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Tentative.
    “What you mean is, put it up but don’t tell me about it. All they can do is take it down.”
    “I guess. Amy, do you ever get propositioned by the pimps?”
    Amy was lighting a cigarette. She scowled.
    “I’m not saying you should,” Julie amended.
    It was the smoke that caused the scowl. Amy waved it away. “Every time I cross the street. One called Goldie, right?”
    Julie nodded, relieved.
    “He’s a charmer. I always say, ‘The Life isn’t for me, Goldie. I’m as straight as a witch’s broom.’ And he’ll say, ‘What a waste.’”
    “I didn’t find him all that charming.”
    “He thinks he’s paying you a compliment.”
    “Sure,” Julie said. “I think I’ll try Information.”
    “If Pete isn’t on time, he isn’t going to show up at all.” Amy took a long drag of the cigarette and put it out “I’ve got to get back, but see if I’m not right—it’s Friday—Monday morning you’re going to find a note from him in the mail, and if he’s got money, which he generally hasn’t you might get flowers. Kiss-and-Run Pete, we call him, but he’s a love, and he’s got more talent than half the names on Broadway. When you leave, be sure the door locks behind you.”
    Julie got a number from Information, the address 741 Ninth Avenue. She got no answer when she dialed.
    Julie spent the weekend getting acquainted with the neighborhood and dressing up the back room with small purchases from the thrift shops on Ninth Avenue: an electric plate, another lamp, a table with its legs cut down to make it coffee size, and a couple of folding chairs that had once belonged to St Mary’s Hall. As a child she had played at equipping her room with everything she would need for an ocean voyage, assuming that her room really was a seaworthy vessel. She pretended to be days at sea; she pretended never to hear her mother and her friends in the other part of the apartment, a thousand miles of the Atlantic between them. Even in college, which had been the best place in her life, she had been a loner. Or, more exactly, an occasional participant in each of the numerous cliques.
    Pete did not show up. Nor did Goldie appear again at her door. On Eighth Avenue she saw a number of girls in fringe skirts and boots, some of whom looked like whores and some of whom didn’t. On Sunday morning, a soft warm day, she kept pace a few feet behind one who definitely did—flaming red hair, a yellow satin blouse with a green vest, and a behind that bounced as she sashayed along. She was singing. A couple of boys made raucous noises after her. She turned and called out, “You should show respect!” and went on. A proper-looking young man shied away when she tried to stop him. “I got a little boy looks just like you,” she said after him. Julie got close enough to hear what she was singing when she started again. Loud and clear: “Holy God, we praise thy name. Lord of all, we bow before thee… Infinite thy vast domain, holy God, we praise thy name.”
    All right. Julie crossed the street and headed for St. Malachy’s. She proposed to attend what was left of the eleven o’clock Mass, slipping into a pew at the rear of the church. The priest had an awful voice. Someone she couldn’t see from behind a pillar announced the lesson and began to read. A familiar voice. She didn’t have to look, but she did. Pete Mallory. It gave her an eerie, uncomfortable feeling, as though she had seen something creepy, obscene, that she wasn’t supposed to. Crazy, but she left the church as quickly as she could get out of it.
    She started back to the shop with the firm intention of putting Pete out of her mind. If he had been more definitely in it, it would have been easier to get him out. She didn’t even know what color eyes he had. She hadn’t talked with him more than a couple of hours in their entire acquaintanceship. But they were easy together. She felt a kinship with him she had with practically no one else, a kind of