The first was--he saw Gloria. It was a short meeting. Both bowed. Both
spoke, yet neither heard the other. But when it was over Anthony read
down a column of The Sun three times in succession without understanding
a single sentence.
One would have thought Sixth Avenue a safe street! Having forsworn his
barber at the Plaza he went around the corner one morning to be shaved,
and while waiting his turn he took off coat and vest, and with his soft
collar open at the neck stood near the front of the shop. The day was an
oasis in the cold desert of March and the sidewalk was cheerful with a
population of strolling sun-worshippers. A stout woman upholstered in
velvet, her flabby cheeks too much massaged, swirled by with her poodle
straining at its leash--the effect being given of a tug bringing in an
ocean liner. Just behind them a man in a striped blue suit, walking
slue-footed in white-spatted feet, grinned at the sight and catching
Anthony's eye, winked through the glass. Anthony laughed, thrown
immediately into that humor in which men and women were graceless and
absurd phantasms, grotesquely curved and rounded in a rectangular world
of their own building.
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