He insisted on giving Buddy a shake with an ink-imprinted, damp hand. "The wife couldn't make it," said he. "The two-year-old came down with the grippe, vomiting all over the place." Rolling his eyes, he said: "So maybe you could take a raincheck on that stopping in for coffee."

Buddy tossed his chin to the side. "Say, Jack, what would you think about coming on with me full time?"

Jack moved his Adam's apple. "Gee, Mr.-"

Buddy leaned in. "Just between you, me, and the gatepost, Leo's gone a little batty. He might have to be put away."

"Oh," said Jack, "isn't it just the shock? He's got a awfully good head on his shoulders."

"Do me a favor," Buddy said. "Don't mention to him what I just mentioned to you."

Jack quickly widened his eyes in a sissified style. He angled his head knowingly and then asked: "Is that Mrs. Sandifer I saw sitting in the car?"

"Probably," said Buddy, and went down the steps. He glanced at the Plum house. Grace never got home till well after six, given the hour's bus ride from downtown. If she was getting cock from somebody, it might run as late as ten, as it did in the old days when he fed it to her. According to her, her old man never even looked at her crossways.

He avoided looking at Naomi, sitting in the car, as he went by way of the trunk to reach the driver's side. Buddy never used the front route, around the hood, not even when the engine was at rest; he was far too paranoid. Nor did he lie on his stomach in the presence of a woman, displaying an unprotected spine. Even with Laverne this was true.

Naomi could not drive, her only male habit being one he did not practice: smoking. Though the windows were open, front and rear, on this breezeless evening the air inside the car was poison-blue. He fanned the door several times before climbing in.

Naomi's veil was lowered again, the cigarette going in and out just beneath it.

"Leo's completely cracked," Buddy said.

"He always seemed very level-headed to me," said Naomi.

"Those," said Buddy, letting out the clutch, "are the type who go to pieces first. Now, take me, I fly off the handle once in a while, I know, but it does take the pressure off."

Naomi sent some smoke towards him. "Is that true?" she asked. "How odd. I've never seen you do that."

"I guess I don't always let on," said Buddy. "I blow up in private."

Naomi murmured indistinctly behind the veil. With her it was not control but simply a character incapable of any feeling at all.

"You got supper waiting?" He knew better.

"Chipped beef won't take a minute," she said. "And I'll warm a can of limas."

"I'll tell you, Nay. We ought to get the taste of that experience out of our mouths. What say we put on the feedbag at Wong's Gardens?"

In the early years they had dined there on signal occasions like anniversaries, and the day-after-holidays, but when business had got better and Buddy acquired a concomitant taste for roadhouses with cocktail lounges, steaks smothered in mushrooms, and dance bands, Naomi in her dreary way remained enmired in an addiction to chicken chow mein. They had not therefore been to Wong's for ages. It was an appropriate locus for their last meal together.

Naomi stared at him through her veil. "Well, it is an extravagance..."

Once again Buddy wondered, as he had for eons, whether her bland exterior, now concealed altogether, was a mask for corrosive sarcasm. And once again he decided it was not: it was humanly impossible to pose as a drone for so many years. Wong's special four-course meal, from egg-drop soup to almond cookie or pineapple slice, was priced at thirty-five cents, and Naomi never even glanced at the a la carte, resorting to which anyway you would be hard put to exceed a dollar's worth of food unless you gluttonized wildly on both lobster and squab. Whereas Buddy had never gone anywhere with Laverne without spending a minimum of three bucks for food alone, with more for the drinks. Laverne could run up a dollar tab at a fish-sandwhich take-out place, with extra orders of french fries and cole slaw, a jar of sweet pickles, not to mention several packages of those round cheese crackers stuck together with peanut-butter putty, which she ate in the car going home. Entering a movie, she invariably stopped at the lobby machines and bought fifteen-twenty cents' worth of chocolates kisses, Milk Duds, and candy-covered licorice pellets.

"Let's go whole hog for a change," said Buddy. "We owe it to ourselves." He shook his head. "The last person I would think It of was leo"

Naomi pushed up her veil and left it there. "I have a confession to make, Buddy." He felt a slight chill for no special reason beyond his instinctive fear of revelations, even such harmless ones as Naomi was likely to make.

