Stella for Star. When he said it, she had exclaimed with delight. "Just some old film I seen," said Nobbi. Stella said, "It's Tennessee Williams. A Streetcar Named Desire." "Oh," said Nobbi. He had lowered his bashful eyes. He was slightly embarrassed and already hard. Five minutes later they were on Star's bed.

She had met him in the library. He had not come in for a book. Books, to Nobbi, were the commodity of others.

No, Nobbi had come in about a crack in the Senior Librarian's office wall. A favor to someone, Nobbi afterwards said.

It was two weeks after Stella's cat had died. There were only three elderly men browsing among the book stacks, and Stella alone at the computer, which she disliked. It had just messed her up, and she had started to cry.

To her rage and wretchedness the door opened, and this burly bloody man was there, through her tears only a graceless shape.

"Where's—" said Nobbi. And then, in a voice so utterly gentle, so utterly kind that it made her see him, he said to Stella, "What's up, love? What is it?"

So she saw him. A short, fat, common London wide-boy in middle age. Bristly thin hair and nut-brown skin from all weathers, in a vest with a jacket over it and a flash gold chain.

And in his eyes, Stella saw—

She saw that which is eternal and indescribable, what the lucky ones have all seen, once, and the very lucky twice or three times. What she had never seen before among the gropings of her youth and the frigid evenings of her maturity.

Stella blushed. It was her body's flag, raised to signal to him from a hill.

Then she said, "My cat died. She was very old. It's silly, isn't it?"

"No," said Nobbi, "no it ain't. It breaks your bloody heart. My granddad had an old dog. Only one eye. It died, and I bawled my bloody eyes out for a month. Lovely old dog, it was. What was her name?"

He knew the cat had been feminine, or else all cats were female to him. "Gertie," said Stella. "My mother called her that. For Gertrude Lawrence."

"Oh," said Nobbi. He plainly had never heard of Gertrude Lawrence, but he liked the name. It had been the Old Girl's. "The thing you got to tell yourself," he said, "is that you gave her a good life. We all got to go. It's what you get here that counts."

"She did have a happy life. She died in her sleep."

"There you are," said Nobbi, "bless her."

"Bless you, too," said Stella.

And then Nobbi also blushed, faintly but unmistakably.

He went on to the Librarian's office and the crack.

A week later he came back. The gang of three workmen had created the usual chaos. Nobbi stood surveying it proudly.