I’d never had trouble rationalizing it before. It was just a custom, a minor eccentricity. I didn’t file a tax return so I paid a tithe instead.

I’d never really let myself ask myself why.

I wasn’t sure I liked the answer. I remembered, too, a thought that had crossed my mind momentarily in that alley off St. Nicholas Avenue—that I was going to get killed by this boy because I hadn’t paid my tithe. Not that I’d really believed it, not that I thought the world worked that way, but how remarkable that I’d had such a thought at all.

After awhile I took out my wallet, counted out the $285. I sat there with the money in my hand. Then I put it all back in my wallet, all but a dollar.

At least I could pay for the candle.

That afternoon I walked all the way to Kim’s building. The weather wasn’t bad and I didn’t have anything better to do. I walked past the doorman and let myself into her apartment.

The first thing I did was pour the bottle of Wild Turkey down the sink.

I don’t know how much sense that made. There was plenty of other booze there and I didn’t feel like doing my Carrie Nation imitation. But the Wild Turkey had taken on the status of a symbol. I pictured the bottle every time I thought of going to that apartment, and the picture was accompanied more often than not by a vivid memory of the taste and smell. When the last of it went down the sink I was able to relax.

Then I went back to the front closet and checked out the fur coat hanging there. A label sewn to the lining identified the garment as consisting of dyed lapin. I used the Yellow Pages, called a furrier at random and learned that lapin was the French word for “rabbit.” “You could find it in a dictionary,” I was told. “A regular American dictionary. It’s an English word now, it came into the language from the fur business. Plain old rabbit.”

Just as Chance had said.

On the way home something triggered the thought of having a beer. I don’t even recall what the stimulus was, but the response was a picture of myself with a shoulder pressed against a bar and one foot up on the brass rail, bell-shaped glass in hand, sawdust on the floor, my nostrils full of the smell of a musty old tavern.

It wasn’t a strong drink urge and I never considered acting on it, but it put me in mind of what I’d promised Jan. Since I wasn’t going to have a drink I felt no compulsion to call her but decided to anyway. I spent a dime and dialed her number from a booth around the corner from the main public library.