Saul Bellow
SEIZE THE DAY
When it came to concealing his troubles, Tommy Wilhelm
was not less capable than the next fellow. So at least he thought,
and there was a certain amount of evidence to back
him
up. He had
once been an actor- no, not quite, an extra-and he knew what
acting should be. Also, he was smoking a cigar, and when a man
is smoking a cigar, wearing a hat, he has an advantage; it
is
harder
to find out how he feels. He came from the twenty-third floor down
to the lobby on the mezzanine to collect his mail before breakfast
and he believed-he hoped-that he looked passably well: doing
all right. It was a matter of sheer hope because there was not much
that he could add to his present effort. On the fourteenth floor he
looked for
his
father to enter the elevator; they often met at this
hour, on the way to breakfast.
If
he worried about his appearance it
was mainly for his old father's sake. But there was no stop on the four–
teenth, and the elevator sank and sank. Then the smooth door opened
and the great, dark red, uneven carpet that covered the lobby billowed
toward Wilhelm's feet. In the foreground, the lobby was dark, sleepy.
French drapes like sails kept out the sun, but three high narrow
windows were open, and in the blue air Wilhelm saw a pigeon about
to light on the great chain that supported the marquee of the movie
house directly underneath the lobby. For one moment he heard the
wings beating strongly.
Most of the guests at the Hotel Gloriana were people past the
age of retirement. Along Broadway in the Seventies, Eighties and
Nineties, a great part of New York's vast population of old men
and women lives. Unless the weather
is
too cold or wet they
fill
the benches about the tiny railed parks and along the subway gratings
from Verdi Square to Columbia University, they crowd the shops
