While the Auto Waits

On an early evening in an American city during the 1920s, a young man encounters a young woman sitting on a bench in a park, reading. The man makes veiled advances but the woman rebuffs him, pretends to be from the upper class, and even complains of some dissatisfaction with her life of wealth and leisure. He says he is a cashier at a nearby restaurant, and she says it is possible she could love a man of such lowly station. Not long thereafter, the woman leaves the young man on the bench, ostensibly to return to her all-white automobile on the corner, where her driver is supposed to be waiting for her. The man follows and secretly watches the woman leave the park, pass the white car, enter a restaurant across the street, and begin her shift as a cashier. Then he takes a look at the young woman’s escapist novel, inadvertently dropped by her on the grass—after which the young man navigates the street corner, steps into the white automobile, gives instructions to his chauffeur, and drives away.