Oh Danny Boy

Danny Phillips had reached an age when he was interested in only two things: sex and football. He was ten years old.

During phys-ed period, at school, the boys in Danny's class played some pretty rugged touch. Then the last five minutes were spent sitting exhausted, sweating, and talking about boobs. The instructor, Miss Bee, never overheard them; all Miss Bee did, during phys ed, was referee girls' volleyball and blow her whistle.

One of Danny's classmates, Francis Riley, had been taken to a nudie movie by an older brother. The movie had been shown at a drive-in theater (one dollar per car) and Francis had been smuggled in under a blanket in the back of a station wagon. Whenever a conversation about boobs lagged, Francis would always recount the plot of the movie.

"There was this silly-looking guy. Short and fat, and his hat was too small. He didn't talk, he just made sounds like oooh and ahhh. And clapped his hands. But he was very wealthy and had an estate with a swimming pool. So he invited all these girls. Tall girls and short girls, a Japanese girl and one with red hair--all kinds of girls. And because it was such a hot day, or something, they all took off their clothes and went in the pool. I never saw so many boobs in my life. That pool was just loaded with boobs!"

Danny walked to the water fountain in disgust. Francis Riley was the most boring person he knew. He'd heard that same damn story about those same damn boobs at least 1500 times. And he'd seen boobs. When he'd been younger he'd gone to the art museum every Saturday, and stared. And he'd seen Mrs. Carter's boobs, more than once. She and her husband had a house next to the seventh green at the country club--they were golf nuts--and there was a place where Danny hid in the bushes and peeked. And Mrs. Carter never closed her blinds.

Danny was no longer interested in boobs. What he wanted to see was It.

He had never seen It. And he was certain no other boy in his class had, either--because, if anyone had, then he would talk about It, and discuss It, and stop all the damn chatter about boobs.

Once, in fourth grade, Annie Miller had said she would let them all see It for two dollars. They were supposed to go to her house that afternoon after school. But, by the time they got the two dollars and went to Annie's house it was five o'clock and her mother was there. Then Annie moved to Omaha. And the other girls in the class weren't like Annie. All they did was shriek and scream and grab things out of your hands with their sharp fingernails.

In history class Danny sat in a direct line with the teacher's desk. Mrs. Harper was a large woman who sat comfortably with her legs slightly apart. Danny spent most of history period dropping his pencil and leaning over to pick it up. Sometimes, during the hour, he dropped his pencil as many as 20 times. But he never saw a thing. Not only was the light bad under the desk, but Mrs. Harper had fat legs. All he ever saw was fat legs and garter fasteners.

One time Danny had saved his allowance and sent away for an "Amazing X-Ray Device." The advertisement claimed it would enable a person to see through wood and paper and cloth. He hadn't given a damn about seeing through wood or paper, but ... if he could only see through cloth! It was a gyp, though. He hadn't seen through anything. And he'd almost ruined his eyes trying, he was sure, because right after that he'd had to start wearing glasses.

Now and then Danny indulged himself in a sweet fantasy. There was a girl or woman, see. It didn't matter which, but a woman might be better since she'd be larger. And Danny had placed a ladder against the side of the house. "Perhaps you'd like to climb up to our roof," he'd say, "and look at the view." And the woman would say, "Why, how sweet of you to think of it!" And he'd be polite, of course, and let her climb up first.

It had seemed such a good idea he'd told Francis Riley. "But she'll be wearing underwear," Francis had said, shattering a dream. "What'll you do about that?"

Danny had never really liked that kid, after that.

The bell rang, sounding the end of phys ed. Danny spat a last mouthful of water on the walk. That was against rules. If Miss Bee had seen, he would have been disciplined. He went upstairs to library. Forty-five minutes and he could eat lunch. Then two and a half hours and he would be free for the weekend. It was Friday. After looking up the word "fornicate" in the big dictionary, he sat down and opened his notebook which was full of designs he'd drawn for the automobile of the future.

After a moment he walked to the librarian's desk. She was not like the teachers: she didn't teach anything, and she never threatened you.

"Miss Gorman, can I be excused, please?"

She nodded. "But don't run in the halls, dear."

The boys' and girls' toilets were downstairs, at the west end of the building. The door on the left opened to the boys' toilets, the door on the right to the girls'. The doors were not marked. They didn't have to be. When you started to kindergarten the first thing you learned was girls' on the right, boys' on the left. They told you that even before they told you where the cafeteria was. Left, boys'; right, girls'.

