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"Nope."

"It comes when I have a bride come up to me and say, 'I don't know how the children and I can ever thank you enough for what you've done. God bless you, Mr. Rosewater.' "

9

THE CARPENTER slunk away from Fred Rosewater, too, leaving a copy of The American Investigator behind. Fred went through an elaborate pantomime of ennui, demonstrated to anyone who might be watching that he was a man with absolutely nothing to read, a sleepy man, possibly hung over, and that he was likely to seize any reading matter at all, like a man in a dream.

"Uff, uff, uff," he yawned. He stretched out his arms, gathered the paper in.

There seemed to be only one other person in the store, the girl behind the lunch counter. "Really now—" he said to her, "who are the idiots who read this garbage, anyway?"

The girl might have responded truthfully that Fred himself read it from cover to cover every week. But, being an idiot herself, she noticed practically nothing. "Search me," she said.

It was an unappetizing invitation.

Fred Rosewater, snorting with incredulity, turned to the advertising section of the paper, which was called, "Here I Am." Men and women confessed there that they were looking for love, marriage, and monkeyshines. They did so at a cost to themselves of a dollar forty-five cents per line.

Attractive, sparkling, professional woman, 40, Jewish, said one, college graduate, resides Connecticut. Seeks marriage-minded Jewish college-educated man. Children warmly welcomed. Investigator, Box L-577

That was a sweet one. Most weren't that sweet.

St. Louis hairdresser, male, would like to hear from other males in Show-me State. Exchange snaps? said another.

Modern couple new to Dallas would like to meet sophisticated couples interested in candid photography. All sincere letters answered. All snaps returned, said another.

Male preparatory school teacher badly needs course in manners from stern instructress, preferably a horse-lover of German or Scandinavian extraction, said another. Will travel anywhere in U.S.

New York top exec wants dates weekday afternoons. No prudes, said another.

On the facing page was a large coupon on which a reader was invited to write an ad of his own. Fred sort of hankered to.

Fred turned the page, read an account of a rape-murder that happened in Nebraska in 1933. The illustrations were revoltingly clinical photographs that only a coroner had a right to see. The rape-murder was thirty years old when Fred read of it, when The Investigator's reputedly ten million readers read of it. The issues with which the paper dealt were eternal. Lucretia Borgia could make screaming headlines at any time. It was from The Investigator, in fact, that Fred, who had attended Princeton for only a year, had learned of the death of Socrates.

A thirteen-year-old girl came into the store, and Fred thrust the paper aside. The girl was Lila Buntline, daughter of his wife's best friend. Lila was a tall creature, horse-faced, knobby. There were great circles under her perfectly beautiful green eyes. Her face was piebald with sunburn and tan and freckles and pink new skin. She was the most competitive and skilful sailor in the Pisquontuit Yacht Club.

Lila glanced at Fred with pity—because he was poor, because his wife was no good, because he was fat, because he was a bore. And she strode to the magazine and book racks, put herself out of sight by sitting on the cold cement floor.

Fred retrieved The Investigator, looked at ads that offered to sell him all sorts of dirty things. His breathing was shallow. Poor Fred had a damp, junior high school enthusiasm for The Investigator and all it stood for, but lacked the nerve to become a part of it, to correspond with all the box numbers there. Since he was the son of a suicide, it was hardly surprising that his secret hankerings were embarrassing and small.

A very healthy man now banged into the news store, moved to Fred's side so quickly that Fred couldn't throw the paper away. "Why, you filthy-minded insurance bastard," said the newcomer cheerfully, "what you doing