He was not in the mood for company when he saw Lucy's glove waving in Childs' window, and intended to move on after saying hello.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded, suspecting he was going to nearby Simone.
"Walking."
"On a day like this! It feels like snow."
"I like snow."
"I just finished at Master's."
"Master's?"
"My ballet teacher. I was having some cocoa and wondering whether to go shopping," she said tentatively. Maybe he'd take the hint that she had nothing to do.
"How about joining me for a walk in the Park?" he asked, surprising himself.
"All right."
Crossing the street she noticed he didn't squeeze her arm as other men did, only touched her elbow politely. She always had a feeling with him he was keeping her at arms' length.
"Those new six-cylinder Chryslers are the cat's pajamas, but they're cold without side curtains if you're driving to Long Island. I thought of getting a Model T to learn to drive but I never get around to it," she chattered when they reached the opposite curb.
Men had taught her about autos on the side, he thought. He knew only busses and taxis, especially the snub-nosed red taxis of Paris that he had heard had formed a brigade and toot-tooted to the front line to stop the Germans, and which, returning battered, had darted erratically across the city carrying Simone and himself. He had no feeling for machines. He wasn't one of the Dada boys who were touting machines as the art of today. The only machine he was interested in controlling was a hand with a brush.
He stopped to buy peanuts from a Greek, and crumbled the nuts. "Sparrows waste no time being flatterers as pigeons are. They take the nuts and beat it." He pointed delightedly to a sparrow, darting under a pigeon's beak to snatch up half a peanut. "He sure beat that pigeon to the punch." He laughed.
His laugh was infectious. Who would have thought you could feel so good just walking with Paul Vermillion? She could hardly restrain herself from doing a dancestep breakdown because it had become such a wonderful day.
