Gender Readings. Top Ten. Ренц Т.Г - 23 стр.

  3          DOROTHY PARKER
             THE LAST TEA

      The young man in the chocolate-brown suit sat down at the
table, where the girl with the artificial camellia had been sitting for
forty minutes.
      “Guess I must be late,” he said. “Sorry you been waiting.”
      “Oh, goodness!” she said. “I just got here myself, just about a
second ago. I simply went ahead and ordered because I was dying for
a cup of tea. I was late, myself. I haven’t been here more than a
minute.”
      “That’s good,” he said. “Hey, hey, easy on the sugar — one
lump is fair enough. And take away those cakes. Terrible! Do I feel
terrible!”
      “Ah,” she said, “you do? Ah. Whadda matter?”
      “Oh, I’m ruined,” he said. “I’m in terrible shape.”
      “Ah, the poor boy,” she said, “Was it feelin’ mizzable? Ah,
and it came way up here to meet me! You shouldn’t have done that
— I’d have understood. Ah, just think of it coming all the way up here
when it’s so sick!”
      “Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “I might as well be here as any
place else. Any place is like any other place, the way I feel today. Oh,
I’m all shot.”
      “Why, that’s just awful,” she said. “Why, you poor sick thing.
Goodness, I hope it isn’t influenza. They say there’s a lot of it around.”
      “Influenza!” he said. “I wish that was all I had. Oh, I’m poisoned.
I’m through. I’m off the stuff for life. Know what time I got to bed?
Twenty minutes past five, a. m., this morning. What a night! What an
evening!”
      “I thought,” she said, “that you were going to stay in the office
and work late. You said you’d be working every night this week.”
      “Yeah, I know,” he said. “But it gave me the jumps. Thinking
about going down there and sitting at that desk. I went up to May’s —
she was throwing a party. Say, there was somebody there said they
knew you.”
      “Honestly?” she said. “Man or woman?”


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