Nick OK. I don’t know why, but Precious Time won. You got eighty for ten. How do you do it?

Joe (roaring) Faith. Faith. How’d he win?

Nick By a nose. Look him up in the Racing Form. The slowest, the cheapest, the worst horse in the race, and the worst jockey. What’s the matter with my luck?

Joe How much did you lose?

Nick Fifty cents.

Joe You should never gamble.

Nick Why not?

Joe You always bet fifty cents. You’ve got no more faith than a flea, that’s why.

Harry (shouting) How do you like this, Nick? (He is really busy now, all legs and arms.)

Nick (turning and watching) Not bad. Hang around. You can wait table. (To Wesley.) Hey, Wesley. Can you play that again tonight?

Wesley (turning, but still playing the piano) I don’t know for sure, Mr Nick, I can play something.

Nick Good. You hang around, too. (He goes behind the bar.)

The atmosphere is now one of warm, natural, American ease; every man innocent and good; each doing what he believes he should do, or what he must do. There is deep American naivety and faith in the behaviour of each person. No one is competing with anyone else. No one hates anyone else. Every man is living, and letting live. Each man is following his destiny as he feels it should be followed; or is abandoning it as he feels it must, by now, be abandoned; or is forgetting it for the moment as he feels he should forget it. Although everyone is dead serious, there is unmistakable smiling and humour in the scene; a sense of the human body and spirit emerging from the world-imposed state of stress and fretfulness, fear and awkwardness, to the natural state of casualness and grace. Each person belongs to the environment, in his own person, as himself. Wesley is playing better than ever. Harry is hoofing better than ever. Nick is behind the bar shining glasses. Joe is smiling at the toy and studying it. Dudley, although still troubled, is at least calm now and full of melancholy poise. Willie, at the marble game, is happy. The Arab is deep in his memories, where he wants to be.

Into this scene and atmosphere comes Blick.

Blick is the sort of human being you dislike at sight. He is no different from anybody else physically. His face is an ordinary face. There is nothing obviously wrong with him, and yet you know that it is impossible, even by the most generous expansion of understanding, to accept him as a human being. He is the strong man without strength – strong only among the weak – the weakling who uses force on the weaker.

Blick enters casually, as if he were a customer, and immediately Harry begins slowing down.

Blick (oily, and with mock-friendliness) Hello, Nick.

Nick (stopping his work and leaning across the bar) What do you want to come here for? You’re too big a man for a little honky-tonk.