Danny walked down the hall and went in the door on the right. He had not planned that, and he never broke rules without planning the smallest detail, since he did not like to be disciplined. He hadn't even thought of it. One minute he was walking down the hall, a law-abiding citizen, and the next he was suddenly in the girls' toilets.

Miss Bee was bent over a basin, giving her hands a good scrub. She appeared to be slightly built, almost willowy, but that was sham. Miss Bee was adept in the Gentle Way. During her sophomore year at college a boy had put his hand fondly under her skirt one warm spring night, and she had dislocated his right arm at the shoulder. Since then she hadn't gone out with men, but she bowled three nights a week and kept a nice cat that nature had intended to be a tom.

Miss Bee was always called to the principal's office when a student needed to be disciplined. The principal was an older maiden lady who tucked a lace-edged handkerchief in her sleeve at the wrist. While discipline was being administered the principal's office door was closed. Miss Bee preferred a strip of leather as wide as a man's belt, but not as long. The principal counted the blows herself in a well-modulated, refined voice.

Danny was already inside the girls' when he saw Miss Bee. His reflexes were excellent: he whirled and ran.

Miss Bee's hands were slippery with soap, but she was the kind who thought on her feet. She slammed her body against the closing door, trapping Danny and bruising his head so that it raised a lump. Still thinking, she dried her hands carefully on his shirt and then twisted his arm so that he fell crying to his knees.

"Dirty little boy!" she said, slapping him with a small but calloused hand. "What are you doing?"

"Going to the toilet, going to the toilet!" But it was too late. He had already waited longer than he could.

Miss Bee stepped back quickly from the spreading puddle.

"And that's not all I got to do, either," Danny said with sudden cunning.

Holding him at arm's length, Miss Bee marched him out of the girls', to the door of the boys'. Teachers never went in there; only the old janitor went in there. Miss Bee pointed her finger. "Go," she said. "And don't forget for a minute I'll be waiting right outside this door."

Weeping, Danny went into the boys'. He ran across the room, stood on a basin, and squeezed out a half-open window. Covered with shame--he had gone into the girls'; only girls went in the girls', and his male acquaintances would never let him forget it--and soggy with urine, he ran across the playing field. At the corner, before he crossed the street, he looked back.

"You old bitch!" he yelled. "You wormy old whore! Miss Bee is an old bitch and a wormy old whore who fornicates!"

Nothing was further from the truth, and he half knew it, but it seemed a fine insulting thing to yell.

Several blocks from school Danny stopped running. He went into a drugstore he seldom frequented and bought 25 cents' worth of candy bars. Eating one, he drifted to the magazine rack and picked up Mad.

The shadow of the druggist fell across the page. "Why aren't you in school, kid?"

Danny cleared his throat delicately. "My mother was afraid I was getting a little cold. She kept me home."

"Get out of here," the druggist said harshly. "Go on, beat it. You'll get me in trouble."

"Yes, sir," Danny said politely. He put the copy of Mad back, carefully leaving a chocolate smear on the inside pages so they'd stick together, and walked out. The candy bar had grown warm and soft in his hand. He rubbed it the length of the drugstore window experimentally. It left a nice messy mark. No one was watching. He began to print, in easily read block letters. W H O R ...

The druggist charged out. "You little bastard!"

Danny whirled and ran, dropping the candy bar where the druggist might step on it, slip and fracture something.

Danny wanted to go see his best friend, Big Ed "Bang-Bang" Roberts. But he couldn't. In the afternoons Big Ed worked in a sporting goods store in the same shopping center where Danny's mother shopped, and Danny wanted to avoid seeing either of his parents as long as possible.

Big Ed had been a famous high school athlete, locally, and had earned the nickname Bang-Bang playing linebacker. In spring training, his freshman year in college, he had torn ligaments in his left knee and had an operation. Although it was his sophomore year academically, Big Ed was taking only a minimum number of hours--and getting his leg in shape--because he still had three years' eligibility.

And Big Ed was the only one in the world who understood.

There was a "pee-wee" football team at Danny's school, but he was not on it. The team had no official connection with the school: it was part of a league organized, and coached, by the American Legion, and they only used the school's playing field for practice and games. But each boy had to provide his own equipment, and Danny had all the equipment except shoulder pads.

