Читать книгу The Beautiful and Damned / Прекрасные и обреченные. Уровень 4 - Френсис Скотт Фицджеральд, Френсис Фицджеральд - Страница 14

That winter afternoon at the Plaza was the first of a succession of “dates” Anthony made with her before Christmas. Invariably she was busy. She attended the charity dances at the big hotels; he saw her several times at dinner parties.

He made engagements with her several times for lunch and tea. She was sleepy, incapable of concentrating upon anything.

One Sunday afternoon just before Christmas he called up and found her after some important but mysterious quarrel.

“Let’s go to something!” she proposed. “I want to see a show, don’t you? Oh, let’s go somewhere!”

“We’ll go to a good cabaret.”

“I’ve seen every one in town.”

“Well, we’ll find a new one.”

“Well, come on, then.”

A dozen blocks down Broadway Anthony’s eyes were caught by a large and unfamiliar electric sign “Marathon” in glorious yellow script.

“Shall we try it?”

With a sigh Gloria tossed her cigarette out the open door; then they had passed under the screaming sign, under the wide portal, and up by a stuffy elevator into this palace of pleasure.

There on Sunday nights gather the credulous, sentimental, underpaid, overworked people: book-keepers, ticket-sellers, office-managers, salesmen, and, most of all, clerks – clerks of the mail, of the grocery, of the brokerage, of the bank.

Anthony and Gloria sat down.

“How do you like it?” inquired Anthony.

“I love it,” she said frankly. Her gray eyes roved here and there, drowsing on each group, passing to the next. They two, it seemed to him, were alone quiet.

“I’m like these people,” she murmured. “I’m like they are – like Japanese lanterns and crape paper, and the music of that orchestra. I am like them. You don’t know me.” She hesitated. “These people could appreciate me, and these men would fall in love with me and admire me, whereas the clever men I meet would just analyze me and tell me I’m this because of this or that because of that.”