could just get something on him to throw off that complex, I’d be happy even if we did have to vacate. I guess I spent my time daydreaming about Swanberg⁠—Swanberg wearing an old-fashioned nightcap, Swanberg slurping his coffee, Swanberg sleeping with his socks on⁠—anything human.

What wouldn’t I have given to have a picture of him in the roller coaster the way I had been the night of July the Fourth, with a perfectly strange, perfectly gorgeous, slim blonde throwing her arms around his neck the way that one had around mine. I was willing to bet he had a big, hefty wife at home who made him step.

I shivered whenever I thought about that blonde. She was the kind I would have liked to marry, only one like that was way out of my reach. I didn’t have much education and I didn’t always know what to do around a real high-class female. That’s why I had been riding the roller coaster alone.

Well, there was nothing for it now but the coal-chute. A truck was backed up to the sidewalk and two very black-faced men were pushing coal down a steel chute through a manhole in the sidewalk. I ducked into the alley, unrolled the bundle under my arm, and threw out a pair of khaki coveralls. I hated this, but I did it anyway; I had to. We couldn’t afford to have my suit cleaned every time I went in through the sidewalk, so I got into the coveralls and zipped them up. I watched around the corner. When the truckers raised the steel bed, I walked up to the open hole in the sidewalk and dropped in casually.

I’m a short man anyway, a little on the chunky side, and that coal-hole was like a furnace. The sweat poured down my back and chest and the coal-dust poured into my nostrils. I got out of there as fast as I could and took the freight elevator to the twenty-second floor. I went through the hall, unlocked the door, got inside, and locked it again.

“That you, Doc?” came Slim Coleman’s deep voice.