"I never did go in to look at his mother," said she. "I could see no point in it if he wasn't there."

Buddy snorted in relief. "You didn't miss much."

Ralph had stopped at the drugstone and bought the box of candy, through alas the super-duper size was not in stock and the largest available was the thirty-nine center, Which however did have a red bow of satin ribbon under tight cellphane.

His route took him past Elmira's and there, leaning against the outer wall of the high-school hangout, he saw his bicycle. Ralph was enraged at the boldness of the thief. Thrusting the candy box, in its green paper bag, as far as it would go into the cavity below his left shoulder, he prepared to enter the shop and confront the malefactor. Even in his anger he was able to reflect that finding the bike here meant no colored youth had stolen it, given the exclusion of Negroes from Elmara's this relived him, because he was scared of them.

Just as he reached the door however, Margie emerged.

"God," she said, "there you are! God, I've been looking everyplace for you."

"Don't bother me now," said Ralph. "For pity sake. Just get out of my way when the fur flies."

Oblivious to his purpose, she continued to block him. "I guess I was stupid. I found your bike laying on the curb over on Myrtle. When you didn't show up after a long time I figured you forgot it or some kids hooked it and left it there or something, so I took it back to Bigelow's but they said you didn't work there any more, so I took it to your house but nobody was home so I came here thinking you might-"

"Oh for Christ sake," said Ralph, "put a lid on it, will you? I might have known. You damn sap." She put a hand to her frozen face and backed up. "Why don't you let me alone? Who asked you, anyway?" He pursued her until her back met the wall. "Lucky I didn't report it to the cops, or you'd have gone to jail."

But once again he was relieved, this time of the responsibility to tangle with a boy who would have had to be tough and fearless to flaunt stolen property. The matter of his own possible cowardice in the clinch was now a dead issue. He had but a cowering, wretched girl to condemn, and could do it in perfect conscience.

Ignoble fellow that he was. "Oh, hell," said he instead, "don't act like you're being murdered. Can't you see I'm kidding?" She peeped through her hands. He made a grotesque grin and pointed to it. "See?" She sniffled. He stuck out his tongue and crossed his eyes. She giggled and wiped her nose on her wrist.

"I knew you had it all the time," said he.

"I don't think you did."

"I didn't report it, did I?"

"I don't know."

"Well, I don't intend to argue about it," Ralph said with fake huffiness. If they continued to stand there, somebody he knew would show up and think she was his girl, and his saintly decency would be rewarded with humiliation.

"Look, I got an appointment." He put the package in the basket and seized the bike.

Now that she had eluded punishment, she had no shame whatever. "I don't suppose you could give me a ride?"

"You're right. The answer is no, nix, nothing doing."

"I mean, just as far as where you turn off."

"You know something, Margie? You've got an awful lot of gall." But what could you do with somebody who regarded that as a compliment, grinning proudly?

"All right," he groaned, nodding at the crossbar. "Climb on. But watch it when we go over the creek. I might throw you in."

"Better not. I can't swim."

"Somehow I knew that," said Ralph.

"You'd just have to save me."

"Don't I know it."

"But," said she, settling her bottom on the bar and putting one damp hand over his on the rubber handle grip, "it would make you feel real big."

Burdened with this threatening knowledge of what she had on him, as well as her physical weight on the bike, and yet with a sense that he was doing the right thing in supporting them both, he shoved off. The effort reminded him immediately that he still wore the heavy suit, from which he had been distracted by his mission since leaving Leo's house.

Margie leaned forward to stare into the basket, dangerously altering the balance. He had not yet got up enough speed, and the bike veered left.

"Hey, watch it!" he said. "Don't you even know how to sit on a bike?"

"What'd you get at the drugstore?" she asked. "Wine?" She turned her head and looked over her hunched shoulder. He saw her naked blue eye between cheek and metal spectacle rim. "You're sure dressed fit to kill, too. Who's giving the party?"

"Nobody," said Ralph, sweating so copiously he could hardly see. He hoped the Mum would continue to hold under fire.

