cigarette and you gave me a lecture with six good reasons why athletes shouldn't smoke?"

Tommy laughed with him. "How'd you and Mario ever put up with me?" "We managed." After a minute Angelo said "Look, Tom-we were all glad when you got out of the Army and decided to team up with Mario again. We're grateful for the way you've straightened him out. He was a pretty wild kid, and after you went in service and the act broke up-well, there was trouble. I don't want to go into that-

Tommy clicked the mechanism of the lighter, restlessly, but when it finally flared, he leaned forward and blew out the tiny flame. "He told me all about it. Before we teamed up."

"I wonder." Angelo frowned. "You've done a lot. Hell-when I was managing, I had more trouble with him than all the rest of the kinkers put together. Only I'm wondering," he repeated, "how much of yourself have you tied up in this?"

"Nothing. We share and share alike, just like it was when you were with us. I put my severance pay into the new rigging, but it works out about equal." "I don't mean money, Tom. I mean-how much of yourself have you tied up? I'd hate to see you two get so dependent on each other that you couldn't work with anyone else."

"Well, you quit us and we lived through it.

"You're not answering my question."

"No, and I don't intend too. Listen, Angelo, I don't want to be rude, but you I'd aren't IN the act any more. If you were still managing us, and catching us, let you run the act and maybe even my life, just like always. But since you did quit isn't it sort of up to us how we run our own show?"

"Fair enough," the older man said. "But you used to be a pretty neat little flyer yourself. Now he's got the star spot, and you're catching for him. I hate to see you putting yourself in the background. He's my nephew, and he's good. But that doesn't give him the right to crowd you out."

"Who's crowding me out? I wanted it that way. Anything I do, it's because I feel like it."

"Confound it!" Angelo clenched his fist and hit the arm of his chair with it. "Why not come right out and say-" he got up and swung around, turning his back on Tommy, and for a minute the younger man thought Angelo would walk out of the room. Finally he turned again, and said "Tom, I don't know how to say this. I don't know whether you know this, or whether Mario ever told you. Knowing what I do about Mario, may be I'm-maybe I'm taking that the wrong way."

"You aren't telling me anything I don't know," Tommy said. He was halfway between anger and a sudden, random hope. He said, surprised to find his voice so steady, "I wonder-can you understand that, then, Angelo? Why

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things are the way they are with Mario and me?”

And then an impulse which had been in Tommy for years found a sudden, tardy giant step of truth.

"I'm sorry if it'bothers you, Angelo, because I like and respect you more than anybody else I know, almost. But that's the way it is. When I quit, and went into the Army, it was because we were scared-there'd been some talk about us. We thought it would hurt the act. The family, the circus, that means more to Mario than anything else. Anyhow, I thought it did. But it didn't save anything. It nearly destroyed us both. Damn it, you just finished telling me how Mario hit the skids!" His voice had risen in his eagerness to make Angelo see. "All those years I was in the Army, he was just knocking around, drifting, like a bum. When I found him in that filthy carnival on the Mexican border-" Tommy swallowed. "I don't want to talk about that. You just got through saying we'd straightened each other out."

"At that price I wish you hadn't bothered."

Tommy got swiftly to his feet. "No, you'd rather see us both in the gutter, wouldn't you? You're jealous, damn you-jealous because Mario and I have something you don't! For you, flying was something you did because you loved your family-your father. You found out you couldn't work without bim, didn't you? Just a week after he was killed, you quit the act, quit the show, left the Flying Santellis stranded in the middle of the season, to break in any bum we could get as our catcher, just because you couldn't stand to see Mario and me working together, happy—”

"Shut up," Angelo said, strangled, "Shut up, shut up or I'll kill you—” "Yes, both of you, shut up," said Mario Santelli. There was no telling how long he had been there, holding to the door frame as if only his clenched knuckles kept him upright. He was still in the sweat-darkened tights, bare to the waist, a towel thrown loosely around his shoulders. The bruised eye, grotesquely darkening, gave his face a lopsided, clown look. "I'd think they'd be calling out the riot squad.”

་

Angelo turned on him, his own voice shaking. "I blame myself for the whole filthy business-for ever thinking you could be trusted with a kid, you-you contemptible-"

Mario came inside the room. "If we're going to be throwing that kind of language around, let's not have the whole family for an audience," he said, shut the door and locked it. Angelo watched in silence.

"Now I see the point of the locks," he said at last. "I ought to admire your discretion. You've improved since the police picked you up for molesting a kid of sixteen."

Mario's swollen face twisted. "I thought you'd get around to that. To keep the record straight, you could add that I was two weeks short of my own six11