Because Someone Did It for Me

BRUCE WAS a tall man, about six feet, with close-cropped hair. The skin of his puffy face, which gave testimony to years of desperate drinking, was pitted as though quicklime had been cast on marble. He had a perpetual cigar about his person, wore a watchman's cap winter and summer, cocked jauntily just above the eyebrow, and was fond of turtleneck sweaters of navy blue, always worn with khaki trousers. When I was in his presence, the sensitiveness of his eyes made me feel a bit uneasy. I knew Bruce in his forty-ninth and fiftieth years.