22
THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED
A New Voice: (Fiercely) Hello, Maury. Hello, Anthony Comstock Patch. How is old Adam's grandson? Debutantes still after you, eh?
In person Richard Caramel is short and fair—he is to be bald at thirty-five. He has yellowish eyes—one of them startlingly clear, the other opaque as a muddy pool—and a bulging brow like a funny-paper baby. He bulges in other places—his paunch bulges, prophetically, his words have an air of bulging from his mouth, even his dinner coat pockets bulge, as though from contamination, with a dog-eared collection of time-tables, programmes, and miscellaneous scraps—on these he takes his notes with great screwings up of his unmatched yellow eyes and motions of silence with his disengaged left hand.
When he reaches the table he shakes hands with Anthony and Maury. He is one of those men who invariably shake hands, even with people whom they have seen an hour before.
Anthony: Hello, Caramel. Glad you're here. We needed a comic relief.
Maury: You're late. Been racing the postman down the block? We've been clawing over your character.
Dick: (Fixing Anthony eagerly with the bright eye) What'd you say? Tell me and I'll write it down. Cut three thousand words out of Part One this afternoon.
Maury: Noble aesthete. And I poured alcohol into my stomach.
Dick: I don't doubt it. I bet you two have been sitting here for an hour talking about liquor.
Anthony: We never pass out, my beardless boy.
Maury: We never go home with ladies we meet when we're lit.
