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“Yeh. It’s good.”

She actually blushed.

He finished, swung himself off the stool, nodded to Jessie. She stacked his dishes with one lean, capable hand, mopped the slab with the other, but as she made for the kitchen she flung a glance at him over her shoulder.

“Day off?”

“Yeh.”

“Some folks has all the luck.”

He grinned. His teeth were strong and white and even. He walked toward the door with his light quick step, paused for a toothpick as he paid his check, was out again into the July sunlight. Her face became dull again.

Well, not one o’clock. Guessed he’d shoot a little pool. He dropped into Moriarty’s cigar store. It was called a cigar store because it dealt in magazines, newspapers, soft drinks, golf balls, cigarettes, pool, billiards, chocolates, chewing gum, and cigars. In the rear of the store were four green-topped tables, three for pool and one for billiards. He hung about aimlessly, watching the game at the one occupied table. The players were slim young men like himself, their clothes replicas of his own, their faces lean and somewhat hard. Two of them dropped out. Nick took a cue from the rack, shed his tight coat. They played under a glaring electric light in the heat of the day, yet they seemed cool, aloof, immune from bodily discomfort. It was a strangely silent game and as mirthless as that of the elfin bowlers in Rip Van Winkle. The slim-waisted shirted figures bent plastically over the table in the graceful postures of the game. You heard only the click of the balls, an occasional low-voiced exclamation. A solemn crew, and unemotional.

Now and then: “What’s all the shootin’ fur?”

“In she goes.”

Nick, winner, tired of it in less than an hour. He bought a bottle of some acidulous drink just off the ice and refreshed himself with it, drinking from the bottle’s mouth. He was vaguely restless, dissatisfied. Out again into the glare of two o’clock Fifty-third Street. He strolled up a block toward Lake Park Avenue. It was hot. He wished the bus wasn’t sick. Might go in swimming, though. He considered this idly. Hurried steps behind him. A familiar perfume wafted to his senses. A voice nasal yet cooing. Miss Bauers. Miss Bauers on pleasure bent, palpably, being attired in the briefest of silks, white-strapped slippers, white silk stockings, scarlet hat. The Green Front Grocery and Market closed for a half day each Thursday afternoon during July and August. Nicky had not availed himself of the knowledge.

“Well, if it ain’t Nicky! I just seen you come out of Moriarty’s as I was passing.” (She had seen him go in an hour before and had waited a patient hour in the drug store across the street.) “What you doing around loose this hour the day, anyway?”

“I’m off ‘safternoon.”

“Are yuh? So’m I.” Nicky said nothing. Miss Bauers shifted from one plump silken leg to the other. “What you doing?”

“Oh, nothing much.”

“So’m I. Let’s do it together.” Miss Bauers employed the direct method.

“Well,” said Nick, vaguely. He didn’t object particularly. And yet he was conscious of some formless programme forming mistily in his mind–a programme that did not include the berouged, be-powdered, plump, and silken Miss Bauers.

“I phoned you this morning, Nicky. Twice.”

“Yeh?”

“They said you wasn’t in.”

“Yeh?”

A hard young woman, Miss Bauers, yet simple: powerfully drawn toward this magnetic and careless boy; powerless to forge chains strong enough to hold him. “Well, how about Riverview? I ain’t been this summer.”

“Oh, that’s so darn far. Take all day getting there, pretty near.”

“Not driving, it wouldn’t.”

“I ain’t got the bus. Busted.”

His apathy was getting on her nerves. “How about a movie, then?” Her feet hurt. It was hot.

His glance went up the street toward the Harper, down the street toward the Hyde Park. The sign above the Harper offered Mother o’ Mine. The lettering above the Hyde Park announced Love’s Sacrifice.

“Gawd, no,” he made decisive answer.

Miss Bauers’s frazzled nerves snapped. “You make me sick! Standing there. Nothing don’t suit you. Say, I ain’t so crazy to go round with you. Cheap guy! Prob’ly you’d like to go over to Wooded Island or something, in Jackson Park, and set on the grass and feed the squirrels. That’d be a treat for me, that would.” She laughed a high, scornful tear-near laugh.