Richard Caramel listened. At first he had remained standing, but as his aunt’s discourse waxed in content—it stands here pruned by half, of all side references to the youth of Gloria’s soul and to Mrs. Gilbert’s own mental distresses—he drew a chair up and attended rigorously as she floated, between tears and plaintive helplessness, down the long story of Gloria’s life. When she came to the tale of this last year, a tale of the ends of cigarettes left all over New York in little trays marked Midnight Frolic and Justine Johnson’s Little Club, he began nodding his head slowly, then faster and faster, until, as she finished on a staccato note, it was bobbing briskly up and down, absurdly like a doll’s wired head, expressing—almost anything.

The Beautiful and Damned