A young man in his early thirties, neither short nor tall, came into the room. His regular features, his short haircut, the cut of his suit, the pattern of his foulard necktie gave out no really final information. He might have been on the staff, or trying to get on the staff, of a news magazine. He might have just been in a play that closed in Philadelphia. He might have been with a law firm.
“Hello,” he said, cordially, to Ginnie. “Hello.”
“Seen Franklin?” he asked.
“He’s shaving. He told me to tell you to wait for him. He’ll be right out.”
“Shaving. Good heavens.” The young man looked at his wristwatch. He then sat down in a red damask chair, crossed his legs, and put his hands to his face. As if he were generally weary, or had just undergone some form of eyestrain, he rubbed his closed eyes with the tips of his extended fingers. “This has been the most horrible morning of my entire life,” he said, removing his hands from his face. He spoke exclusively from the larynx, as if he were altogether too tired to put any diaphragm breath into his words.
“What happened?” Ginnie asked, looking at him.
“Oh… . It’s too long a story. I never bore people I haven’t known for at least a thousand years.” He stared vaguely, discontentedly, in the direction of the windows. “But I shall never again consider myself even the remotest judge of human nature. You may quote me wildly on that.”
“What happened?” Ginnie repeated.
“Oh, God. This person who’s been sharing my apartment for months and months and months—I don’t even want to talk about him…. This writer,” he added with satisfaction, probably remembering a favorite anathema from a Hemingway novel.
“What’d he do?”