He dressed flashily, wore soft collars, was constantly swapping sporty
scarfpins for sportier ones, and was inevitably the center, seldom part,
of a group.
Then one evening at Cooper Union, which stands at the head of the
Bowery, he enrolled for an evening course in law, but never entered the
place again.
Because the next night, in a Fourteenth Street cabaret with adjacent
gambling rooms, he met one who called herself Winnie Ross, the beginning
of a heart-sickening end.
There is so little about her to relate. She was the color of cloyed
honey when the sugar granules begin to show through. Pale, pimply in a
fashion the powder could cover up, the sag of her facial muscles showed
plainly through, as if weary of doling out to the years their hush
money, and she was quite obviously down at the heels. Literally so,
because when she took them off, her shoes lopped to the sides and could
not stand for tipsiness.
She was Jason's first woman. She exhaled a perfume, cheap, tickling,
chewed some advertised tablets that scented her kisses, and her throat,
when she threw up her head, had an arch and flex to it that were
mysteriously graceful.
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