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“Get out before I scream!”

The door slammed behind him, and he hurried downstairs and out of the building.

The bitch... he repeated to himself, walking in the rain. That dirty, low-down, filthy... He quickly turned the corner. She might set the cops on him. Well, she better not. That goddamn... and wasn’t he glad he hadn’t tossed his dough away for a pig like that! She was lower than a nigger whore or a pansy. Still, she was a neat trick. That dirty... There wasn’t any word filthy enough to describe her.

And what a chump he’d been coming all the way over in a rain like this for her. The rotten, goddamn... She probably had some poor feeble-minded chump of a husband, too, who sweated his ears working to get dough she lost on the ponies. And hustling on him on the side. He hoped that dumb George would wake up and kick her all over the house. And the bitch, telling him he didn’t know how to... It made him appreciate how decent a girl Catherine was, and it all went to show how when a guy got a girl who was pure gold like Catherine, he should hold on to her. And he was going to. He’d just like to tell that goddamn bitch one thing. He had a girl who was clean and decent, a girl that she wasn’t fit to walk on the same street with. The rotten, contaminated little .. .

He darted into a drug store.

“Slug.”

“Bad weather today. Looks like it’s going to keep up all day, too,” the bald-headed druggist said.

Studs picked up his slug, and turned toward a booth. The druggist frowned after him.

Waiting to get her, he became afraid she’d turn him down flat, and he breathed in choking anxiety. Jesus, she couldn’t. It was her voice.

“This is Studs,” he mumbled with a prayerful hope.

“Yes,” she replied, but in a friendly voice.

He coughed in the embarrassment of an extended thirty seconds of silence.

“It’s a bum day and I guess I caught a cold.”

“It is terrible out, and you should stay in today and drink tea and hot lemonade.”

“I think I’ll go home and do that,” he gravely said. He grunted during a second silence.

“How have you been?” he asked.

“All right, that is, in one way.”

“Well, in what way?” he asked gently.

“Well,” she said, and he liked her soft and caressingly friendly voice, and Jesus, he had to see her again.

“I thought I’d call you up because I didn’t see any point in not calling and .. .”

“Yes,” she said encouragingly while he struggled to find words.

“Anyway, when am I going to see you?”

“When do you want to?”

“When can I?”

“Come over to supper tonight. Mother and Dad are going out to a supper and bridge party, and I’ll cook supper for you.,,

“What time?”

“Six-thirty.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Goodbye, Bill.”

“Goodbye, Kid.”

“And, Bill, you go home now and put on dry socks and have your mother make you a hot lemonade.”

“I will. So long, Kid.”

He emerged from the telephone booth smiling.

“Bad day,” he said to the druggist.

“Yes, looks like it’ll rain all day.”

“It’s rained more than the flood already.”

“Well, maybe it’ll clear up tomorrow.”

“Say, give me a coke.”

“Yes, sir. Say, you know what I’ll bet? I bet you’ve been fighting with your girl. When you came in, you had a face on you like a man ready to lick his weight in wild cats, and didn’t even hear me talk to you. And you came out smiling like Easter Sunday. I said to myself, Wow, there’s a lad, quarrelling with his girl friend or his missus. Well, here’s your coke.”

“Yeah, you guessed it. We had a dumb fight, and fixed it up. She’s a damn fine kid.”

“If she is, don’t let a little spat draw you apart. These days there ain’t many of them left that a man can have trust in. I know that with so many of them painting up and smoking cigarettes. They ain’t out of public school before they’re in here for cigarettes and making eyes at anything in pants.”

“Well, my girl’s the goods and I’m glad I got her.”

“If she is, boy, hang on to her.”

“I know that much.”

“Well, it’s still raining. Looks like an all-day rain.”

“Uh huh! So long.”

He could thank that Jackson bitch for one thing.