"What I like is goin' round to new towns, hoppin' freights an' all that. Jeeze, I been some places in the last year. I've worked in Akron an' Cleveland, an' Chicago, an' Atlanta, Georgia. If I'd had the sense to stay down south I wouldn't be freezin' to death at this minute.... An' Tallahassee an' Key West. I passed up a chance to go to Havana. 'Count the lingo. An' Galveston an' South Bend an' Topeka an' Pittsburgh. That's where they pick you up an' put you on the stone crushers. An' Duluth an' Cairo an' Albany an' New Orleans. Ought to see them high yallers down there if you're stuck on girls. I didn't get to the coast but I was in New York and Philly...."
"Have some more beer?"
"No... Jeeze, I'm talkin' too much, I guess."
"Hell no, I like to hear you."
"Well, I'll beat it this time. Got to meet a friend o' mine on the Common.... See you some time."
He pulled his cap over his eyes, put up his collar and slouched out the door. Wenny sat sipping his beer. He wished Whitey had not gone. His mind was fearfully empty and dark. Why couldn't I do that, bum from town to town? That's the worst that can happen to me anyway, and that sounds fun. That way I can forget her and all this life. Start afresh as if I had just been born. He got to his feet firmly, put his two dollars down beside the cheque and walked out into the street. A sudden wild elation had seized him. He hadn't a cent in the world. What should he do now, reborn without a cent?
It was already dark. The wind made his cheeks tingle. Of course he knew what to do. He'd pawn his watch. Down the street a little way three gold balls glinted above a show window in the full glare of an arclight.
* * * *
His forehead and eyes in the carmine ring of a Ward 8 becoming oval as he tipped it to his mouth, half a slice of orange bobbing in the midst of it, the lemony claret taste in his mouth and excitement shooting in hot and cold shivers through his blood. Opposite a girl's face, cheeks firm under powder giving way suddenly in loose purplish skin under the eyes, hair fuzzy and yellow. Beyond, through blue arabesques of tobacco smoke, tops of instruments from the orchestra playing Goodby, Girls I'm Through, a chromo of George Washington in a gold frame hung with a festoon of red frilled paper. In his mind muddled the towns Whitey had told him about, Akron and Cleveland and Chicago and Atlanta, Georgia, and Tallahassee and Key West, and Fanshaw's delicately intoned voice saying: Like beautiful leanfaced people of the Renaissance lost in their vermillion barge.... Ellen wasn't leanfaced; plump cheeks, plump breasts. He was living now. Now he'd forget how his father looked with his collar round backwards, he'd forget Nan with Ellen, realer than old fool Fanshaw's vermillion barge.
"You're one of these college boys, aren't you, dear?"