In all his being he felt the new day. He walked across a spotless rug, past the bellboys, looking about him with confident eyes. He had changed into a single-breasted brown suit, a white shirt, a green tie and a brown felt hat. His jaws gleamed from his shave. He swung through the hotel door and out on Forty-Second Street. Thousands of people were legging it east to Lexington and Third Avenues, and west to Madison and Fifth. As if on escalators, they passed endlessly before Bill. He stepped over to the cab rank on the curb, nodded at the driver in the first cab, guessing automatically at the driver’s race — he was an Italian — and said, “One Hundred Twenty-Fifth Street and Lenox.” “Okay,” said the driver. Bill got into the leather interior of the cab which wheeled west to Madison Avenue. After the coming-and-going atmosphere of Forty-Second Street, Madison with its luggage shops and hotels almost seemed like a quiet back alley. He lit a cigarette. He wasn’t thinking of Isabelle, of Hayden or even of Big Boy Bose.
