tain rod and all of the front windows were broken,

At last he began turning his head toward the far corner. His breath held a moment and his jaw muscles flickered when he saw the outline in chalk. It was of a small figure in the grotesque pose of a rag doll. The design was of something completely discarded where it had been flung that last time. The outline in chalk of a very little guy. And hardly any blood at all.

He looked at the torn strip of shirt tangled in a light cord and then up to where the Congo mask had hung. His feet crunched fragments as he went over to reach up toward the bare nail. His finger-tips missed it by inches, and he was a tall man.

In the kitchen, he looked up at the top shelf of the cupboard. Everything had been swept onto the floor or into the sink. Silverware littered the linoleum along with garbage and granulated soap. There was another piece of shirt in here, too, and little brown smudges where bare feet had walked on broken glass. He looked through the broken window over the sink and saw the big frying pan out on the back lawn.

The grocery cabinet under the sink was untouched. There was a half-filled bottle of bourbon on the second shelf. He picked up a plastic measuring cup, rinsed it out and filled it to the top with the light amber. He drank half of it, filled it again and went back into the front room with the cup and uncorked bottle. He pushed the armchair upright with his foot; a splash from the cup wet his hand and wrist. He sat down as if very tired. Now, drinking steadily, he began again to look around without expression from fragment to fragment, splinter to splinter. Each time the cup emptied, he filled it and started all over again to study each thing in the room.

The afternoon became bright at sunset, then twilight rose out of the ground, He sat in the same position. Once he reached down to set the radio upright and turn it on. From a vast distance, came a high humming scream that mounted until it pierced the air. He wrenched it off and sank back into the chair to watch the darkness come. Gradually a lamp on the floor behind the divan cast a stronger and stronger light. The neighbors must have seen it burning all night, these last four nights, and shuddered and hurried by.

The phone screamed suddenly. He didn't start. His steadily moving eyes merely settled on it. After a while he rose, pulled the shrillness to the armchair and lifted the receiver. His voice was low and uninflected.

"Hello. Oh, hi . . . . No, they released me. No need for a lawyer. The only thing they had on me was the fact I was living with him. They sure ran THAT in the ground. . . No . . . No, Ann, except the place needs a little cleaning up if you want to help with that. Okay, if you want to and, hey, bring a bottle, will you? I don't care, anything. Oh, and bring some cash, doll. I'm not sure I have a job anymore and I'll need a little until I can get to the bank. Whatever you can spare. Okay."

He was still sitting there when Ann came in. She stopped in the doorway, looked from him to the hidden lamp and walked to it carefully between the fragments. It wouldn't stand alone; she leaned it against the wall. When she asked if he was hungry, he shrugged. She took off her coat then went into the kitchen taking the new bottle out of its sack. There was a tinkle of glass and silver out there, a faint THOP, and she returned to fill his cup. Ann stood looking around the room for several moments. "Heavens, where were the attentive neighbors during all this?" When car lights swept the room, she put the new bottle on the floor beside his chair and went to draw the remaining curtain across the front window. She turned on the ceiling light and tried to press together a gash in the lampshade beside her.

Dave ground out his cigarette, rose and went for the broom. She watched him cross the room: "Dave, aren't you tight at all?" He didn't stop in answering: "No effect. It's like water." It's like water." He came back with two cardboard boxes, a dust pan and the new plastic broom. They began putting the glass and pottery in one box and the burnable stuff in the other. She looked at a gailycolored pig snout: "I suppose we'll be finding pennies for months." He looked

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