Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (Vintage Classics)

He did not know what to do. Not just now, he thought, not just in this, not just about this, today and tomorrow, but every day on earth.

A bell over the door tinkled. Ralph almost wept from the sound of it.

Then suddenly he knew! His mind buckled. For a minute he could only stare dumbly at his hands. He knew! His mind roared with the knowing.

“Christ!” The word leaped out of him. “But you’ve always been that way, Marian!” And he knew at once that he had uttered a new and profound truth.

His mind filled with a swarm of accusations, and he tried to focus on one in particular.

Her eyes were large and seemed to take in everything at a glance.

The waiter looked amazed and then perplexed.

“That’s Finch,” his dad said admiringly. “He’s been in bankruptcy at least twice. Look at that house.” But bankruptcy is a company collapsing utterly, executives cutting their wrists and throwing themselves from windows, thousands of men on the street.

“I’m the one going crazy,” he said and then nodded his head in agreement.