The Vertical City | Page 2

ultimate Leander, liked, fascinatedly, to
watch Mrs. Samstag's nicely manicured fingers at work. He liked them
passive, too. Best of all, he would have preferred to feel them between
his own, but that had never been.
Nevertheless, that desire was capable of catching him unawares. That
very morning as he had stood, in his sumptuous bachelor's apartment,
strumming on one of the windows that overlooked an expansive
tree-and-lake vista of Central Park, he had wanted very suddenly and
very badly to feel those fingers in his and to kiss down on them.
Even in his busy broker's office, this desire could cut him like a swift
lance.
He liked their taper and their rosy pointedness, those fingers, and the
dry, neat way they had of stepping in between the threads.
Mr. Latz's nails were manicured, too, not quite so pointedly, but just as
correctly as Mrs. Samstag's. But his fingers were stubby and short.
Sometimes he pulled at them until they cracked.
Secretly he yearned for length of limb, of torso, even of finger.
On this, one of a hundred such typical evenings in the Bon Ton lobby,
Mr. Latz, sighing out a satisfaction of his inner man, sat himself down
on a red-velvet chair opposite Mrs. Samstag. His knees, widespread,
taxed his knife-pressed gray trousers to their very last capacity, but he
sat back in none the less evident comfort, building his fingers up into a
little chapel.
"Well, how's Mr. Latz this evening?" asked Mrs. Samstag, her smile
encompassing the question.
"If I was any better I couldn't stand it," relishing her smile and his
reply.
The Bon Ton had just dined, too well, from fruit flip _à la_ Bon Ton,
mulligatawny soup, filet of sole _sauté_, choice of or both _poulette
emincé_ and spring lamb grignon, and on through to fresh strawberry
ice cream in fluted paper boxes, petits fours, and _demi-tasse_. Groups
of carefully corseted women stood now beside the invitational plush

divans and peacock chairs, paying twenty minutes' after-dinner
standing penance. Men with Wall Street eyes and blood pressure slid
surreptitious celluloid toothpicks and gathered around the cigar stand.
Orchestra music flickered. Young girls, the traditions of demure sixteen
hanging by one-inch shoulder straps, and who could not walk across a
hardwood floor without sliding the last three steps, teetered in bare
arm-in-arm groups, swapping persiflage with pimply,
patent-leather-haired young men who were full of nervous excitement
and eager to excel in return badinage.
Bell hops scurried with folding tables. Bridge games formed.
The theater group got off, so to speak. Showy women and show-off
men. Mrs. Gronauer, in a full-length mink coat that enveloped her like
a squaw, a titillation of diamond aigrettes in her Titianed hair, and an
aftermath of scent as tangible as the trail of a wounded shark, emerged
from the elevator with her son and daughter-in-law.
"Foi!" said Mr. Latz, by way of somewhat unduly, perhaps, expressing
his own kind of cognizance of the scented trail.
"Fleur de printemps," said Mrs. Samstag, in quick olfactory analysis.
"Eight-ninety-eight an ounce." Her nose crawling up to what he thought
the cunning perfection of a sniff.
"Used to it from home--not? She is not. Believe me, I knew Max
Gronauer when he first started in the produce business in Jersey City
and the only perfume he had was at seventeen cents a pound and not
always fresh killed at that. Cold storage de printemps!"
"Max Gronauer died just two months after my husband," said Mrs.
Samstag, tucking away into her beaded handbag her filet-lace
handkerchief, itself guilty of a not inexpensive attar.
"Thu-thu!" clucked Mr. Latz for want of a fitting retort.
"Heigh-ho! I always say we have so little in common, me and Mrs.
Gronauer, she revokes so in bridge, and I think it's terrible for a
grandmother to blondine so red, but we've both been widows for almost
eight years. Eight years," repeated Mrs. Samstag on a small, scented
sigh.
He was inordinately sensitive to these allusions, reddening and wanting
to seem appropriate.
"Poor little woman, you've had your share of trouble."
"Share," she repeated, swallowing a gulp and pressing the line of her

eyebrows as if her thoughts were sobbing. "I--It's as I tell Alma, Mr.
Latz, sometimes I think I've had three times my share. My one
consolation is that I try to make the best of it. That's my motto in life,
'Keep a bold front.'"
For the life of him, all he could find to convey to her the bleeding
quality of his sympathy was, "Poor, poor little woman!"
"Heigh-ho!" she said, and again, "Heigh-ho!"
There was quite a nape to her neck. He could see it where the carefully
trimmed brown hair left it for a rise to skillful coiffure, and what
threatened to be a slight depth