A sudden lurch and he caught her as she swayed.
“Come, Sweetness, this is our corner. Quit your coughing there, hon; this ain’t no T.B. hop we ’re going to.”
“No what?”
“Come along; hurry! Look at the crowd already.”
“This ain’t no—what did you say, Charley?”
But they were pushing, shoving, worming into the great lighted entrance of the hall. More lurching, crowding, jamming. “I’ll meet you inside, kiddo, in five minutes. Pick out a red domino; red’s my color.”
“A red one? Gee! Looka; mine’s got black pompons on it. Five minutes, Charley; five minutes!”
Flags of all nations and all sizes made a galaxy of the Sixth Avenue hall. An orchestra played beneath an arch of them. Supper, consisting of three-inch-thick sandwiches, tamales, steaming and smelling in their buckets, bottles of beer and soda water, was spread on a long picnic table running the entire length of the balcony.
The main floor, big as an armory, airless as a tomb, swarmed with dancers.
After supper a red sateen Pierrette, quivering, teeth flashing beneath a saucy half mask, bowed to a sateen Pierrot, whose face was as slim as a satyr’s and whose smile was as upturned as the eye slits in his mask.