Fleetwood turned and looked at her, and it happened. His eyebrows shot up, his heart stood still. He felt faintly ill in a surprised, elated sort of way. Never had he dreamed that there could be such a creature. This girl, this ... this fragment of heaven! She couldn't possibly be real. She was so extraordinarily ordinary!
"What would you like?" the girl said, and Fleetwood tingled anew just at the sound of her voice; its tone was so enchantingly flat and nasal. Never had he dreamed that it was possible for any woman to speak with so little innuendo. He was shaken to the very core. He realized that because of this girl something very important was happening to him, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. The mystery of the disappearing Grande Apartments faded from his mind.
"I beg your pardon?" he murmured in an effort to induce the girl to speak again.
"I said, what do you want?" the girl repeated, and her grey-brown eyes looked into his unconcernedly.
It was too good to be true! Here she was, this extraordinary female person, apparently eager, even impatient, to fulfill his slightest wish, just for the naming. Fleetwood took a firm grip on the edge of the counter. If this was a dream he didn't want to interrupt it by being too rash. His eyes dwelt on her hair, tabulating the exact measure of its fascinating dullness.
"Bourbon and water?" he said cautiously. "Double?" He couldn't remember exactly what it meant, but it seemed a likely entry.
"Huh?" the girl said. "What was that?"
Fleetwood's heart sank; he'd said the wrong thing, and the first crack out of the box, too. Obviously, he had blundered somehow into a strange land where people spoke in prepared dialogues, and the moment he'd opened his mouth he'd gone up in his lines. There was a proper response to the question, "what do you want?" but "bourbon and water" was not it. He glanced around nervously as two young women arrived at the magazine racks behind him and simultaneously picked up copies of the New York Toast. Neither returned his glance or even gave the slightest indication that they were aware of his existence, much less his dilemma. He looked back at the girl who had now begun to eye him rather curiously. Plainly she was waiting for him to get on with it; he had to try again, no matter how much he might disappoint both of them.
"Scotch and soda?" he offered timorously.