“That’s a burglar alarm isn’t it?”
“There cant be any burglars because the place is vacant. The wires must get crossed or something. I dont know when it stopped but it certainly drove me wild when I went to bed this morning.”
“Now James Herf you dont mean me to infer that you come home sober every night?”
“A man’d have to be deaf not to hear that damn thing, drunk or sober.”
“Well in my capacity of bloated bondholder I want you to come out and eat lunch. Do you realize that you’ve been playing round with your toilet for exactly one hour by the clock?”
They went down the stairs that smelled of shavingsoap and then of brasspolish and then of bacon and then of singed hair and then of garbage and coalgas.
“You’re damn lucky Herfy, never to have gone to college.”
“Didnt I graduate from Columbia you big cheese, that’s more than you could do?”
The sunlight swooped tingling in Jimmy’s face when he opened the door.
“That doesnt count.”