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Francine.
    “Mail service doesn’t come out this far,” said Fuzz. “When I come to work in the morning, and again when I come back from lunch, I pick up our mail at the company post office.”
    “Oh,” said Francine.
    The leaking showerheads next door suddenly decided to inhale noisily. And then, their nasal passages seemingly cleared, they resumed their dribbling once more.
    “Is it real busy around here sometimes, Mr. Littler?” said Francine, and she shuddered because the idea of being thrillingly busy pleased her so much.
    “Busy enough,” said Fuzz.
    “When do the people come out here, and what do we do for them?” said Francine.
    “People?” said Fuzz.
    “Isn’t this public relations?” said Francine.
    “Yes—” said Fuzz.
    “Well, when does the public come?” said Francine, looking down at her eminently presentable self.
    “I’m afraid the public doesn’t come out this far,” said Fuzz. He felt like a host at the longest, dullest party imaginable.
    “Oh,” said Francine. She looked up at the one window in the office. The window, eight feet above the floor, afforded a view of the underside of a candy wrapper in an areaway. “What about the people we work with?” she said. “Do they rush in and out of here all day?”
    “I’m afraid we don’t work with anybody else, Miss Pefko,” said Fuzz.
    “Oh,” said Francine.
    There was a terrific bang from a steam pipe upstairs. The huge radiator in the tiny office began to hiss and spit.
    “Why don’t you read your pamphlets, Miss Pefko,” said Fuzz. “Maybe that would be a good thing to do,” he said.
    Francine nodded, eager to please. She started to smile, thought better of it. The crippled smile was Francine’s first indication that she found her new place of employment something less than gay. She frowned slightly, read her pamphlets.
    Fuzz whistled reedily, the tip of his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
    The clock on the wall clicked. Every thirty seconds it clicked, and its minute hand twitched forward microscopically. An hour and fifty-one minutes remained until lunchtime.
    “Huh,” said Francine, commenting on something she’d read.
    “Pardon me?” said Fuzz.
    “They have dances here every Friday night—right in this building,” said Francine, looking up. “That’s how comethey’ve got it all so decorated up upstairs,” she said. She was referring to the fact that Japanese lanterns and paper streamers were strung over the basketball court. The mood of the next dance was apparently going to be rural, for there was a real haystack in one corner, and pumpkins and farm implements and sheaves of corn stalks were arranged with artistic carelessness along the walls.
    “I love to dance,” said Francine.
    “Um,” said Fuzz. He had never danced.
    “Do you and your wife dance a lot, Mr. Littler?” said Francine.
    “I’m not married,” said Fuzz.
    “Oh,” said Francine. She blushed, pulled in her chin, resumed her reading. When her blushing faded, she looked up again. “You bowl, Mr. Littler?” she said.
    “No,” said Fuzz quietly, tautly. “I don’t dance. I don’t bowl. I’m afraid I don’t do much of anything, Miss Pefko, but take care of my mother, who’s been sick for years.”
    Fuzz closed his eyes. What he contemplated within the purple darkness of his eyelids was what he considered the cruelest fact of life—that sacrifices were
really
sacrifices. In caring for his mother, he had lost a great deal.
    Fuzz was reluctant to open his eyes, for he knew that what he would see in Francine’s face would not please him. What he would see in Francine’s heavenly face, he knew, would be the paltriest of all positive emotions, which is respect. And mixed with that respect, inevitably, would be a wish to be away from a man who was so unlucky and dull.
    The more Fuzz thought about what he would see when he opened his eyes, the less willing he was to open them. Theclock on the wall clicked again, and Fuzz