She was costing me my last nickel at
these auctions and the better auctioneer I was the more money I lost, on
account of her being so susceptible to my line of stuff. It sounds funny,
but it's a fact. So I told her. I made a clean breast. I told her what a
liar I was and how all the stuff I pulled from the auction stand was the
bunk and how she was a boob for falling for it. And so on and so on. Say,
I sold myself to her as the world's greatest, all around, low down,
hideous liar that ever walked in shoe leather. And that's how it started.
This divorce today is kind of an anti-climax. We ain't had much to do with
each other ever since that confession."
Mr. Ludlow stared sorrowfully into the remains of a glass of juniper
juice.
"I'll never marry again," he moaned. "I ain't the kind that makes a good
husband. A good husband is a man who is just an ordinary liar. And me?
Well, I'm an auctioneer."
FOG PATTERNS
The fog tiptoes into the streets. It walks like a great cat through the
air and slowly devours the city.
The office buildings vanish, leaving behind thin pencil lines and smoke
blurs. The pavements become isolated, low-roofed corridors. Overhead the
electric signs whisper enigmatically and the window lights dissolve.
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