Page "fiction" Paragraph 1038

At five o'clock that night it was already dark, and behind my closed door I was dressing as carefully as a groom.

I wore a new double-breasted brown worsted suit with a faint herringbone design and wide lapels like a devil's ears.

My camp-made leather wallet, bulky with twisted, raised stitches around the edges, I stuffed with money I had been saving.

Hatless, in an overcoat of rough blue wool, I was given a proud farewell by my mother and father, and I set out into the strangely still streets of Brooklyn.

I felt superior to the neighborhood friends I was leaving behind, felt older than my years, and was full of compliments for myself as I headed into the subway that was carrying its packs of passengers out of that dull borough and into the unstable, tantalizing excitement of Manhattan.