The Stories of John Cheever

The Malloys were the hard-working children of an industrious generation, and they were up at half past six the next morning. They scrubbed their faces and their ears and brushed their teeth with soap. At seven o’clock, they started for the Automat. Evarts had not slept that night. The noise of traffic had kept him awake, and he had spent the small hours sitting at the window. His mouth felt scorched with tobacco smoke, and the loss of sleep had left him nervous. They were all surprised to find New York still sleeping. They were shocked. They had their breakfast and returned to the Mentone. Evarts called Tracey Murchison’s office, but no one answered. He telephoned the office several times after that. At ten o’clock, a girl answered the phone. “Mr. Murchison will see you at three,” she said. She hung up. Since there was nothing to do but wait, Evarts took his wife and daughter up Fifth Avenue. They stared in the store windows. At eleven o’clock, when the doors of Radio City Music Hall opened, they went there.

This was a happy choice. They prowled the lounges and toilets for an hour before they took their seats, and when, during the stage show, an enormous samovar rose up out of the orchestra pit and debouched forty men in Cossack uniform singing “Dark Eyes,” Alice and Mildred-Rose shouted with joy. The stage show, beneath its grandeur, seemed to conceal a simple and familiar intelligence, as if the drafts that stirred the miles of golden curtain had blown straight from Indiana. The performance left Alice and Mildred-Rose distracted with pleasure, and on the way back to the Mentone, Evarts had to lead them along the sidewalk to keep them from walking into hydrants. It was a quarter of three when they got back to the hotel. Evarts kissed his wife and child goodbye and started for Murchison’s.

He got lost. He was afraid that he would be late. He began to run. He asked directions of a couple of policemen and finally reached the office building.