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shoulda been here yesterday.”
    “Wha’?”
    “There was a breeze. She wears a black slip with itsy-bitsy frills.”
    Eyes crossed, tongue protruding, pool cue squeezed between his thighs, Jerry pretends to pull himself off.
    “Hey,” Morty says, “I’ll bet you guys have no idea why they put saltpetre in your cigs in the army.”
    Down the street she drifts, trailing Lily of the Valley.
    “You ever heard of this stuff called Spanish Fly? I’m not saying I believe it but Lou swears –”
    “Aw, go home and squeeze your pimples out. It’s the bull.”
    Across the street, toward Myerson’s.
    “Yeow! Take care, doll. Don’t take chances with it.”
    Cars gearing down, windows rolling open.
    “Here, pussy. Nice pussy.”
    “You dirty bastard,” Myerson says, “take your hands out of your pocket.”
    “All right.”
    Past Best Grade Fruit.
    “You see this pineapple?”
    “I dare you.”
    Molly stops – considers – stoops. A stocking seam is straightened.
    “You know, Bernie, I’d give a year of my life – well maybe not a year, but –”
    “The line forms at the right.”
    Tickety-tap, tickety-tap, she goes, bottom swaying.
    Myrna raises an eyebrow. “If I was willing to wear a skirt as tight as that –”
    “It’s asking? It’s
begging
for it,” Gitel says.
    “– I could have all the boys I wanted to.”
    At the Triangle Taxi Stand, Max Kravitz twists his cap around. “Up periscope,” he says, raising his arms to adjust the imaginary instrument.
    “Longitude zero,” Korber says, “latitude 38-29-38. She carries twin stacks.”
    “Ach, so. A destroyer. Ready torpedoes.”
    “Ready torpedoes, men.”
    “Ready torpedoes,” is shouted down the queue of waiting drivers. Cooper, the last man, calls hack, “If you ask me all periscopes are already up and all torpedoes –”
    “FIRE!”
    A pause.
    “Nu?”
    “She’s going down.”
    “Heil Hitler!”
    Into Tansky’s for a package of Sen-Sen, ten filter-tips, the latest issue of
Silver Screen
. Takifman adjusts his tie and Segal drops a mottled hand to make sure he’s buttoned.
    “If I was her father,” Takifman says, “I’d turn her over for a good spanking before I let her go out on the streets like that.”
    “Me too,” Segal agrees with appetite.
    St. Urbain, we felt, was inviolable. Among us we numbered the rank-one scholars in the province, gifted artists, medical students, and everywhere you looked decent, God-fearing people. It was a little embarrassing admittedly, when Mrs. Boxer, the
meshugena
, wandered the streets in her nightgown singing Jesus Loves Me. Our landlords, by and large, were rotten types. Polacks, Bulgarians, and other trash were beginning to move in here and there. When that sweet young man from CHFD’S “Vox Pop” asked Ginsburg, didn’t he thinkCanada ought to have a flag of her own, he shouldn’t have come back with, you do what you like,
we
already have a flag. Not on the radio, anyway. Sugarman’s boy, Stanley, it’s true, had had to do six months at St. Vincent de Paul for buying stolen goods, but all the time he was there he refused to eat non-kosher food. We had our faults on St. Urbain, but nobody could find anything truly important to criticize.
    Then one black, thundering day there was an article about our street in
Time
magazine. For several years we had been electing communists to represent us at Ottawa and in the provincial legislature. Our M.P. was arrested. An atomic spy.
Time
, investigating the man’s background in depth, described St. Urbain, our St. Urbain, as the Hell’s Kitchen of Montreal. It brought up old election scandals and strikes and went into the housing question and concluded that this was the climate in which communism flourished.
    The offending magazine was passed from hand to hand.
    “What’s ‘squalor’?”
    “Shmutz.”
    “We’re dirty? In my house you could eat off the floor.”
    “We’re not poor. I can walk into any delicatessen in town, you name