After this, the individual instructors spoke, each saying a few words about his specialty and what he hoped to achieve in his course. Each one, it seemed to Peggy, opened up whole new areas of knowledge for her, until at the end she felt that she knew absolutely nothing at all, and wondered how she could ever have thought of herself as an actress. This was going to take a lot of work!
After the meeting, the rest of the morning was spent in the routine of registration, getting class cards, finding out where the rooms were, getting locker assignments and book lists and, bit by bit, eliminating the first sense of confusion.
Peggy and Amy, happily, were registered in the same class, and went together through the busy morning. Before they knew it, it was time for lunch with Pip Piper and “some of the others.”
The others proved to be Connie Barnes, a cheerful comedienne who managed to be wonderfully attractive without being in the least pretty, and a dark, muscular, tough-looking young man with a face like either a private detective or a gangster in a grade-B movie, who was introduced by Pip as Mallory Seton.
Much to Peggy’s surprise, when he spoke it was not at all the tough, New York sound she had expected, but a quiet, cultured English accent. “Call me Mal,” he said. “Mallory’s rather a mouthful, isn’t it? At least, it seems so here. At home, they used to call me ‘Mallory John’ all the time, so as not to confuse me with my father, who is named ‘Mallory Peter,’ but I can’t imagine anyone in America doing that. If I’d been brought up here, I’d probably have been called ‘Bud.’”
Following Pip, the students walked around the corner to stop in front of a narrow delicatessen store. The sign on the window said, “Tables in the rear,” but Peggy could see from the crowd that clustered at the counter that there would be no chance of getting one. And besides, the place didn’t look wide enough to hold a table that would seat the five of them.
“Oh dear,” she said, “I don’t think we’re going to be able to eat here, there are so many of us. Perhaps if Amy and I went somewhere else, you three would have a chance? We don’t want to make it difficult for you—”
“Don’t be silly,” Pip cut in. “We didn’t expect to get a table here. You’re lucky if you can get a seat at the counter for one, much less a table for more than one. We’re going to buy sandwiches here and take them to the park.”
Whipping out a notebook, Pip started to take orders and money, with frequent reference to the menu pasted to the delicatessen window. Then he plunged into the place and, in less time than Peggy thought possible, was back with a giant bag full of sandwiches and cold, bottled drinks.
It was only two blocks to the southern boundary of Central Park, and once they had crossed Fifty-ninth Street and stepped into the tree-shaded, winding footpath, the city seemed to disappear behind them as if it had never been. At the foot of the first gentle hill, there was a small lake bordered by a bench-lined path. There were some empty benches, but Pip ignored them.