His
surroundings became a little blurred, out of focus; his voice sounded
unfamiliar, as though it came from somewhere behind him. Fresh buckets
of wine were brought, fresh, polished glasses. His appetite revived,
and he ordered caviar. Beyond, a girl in a snake-like dress was
breaking a scarlet boiled lobster with a nut cracker; her cigarette
smoked on the table edge. Waiters passed bearing trays of steaming
food, pitchers of foaming beer, colorless drinks with bobbing sliced
limes, purplish sloe gin and sirupy cordials. Bernard's face was dark
and there was a splash of champagne on his dinner shirt. Louise was
uncertainly humming a fragment of popular song. The table was littered
with empty plates and glasses. Perversely it made August think of Emmy,
his wife, and acute dread touched him at the mockery of her wasting
despair.
III
The following morning, Thursday, August Turnbull was forced to go into
the city. He drove to the Turnbull Bakery in a taxi and dispatched his
responsibilities in time for luncheon uptown and an early afternoon
train to the shore. The bakery was a consequential rectangle of brick,
with the office across the front and a court resounding with the
shattering din of ponderous delivery trucks. All the vehicles, August
saw, bore a new temporary label advertising still another war bread;
there was, too, a subsidiary patriotic declaration: "Win the War With
Wheat."
He was, as always, fascinated by the mammoth trays of bread, the
enormous flood of sustenance produced as the result of his energy and
ability.
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