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was distorted perhaps because of the moonlight. Shadows were swollen and dead black and nothing looked the same as it did in the day. The filling station was a hot oasis of light, but I was behind it, walking fast along the alley. Beyond it I crossed the road and went into the trees. I pushed through the oleander hedge and stood for a moment in its shadow, looking at the house and the lawn. The only car in the drive was the Buick coupé, right where I’d left it, and all the windows in the house were dark. I went up the porch.
    The screen door was unlatched.
    A little light came in through the venetian blinds in the living room. There was no one in it. I located the stairs and went up. The short hallway at the top had two doors in it and a window at the end. One of the doors was open.
    She was lying on the bed next to a window looking out over the back yard. From the waist up she was in deep shadow, but moonlight slanted in across the bottom of the bed and I could see the gleam of that tiny chain around her ankle.
    “Harry,” she said, her voice a little thick with the whisky. “You found the way, didn’t you?”
    What’s so wonderful about it? I thought. Dogs do.

5
    “H ARRY ?”
    “What?”
    “You want another drink?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “I’ve had enough. I’ve got a headache.”
    “It couldn’t be the whisky. It’s straight Bourbon. It wouldn’t give you a headache.”
    Nothing but the best, I thought. “All right. It’s not the whisky.”
    “I like you,” she said. “You don’t drink much, but you’re all right. Harry, you know what?”
    “What?”
    “You’re all right.”
    “You said that.”
    “Well, Godsakes, I’ll say it again if I want to. You’re all right. You’re sweet. You’re a big ugly bastard with a face that’d stop a clock, but you’re sweet. You know what I mean?”
    “No.” I lighted a cigarette and lay on my back staring up at the ceiling. It must be nearly midnight. My head throbbed painfully and very slowly, like a big flywheel turning over, and the taste of whisky was sour in my mouth. She must bathe in cologne, I thought; the room was drenched with it.
    “Harry?”
    “What is it?”
    “You don’t think I’m fat, do you?”
    “Of course not.”
    “You wouldn’t kid ’ninnocent young girl, would you?”
    “No.” I turned and looked at her. Moonlight from the window had moved up the bed and now it fell diagonally across her from the waist up to the big spread-out breast which rocked a little as she shook the ice in her glass. I thought of a full and slightly bruised peach beginning to spoil a little. She was somewhere between luscious and full-bloom and in another year or so of getting all her exercise lying down and lifting the bottle she’d probably be blowzy.
    “Well?” she said sarcastically. “Maybe I ought to turn on the light.”
    “You asked me a question. Did you want it answered or didn’t you?”
    She giggled. “Oh, don’t be so touchy. I was just kidding you. I don’t mind. Pour me another drink.”
    She didn’t need any more, but I reached down beside the bed for the bottle. Anything to get her to shut up, I thought. The bottle was empty.
    “There’s not any more,” I said.
    “The hell there’s not. What became of it?”
    “Maybe it leaks,” I said wearily.
    “Nuts. We got to have a drink.” She sat up in bed and climbed out unsteadily, whisky-and-cologne smelling and sexy, bosom aswing, and humming “You’d Be So Easy To Love,” under her breath. “I got some more hid in the kitchen. Have to keep it hid from him because he don’t drink and won’t let me, when he’s home. Him and his lousy ulcers.”
    I heard her bump into something in the living room and swear. She had a bos’n’s vocabulary. My head felt worse and I wondered why I didn’t get out of there. She was already on the edge of being sloppy drunk, kittenish one minute and belligerent the next. God knows I’ve always had some sort of affinity