Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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The first morning he stretched himself on a row of cereal cartons and carefully went over the limitations of the Theron G. Macy Company.

“It’s a piker organization. My Gosh! Lookit what they give me. I’m quittin’ in a coupla months. Hell! Me stay with this bunch!”

The Charley Moores are always going to change jobs next month. They do, once or twice in their careers, after which they sit around comparing their last job with the present one, to the infinite disparagement of the latter.

“What do you get?” asked Dalyrimple curiously.

“Me? I get sixty.” This rather defiantly.

“Did you start at sixty?”

“Me? No, I started at thirty-five. He told me he’d put me on the road after I learned the stock. That’s what he tells ’em all.”

“How long’ve you been here?” asked Dalyrimple with a sinking sensation.

“Me? Four years. My last year, too, you bet your boots.”

Dalyrimple rather resented the presence of the store detective as he resented the time-clock, and he came into contact with him almost immediately through the rule against smoking. This rule was a thorn in his side. He was accustomed to his three or four cigarettes in a morning, and after three days without it he followed Charley Moore by a circuitous route up a flight of back stairs to a little balcony where they indulged in peace. But this was not for long. One day in his second week the detective met him in a nook of the stairs, on his descent, and told him sternly that next time he’d be reported to Mr. Macy. Dalyrimple felt like an errant schoolboy.