At the beginning of school he had explained to his parents he needed shoulder pads. They had said he would get them for Christmas. Danny had said, in a rising voice, that the season would be over then. His parents had said there was always next year. Danny had immediately pointed to the uncertainty of the future--perhaps the country would be involved in a foreign war, or a large-scale depression, or he might even catch a new disease and die, or possibly a truck would run over him and his bicycle and cripple him for life. His parents had told him to shut up.

Danny knew his parents could afford shoulder pads. His father had handmade golf clubs from Scotland, and drove a silver XK-E with airplane-type seat belts. Danny's mother didn't drive, usually: she called a place and they sent a chauffeur and a limousine. In the winter she flew to Jamaica, or the Virgins, with her friend Dotty, when she was "bored absolutely pea-green, dear, and in a hideous depression."

(continued on page 153)Danny Boy(continued on page 102)

When Danny's parents wanted something they bought it. When Danny wanted something he was told he was a "child" and that he should not be given "too much" because that would "seriously hamper his development."

Danny didn't give a damn about his development. He would gladly spend the rest of his life as an emotional and spiritual cretin if he could just have shoulder pads.

Afternoons he didn't hang around school and watch football practice. He walked home with an angry, tearful lump in his throat, and stopped to stare in the sporting goods store window at the shoulder pads on display.

He never went in the store. The old bastard who owned it hated kids. "What you want?" he'd yell from the cash register. "You got money to buy? Go get money and come back, kid, we'll do a little business."

One afternoon Danny was staring in the window when Big Ed walked to the door to stand in the sun. He was six, four, weighed 270, and had a golden grin for small boys. "Hi, sport," Big Ed had said. "What's new?"

Danny was not four feet tall, he weighed less than 75 pounds fully clothed, and the lenses of his eyeglasses were always fogged and dirty. But he knew emotional rapport when he felt it: here was a human being who understood.

"Your coach is right, sport," Big Ed had said, after Danny had explained about the shoulder pads. "You got to have the right equipment, because a man must protect himself at all times. You got a jockstrap?"

Danny had explained he didn't actually need one, at the moment.

"Oh, it's never too early to form right habits," Big Ed had said. "You don't want to buy one here, though. Too expensive. You got forty-nine cents, sport? The cut-rate's having a sale. You can get the small size for forty-nine."

It was rather a personal item, and all the clerks in the cut-rate drugstore were women.

"I'll pick one up for you," Big Ed had said. "I mean, if you haven't got the time. I go there for coffee."

Danny's weekly allowance was 50 cents; he gave it to Big Ed. The next afternoon, in the privacy of his room, he tried on the jockstrap. Of course, he had to stand on a chair to see in the mirror, but it had looked damn athletic. And it had made him feel damn athletic, too.

And that was what made Danny sick at heart, as he walked farther and farther away from school: what Big Ed would say. Big Ed had explained about grades. "No Cs, sport. You got to make Bs or better. You've got to train your mind as well as your body to play football. You don't think men like Y. A. Tittle or Jimmy Brown are unintelligent, do you?"

Danny could hear Big Ed saying, "Now how do you expect to make the team when you aren't even in school?"

And, undoubtedly, Big Ed had never gone in the girls' toilets. No one Danny knew had ever gone in the girls' toilets, except girls. It was probably the worst crime that had ever been committed at that school.

There was nowhere else to go, and so Danny hid in the rough beside the seventh green. Mrs. Carter did not seem to be at home. The seventh was a blind dog-leg to the left, and the green could not be seen from the tee. Golfers had a choice of playing it safe and hitting down the fairway, or going for a birdie by driving over the rough toward the hidden green.

A ball plopped on the green and rolled to within ten feet of the cup. No one was in sight. Danny dashed out, grabbed the ball and put it behind a large stone, and then hid in the rough again.

He spent the afternoon heckling golfers. Finally he outdid himself when he took two balls, which had landed close to the green, and put them both in the cup. Two men searched for 20 minutes before one of them cried, "My God, Fred, look at this! I never heard of two holes in one---"

But Fred heard something giggling in the rough and he was charging toward it with a seven iron and an angry mottled face. Danny jumped up and ran, vaulted Mrs. Carter's fence and, with her toy poodle snapping at his heels, ran across the terrace and disappeared.

