Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/288

 sea foods and salads and pastries; there was an extraordinary musical trio,—a Heifetz-looking violin youth accompanied by two girls who played, sang, dialogued or danced, and who, with the soulful violinist, jazzed zestfully for the dancing of the patrons in the cleared space at the center of the floor.

Marjorie knew a good many of the couples at the other tables or dancing; there was Red Else Nordquist making motions with his fiery head meaning, "on for toddle pretty soon?" Red Else considered himself in the real-estate business, having a father who was a carpenter and had slapped up a block of flats on first and second mortgage money just before the war; Red got his, now, from the rents. Gus Linduska gazed Clara's and Marjorie's way, too often for Mil Kotopoulos, who was with him. Mil was an old friend of Clara's; they'd worked in the same manicure shop; she was changing her hair, letting it go back to brown, but she wasn't changing her friends, though her father was bootlegging now and cleaning up—some said—three thousand a month. Winking to a waiter in the manner which meant "yes; cocktails in the coffee cups" was Max Kral, credit clothing, who wasn't one of those caught with a big inventory when prices broke; Mrs. Kral was with him and the Sequieras, credit jewelry, whose seven-thousand-dollar car, brand new and with chauffeur, waited outside; Marjorie could hear them, as they meant her to, when they mentioned the car by name and by price, with chauffeur; Ig Kostic, the Serbian undertaker, with "Krazy Kat" Fiala, Mat Jilek, of the chain stores, and Vittie (Vittoria) Garibaldi—Marjorie, in her mind, ran over the names of the people who nodded to her and whom she could nod to, all of them dining from the card and at a cost of