There had been a present for Lilly, too,
a light-blue, drugstore-purchased celluloid toilet set.
He no longer sat idle in his room, his light eyes futile with staring at
space or his head down tiredly in his hands. Something had indeed come
over Harry.
"After all," said Lilly, always readily buoyed, "the operation did
accomplish!"
Sometimes, since his mornings were free, he rode down to the office with
Lilly, eagerly insistent to pay her car fare and cram a return Subway
ticket into the warm pink aperture of flesh where her glove clasped.
Once he bought her a little spray of heather off a vender's tray.
"Harry, you mustn't spend on me this way. You must begin to save your
money for that right girl when she comes along."
Never quick with retort, he stood watching her dart into the foyer of
the Forty-second Street building, a sudden silence shaping around him
that had in it the little noises of birds singing. "Right girl," he kept
repeating after her, or something like that, and remained there
loitering for twenty minutes after her presence had fluttered through
the revolving doors and into the elevator.
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