It was twilight when Danny walked cautiously up the hill to his home. Houses in that area were on three- to five-acre plots, and roads were winding. There were no "blocks." When people who lived there looked through their glass walls they saw views, not other houses.

Danny's relationship with his parents was a simple one: whatever he did his mother would say it was wrong. And if he kept saying, "Yeah, I guess," long enough then his father would tell him to shut up and stop talking.

Danny cloistered himself in the rhododendrons, and stared. Mother was having a martini in front of the fireplace. The XK-E was not in the garage: Father was still having martinis in town. The old bitch who came afternoons and cooked dinner, Mrs. Mac, was in the kitchen. There was really no hope of escape.

Danny eased the kitchen door open, and a matched pair of basset hounds bugled. Mrs. Mac shrieked, "He's here, Mrs. Phillips, he's here--I got him!" and struck out with a wooden stirring spoon that had been hand-carved in Denmark.

Danny kicked the dogs, stepped hard on Mrs. Mac's arthritic foot and dashed straight into Mother. He had a deep morbid fear of Mother--she was really a shaman figure in those pants she always wore, neither male nor female. He fled in a circle around the kitchen, from one modern electric appliance to the next; but they fitted so neatly together there was no place to cower.

"What do you mean, what do you mean" Mother kept saying, grabbing at him. "Embarrassing me, embarrassing me! Oh, I heard, I heard, I heard what you did!"

Then she began to sob, hiccuping and burping like some damn kid in first grade. It was the most disgusting thing Danny had ever seen. He shoved Mother aside, kicked a dog and fled to his room. Once inside he began to barricade the door, shoving a chest of drawers, a bookcase, a table and chairs in front of it. Then he sat down to wait, because they were going to kill him--he was certain.

Thirty minutes later the headlights of the XK-E came up the drive. Danny heard his father's cheery evening greeting, "Well, hi-ho-hi-ho-hi-ho, everybody!" as he entered the house. Mother immediately began to sob again, and told what the product of their loins, that little love baby Danny, had done.

"He's fallen way below norms for his peer group," Mother belched. "I'm so ashamed. I want to fly to Mexico for a rest."

"Oh, now, now, now, now, now," Danny's father said in a cheerful voice, unafraid of the future because he was half loaded. "It's always darkest before dawn. Let's just have our usual quiet martini-toonies and think." Ice tinkled. "Now, if the little bastard went in the girls' can, or whatever they call it these days, he was interested in something in there. Now what the hell could that be? Want Daddy's pickled onion, love duck?"

"Ooh, yummy!" Mother said. "I mean, I wouldn't mind if he was two, or three. It's average, at two or three. Like everybody else. But he's ten years old."

"Regressive," Father said in a manly voice.

"Oh, God, what if he develops enuresis? I'll die if he develops enuresis and our friends know."

Ice tinkled. "Well," Father said soberly, getting drunker, "there's only one tiling to do now, love duck. Have the kid analyzed. It's our duty."

"Oh?" Mother said. That would make her one up, the first in her group who had a child sick enough for analysis. "Ooh, you just come right here to me and give me your other pickled onion," she said, sounding sexy.

Danny sank back on his bed in disgust. He knew how much analysis cost, he'd heard older boys talking about it on the streets. But would the stupid bastards buy him a pair of shoulder pads? Har-de-har-har, and like hell.

Danny's punishment was being confined to his room for the weekend, being deprived of his television, his radio and his record player. (On Monday, of course, discipline would await him at school.) He didn't give a damn: he spent most of Saturday tattooing "Death Before Dishonor" with a pin and permanent--not washable--black ink on the soft inside of his left forearm.

Sunday morning Mother kicked his door. "Hey, listen. We're going to church. Be back about twelve-thirty, or one." And the key made a sound as Mother locked him in.

The door was locked from outside, and Danny had no key. But the door hinges were on his side and he had a Swiss Army knife with a screwdriver blade. He carefully removed the pins and took the door off its hinges. The lock was still locked, of course. He went to the kitchen, found the set of house keys always kept there, and unlocked the door: then he put it back on its hinges.

Danny dressed in sneakers, white jeans, and a jacket with a hood, and then printed a note: Dear Mr. and Mrs. Phillips, While you were at church today, praying, your little boy Danny died and I have taken him to heaven. He signed God's name to it and on his way out of the room locked the door from the outside and returned the keys to where he'd found them. Let the bastards figure that one out.

