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York to go home and not bother herself about him any more, told her he had work to do, told her to go back to the boys who didn’t have work to do, and she went, but an hour later when he stepped out of his apartment to take a walk and pick up the morning papers, there she was sitting on the marble bench just outside his door bawling and blubbering, her eyes red, her face red, her mouth wet with slobber, and he thought: Have I got this whole thing wrong? Is it possible that this girl is so much more than she seems to be? Am I so stupid as not to have found out anything about her at all after all this time?
    â€˜I was going to go in a minute,’ she wept. ‘I was just going to go.’
    â€˜What are you crying about?’
    â€˜I don’t know. I don’t know, but I wish you knew how it is.’
    Is it possible? he thought. I’ve treated her the way I believed she deserved to be treated, like a vagrant piece. What the devil is this?
    â€˜Well, come back in here and wash your face. Then I’ll walk you home if that’s where you want to go.’
    â€˜I don’t want to go home,’ she wept. ‘I never want to go home again. I want to stay here the rest of my life.’
    â€˜This apartment’s twenty-five dollars a day. I’m leaving it in a few days to go into the Army.’
    â€˜I want to go with you,’ she wept, only she wasn’t trying to be funny, she was just sick, he couldn’t imagine how she could ever have gotten so sick. He could imagine her getting sick of him as he had gotten sick of her—until now—until this incredible unbelievable bawling that was impossible to disbelieve, for nothing seemed to stop it, not even cold water splashed on her face. What the devil was she bawling
about
?
    And why had she picked him to hear it? All he had wanted was another piece, a better one than most for being younger and prettier and funnier, so what was all the bawling about?
    Now, in San Francisco, seven years later, she was bawling that way again because in the midst of play he had tricked her, driven the play far back into her and brought forward the weeping to take its place.
    â€˜Now, stop that bawling,’ he said.
    But the woman couldn’t stop it, it was the one thing over which she had no control, the one thing that made him helpless, the one thing that held them together, pathetically. He got in bed beside her and took her in his arms.
    â€˜You dirty dog,’ she wept, hugging him quickly and kicking her feet around him, to hold him with
them
, too. ‘I’m so God-damn lonely, and so are you. And down the hall are the two kids we’ve got, and we’re all so God-damn lonely. God, how we must stink!’
    â€˜Why don’t you try to shut up once in a while?’

Chapter 9
    It was the little boy standing over him, he knew. He had been standing there a minute or two. He always knew in his sleep when the boy arrived, but the boy never did anything and he never said anything. He just stood there, and then his father opened his eyes and got up. His father opened them now.
    â€˜Don’t you want to go back to bed and sleep some more?’
    â€˜No, Papa. I want to get dressed.’
    â€˜Is Rosey asleep?’
    â€˜Asleep? She woke
me
up.’
    He found his watch on the night table between the two beds and saw that it was a little before seven, not so bad at that. He got out of bed and saw the boy’s whole face wink, all the dark of it fall away under the light of gladness.
    â€˜O.K., come on.’
    The boy stopped to look at his mother. Her freckles were out, the way they always were in the morning, her hair was tangled all over, red over the white of her face and neck and shoulders, and her mouth was a little open, a little wet with the drooling she always did when she was asleep.
    â€˜Do you want to get in bed with Mama?’
    â€˜No, I want to get dressed.’
    â€˜Does Rosey want to get in