He was so full of complaint. So elderly.

“It didn’t happen to you,” she said. “None of us count in your life.”

“That’s stupid. You don’t understand. I’ve been on the verge of a breakdown. I’m thirty-seven years old. Everything bores me.”

People did not grow up—they grew down, to the small patch of earth they’d marked out as their own. He was disgusting!

“Every cliché of Christian sanctimony is written on your mug,” he flung at her. “Do you think I can’t see what you’re thinking? That I should be pitying that dead man? I should be concerned about his troubles? What cant! If you were truthful—”

“I have to go. Ernie’s seen me. I have to tell him about Sigrid.”

Greenhouse began to walk up toward the road.

Released, she ran to Ernie. He received the news with no comment. After she’d put on her uniform, he came up to her. “Well, how long’s Sigrid going to take off? What am I supposed to do meanwhile? My wife can’t take this for long. She’s ailing. Well …” And turned away, shambling toward the table where the accounts were kept.

An hour or so before closing time—Ernie conceded they could close a little earlier since it was a weekday anyhow and they were short-handed, although he had no sympathy for anyone who would take his own life—Ben Greenhouse drove up in a Chrysler touring car. Annie went out to him with order pad in hand.

“You can bring me a ginger ale,” Ben said, “so we can talk a minute. I’m going back to Hollywood.”

She brought back the drink and hooked the tray onto the rim.

“Don’t let it scratch the car,” he said nervously.

She was exhausted; her hair untidy, her lipstick chewed away.

“You’re disappointed in me,” he said.

“No…no.”

He sighed. “Yes. You couldn’t help but be. I wish I could simply be awful and not be aware of it.”

“The ice is melting.”

“You’re going to think harshly of me. I wanted to leave you with something—pleasant. I’m sorry about the young man…but it’s part of my illness, that I’m not more concerned. I’m concerned about you, though. Will you be all right? Do you think so?”

He looked at her with curious eagerness. He was very small in the huge car. For all the romantic swagger of the fedora on the back of his head, he merely seemed forlorn, the dark eyes lusterless.

“I’ll be all right,” she said, asserting something against his soft sadness, meaning something other than what he’d asked which she understood as a kind of exoneration.