“I’ll teach you.... Look next Sunday bright and early we’ll hop into Dingo and go down to Long Beach. Way down at the end there’s never anybody.... You dont even have to wear a bathingsuit.”
“I like the way you’re so lean and hard Stan.... Jojo’s white and flabby almost like a woman.”
“For crissake don’t talk about him now.”
Stan stood with his legs apart buttoning his shirt. “Look Ellie let’s beat it out an have a drink.... God I’d hate to run into somebody now an have to talk lies to ’em.... I bet I’d crown ’em with a chair.”
“We’ve got time. Nobody ever comes home here before twelve.... I’m just here myself because I’ve got a sick headache.”
“Ellie, d’you like your sick headache?”
“I’m crazy about it Stan.”
“I guess that Western Union burglar knew that.... Gosh.... Burglary, adultery, sneaking down fireescapes, cattreading along gutters. Judas it’s a great life.”
Ellen gripped his hand hard as they came down the stairs stepping together. In front of the letterboxes in the shabby hallway he grabbed her suddenly by the shoulders and pressed her head back and kissed her. Hardly breathing they floated down the street toward Broadway. He had his hand under
her arm, she squeezed it tight against her ribs with her elbow. Aloof, as if looking through thick glass into an aquarium, she watched faces, fruit in storewindows, cans of vegetables, jars of olives, redhotpokerplants in a florist’s, newspapers, electric signs drifting by. When they passed cross-streets a puff of air came in her face off the river. Sudden jetbright glances of eyes under straw hats, attitudes of chins, thin lips, pouting lips, Cupid’s bows, hungry shadow under cheekbones, faces of girls and young men nuzzled fluttering against her like moths as she walked with her stride even to his through the tingling yellow night.