light signs shone cleanly into the street. Two blocks away was Times Square. He could just barely make out the colored sign of a soft drink bottle. He shuddered as he thought of soft drinks.
He stood in front of the theater, the light from the marquee shining dramatically down upon him. He would stand here now without moving until his waiting chauffeur saw him and took him away. To his left he heard the sound of a motor starting. He did not look to his left. He merely stood now, self-contained and passive, waiting.
His car stopped in front of him. The chauffeur got out, opened the door and said something to him and Mr Heywood said something to the chauffeur and an understanding was reached. Mr Heywood got into the car and the chauffeur drove down the street into the square and toward home.
Mr Heywood shrank from the lights that suddenly made the inside of his car as colorful as a rainbow. He tried not to look out the window at the square but it was impossible not to look. His eyes were drawn by the force of the lights and he looked out finally.
All the cheapness he hated was in the square. The people of whom he was terrified moved all about him now. The noises he hated to hear and the lights he hated to see intruded. He shuddered and wondered if he was going to be sick.