Jeff Tuttle was
now dancing in an extreme manner with a haggard society bud aged
thirty-five, and only Jake and me was left at our table. We didn't count
the New Yorker any longer; he was merely raising his glass to his lips
at regular intervals. He moved something like an automatic chess player
I once saw. The time passed rapidly for a couple hours more, with Jake
Berger keeping up his ceaseless chatter as usual. He did speak once,
though, after an hour's silence. He said in an audible tone that the New
Yorker was a human hangnail, no matter where he was born.
And so the golden moments flitted by, with me watching the crazy crowd,
until they began to fall away and the waiters was piling chairs on the
naked tables at the back of the room. Then with some difficulty we
wrenched Ben and Lon and Jeff from the next table and got out into the
crisp air of dawn. The New Yorker was now sunk deep in a trance and just
stood where he was put, with his hat on the wrong way. The other boys
had cheered up a lot owing to their late social career. Jeff Tuttle said
it was all nonsense about its being hard to break into New York society,
because look what he'd done in one brief evening without trying--and he
flashed three cards on which telephone numbers is written in dainty
feminine hands.
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