That's the kind
of a regular guy I am."
"No. I want to go home."
"All right, all right! I'm taking you there, ain't I?"
"Straight."
"Oh, you'll go straight, if you can't go that way anywhere but home."
They trotted the little detour in silence, the corners of her mouth
wilting, he would have declared, had he the words, like a field flower
in the hands of a picnicker. Marylin could droop that way, so suddenly
and so whitely that almost a second could blight her.
"Now you're mad, ain't you?" he said, ashamed to be so quickly
conciliatory and trying to make his voice grate.
"No, Getaway--not mad--only I guess--sad."
She stopped before her rooming house. It was as long and as lean and
as brown as a witch, and, to the more fanciful, something even of the
riding of a broom in the straddle of the doorway, with an empty flagpole
jutting from it. And then there was the cat, too--not a black one with
gold eyes, just one of the city's myriad of mackerel ones, with chewed
ear and a skillful crouch for the leap from ash to garbage can.
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