Page:Manhattan Transfer (John Dos Passos, 1925).djvu/41

Rh "No to a real painter."

"By Gad I'll buy it."

"Maybe you wont have a chance."

She nodded her blond pompadour at him.

"You're a wicked little tease, Olga."

She laughed keeping her lips tight over her long teeth.

A man was leaning towards the man with the diamond stud, tapping with a stubby finger on the table.

"No sir as a real estate proposition, Twentythird Street has crashed That's generally admitted But what I want to talk to you about privately sometime Mr. Godalming, is this How's all the big money in New York been made? Astor, Vanderbilt, Fish In real estate of course. Now it's up to us to get in on the next great cleanup It's almost here Buy Forty"

The man with the diamond stud raised one eyebrow and shook his head. "For one night on Beauty's lap, O put gross care away or something of the sort Waiter why in holy hell are you so long with the champagne?" He got to his feet, coughed in his hand and began to sing in his croaking voice:

Everybody clapped. The old waiter had just divided a baked Alaska and, his face like a beet, was prying out a stiff champagnecork. When the cork popped the lady in the tiara let out a yell. They toasted the man in the diamond stud.

"Now what kind of a dish d'ye call this?" the man with the bottlenose leaned over and asked the girl next to him. Her black hair parted in the middle; she wore a palegreen dress with puffy sleeves. He winked slowly and then stared hard into her black eyes.