Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

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“Hello, you old bag of ‘nerves,’” cried Crosby genially, “come and have a big gloom-dispelling Corona.”

Sylvester regarded the cases anxiously. He knew he wasn’t going to like what he bought.

“Still out at Larchmont, Waldron?” he asked.

“Right-o.”

“How’s your wife?”

“Never better.”

“Well,” said Sylvester suspiciously, “you brokers always look as if you’re smiling at something up your sleeve. It must be a hilarious profession.”

Crosby considered.

“Well,” he admitted, “it varies—like the moon and the price of soft drinks—but it has its moments.”

“Waldron,” said Sylvester earnestly, “you’re a friend of mine—please do me the favor of not smiling when I leave you. It seems like a—like a mockery.”

A broad grin suffused Crosby’s countenance.

“Why, you crabbed old son-of-a-gun!”

But Sylvester with an irate grunt had turned on his heel and disappeared.

He strolled on. The sun finished its promenade and began calling in the few stray beams it had left among the westward streets. The Avenue darkened with black bees from the department stores; the traffic swelled into an interlaced jam; the busses were packed four deep like platforms above the thick crowd; but Sylvester, to whom the daily shift and change of the city was a matter only of sordid monotony, walked on, taking only quick sideward glances through his frowning spectacles.