"You don't have to protect my feelings," said Margie. "Nobody ever invites me, and I've got used to it." Nevertheless she looked desolately down at the turning wheel ahead.

The self-pity made Ralph grimace at her rumpled back. "I don't go to all that many myself. They aren't much fun anyway." He was sincere in this judgment. At spin the bottle, fortune always gave him the dogs; he would for example have got Margie.

"You know when I used to run around with Imogene," said Margie, "she never even invited me to her parties."

"I wouldn't know about that," said Ralph. In pride he lapsed into Hauser tough-talk. "Her and me never have seen eye to eye. She's just a little chippie for my money."

Margie gasped at this. "Gee, I wouldn't go that far."

"Wasn't it you who told me she went off with Lester Hauser? She'll end up pregnant one of these days."

Margie's hands stiffened on the bars; she pushed herself back against his chest. "You better let me off right here."

Ralph stopped pedaling and caught the laden bike with outstretched feet. "With pleasure."

"I mean..." She still sat there and looked ahead.

"Listen," said Ralph in patient indignation, "'pregnant' isn't a dirty word, and you know it."

"I can't help it."

"I can't help if you're ignorant," said Ralph. "A cow has 'teats,' and a female dog is a 'bitch.' Put that in your pipe and smoke it. For God's sake, that's the king's English, and if all the sissies and old maids who run the stupid churches round here read the goddam Bible they would find out all kinds of things, like what the word 'know' really means." This was one of Ralph's causes insofar as he had any. He and Hauser often discussed this matter: Horse, though fouler-mouthed, was for once less ardent.

Margie's hands went through the stringy hair to cover her ears. Ralph decided not to let her off the bike for this stupid reason, though she was making no physical move to go anyway. He started up again, and because she would otherwise have fallen, he caught her in his right arm while managing, with the fine authority of the veteran cyclist, to correct the balances with his corded left wrist. He felt a slender but smooth and vital trunk within the loose cotton dress and then, as compensating for the motion she leaned forward, his hand sliding up, a projection the size, shape, and firmness of a lemon half.

At the top of his leg, the foot of which was grinding the pedal around the sprocket, his pecker instantly went rigid. Margie on the other hand went soft in attitude though not in body: he had not dreamed she was slender-firm rather than skinny-slack. His hard-on now had swelled to touch the rounded edge of her amazingly substantial butt on every downstroke of his shoe.

She tolerated this in silence. His hand seemed glued to her breast, immune to volition. There he pedaled, along Wyman Street, flagrantly yet helplessly cupping the tit of some dippy girl, to whom furthermore yet helplessly cupping the tit of some dippy girl, to whom furthermore he had never been attracted, sexually or otherwise, and he did not know if he was genuinely so now. In fact he doubted it, he who could get a bone-on from the motion of a streetcar in which he was passenger.

God only knows how long this would have continued had the front wheel not hit a pothole. His had went desperately from breast to corrugated rubber grip, made it, applied corrective measures, and his balance was regained. Hers never seemed in doubt, oddly enough, though he had withdrawn her only visible support. Her narrow back was still warmly against his chest.

The physical shock broke his moral silence.

"Let me know if another hole comes up. I can't see through you, for Christ sake."

"You really ought to do something about your language, Ralph," said she. "If a person can't express themselves without being crude-"

He stopped the bike. "All right, that's it...Go on, get off."

She complied. If he expected tears again he was disappointed. She frowned and made her mouth like a little old lady's.

Ralph said: "Let me tell you something: you're in no position to criticize." He pedaled off to see Laverne L. Lorraine.

The remarkable feature was that when he noticed his whereabouts he saw he was already only a block or two from Myrtle, with Bigelow's corner in sight. He had ridden across town in a benumbed state, his hand on Margie's little knocker. On reflection he identified something sinister in her character, which he had hitherto assessed as totally dopey. To object to a little mild cussing and then put her tit in his hand and rub her ass against his dick.

Yet it was weird and repulsive to think of such a plain girl as being horny: she had no right. But if this were true, was not the world completely rotten? Having abandoned her, Ralph assuaged his guilt with sentimentality: think of the poor devils born with clubfeet or as Mongolian idiots. With such melancholy deliberations he swung at high speed around the corner into Myrtle Avenue. This irked some old geezer in an ancient coupe, though he was nowhere near him. Ralph ignored the angry oo-gah of the old-fashioned horn.

