with the possible exception of me.
Rain fell all around the marquee--in a wet, funereal fringe.
The doorman stood in the street beneath his great umbrella, whistling.
Two old ladies waited impatiently, jostling each other and batting
annoyedly at their pocketbooks. They seemed to expect the whistle to
conjure up a yellow taxi from the fourth dimension and because it took
Al five minutes to hail an empty, the elder of the two put back her
dime in her purse and snapped it with the righteous authoritative sound
of a Norn's shears.
"Let's go to Gimbel's first," she said.
But the other wanted to start in Lord and Taylor's.
They whisked away debating this.
And I went soon--through the leaden atmosphere, on the black and
slippery pavement.
The people were there in the office ahead of me.
Mr. So-and-so. Mrs. So-and-so. Miss So-and-so.
The nurse was there, too.
It was where we had come in. Where we all do. Where we leave.
I sat, batting the drops from my trouser cuffs, smelling the damp
feathers of the anxious poultry.