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County Jail in Warrentown. He went down and talked to him for a long time. And then he said he would take it. I won’t tell you any more. I want you to talk to him,”
    “Should we make an appointment?”
    “Perhaps we should. I’ll call from here.”
    She didn’t have change so I gave her some. I waited at the table over a fresh cup of coffee, watched her walk away from me toward the booth. She wore a gray sweater with an intricate stitch, a gray flannel skirt, very short. Her dark hair was not lustrous as I remembered it, gleaming with health. It was dulled and lifeless. But in her walk, despite the ten pounds she had lost, there was the same unconscious, unplanned provocation.
    As I settled back to wait, I overheard a snatch of conversation from two booths away, a heavy voice. “—her all right. It never got in the papers. And they didn’t have to bring it up at the trial. But you figure it out. They were living there in the apartment together. I got the cold dope. It wasn’t normal, Ed, It wasn’t normal at all.” The voice was oily, insinuating.
    “Who’s the guy with her?”
    “They locked up the other one. She’s got to have somebody. She’s that type. She’s the one got the kid so heated up he went out and—”
    I turned all the way around. The conversation stopped. The man was in his fifties, with a loose gray face, small avid eyes. His companion, with his back to me, was thin and redheaded and going bald. The man licked his lips and looked away. The thin one turned around and stared at me.
    I was about to turn back. I had myself under control. Everything was fine. But the redhead had to say, “Something on your mind?”
    “Not a thing. Want a suggestion?”
    Grayface was emboldened by his friend’s antagonism. “Not from you, friend.”
    “I thought you boys might go get a good dry-cleaning job. On the inside. A nice mental detergent maybe.”
    The waitress hovered, obviously nervous. Redhead was the one with the guts. Or maybe he thought all scenes of violence were limited to Saturday night taverns. He got up and came to my table. He leaned a freckled hand on the table. He had a wide loose mouth, a rasping voice, a florid necktie without tie clip.
    “You need a lesson in manners,” he said. “And maybe you need better taste in girl friends. That floozy you’re with—”
    His tone was loud. All the clink and rustle of the sounds of eating had ceased. I do not know how he planned to finish the sentence. I pushed his left hand off the table with my left hand. Simultaneously I grabbed the dangling gaudy necktie with my right hand and yanked down as hard as I could. He came down hard. His teeth clicked as his chin hit the formica table top. His eyes rolled vaguely and he sat gently on the restaurant floor. I put money on top of the check, got up and stepped across his legs. I turned and looked at Grayface. He stayed put, reaching nervously and absently for his coffee, looking everywhere but at me or his friend. The manager had appeared from somewhere. I went to the phone booth. Vicky smiled at me and hung up and came out of the booth. She saw the manager helping redhead to his feet.
    “What happened?”
    “Let’s get out of here.”
    A mile down the road she said, “It was about me, wasn’t it? I mean that’s what started it.”
    “Yes. Things they said.”
    “Don’t let it bother you, Hugh. They say things loud so I can hear. I don’t let myself listen. It’s filth. I know why it started. Silly reasons. Al and I were close. You know that. I guess I was the only person in the world he could be halfway normal with, affectionate with. Sometimes, when we walked, we would hold hands. It was brother-sister, and a sort of reassurance to him. Nothing else. I kissed him once in public. He had won a prize. It embarrassed him terribly. None of that would have mattered. But afterward they remembered it, and twisted it. Maybe you wonder why we moved to the apartment. He said that one year in