“What in hell’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing,” he whispered.

But he did not reach for the light. Murphy squinted at him.

“Here, hold your cigarette,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

He reached forward and held the cigarette to the flame, but he did not put it in his mouth as he did so.

“What the hell!” Murphy exclaimed. “You can’t light that cigarette that way.”

“Oh,” he said.

He discovered his mistake and put the cigarette between his lips and puffed vigorously as though it were already lit.

“Goddammit, are you crazy?” Murphy asked.

His hand froze in midair. Quickly he leaned forward with the cigarette between his lips and touched it to the flame and inhaled twice, then he held the cigarette tightly between his fingers. A wave of sleepiness came over him and he did not remember the cigarette until its fire burned him. The cigarette dropped to the floor.

“I’ll be damned,” Murphy said.

His body stiffened; a white blur was standing in front of him. He looked up and saw a nurse.

“She’s in birth now,” the nurse said.

“Yes, ma’am,” he whispered without understanding what her words meant.

Murphy flicked his cigarette away and rose and walked to and fro in the corridor, looking now and then at him. With some remote part of his mind he was aware of Murphy, but that sharp focus of attention with which he had always lived from day to day was not functioning now. Murphy came up and stood directly in front of him.

“Hey, boy, wake up,” Murphy said loudly. “What’re you doing? Sleeping with your eyes open?”

“Yes, sir,” he mumbled dreamily; then added quickly: “Oh, no, sir.”

As he spoke he did not even lift his head; Murphy’s voice seemed to have come from far away. The black shine on Murphy’s shoes contrasted sharply with the stony whiteness of the tile. Then he saw Murphy’s shoes going away, leaving their blurred image before his eyes. He looked up and saw Murphy go to the door of the men’s room, pause, glance back over his shoulder, as though to reassure himself that he would remain sitting there, then go from sight. At last he was alone; at last that constant threat of nameless punishment was gone from him, for a little while. An impulse, not a thought, but just a vague gathering of all the forces of his body urged him to escape, to run off while there was time.

He rose and looked about. At the far end of the hall he saw a nurse mount a stairway with a loaded tray. He went to the stairway and stood looking at the descending steps, then started down, leisurely, deliberately. Yeah, I signed that paper. . . . He went down four flights and found himself in a corridor near an open window. He looked out, then stepped away. Lawson and Johnson sat in the police car below him in the street. He went down the hall to another window through which he saw a black, cinder-paved courtyard about ten feet below him. He glanced around; no one was in sight. Yeah, I ought to jump. . . . He landed on his back and his head hit the pavement. A sheet of white flicked past his eyes and for a moment he was completely out, though his eyes were open and gazing directly into the sun. He came to himself and looked down. Hanging like a shimmering curtain before him was a vast smudge of pink that gradually turned into a blob of lemon; the lemon resolved itself into a dab of green that grew smaller and finally converted itself into a smeary mesh of violet that vanished. He could see clearly now.