He went the length of the street twice, cutting across where it died at the river to come back the opposite way, strolling, his pace easy. The coat was hot on him in the sun. His shirt was wet under his arms and down his sides and stuck to him and he knew he’d have to buy another shirt, maybe two, and find a way to have them laundered, socks also. He was looking for the girl but did not see her. Yesterday he’d thought the girl’s look held invitation in it but today wasn’t sure. It might have been only mockery or pity. She was nowhere. He’d’ve guessed her as itinerant as himself but for her knowledge of him; that had not come from arriving fresh off a farm somewhere. The way she perched on the stoop also had spoken of some knowledge, not so much of the place itself as the kind of place it was. And of her place in it. And so he ignored the obvious whores, as if this chastity might renew him in the eyes of the street and someway be communicated to her. He believed she would know it of him, were she to see him.

A shift change took place in the works on the hill above. First men began appearing from rooming houses and quarters wearing clean rough workclothes and carrying pails or sacks stained with food as they made their way upstreet to where the trolleys ran. After this men came down the other way, sagged, stooped, ragged, even the young among them. The fine dust of stone lay over them as if the earth they emerged from followed them home. For a time the shops and cafés were busy with these men and their women and then as the afternoon heat settled the dust and the air in fine waves over the street it became quiet again as the men went inside to sleep or drink or lie with their wives. Jamie went back to his own room during this time and sat with his jacket and shirt off, the shirt spread uneven over the ladder of the straightback chair to let it dry and air in the unmoving heat. He drank a small spot from the pint of whiskey and smoked one of the cigarettes. After a time he felt better and drew his clothes on and went back out on the street. He was hungry and eager to face the man from the restaurant of the night before.

The girl was on the same stoop two doors up as the day before. Again in a navy dress but this one with white dots the size of pearls. She held up against the sun a small white parasol that seemed fine but as he came near he saw was slitted and ragged, a shade of ash and tallow from age and the bituminous sift the air carried. Her legs were stretched before her to the bottom step, crossed at the ankles and her hair was a loosely bound aurora about her face. She did not watch him come but he felt tracked, not only each step but every fiber and thought of him. When he came abreast of her she swung her face up at him just before he paused, looking at him seriously a moment.