The offer had been made out of gratitude, but Adam saw with relief that it was unnecessary. “Thanks for the lift,” he said.

“Yuh.”

He carried the suitcase back down the street to the diner, struggling with it, a small bandy-legged man, too big for a jockey, not enough heft for most other sports except diving, which for him had ceased to be a sport five years before. It was at times like this that he regretted not resembling more closely his mother’s brawny brothers. He disliked being at the mercy of anyone or anything, including a piece of luggage.

Inside there were wildly enticing food smells and mad diner noise: talk and laughter, the hollow clatter of panware through the small window leading to the kitchen, the solid sound of coffee mugs against the white marble counter, things sizzling on the grill. Expensive things, he decided.

“Coffee, black.”

“Bleed one,” the straw-haired girl said. She was full-blown and firm fleshed, with pale and milky skin; but she would have an obesity problem before she was thirty. Under her white-draped left breast twin smears of red jam stood out like stigmata. The coffee slopped over the rim of the mug as she pushed it toward him, accepted his dime sullenly and swung away with an insult of hips.

Moo.

The coffee was very hot and he drank it slowly, now and then gulping with great daring and feeling victorious when it became clear that he had not burned his tongue. The wall behind the counter was mirrored. Staring back at him from it was a bum, stubble-faced, wild-haired, wearing a soiled and worn blue work-shirt. When he finished the coffee he got up and carried the suitcase into the men’s room. He tested the faucets; both the HOT and the COLD ran cool, a circumstance that failed to surprise him. He went back into the diner and asked the girl for a cup of very hot water.

“For soup or for tea?”

“Just for water.”

With an air of patient disgust she ignored him. Finally he surrendered and ordered tea. When it came he paid for it and took the teabag from the saucer and dropped it on the counter. He carried the cup of hot water into the men’s room. The floor was covered with layers of grit and, judging from the odor, dried urine. He set the cup on the edge of the dirty sink and, balancing the suitcase on the radiator, opened it to remove his toilet articles. By collecting cold water from the tap in his cupped palm and adding hot water from the cup he managed to soap up his whiskers and rinse his face with water sufficiently warm to soften the bristles. When he finished shaving, the face that looked back at him from the speckled mirror was more civilized. Dr. Silverstone. Brown eyes. Big nose he preferred to think of as Roman, really not tremendously oversized but accentuated by his lack of height. Wide mouth like a cynical slash in the thin face. Face undeniably light-skinned despite the tan and topped by hair of disordered brownness. Such a dull brown. Drab. He took a brush from the suitcase and slapped at his hair. He had always felt slightly guilty about his coloring. A child should be the color of olives, not of lemons or groats, he had heard his mother say once. He was groats, a compromise between his blond father and his Italian mother.