Page:Manhattan Transfer (John Dos Passos, 1925).djvu/186

 "A man'd have to be deaf not to hear that damn thing, drunk or sober."

"Well in my capacity of bloated bondholder I want you to come out and eat lunch. Do you realize that you've been playing round with your toilet for exactly one hour by the clock?"

They went down the stairs that smelled of shavingsoap and then of brasspolish and then of bacon and then of singed hair and then of garbage and coalgas.

"You're damn lucky Herfy, never to have gone to college."

"Didnt I graduate from Columbia you big cheese, that's more than you could do?"

The sunlight swooped tingling in Jimmy's face when he opened the door.

"That doesnt count."

"God I like sun," cried Jimmy, I wish it'd been real Colombia"

"Do you mean Hail Columbia?"

"No I mean Bogota and the Orinoco and all that sort of thing."

"I knew a darn good feller went down to Bogota. Had to drink himself to death to escape dying of elephantiasis."

"I'd be willing to risk elephantiasis and bubonic plague and spotted fever to get out of this hole."

"City of orgies walks and joys "

"Orgies nutten, as we say at a hun'an toitytoird street Do you realize that I've lived all my life in this goddam town except four years when I was little and that I was born here and that I'm likely to die here? I've a great mind to join the navy and see the world."

"How do you like Dingo in her new coat of paint?"

"Pretty nifty, looks like a regular Mercedes under the dust."

"I wanted to paint her red like a fire engine, but the garageman finally persuaded me to paint her blue like a cop Do you mind going to Mouquin's and having an absinthe cocktail."