THE UNCOLLECTED TALES OF 1926-1934 (38 Short Stories in One Edition). F. Scott Fitzgerald

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      Stories 1926–34.

      Presumption.

       The Saturday Evening Post (9 January 1926)

       Table of Contents

       II.

       III.

       IV.

       V.

       VI.

       VII.

      Sitting by the window and staring out into the early autumn dusk, San Juan Chandler remembered only that Noel was coming tomorrow; but when, with a romantic sound that was half gasp, half sigh, he turned from the window, snapped on the light and looked at himself in the mirror, his expression became more materially complicated. He leaned closer. Delicacy balked at the abominable word “pimple”, but some such blemish had undoubtedly appeared on his cheek within the last hour, and now formed, with a pair from last week, a distressing constellation of three. Going into the bathroom adjoining his room—Juan had never possessed a bathroom to himself before—he opened a medicine closet, and, after peering about, carefully extracted a promising-looking jar of black ointment and covered each slight protuberance with a black gluey mound. Then, strangely dotted, he returned to the bedroom, put out the light and resumed his vigil over the shadowy garden.

      He waited. That roof among the trees on the hill belonged to Noel Garneau’s house. She was coming back to it tomorrow; he would see her there … A loud clock on the staircase inside struck seven. Juan went to the glass and removed the ointment with a handkerchief. To his chagrin the spots were still there, even slightly irritated from the chemical sting of the remedy. That settled it—no more chocolate malted milks or eating between meals during his visit to Culpepper Bay. Taking the lid from the jar of talcum he had observed on the dressing table, he touched the laden puff to his cheek. Immediately his brows and lashes bloomed with snow and he coughed chokingly, observing that the triangle of humiliation was still observable upon his otherwise handsome face.

      “Disgusting,” he muttered to himself. “I never saw anything so disgusting.” At twenty, such childish phenomena should be behind him.

      Downstairs three gongs, melodious and metallic, hummed СКАЧАТЬ