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"I beg your pardon," I said. "I just want to know when you want me to finish up there."

"Never!" he said. "Forget it! The hell with it!"

"Mr. Murra—" I said, "I can’t return that door for credit."

"Send me the bill," he said. "I make you a present of the door."

"Whatever you say," I said. "Now, you’ve got these two Fleetwood Trip-L-Trak windows, too."

"Throw ’em on the dump!" he said.

"Mr. Murra—" I said, "I guess you’re upset about something—"

"God you’re smart!" he said.

"Maybe throwing away that door makes sense," I said, "but storm windows never hurt a soul. Why don’t you let me come out and put ’em up? You’ll never even know I’m there."

"All right, all right, all right!" he said, and he hung up.

The Fleetwood Trip-L-Trak is our first-line window, so there isn’t anything quick and dirty about the way we put them up. We put a gasket up all the way around, just the way we do on a bathtub enclosure. So I had some standing around to do at Murra’s house, just waiting for glue to dry. You can actually fill up a room equipped with Fleetwoods with water, fill it clear up to the ceiling, and it won’t leak—not through the windows, anyway.

While I was waiting on the glue, Murra came out and asked me if I wanted a drink.

"Pardon me?" I said.

"Or maybe bathtub enclosure men don’t drink on duty," he said.

"That’s only on television," I said.

So he took me in the kitchen, and he got out a bottle and ice and a couple of glasses.

"This is very nice of you," I said.

"I may not know what love is," he said, "but, by God, at least I’ve never gotten drunk by myself."

"That’s what we’re going to do?" I said.

"Unless you have some other suggestion," he said.

"I’ll have to think a minute," I said.

"That’s a mistake," he said. "You miss an awful lot of life that way. That’s why you Yankees are so cold," he said. "You think too much. That’s why you marry so seldom."

"At least some of that is a plain lack of money," I said.

"No, no," he said. "It goes deeper than that. You people around here don’t grasp the thistle firmly." He had to explain that to me, about how a thistle won’t prick you if you grab it real hard and fast.

"I don’t believe that about thistles," I said.

"Typical New England conservatism," he said.

"I gather you aren’t from these parts," I said.

"That happiness is not mine," he said. He told me he was from Los Angeles.

"I guess that’s nice, too," I said.

"The people are all phonies," he said.

"I wouldn’t know about that," I said.

"That’s why we took up residence here," he said. "As my wife—my second wife, that is—told all the reporters at our wedding, ’We are getting away from all the phonies. We are going to live where people are really people. We are going to live in New Hampshire. My husband and I are going to find ourselves. He is going to write and write, and write. He is going to write the most beautiful scenario anybody in the history of literature has ever written for me.’ "

"That’s nice," I said.

"You didn’t read that in the newspapers or the magazines?" he said.

"No," I said. "I used to go out with a girl who subscribed to Film Fun, but that was years ago. I have no idea what happened to her."

Somewhere in the course of this conversation, a fifth of a gallon of Old Hickey’s Private Stock Sour Mash Bourbon was evaporating, or was being stolen, or was otherwise disappearing fast.

And I haven’t got the conversation set down quite straight, because somewhere in there Murra told me he’d been married when he was only eighteen —and he told me who the John was he’d thought I was on the telephone.

It hurt Murra a lot to talk about John. "John," he said, "is my only child. Fifteen years old." Murra clouded up, pointed southeast. "Only twenty-two miles away—so near and yet so far," he said.

"He didn’t stay with his mother in Los Angeles?" I said.

"His home is with her," said Murra, "but he goes to school at Mount Henry." Mount Henry is a very good boys’ prep school near here. "One of the reasons I came to New Hampshire