“He doesn’t know,” Mr. Allingham said. “Don’t think you’re anywhere now, mind. You can’t call this place anywhere, can you? It’s breathing space.”

“I’ve been wondering what was going to happen. That’s what I’ve been discussing with myself. I came up really to see what would happen to me. I don’t want to make anything happen myself.”

“He was discussing it with himself. With a boy of twenty. How old are you?”

“Twenty.”

“That’s right. Discussing a question like that with a boy just out of his teens. What did you expect to happen?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps people would come up and talk to me at the beginning. Women,” Samuel said.

“Why should they talk to you? Why should I talk to you? You’re not going anywhere. You’re not doing anything. You don’t exist,” he said.

But all Samuel’s strength was in his belly and his eyes. He should veil his eyes or the marble-topped counter might melt and all the clothes of the girls behind them peel away and all the cups chip on the shelves.

“Anyone might come up,” he said. Then he thought of his fine beginning. “Anyone,” he said without hope.

A clerk from the Crescent a dozen doors away; a cold, ordinary woman from Birmingham, driven off by a wink; anybody, anybody; a deacon from the Valleys on a mean blind, with his pocketbook sewn in his combs; an elderly female assistant on holiday from a flannel and calico shop where the change hums on wires. Nobody he had ever wanted.

“Oh, anyone of course. Janet Gaynor,” Mr. Allingham said. “Marion Davies and Kay Francis and …”

“You don’t understand. I don’t expect that kind of person. I don’t know what I do expect at all, but it isn’t that.”

“Modest.”

“No, I’m not modest either. I don’t believe in modesty. It’s just that here I am and I don’t know where to go. I don’t want to know where to go.”

Mr. Allingham began to plead, leaning across the table, pulling softly at Samuel’s collar, showing the sums on his hands. “Don’t say you don’t want to know where to go. Please. There’s a good boy. We must take things easy, mustn’t we? We mustn’t complicate things. Take one simple question. Now don’t rush it. Take your own time.” He gripped a teaspoon with one hand. “Where will you be tonight?”

“I don’t know. I’ll be somewhere else but it won’t be anywhere I’ve chosen because I’m not going to choose anything.”

Mr. Allingham put the knotted teaspoon down.

“What do you want, Samuel?” he whispered.

“I don’t know.” Samuel touched his breast pocket where his wallet was. “I know I want to find Lucille Harris,” he said.

“Who’s Lucille Harris?”

Then Mr. Allingham looked at him.

“He doesn’t know,” he said. “Oh, he doesn’t know!”

A man and a woman sat down at the next table.

“But you promised you’d destroy him,” the woman said.