In the attached garage was 75 feet of nylon clothesline. Danny coiled it around his waist, inside his jacket, and then sauntered to the shopping center. He knew exactly how he was going to break into the sporting goods store.

At the rear of the shopping center there was a large parking lot. Sunday morning no one was in sight: the big supermarket and the cut-rate wouldn't be open until one o'clock. Danny climbed up a fire escape to the roof. He walked down to the skylight over the back room of the sporting goods store. It was partly open. He struggled to raise it another two feet. Then he tied one end of the nylon rope around a ventilator pipe and slowly lowered himself, hand over hand, into the darkness.

It was blacker than the inside of your hat, boy. He knew it was a storeroom, with boxes and so on, like all stores, but lie wished he'd brought a flashlight because he didn't want to break a leg. Then his foot touched something soft. That was odd, it felt like a bed. Gingerly he rested both feet on it, then bounced a little. By God; it was a bed! And then a light snapped on.

"What the hell you doing?" Big Ed "Bang-Bang" Roberts growled, sitting up in the bed.

Danny ran. He ran off the bed, straight into a wall. Quickly picking himself up, he dashed into a chair. He whirled and ran into Big Ed, who was getting out of bed.

Big Ed picked him up and patted him. "Sport, sport," he said gently. "It's just me, sport. Everything's all right. I wouldn't let anyone hurt you."

Danny was sitting on Big Ed's knee, shaking and sobbing. He had been through a great deal since Friday. Suddenly the enormity of what he had intended--to rob the store, to rob his best friend!--overwhelmed him, and he threw both arms, including the one tattooed "Death Before Dishonor," around Big Ed's oak-tree neck, and clung.

"I--I was going to rob you," he explained.

"Oh ... the shoulder pads, sport?"

"Uh-huh." He was feeling a little better, and he glanced around the room. Boy, it had been fixed up neat. There was wall-to-wall carpeting, and a hi-fi, and a swell little bar with a bottle of Black & White, and a great big bed with a pretty blonde lady in it, staring back at him in horror and disbelief. "Oh, hello, Mrs. Carter," Danny said, glad to see a friend. "You're not playing golf this morning, huh?"

"Oh, for God's sake!" Mrs. Carter said, hiding under the sheet. "Now what do we do?"

"We relax, Doris," Big Ed said calmly. He stood up. "Well, sport, how about a Coke?"

"OK," Danny said. He wasn't thirsty, but you didn't refuse your best friend when he asked. He watched Big Ed pour them both a little something.

"Sport ... what's the matter with you?"

Danny took a drink of Coke and belched. "Well, Friday at school I went in the girls' toilets---"

"Dear God," Mrs. Carter said, under the sheet.

Danny told the whole sorry tale--Miss Bee, his stupid parents those bastards, everything. Big Ed's eyes grew wet. He, walked to the door of the room, drew back his fist, and put it through the door up to his elbow.

"Jeee-sus!" Danny said in awe.

Mrs. Carter's pretty little head popped from under the sheet. "Really, Bang-Bang lover, it doesn't accomplish too much to beat at walls, you know."

"I can't help it when people do things to little kids," Big Ed said thickly. "Can I use your handkerchief, sport?"

"Oh, sure!" Danny said. He certainly admired the way Big Ed blew his nose, one nostril at a time.

Big Ed sat clown on the bed beside Danny and Mrs. Carter. "Sport, I'm going to give you any goddamn pair of shoulder pads you want in this goddamn store."

Mrs. Carter's head popped out again. "Oh, yes, and anything else your little heart desires. Take it all. Track shoes, hockey pucks, tennis nets. And just forget you ever saw Mrs. Carter here, hmmm? You sweet, sweet child!"

Danny stared at that crazy Mrs. Carter. What the hell did he want with a hockey puck? It wasn't the season. Her arms and shoulders were bare. Under the sheet, of course, were her boobs. He'd seen them many times. Then Danny looked quickly at Big Ed, and he knew what they had been doing. And they had been doing it together.

"You been doing bad," Danny said in a whisper. Big Ed doing bad? Big Ed? That was much, much worse than simply walking into the girls'.

"It's not bad, sport," Big Ed said quickly. "Who told you that?"

"Well ... everybody says."

"It's not bad," Big Ed repeated. Sweat broke out on his forehead as he tried to think of some understandable words. "Listen, I can't explain this to you, sport. But, will you believe me if I say it's not bad?"

