Eddie lay awake but briefly in the small overcrowded room. In those moments of wakefulness he thought of Skip and Skip’s plan to rob the Havermann house of its store of money. Skip had talked of nothing else for more than a week. Karen seemed to be under his control now. Eddie allowed himself a brief wishful glimpse of riches, of buying a car for himself and something nice for his mother. A necklace, a nice dress, a big plastic purse like those in the fancy shopwindows. Maybe something for the house, too. To Eddie the house was familiar, its shabbiness acceptable; but he knew from remarks dropped now and then by his mother that she wanted the place fixed up. A new rug and a couple of chairs would bring a glow of joy to her brown eyes.

He woke in the early dawning, hearing his father pounding out to the kitchen, the rattle of glassware and the rush of water from the faucet. His father always downed about a pint of water before taking a pickup. Then he was ready for coffee, a couple of doughnuts, a second pickup, and so off to the job at the roundhouse.

Eddie’s mother glanced in at him. She was huge inside the shapeless flannel gown, the gray hair tied up in skimpy braids, her enormous, bulbous throat hanging over the neck of the gown. “Cover up, Eddie. It’s cool this morning.”

He grunted, burrowing into the pillow. He went back to sleep. There was nothing to get up for. He’d given up hunting a job, even a temporary job to fill in until he was through the metalwork class, a long time ago.

Skip awoke in the room above the garage, raised himself on an elbow, and looked out at the morning. It was foggy, overcast, and a dull gray light lay over the neighborhood. Next to the garage was a big bank of shrubbery, then a plot of flowers, then the paved tennis court and the high brick wall surrounding the house next door. It was a district of once-exclusive homes now mostly broken up into housekeeping apartments and rooms-for-rent. Only a few of the original owners still lived here, among them Mr. Chilworth, who owned the big house at the front of the lot.