Читать книгу The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald онлайн

948 страница из 1457

“Don’t marry him.”

“I won’t—probably.”

“Yanci,” he said in a low voice, “do you remember a night on that boulevard——”

She changed the subject. It was noon and the room was full of sunlight. It was not quite the place, the time. When he spoke she must have every aspect of the situation in control. He must say only what she wanted said; nothing else would do.

“It’s five minutes to two,” she told him, looking at her wrist watch. “We’d better go. I’ve got to keep my date.”

“Do you want to go?”

“No,” she answered simply.

This seemed to satisfy him, and they walked out to the lobby. Then Yanci caught sight of a man waiting there, obviously ill at ease and dressed as no habitué of the Ritz ever was. The man was Jimmy Long, not long since a favored beau of his Western city. And now—his hat was green, actually! His coat, seasons old, was quite evidently the product of a well-known ready-made concern. His shoes, long and narrow, turned up at the toes. From head to foot everything that could possibly be wrong about him was wrong. He was embarrassed by instinct only, unconscious of his gaucherie, an obscene specter, a Nemesis, a horror.