He was about twenty-one and his name was Eddie Something and he was home from school for the summer. The three of us sat on the steps and talked for a while, about how hot it was and about school and about how many of them were going right into the Army.

“What outfit were you in, Mr. Madox?” Eddie Something asked.

“Navy. I got out on a medical and went into the merchant marines.” I thought of the “Mr. Madox” and the fact that we were talking about two armies ten years apart. What was I doing here, talking to these kids? Getting off the steps, I flipped the cigarette away and said, “Well, I’ll see you around.”

“You don’t have to go, do you?” Gloria asked.

“Yeah,” I said. I went out and got in the car and rammed it towards the highway, full of a black restlessness and angry at everything. Driving around didn’t do any good. I drove out to the river and went swimming, and when I came back to town it was still only ten o’clock. The rooming house was thunderously silent. Even the old couple in the next room had gone somewhere. I mopped the sweat off my face and tried to sit still on the bed.

Well? she said. She sat on the chair with her legs stretched out and the toes of the wedgies touching and stared at me, sulky-eyed, over ripe, and spoiling, and said, Well?

Well?

Everything was distorted perhaps because of the moonlight. Shadows were swollen and dead black and nothing looked the same as it did in the day. The filling station was a hot oasis of light, but I was behind it, walking fast along the alley. Beyond it I crossed the road and went into the trees. I pushed through the oleander hedge and stood for a moment in its shadow, looking at the house and the lawn. The only car in the drive was the Buick coupe, right where I’d left it, and all the windows in the house were dark. I went up the porch.

The screen door was unlatched.

A little light came in through the Venetian blinds in the living room. There was no one in it. I located the stairs and went up. The short hallway at the top had two doors in it and a window at the end. One of the doors was open.

She was lying on the bed next to a window looking out over the back yard. From the waist up she was in deep shadow, but moonlight slanted in across the bottom of the bed and I could see the gleam of that tiny chain around her

“Harry,” she said, her voice a little thick with the whisky. “You found the way, didn’t you?”

What’s so wonderful about it? I thought. Dogs do.

5

“Harry?”

“What?”

“You want another drink?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve had enough. I’ve got a headache.”

“It couldn’t be the whisky. It’s straight Bourbon. It wouldn’t give you a headache.”

Nothing but the best, I thought. “All right.