What’ll I do...?
“What time’s it?” she asks a broadchested wise guy. “Time you an me was akwainted, sister....” She shakes her head. Suddenly the music bursts into Auld Lang Syne. She breaks away from him and runs to the desk in a crowd of girls elbowing to turn in their dancechecks. “Say Anna,” says a broadhipped blond girl ... “did ye see that sap was dancin wid me?... He says to me the sap he says See you later an I says to him the sap I says see yez in hell foist ... an then he says, Goily he says ...”
III. Revolving Doors
Glowworm trains shuttle in the gloaming through the foggy looms of spiderweb bridges, elevators soar and drop in their shafts, harbor lights wink.
Like sap at the first frost at five o’clock men and women begin to drain gradually out of the tall buildings downtown, grayfaced throngs flood subways and tubes, vanish underground.
All night the great buildings stand quiet and empty, their million windows dark. Drooling light the ferries chew tracks across the lacquered harbor. At midnight the fourfunneled express steamers slide into the dark out of their glary berths. Bankers blearyeyed from secret conferences hear the hooting of the tugs as they are let out of side doors by lightningbug watchmen; they settle grunting into the back seats of limousines, and are whisked uptown into the Forties, clinking streets of ginwhite whiskey-yellow ciderfizzling lights.
She sat at the dressingtable coiling her hair. He stood over her with the lavender suspenders hanging from his dress trousers prodding the diamond studs into his shirt with stumpy fingers.
“Jake I wish we were out of it,” she whined through the hairpins in her mouth.
“Out of what Rosie?”