“Oh, don’t joke like that. You’re breaking my heart. My work! Here I am, trying to string one good day’s work along over all eternity, and you drift in and start to kid me—”
“I’m sorry,” said Eden. “Come to think of it, I did see your placard on the door.”
Holley shrugged. “I suppose that was just cheap cynicism. I try to steer clear of it. But sometimes—sometimes—”
They went together out of the office, and Holley locked the door. The deserted, sad little street stretched off to nowhere in each direction. The editor waved his hand at the somnolent picture.
“You’ll find us all about out here,” he said, “the exiles of the world. Of course, the desert is grand, and we love it—but once let a doctor say’you can go’and you couldn’t see us for the dust. I don’t mind the daytime so much—the hot friendly day—but the nights—the cold lonely nights.”
“Oh, it isn’t so bad, Will,” said the girl gently.
“Oh no, it isn’t so bad,” he admitted. “Not since the radio—and the pictures. Night after night I sit over there in that movie theater, and sometimes, in a newsreel or perhaps in a feature, I see Fifth Avenue again, Fifth Avenue at Forty-second, with the motors, and the lions in front of the library, and the women in furs. But I never see Park Row.” The three of them walked along in silence through the sand. “If you love me, Paula,” added Will Holley softly, “there’s a location you’ll find. A story about Park Row, with the crowds under the El, and the wagons backed up to the rear door of the post-office, and Perry’s Drug Store and the gold dome of the World.
