Читать книгу An Affair of State - Harry Hart Frank - Страница 13

Table of Contents

One day Dannenberg called him and told him his oral was scheduled for Monday of the following week. “Dress carefully,” he advised, “and better not drink Sunday night, and don’t cut yourself shaving, and by all means be on time.”

Jeff bought a new suit. It was a two-button blue pin stripe, a lounge that was being worn that year by all the successful young men, like Charles Luckman, Bob Considine, Richard Kollmar, and Fred Keller. He paid ninety-five dollars for it, which was more than he had ever paid for a suit before. He also bought black socks, and three white shirts with button-down collars—although his shirt drawer was full—and six handkerchiefs of the best linen that cost as much as shirts used to cost before the war, and a maroon tie that announced itself as at once restrained and expensive.

As an afterthought he bought a hat. He rebelled against hats. He had had to wear a cap as a freshman at Princeton, and he had been compelled to wear either a helmet or a go-to-hell cap during his years in the Army. Hats seemed to him a symbol of compulsion and conformity, and he had not worn one since he had been home. He selected a black homburg, size seven and a quarter. The clerk approved. As he wrote a check the clerk said, “You’re in the State Department, aren’t you, sir? When you outfit yourself for going abroad, we’ll be glad to take care of you.”

“Thanks,” Jeff said. “Thanks very much.” All day he wondered how the clerk could guess.