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“Yoo-hoo!” Tommy Doyle called.

“You dropped something,” Les shouted.

Studs had an impulse to try picking her up, but he had been kidded so much because of what had happened the last time he had robbed the cradle and had made Nellie Cullen that he didn’t. The sight of the flapper, the sight of any girl, even his sisters, drove Lucy back into his mind. Just before he had left the house, he had surprised Loretta in the hallway, when she dashed out of the bathroom in only a chemise, her left breast sticking out. Last week, by accident, he had seen Fran without a strip on. Such things were driving him almost cuckoo. He had just called Lucy up before meeting the guys and tried to get a date with her, and for the third time since the dance she had given him the go-by. All over again, he tried to convince himself that she was nothing in his young life. She did mean something to him. Goddamn it, he was going nuts without her, thinking of her all the time. He could see that she was only a teaser. It didn’t matter what she was. He remembered dancing with her, talking to her, holding her in his arms, kissing her, their tongues touching, digging his hand under her dress and touching her breast. He loved Lucy. He wanted—yes--to marry her. Red asked Studs what was the matter, was he thinking hard, worrying about his dose, what? Studs said there was nothing and that the dose was cured. Red congratulated him. Shrimp suggested getting a bottle and celebrating. Les said it would be all right by him.

“Say, Les, don’t you and Shrimp ever have the curiosity to find out how it would be to stay sober for one night?” Kelly asked.

“What the hell! All the tanks here couldn’t get drunk on one measly bottle.”

“Sorry, Haggerty, but the Alcohol Squad is A.W.O.L. this evening,” Stan Simonsky said.

“It’s swell out,” Studs said, looking at the twilight sky, wanting to forget things by talking and looking at the sky; only the sky made him remember all the more. A song came to him. Blue and broken-hearted—Blue because we’re parted.—There was a time I was jolly—You know the reason, I’m melancholy. The words only half-expressed his feelings. And he had had them ever since the dance. He had had them all his life.

“Say, you know, I think I’ll join the Navy,” Shrimp said, looking pointedly at Barney.

“Last week, Shrimp was joining the Marines,” Doyle said.

“Hell, Haggerty, with that caved-in chest you got, and with your guts pickled in alcohol, and a leg and a half in the grave, the Navy wouldn’t even take you for punkin’,” Barney sourly said.

“I’m organically all right. I’m just tired of hanging around here, without any job, so I thought I’d join up, see the world, building myself up physically so I wouldn’t end up with a balloon belly and false teeth like Keefe,” Shrimp said.

“I’m laughing,” Barney snapped.

Studs wasn’t interested in the gassing and kidding.

“If I was like Studs now, with an old man who’s well heeled, and gives him a good job, and has a business to leave him when he kicks the bucket. But, hell, all a guy can get is a thirty-five or forty-dollar-a-week job. You won’t find me wearing my can out that way,” Shrimp said, giving Barney the eye.

“Yeah, you should be a painter too, and in summer time climb a ladder so much that your pants rub blisters on your tail, the way it happened to me last summer,” Studs said. They laughed.

But Studs wished that Lucy would realize—see—that he could take care of her, give her things, make them .. happy together. Why did he have to be such a goofy damn fool with sloppy feelings?

“Haggerty, better go back to that wife of yours, and let her take care of you. She might love you, even if her taste is all in her mouth,” Keefe said.

“Shrimp is right. Now take me, what have I got to look forward to but always wrestling freight for the Continental Express Company?” Les whined.

“Will you bastards quit singing the blues? You’re young, and there’s plenty of gash in the world, and the supply of moon goes on forever,” Simonsky said.

Studs wished he had someone to talk it over with.