Her tired fingers, overwhite, played nervously with a cigarette box on the table.
"Why?"
"Cause you keep askin' me my life history. I'm not a fiction magazine. Tellin' stories isn't in my line, see?"
"I'm sort of interested in people's life histories today, Ellen. I'm just beginning mine."
"I knew I was robbin' the cradle," she said, and laughed, showing to the gums a set of teeth like the teeth in a dentist's showcase. "But I didn't know it was that bad."
Wenny felt himself blushing. He took another long drink of the Ward 8. Leanfaced people of the Renaissance with falcons on their wrists, quoting Greek in bed with their great-limbed rosy lemans, riding days over parched hills to find the yellow, half-obliterated parchment that once spelled out would resolve the festering chaos of the world into radiant Elysian order. Whitey loafing on street corners in New Orleans watching the high yallers drive by in barouches. By God, I must live all that.
"Ever been abroad, Ellen?"
"The Fall River boat's about the biggest liner I ever took."
"Waiter, two more Ward 8's."
"Make mine a ginger ale highball, kiddo."