I've
watched him. No one ever talks to him. There are no salutations. He is
unknown and worse. For the women, the rouged and ornamental ones, know him
a bit too well. They know the carefully counted nickels in his trousers
pocket, the transfers he is saving for the three-cent rebate that may come
some day, the various newspaper coupons through which he hopes to make a
killing.
All this they know and through a sixth sense, a curious instinct of sex
divination, they know the necktie counter or information desk behind which
he works during the day, the stuffy bedroom to which he will go home to
sleep, the vacuity of his mind and gaudy emptiness of his spirit. They
know all this and pass him up with never a smile. Yes, even the manicure
girls in the barber shop give him the out-and-out sneer and the hat-check
girls and even the floor girls--the chambermaids--all of whom he has tried
to date up--they all respond with an identical raspberry to his
invitations.
But he asks for translation--this determined little caricature of the
hotel lobby. A little peasant masquerading as a dazzled moth around the
bright lights. Not entirely. There is something else. There is something
of a great dream behind the ridiculous pathos of this over-dressed little
fool.
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