PALE
VIRGINS SHROUDED IN SNOW
83
they pass a man who makes a half-salute, grinning, and saying
"Hi!" and Scotty says: "Hmv's it, keed, how's it?" wondering which
one of the eight hundred employees that might have been, and
then they come into Craig'S office where Craig sits down at his
desk ,and with a studied pretense of having to search among the dry
rattle of pencils and paper clips, grunts, a satisfied smile spread all
over his face, and fishes up the two unbelievable little bottles so that
he can give Scotty his latest lecture on the effects of feeding and not
feeding whole wheat to dogs. No, thought Mr. Ennis, no. There is
not any man like that. He turned away from the neon-glowing hall to
write on his pad and then look at the terrace again.
The three men had come back, one of them now wrestling a
camera on a tripod whose supports trailed after it like legs, long, thin
and broken. He set the camera up in an angle of the terrace and,
making a bow from which he didn't straighten, sighted through the
camera lens at the group of beach chairs a few paces away. For a
moment he stood there adjusting the camera, while the other two men
gesticulated at one ,another and looked up at the sky, and then the
tall man in the dark-framed glasses came and peered through the
camera and, standing up, shook his head slowly from side to side.
The first man moved the camera imperceptibly to the left. The tall
man nodded abruptly; the first man made a beckoning gesture to the
third who, waiting by the cloor now, like a man in a silent movie,
called inside; and out onto the terrace in the gentle, wavering, but–
tercup-yellow light there walked three girls apparently naked under
their glossy, brown fur coats.
At a nod from the assistant photographer, they slipped off
their coats .and piled them onto the balustrade, and shivering in
their short two-piece bathing suits sat clown ancl stretched out each
on one of the beach chairs under the gaudy, fringed umbrellas while
the tall man prepared to take their pictures.
"Look," said Mr. Ennis, swiveling his chair around as Scotty
walked into the room a few minutes later, "just look at that."
"Do you know what that man keeps in his desk?" asked Scotty,
walking over to the window. "Have you got the faintest idea of what
Bill Craig keeps in the middle drawer of his desk?"
"Sure," said Mr. Ennis. "We rich who keep vials of dog shit in
our desks, why are we so glum? Just look at that."
