SEIZE THE DAY
319
York with paints and brushes, each practically a law unto himself.
It was the Tower of Babel in paint.
He
didn't want to go far into
this. Things were chaotic all over.
Dr. Adler thought that Wilhelm looked particularly untidy this
morning-unrested, too, his eyes red-rimmed from excessive smoking.
He was breathing through his mouth and he was evidently much
distracted and rolled his red-shot eyes barbarously. As usual, his
coat collar was turned up as though he had had to go out in the
rain. When he went to business he pulled himself together a little;
otherwise he let himself go and looked like hell.
"What's the matter, Wilky, didn't you sleep last night?"
"Not very much."
"You take too many pills of every kind-first stimulants and
then depressants, anodynes followed by analeptics, until the poor
organism doesn't know what's happened. Then the Luminal won't
put people to sleep, and the Pervitin or Benzedrine won't wake them.
God knows! These things get to
be
as serious as poisons, and yet
everyone puts all their faith in them."
"No, Dad, it's not the pills. It's that I'm not used to New York
any more. For a native, that's very peculiar, isn't it? It was never
so noisy at night as now, and every little thing is a strain. Like the
alternate parking. You have to run out at eight to move your car.
And where can you put it?
If
you forget for a minute they tow you
away. Then some fool puts advertising leaflets under your windshield
wiper and you have heart failure a block away because you think
you've got a ticket. When you do get stung with a ticket, you can't
argue. You haven't got a chance in court and the city needs the
revenue."
"But in your line you have to have a car, eh?" said Mr. Perls.
"Lord knows why any lunatic would want one in the city who
didn't need it for his livelihood."
Wilhelm's old Pontiac was parked in the street. Formerly, when
on an expense account, he had always put it up in a garage. Now
he was afraid to move the car from Riverside Drive lest he lose his
space, and he used it only on Saturdays when the Dodgers were
playing in Ebbets Field and he took his boys to the game. Last
Saturday when the Dodgers were out of town he had gone out to
visit his mother's grave.
(Continued on page 376)
