He flung down the
paper and rose with a yawn.
"Well, this is one helluva honeymoon. I'm going to crawl into
the oven and fry."
Kedzie sat alone in the dark parlor a long while. She was cold now.
She had danced Greek dances in public, but she blushed in the dark
as she loitered over her shoelaces. She was so forlorn and so
disappointed with life that tears would have been bliss.
Somebody on that populous, mysterious air-shaft kept a parrot.
It woke Kedzie early in the morning with hysterical laughter that
pierced the ears like steel saws. There was something uncannily
real but hideously mirthless in its Ha-ha-ha! It would gurgle with
thick-tongued idiocy: "Polly? Polly? Polly wanny clacky? Polly?
Polly?"
Kedzie wondered how any one could care or dare to keep such a pest.
She wanted to kill it. She leaned out of the window and stared up.
Somewhere above the fire-escape rungs she could see the bottom of
its cage. If only she had a gun, how gladly she would have blown
Polly to bits.
She saw a frowsy-haired man in a nightgown staring up from another
window and yelling at the parrot. She drew her head in hastily.
The idol of her soul slept on. The inpouring day illumined him to
his disadvantage. His head was far back, his jaw down, his mouth
agape. During the night a beard had crept out on his cheeks. He was
startlingly unattractive.
Kedzie crouched on the bed and stared at him in wonder, in a
fascination of disgust.
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