The man in the sweater had been white, clean, non-menacing. Possibly European. Yet Harold now, crossing Madison, felt chilled by the thought of him. Under the chill was anger. That spoiled, arrogant face, that sandy hair! He hurried back to Janet’s apartment building, walked briskly up the stairs to the third floor, let himself in. There in the living room stood the painting. He suddenly saw that it could use a sort of rectangle of pale green, like a distant field of grass, right there. He picked up a brush, very happy to do so. Outside the window, the sun was shining brightly. The workmen on the building were busy. Harold was busy.

He worked for three solid hours and felt wonderful. It was good work too, and the painting was coming along. At last.

For lunch he made himself a bacon and tomato sandwich on toast. It was simple midwestern fare and he loved it.

When he had finished eating, he went back into the living room, sat in the black director’s chair in front of the window and looked at the painting by afternoon light. It looked good—just a tad spooky, the way he wanted it to be. It would be a good painting after all. It was really working. He decided to go to a movie.

The movie he wanted to see was called Out of Luck. It was a comedy from France, advertised as “an hilarious sex farce,” with subtitles. It sounded fine for a sunny fall afternoon. He walked down Madison toward the theater.

There were an awful lot of youthful, well-dressed people on Madison Avenue. They probably all spoke French. He looked in the windows of places with names like Le Relais, La Bagagerie, Le Bijou. He would have given ten dollars to see a J. C. Penney’s or a plain barber shop with a red and white barber’s pole.

As he was crossing Fifty-seventh Street, traffic-snarled as usual, there was suddenly the loud harrumphing of a pair of outrageously noisy motorcycles and with a rush of hot air two black Hondas zoomed past him. From the back the riders appeared to be a man and a woman, although the sexual difference was hard to detect. Each wore a spherical helmet that reflected the sun; the man’s helmet was red, the other green. Science fiction helmets, they hurt the eyes with reflected and dazzling sunlight. There was a smell of exhaust. Each of the riders, man and woman, was wearing a brown sleeveless sweater and blue jeans. Each wore Adidas over white socks. Their shirts were short-sleeved, blue. So had been the shirts of the man in the taxi and the man in line at Chemical Bank. Harold’s stomach twisted. He wanted to scream.

The cyclists disappeared in traffic, darting into it with insouciance, tilting their black bikes first this way and then that, as though merely leaning their way through the congestion of taxis and limousines and sanitation trucks.

Maybe it was a fad in dress. Maybe coincidence. He had never noticed before how many people wore brown sleeveless sweaters. Who counted such things? And everyone wore jeans. He was wearing jeans himself.