Read The Folded Leaf for Free Online

Metternich (his right thumb) presided over the Congress, and Prince Talleyrand (the index finger) represented France.
    A party of four, two men and two women, came into the restaurant, all talking at once, and took possession of the center table nearest Lymie. The women had shingled hair and short tight skirts which exposed the underside of their knees when they sat down. One of the women was fat. The other had the face of a young boy but disguised by one trick or another (rouge, lipstick, powder, wet bangs plastered against the high forehead, and a pair of long pendent earrings) to look like a woman of thirty-five, which as a matter of fact she was. The men were older. They laughed more than there seemed any occasion for, while they were deciding between soup and shrimp cocktail, and their laughter was too loud. But it was the women’s voices, the terrible not quite sober pitch of the women’s voices which caused Lymie to skim over two whole pages without knowing what was on them. Fortunately he realized this and went back. Otherwise he might never have known about the secret treaty concluded between England, France, and Austria, when the pretensions of Prussia and Russia, acting in concert, seemed to threaten a renewal of the attack. The results of the Congress were stated clearly at thebottom of page 67 and at the top of page 68, but before Lymie got halfway through them, a coat that he recognized as his father’s was hung on the hook next to his chair. Lymie closed the book and said, “I didn’t think you were coming.”
    “I got held up,” Mr. Peters said. He put his leather brief case on a chair and then sat down across the table from Lymie. The odor on his breath indicated that he had just left a prospective client somewhere (on North Dearborn Street, perhaps, in the back room of what appeared to be an Italian
pizzeria
but was actually a speakeasy); his bloodshot eyes and the slight trembling of his hands were evidence that Mr. Peters drank more than was good for him.
    Time is probably no more unkind to sporting characters than it is to other people, but physical decay unsustained by respectability is somehow more noticeable. Mr. Peters’ hair was turning gray and his scalp showed through on top. He had lost weight also; he no longer filled out his clothes the way he used to. His color was poor, and the flower had disappeared from his buttonhole. In its place was an American Legion button.
    Apparently he himself was not aware that there had been any change. He straightened his tie self-consciously and when Irma handed him a menu, he gestured with it so that the two women at the next table would notice the diamond ring on the fourth finger of his right hand. Both of these things, and also the fact that his hands showed signs of the manicurist, one can blame on the young man who had his picture taken with a derby hat on the back of his head, and also sitting with a girl in the curve of the moon. The young man had never for one second deserted Mr. Peters. He was always there, tugging at Mr. Peters’ elbow, making him do things that were not becoming in a man of forty-five.
    “I won’t have any soup, Irma,” Mr. Peters said. “I’m not very hungry. Just bring me some liver and onions.” He turned to Lymie. “Mrs. Botsford come?”
    Lymie shook his head. “Maybe she’s sick.”
    “She always calls the office when she’s sick,” Mr. Peters said. “More than likely she’s quit. It’s a long way to come and she may have found somebody on the South Side to work for. If she
has
quit, she’ll get in touch with me. She’s got four weeks’ wages coming to her.”
    “But I thought you paid her last week,” Lymie said.
    “I was going to,” Mr. Peters said, “but I didn’t get around to it.” He glanced at the next table. “What kind of a day did you have at school?”
    “All right,” Lymie said.
    “Anything happen, specially?”
    A whistle blew faintly, Mr. Pritzker’s whistle, and for a moment