"Yes Miss-" he still gazed.

"Why don't you get out of that puddle and go empty your shoes— it's over your ankles!”

The saturated doorman looked downward then turned, squish- squish-squished back across the street and went into the lobby. He took off his shoes and poured the rainwater into a redwood tub which held a giant palm tree.

Cass started the car, maneuvered it from the curb and headed for the Hudson River Parkway. Gosh, she thought, how very sensible it was of me to bring my knee-high boots-if I had had to wear those little black evening shoes to the car my feet would have been utterly soaked like that poor doorman's. She felt sorry for the young fellow . . . sort of. She had scrambled into the car so quickly that her coat and the skirt of her mini-dress had zoomed up somewhat further than she would have allowed (or contrived) normally-given a young and rather attractive doorman for an audience; that poor bedraggled-looking fellow . . with the sopping wet argyles. . . to no avail . . .! He might have thrown an actual conniption right then and there, she thought, and yeeps, he might even come down with pneumonia getting so wet he might never make it!

She drove very carefully, keeping to the right as the rain slanted across the hood on blustery east-bound gusts from the Hudson River. She was glad it was raining. It precluded the nuisance of side-pacers— those positively awful super-libidoed men who drew parallel and drove alongside trying to attract her attention. But Cass never shifted her eyes from the lane ahead. She knew what would happen if she ever did glance sideways. First the leer, then the eyes forming the question, she would look away - bored — then the car would spurt ahead. To Cass, nothing was more ludicruous—more hokey—than a sixty-five year-old kid burning-out a 1970 Cadillac! But there were no highway Romeos. The rain and the spray tossed up in torrents from the wheels of passing cars, mixed with the multi-faceted glare of oncoming headlights and overhead arcs, making it impossible to see into her car. Cass revelled in a sort of uterine safety. She turned off the parkway at the George Washington Bridge, passed under Upper Manhattan and drove onto the Cross Bronx Expressway. The fic was light-the tail-end of the theatre crowd laughing their way back to Westchester after a nightcap at some city bistro.

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