“I just found there was nothing in it for me,” he found himself saying a little later.
“Oh we none of us know what we want,” burst out Martin. “That’s why we’re such a peewee generation.”
“I’m beginning to learn a few of the things I dont want,” said Herf quietly. “At least I’m beginning to have the nerve to admit to myself how much I dislike all the things I dont want.”
“But it’s wonderful,” cried Alice, “throwing away a career for an ideal.”
“Excuse me,” said Herf pushing back his chair. In the toilet he looked himself in the eye in the wavy lookingglass.
“Dont talk,” he whispered. “What you talk about you never do....” His face had a drunken look. He filled the hollow of his two hands with water and washed it. At the table they cheered when he sat down.
“Yea for the wanderer,” said Roy.
Alice was eating cheese on long slices of pear. “I think it’s thrilling,” she said.
“Roy is bored,” shouted Martin Schiff after a silence. His face with its big eyes and bone glasses swam through the smoke of the restaurant like a fish in a murky aquarium.
“I was just thinking of all the places I had to go to look for a job tomorrow.”