Jimmy blushed and sat down again stammering: “Why of course I’d be delighted.... Suppose we drink something.”
“I’ll finish my tea, but why dont you have a gin fizz? I love to see people drink gin fizzes. It makes me feel that I’m in the tropics sitting in a jujube grove waiting for the riverboat to take us up some ridiculous melodramatic river all set about with fevertrees.”
“Waiter I want a gin fizz please.”
Joe Harland had slumped down in his chair until his head rested on his arms. Between his grimestiff hands his eyes followed uneasily the lines in the marbletop table. The gutted lunchroom was silent under the sparse glower of two bulbs hanging over the counter where remained a few pies under a bellglass, and a man in a white coat nodding on a tall stool. Now and then the eyes in his gray doughy face flicked open and he grunted and looked about. At the last table over were the hunched shoulders of men asleep, faces crumpled like old newspapers pillowed on arms. Joe Harland sat up straight and yawned. A woman blobby under a raincoat
with a face red and purplish streaked like rancid meat was asking for a cup of coffee at the counter. Carrying the mug carefully between her two hands she brought it over to the table and sat down opposite him. Joe Harland let his head down onto his arms again.
“Hay yous how about a little soivice?” The woman’s voice shrilled in Harland’s ears like the screech of chalk on a blackboard.
“Well what d’ye want?” snarled the man behind the counter. The woman started sobbing. “He asts me what I want.... I aint used to bein talked to brutal.”
“Well if there’s anythin you want you kin juss come an git it.... Soivice at this toime o night!”
Harland could smell her whiskey breath as she sobbed. He raised his head and stared at her. She twisted her flabby mouth into a smile and bobbed her head towards him.