“Aren’t you giving this guy an awful build up?” I asked suspiciously, “I believe you want me to work for him.”
“I want you to get fixed up in a good job.”
“Well, it seems to me you’re pushing Andasca on me,” I returned. “I’ve already told you what I think of Peppi and his set-up. I can get a job, but it won’t be with Andasca.”
“You’re being pig-headed.” There was a note of anger in her voice. “Where else do you think you can earn two fifty a week?”
“That’s not such a lot of dough,” I returned. “Just shooting in articles would get me double that.”
She bit her lip and looked away. “Well, if that’s how you feel about it,” she said and jerked her hand from under mine.
It struck me that the lunch wasn’t going to be a success and I wanted to get her somewhere where we could have this out. There was something at the back of her mind she hadn’t told me and I wanted to know what it was.
We finished lunch almost in silence. When we did speak it was about the people in the room and stuff like that and all through the meal she didn’t once look me in the eye. By the time I got the check and followed her out of the restaurant I was feeling a little low. We stood waiting for a taxi in silence, then when one drew up, I said, “Well, what do we do? Shall we go back and take Whisky for a walk? Or shall we sit in the park or what?”
“The park,” she said.
I hadn’t been in Central Park for two years. It was nice to get back there. It was just like it always was. I guess in another fifty years it’ll be the same as it is to-day. Mothers and nurse-maids, minding children on roller skates, wagons, scooters and bikes, will be reading and gossiping in the sun long after I’ve been put under ground. Row-boats were lying on the lake as thick as water bugs and they’ll be there too. Your born and bred New Yorker with a modest income doesn’t miss the country much. He’s got Central Park with thirty tennis courts, nineteen ball fields, six hockey fields and four-and-a-half miles of bridle paths to take his girl along in the evening. That’s enough for him and it’s enough for me.