"What?" Corinne said, though she heard Waner perfectly.
"He doesn't love you." Waner courageously repeated. "He isn't even considering loving you."
"Shut up." Corinne said.
"All right."
There was a long pause. But Waner's voice came back in again. It sounded quite far off.
"Corinne, I remember a long time ago kissing you in a cab. When you first got back from Europe. It was sort of an unfair, Scotch-and-soda kiss- maybe you remember. I bumped your hat." Waner cleared his throat again. But he put the whole thing through: "There was something about the way you raised your arms to straighten your hat, and the way your face looking in the mirror over the driver's photograph. I don't know. The way you looked and all. You're the greatest hat-straightener that ever lived."
Corinne broke in coldly. "What's the point?" Nevertheless, Waner had touched her, probably deeply.
"None, I guess." Then: "Yes, there is a point. Of course there's a point. I'm trying to tell you that Ford's long past noticing that you're the greatest hat straightener that ever lived. I mean a man just cant reach the kind of poetry Ford's reaching and still keep intact the normal male ability to spot a fine hat-straightener-"
-j. d. salinger
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