And he sure dressed the part, on and off. The Tin-Horn Sport Cut clothes that you see advertised so wide must be made and designed 'special for Lester. I remember he sprung the first pinch-back coat that came into the office. Same way with the slit pockets, the belted vest and other cute little innovations that the Times Square chicken hounds drape themselves in. I wouldn't quite say that he'd pass for the perfect male, either. Not unless you count the bat ears, face pimples, turkey neck and the cast in one eye as points of beauty. But that don't seem to bother Lester in the least. He knows he has a way with him. His reg'lar openin' is "Hello, Girlie, what you got on the event card for tonight?" and from that to makin' a date at Zinsheimer's dance hall is just a step. Oh, yes, Lester is some gay bird, if you want to call it that. And all on twenty a week. So of course that interferes some with his great ambition. He used to tell me about it back in the old days when I was on the gate and hadn't sized him up accurate. Chorus girls! If he could only get to know some squab pippin from the Winter Garden or the Follies that would be all he'd ask. He would pick out his favorite from the new musical shows, lug around half-tone pictures of 'em cut from newspapers, and try to throw the bluff that he expected to meet 'em early next week; but as we all knew he never got nearer than the second balcony he never got away with the stuff. "Suppose by some miracle you did, Lester?" I'd ask him. "What then? Would you blow her to a bowl of chow mein at some chop suey joint, or could you get by with a nut sundae at a cut-rate drug store? And suppose some curb broker was waitin' to take her out to Heather Blossom Inn? You'd put up a hot competition, you would, with nothing but the change from a five left in your jeans." "Ah, just leave that to me, old son," he'd say, winkin' devilish. And the one time when he did pull it off I happened to hear about. A friend of his who was usher at the old Hippodrome offered to tow him to a little Sunday night supper at the flat of one of the chorus ladies. Lester went, too, and found a giddy thing of about forty fryin' onions for a fam'ly of five, includin' three half-grown kids and a scene-shiftin' hubby. That blow seems to discourage Lester for a week or so, since which he has run true to form. He'll run around with lady typists, or girls from the cloak department, or most anything that wears skirts, until they discover what a tight-wad he is and give him the shunt. But his great aim in life is to acquire a lady-friend that he can point out in the second row and hang around for at the stage door about midnight.