Chapter 5 Breakfast at Tiffany's-5

"Any time," he said, and closed his door. I went out into the hall and leaned over the banister, just enough to see without being seen. She was still on the stairs, now she reached the landing, and the ragbag colors of her boys hair, tawny streaks, strands of albino-blond and yellow , caught the hall light. It was a warm evening, nearly summer, and she wore a slim cool blackdress, black sandals, a pearl choker. For all her chic thinness, she had an almost breakfast-cereal air of health, a soap and lemon cleanness , a rough pink darkening in the cheeks. Her mouth was large, her nose upturned. A pair of dark glassesblotted out her eyes. It was a face beyond childhood, yet this side of belonging to a woman. I thought her anywhere between sixteen and thirty; As it turned out, she was shy two months of her nineteenth birthday.

She was not alone. There was a man following behind her. The way his plumphand clutched at her hip seemed somehow improper; not morally, aesthetically. He was short and vast, sun-lamped and pomaded, a man in a buttressed pin-stripe suitwith a red carnation withering in the lapel. When they reached her door sherummaged her purse in search of a key, and took no notice of the fact that his thicklips were nuzzling the nape of her neck. At last, though, finding the key and openingher door, she turned to him cordially: "Bless you, darling -- you were sweet to seem home." "Hey, baby!" he said, for the door was closing in his face.

"Yes, Harry?" "Harry was the other guy. Im Sid. Sid Arbuck. You like me." "I worship you, Mr. Arbuck. But good night, Mr. Arbuck." Mr. Arbuck stared with disbelief as the door shut firmly. "Hey, baby, let me inbaby. You like me baby. "Im a liked guy. Didnt I pick up the check, five people, your friends, I never seenthem before? Dont that give me the right you should like me? You like me, baby." He tapped on the door gently, then louder; finally he took several steps back, his body hunched and lowering, as though he meant to charge it, crash it down. Instead, he plunged down the stairs, slamming a fist against the wall. As he reached the bottom, the door of the girls apartment opened and she poked out her head.

"Oh, Mr. Arbuck... " He turned back, a smile of relief oiling his face: shed only been teasing. "The next time a girl wants a little powder-room change," she called, not teasing at all, "take my advice, darling: dont give her twenty-cents!" She kept her promise to Mr. Yunioshi; or I assume she did not ring his bell again, for in the next days she started ringing mine, sometimes at two in the morning, three and four: she had no qualms at what hour she got me out of bed to push the buzzer that released the downstairs door. As I had few friends, and none who would come around so late, I always knew that it was her. But on the first occasions of its shaping, I went to my door, half -expecting bad news, a telegram; and MissGolightly would call up: "Sorry, darling -- I forgot my key."