At Columbus Circle they went into a drugstore. Girls in green, violet, pink summer dresses, young men in straw hats were three deep along the sodafountain. She stood back and admiringly watched him shove his way through. A man was leaning across the table behind her talking to a girl; their faces were hidden by their hatbrims.
“You juss tie that bull outside, I said to him, then I resigned.”
“You mean you were fired.”
“No honest I resigned before he had a chance.... He’s a stinker d’you know it? I wont take no more of his lip. When I was walkin outa the office he called after me.... Young man lemme tell ye sumpen. You wont never make good till you learn who’s boss around this town, till you learn that it aint you.”
Morris was holding out a vanilla icecream soda to her. “Dreamin’ again Cassie; anybody’d think you was a snowbird.” Smiling brighteyed, she took the soda; he was drinking coca-cola. “Thank you,” she said. She sucked with pouting lips at a spoonful of icecream. “Ou Morris it’s delicious.”
The path between round splashes of arclights ducked into darkness. Through slant lights and nudging shadows came a smell of dusty leaves and trampled grass and occasionally a rift of cool fragrance from damp earth under shrubberies.
“Oh I love it in the Park,” chanted Cassie. She stifled a belch. “D’you know Morris I oughnt to have eaten that icecweam. It always gives me gas.”
Morris said nothing. He put his arm round her and held her tight to him so that his thigh rubbed against hers as they walked. “Well Pierpont Morgan is dead.... I wish he’d left me a couple of million.”
“Oh Morris wouldn’t it be wonderful? Where’d we live? On Central Park South.” They stood looking back at the glow of electric signs that came from Columbus Circle. To the left they could see curtained lights in the windows of a whitefaced apartmenthouse. He looked stealthily to the right and left and then kissed her. She twisted her mouth out from under his.
“Dont.... Somebody might see us,” she whispered breathless. Inside something like a dynamo was whirring, whirring. “Morris I’ve been saving it up to tell you. I think Goldweiser’s going to give me a specialty bit in his next show. He’s stagemanager of the second woad company and he’s got a lot of pull up at the office. He saw me dance yesterday.”