"Tomorrow afternoon, I think," she said. "We ought to be done with the telephone book by noon, if we don't sleep the whole morning away as a result of this heavy dinner. Then we can look in the afternoon."
"Sounds good," Randy said. "It looks as if the best help we can give you is to see to it that you work off this dinner so that you don't waste the morning in sleep! What do you suggest, Mal?"
"Dancing," Mal said firmly. "Best way to get rid of the full feeling. But, unfortunately, I can't dance on an empty stomach, so we'd best order a sweet, right?"
The girls and Randy protested with groans, but somehow managed to eat every scrap of the thin pancakes with lingonberries that Mal ordered for them. A final cup of coffee, and then it was time to go.
"I feel as if my dress is going to split any minute!" Peggy whispered to Amy. "I don't know if I'll be able to walk to the door, much less dance!"
Stepping out of Luchow's, leaving its noise, gaiety, and glitter behind, was once more like making a transition between worlds. Fourteenth Street, now almost deserted, looked even sadder and more run-down than before. The night lights in the windows of the closed shops cast baleful gleams on the pavement; the thin sound of a cheap dance band far off lent its sad jazz beat to the relatively quiet night. Peggy shivered a little in the first chill of autumn.
"It's like two different cities, in there and out here," she said. "It's a shame, isn't it, that the real one is out here?"
Catching her mood, Randy put a reassuring arm about her shoulders. "It's two hundred different cities," he said, "and the real one is wherever you happen to be at the moment. So let's leave this one, to make it unreal, and go uptown. By the time we turn our backs on this, it will disappear."
And it did disappear, or nearly, in the sophisticated decor and subdued harmonies of the St. Regis Roof. Randy was, as Peggy had suspected, a fine dancer. His lightness and his certainty helped her, and she knew that she had never danced so well before. But even as they floated about the gleaming floor, the sounds of the elegant music could not quite drown out the tinny jazz sound of Fourteenth Street that echoed in her mind.