The Gimlet Affair

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It was late in the afternoon of a day that was in June and I was in my office, developing a feeling of sadness that was already pretty bad and would keep on getting worse, because that was the kind of evening it was going to be.

You know the kind of evening I mean? It goes on and on in the softest kind of light, and there’s a breeze that barely stirs the leaves of the trees, and in among the leaves are about a million cicadas sawing away with their legs, or vibrating their wings, or doing whatever cicadas do to make the sad-sounding and lovely racket they make. It is the kind into which you withdraw alone to weep without tears, remembering every pretty girl you ever kissed or didn’t kiss, and thinking with sorrow of things you haven’t done that you will almost certainly never do. It is an adolescent kind of emotionalism, immune to reason. A man in its spell is in danger.

I was in its spell, or beginning to be, and in danger, although I didn’t know it. I leaned back and made a little tent of fingers over which I sighted through Venetian blinds at the neon sign of the Rex-all drug store on the corner across from the Merchant’s Bank Building, in which I had, second floor front, my office. At that moment, I was distracted by the red head of Millie Morgan, which appeared in the doorway and came into the room. Millie is my secretary, and her head was followed, naturally, by the rest of her. The rest of Millie happens to be even more distracting than her head, and the fact that my wife tolerates her amiably is less of a commentary on my stability than on my wife’s serene confidence in her own assets, which are, in fact, considerable.

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