Kent having more money than he could spend enjoyed spending it on Broadway. Having nothing better to do, he had never looked for anything better. He and Naomi were good pals in their way. He liked to stare through her lashes at the puzzle beneath. Most women were so revealing.
[129]
] But to-night she resented his set gaze, the ironic twitch of his thin lip. After her nasty, self-disclosing day she wanted a friend. Some one to whom she could be something more than heavy eyes and auburn-tinted hair, some one with whom she could share thoughts—and fears. But Marshy Kent had never given her friendship. No man had.
All through supper she was silent, with a hard, shell-like silence her companions could not break. Finally she pushed her plate to one side and her glance sifted the smoke-thickened air.
Beyond the table, in a space so small that they might have been squirrels chasing their tails, the crowd jostled and elbowed and glared at one another in an effort to keep time to a stamping, hilarious jazz. In the doorway beyond, another crowd jostled and elbowed and glared at one another and fought for the privilege of slipping crisp greenbacks to supercilious head-waiters. Through the befogged atmosphere the lights with their shades of brilliant yellow and black glimmered faintly. At the tables and on the dance floor jaded New Yorkers and curious out-of-towners pretended to enjoy themselves.
Naomi swept it with a noxious sense of disgust. Suddenly it seemed a ton weight, as if the ceiling like some infernal machine were descending upon her. She lifted her shoulders and her head went back. Oh, for a breath of real fresh air!
“What’s the matter, my dear?” put in Kent. “Off your feed?”
“No.” She brought her eyes toward him, then they drifted back to the crowd at the door. “I was just [130] ]thinking what a joke they are on themselves, fighting like that to get into a stuffy old hole where they’re going to be held up and fleeced.”
Kent laughed.
“Aren’t you worth the price of admission? You’re one of the exhibits, you know.”
She shrugged.