He hopped off in front of 23. On the porch sat a tremendous fat slob in an undershirt, his belly bigger than even Bigelow's. While Ralph wheeled the bike towards the side of the house, an enormous matching woman shuffled out in carpet slippers and gave the man a glass of lemonade. They both gazed piggishly at Ralph, who favored them with the briefest of glances. He thought it amusing that a princess lived above such peasants.

But before he reached the corner the man yelled: "Hey, bud, you got a delivery for upstairs? She ain't home." The woman continued to stare expressionlessly from a face as wide as a pie. "She just went down the bus stop," the man elucidated. "Don't leave your package outside up there or some nigger might steal it. And we can't take it here. We don't want to be responsible." The woman grimaced disagreeably.

Ralph ran his bike out to the street. He assumed the bus stop would be on Jackson, the nearest arterial highway, and he was right. He was still half a block away, pumping hard, when a pair of silken limbs, topped by a golden head, between which was a fabulous figure dressed in bright green, stepped onto the bus, which subsequently roared away, leaving him in a cloud of dull blue exhaust.

He was soaked with disappointment, exertion, and his horse-blanket suit. A unique sensation was provided by a stream of sweat coursing behind his knees, now that he had stopped, with straight legs, feet planted, rump raised off a sticky seat. He fanned himself with the edges of his jacket, smelling no stench in the hot body-air that emerged, though the time for that concern had passed.

Having watched the bus dwindle to a little red dot and vanish into the converging parallels of Jackson Avenue, he remounted the bicycle. There would of course be other days, but none so right as this one could have been. His aims had been so modest: to return the money for the damage, to present the candy as a bonus, then to watch the sun rise in that glorious face.

He decided to go home, get out of the damned suit, and make himself a melted-cheese sandwich in the waffle iron. The juvenile idiocy of Elmira's would be repugnant to him at this moment.

chapter 11.

LAVERNE HAD BEEN GIVEN to extremes throughout her adult life, going helplessly where she was blown by the gusts of chance, on the one hand; but on the other, from time to time making irrevocable decisions. At the age of sixteen, already full-breasted, hanging around a dance pavilion on the shore of a man-made lake just outside her home town, she had caught the eye of the bandleader, a thin, dapper man with patent-leather head and hairline mustache.

When dancing Laverne would maneuver her partner into a position below the bandstand from which she could keep a surveillance on the leader, who most of the time kept his back turned as his baton dominated the five musicians, but turned occasionally to charm the customers and in one out of three numbers himself soloed on saxophone or, more rarely, clarinet, and when he did might wink at Laverne, who was foxtrotting with her friend Irma Grunion.

The two girls had been going to the pavilion every night, but this being a semi-rural area, the unattached boys were mostly hicks, with a few older tinhorn sports from town who had cars, into which if you climbed, especially the rumble seat, you had to fight for your life, which is how it seemed from the ferocity of the attacks: as if they wanted rather to kill than merely rape you. The hicks though danced at arm's length and smelled of the cloves they chewed for their breath. In the intermissions they nervously rushed away to buy pretzels and orange pop; at the end of the evening they would ride you home in the bus without a word; that is, if they had not disappeared while you were in the restroom. Many nights the girls preferred their own company.

Laverne knew herself as yet a rube, but she had a conviction that a true sophisticate neither despised nor feared women, and furthermore spoke beautifully. Therefore, when after the playing of "Goodnight, Ladies" her admirer put his little megaphone to his mouth and said: "This is Ken Canning and his Ragtime Dreamers saying a bit of a tweet-tweet, and wishing sweet dreams to you-all for always and a day," she was ready to swoon even if he had not winked for the third time that night.

"You see that?" asked Irma as they went to the Ladies' through the grove of trees, floored with tanbark and lighted with orange bulbs on strings, "Ken Canning winking at me? He was doing it all night. I never let on though. He's a real masher."

"You know that for a fact?" asked Laverne.

"By that little mustache."

"Well, I never!" Laverne said.