"Oh, sure," Danny said, instantly amiable. You believed anything your best friend said, no matter what. So, doing bad wasn't bad. OK. Then going into the girls' wasn't ...

"Can I ask a favor?" Danny asked earnestly.

"You name it, sport."

"I don't want the shoulder pads," he said. "I mean, I swear I'll never tell. But, there's something else."

"A nice tennis racket, dear?" Mrs. Carter said. "Snowshoes? Your own inflatable swimming pool?"

Danny felt shy; he looked at the floor. "Get her to let me see It," he whispered.

"It?" Mrs. Carter said. "Why, of course. What it?"

"It?" Big Ed said.

Danny raised up to Big Ed's ear. "Hers. Her thing."

"Oh," Big Ed said, and he suddenly understood why one small boy had had so much small-boy trouble. "Well, why the hell not?" he said after a moment. The world was full of them; almost every other person you met had one.

"What are you whispering?" Mrs. Carter asked anxiously.

"Well, Doris, sport here wants to see you without your clothes on," Big Ed said kindly, "so take off the sheet."

Danny drifted casually to the foot of the bed.

"That is completely out of the question," Mrs. Carter said. "Give the dear goddamn child, money. Where is my bag? Where did I leave it?"

"You've got a pretty little body," Big Ed said in a friendly way. "You aren't ashamed of it, are you? You'd let sport look at your foot, or your ear."

"I don't believe he's much interested in ears."

"Doris, you're making me lose my temper. I've taken psych courses, and I know one thing you don't do with a kid is traumatize him. You've got to satisfy his curiosity. Otherwise, sport'll grow up to be one of those creeps who likes to burn matches in secret."

"I couldn't care less," Mrs. Carter said, under the sheet.

Big Ed stopped arguing; he leaned forward and ripped off the sheet, and there It was. And Danny stared and stared and stared and ...

Helen, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicaean barks of yore,

That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,

The weary, wayworn wanderer

bore

To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to

roam,

Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic

face,

Thy Naiad airs have brought me

home ...

Danny put his hand over his mouth and giggled. It just looked funny, that was all.

"What's the matter?" Big Ed asked.

Danny didn't know what to say; he shrugged.

"Well, all the important organs are in the interior of the body," Big Ed said, picking up a pencil. Danny leaned against him, watching him draw. "Now the ovaries are right about here. Each month---"

"God!" Mrs. Carter grabbed at the sheet. "Pictures!"

Big Ed picked out the best pair of shoulder pads in the store for Danny. Then he unlocked the front door and they hung there, reluctant to part, like two comrades who had fought a long war and who would never see each other again. For the remainder of their lives they would live among aliens who had not fought, who had no idea how it had been. And there was no way to say goodbye or I love you.

"Say, that Miss Bee," Big Ed said. "Where's she live?"

"In the Miles Standish apartments," Danny said. "Only her name's Benson. We just call her Miss Bee." Then suddenly he began to run. "See you!" he yelled back. "See you!"

"Right!" Big Ed called, and he slammed the door.

Monday morning at school discipline was administered to Danny Phillips, but he didn't give a damn. He knew something the rest of his male acquaintances didn't--oh, he might tell them someday--and he had shoulder pads, too. Let one kid, just one kid, mention the girls' toilets and he'd put a block on him in foot-ball practice no one would ever forget.

That afternoon three teachers gathered in the lounge for a coffee break.

"Do you have Danny Phillips in your classes?" Miss Gorman, the librarian, asked.

"The one who drops his pencil?" Mrs. Harper, the history teacher, said. "Yes. Why?"

"Well, he gave me the weirdest feeling this morning," Miss Gorman said. "The way he looked at me." She laughed nervously. "He made me feel so strange ... as if I was standing there without any clothes on, or something."

"Rot," Miss Benson, the phys-ed instructor, said firmly. "He's only a child. You read too much imaginative literature, my dear. You should come bowl some night with me."

When Miss Benson walked into her apartment, later that day, the telephone was ringing and, as she hurried to answer it, the castrated tomcat looked up from his pillow and grinned, as if lie knew who was calling, as if he knew what an unusual thing might happen that night in a small room with wall-to-wall carpeting, a hi-fi, a real neat little bar with a bottle of Black & White, and a great big bed.