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she was seldom quick to resent anything Clyde said: his tempers affected her only inasmuch as they made her feel closer to him, for that he released them against her so freely reflected the degree of their intimacy. She would have preferred, however, that nothing had been reflected in front of this ox-child: ain’t you Manzer’s girl? She had imagined Clyde talking of her to his friends, even showing them her picture in a magazine, that was all right, why not? On the other hand, her imaginings had not gone so far as to consider what sort of friends they might be. But it was pretty late in the day for climbing a high-horse; so, smiling, she tried to accept Mink, and said: “Clyde was afraid youmight not be able to come. You’re awfully nice to do this for us.”
    Mink beamed as if she had pressed inside him a light switch; it was painful, because she could see, by the new life in his face, that he knew she had not liked him and that it had mattered. “Oh yeah, yeah, I wouldn’t let Manzer down. I’d have been here sooner, only Winifred, you know Winifred, she’s on a strike from her job and she had me down there to tell off some big (pardon).” Grady’s eyes fidgeted in the direction of the Nemo’s little office-shack: Clyde had gone there to change his clothes, and she was anxious for him to come back, not only because being alone with Mink was nerve-racking but because, and it was as true of a minute ago as a week, she missed him. “That’s a great car you got, sure is. Winifred’s uncle, he’s the one in Brooklyn, he buys used cars: bet he’d give you a load for that. Say, we all of us ought to double-date one night: drive out dancing, know what I mean?”
    Clyde’s reappearance relieved her of answering. Under a leather windbreaker he’d put on a clean white shirt and a tie; there was an attempt at a part in his hair and his shoes were shined. He planted himself before her, his eyes set apart and his hands cocked on his hips: the glare of the sun made him scowl, but his whole attitude seemed to say, how do I look? And Grady said, “Darling, you look just wonderful!”

Chapter 3

    It had been her idea for them to lunch in Central Park at the cafeteria which adjoins the zoo. Because the McNeils’ apartment was on Fifth Avenue and almost opposite the zoo, she had long since wearied of it, but today, goaded on by the novelty of eating out-of-doors, it seemed a gala notion; and furthermore, it would be all new to Clyde, for he drew a blank concerning certain sections of the city: the entire territory, for instance, that, beginning around the Plaza, stretches and widens up and eastward. This park-east world was naturally the New York Grady knew best: except for Broadway, she’d not often ventured out of it. And so she’d thought it was a joke when Clyde said he hadn’t even known there was a zoo in Central Park; at least, that is, he had no memory of one. These ignorances intensified the overall riddle of hisbackground; she knew the number and names of his family: there was a mother, two sisters who worked, a younger brother—the father, who had been a sergeant of police, was dead; and she knew generally where they lived: it was somewhere in Brooklyn, a house near the ocean that required over an hour by subway to reach. Then there were several friends whose names she’d heard often enough to remember: Mink, whom she’d just seen, another called Bubble, and a third named Gump; once she’d asked if they were real names, and Clyde had said sure.
    But the picture she had devised from these oddments was too amateurish to deserve even the most modest frame: it lacked perspective and showed few talents for detail. The blame of course belonged to Clyde, who just was not much given to talk. Also, he seemed very little curious himself: Grady, alarmed sometimes by the meagerness of his inquiries and the indifference this might suggest, supplied him liberally with personal information; which isn’t to say she