She was a poor, sick, lonely, homesick girl, far away from her world. She dosed herself with alcohol, remembered her dead parents, sad bits of her childhood and unfortunate slices of her past, and cried over them. She poured out all her hopes and fears to me—including her liking for Milk River, who was a good kid even if he had never been within two thousand miles of Forty-second Street and Broadway.
The talk always came back to that: New York, New York, New York.
It was close to four o’clock Thursday morning when the whisky finally answered my prayers, and she went to sleep on my shoulder.
I picked her up and carried her down the hall to her own room. Just as I reached her door, fat Bardell came up the stairs.
“More work for the sheriff,” he commented jovially, and went on.
I took her slippers off, tucked her in bed, opened the window, and went out, locking the door behind me and chucking the key over the transom.
After that I slept.