She shook her head sadly. "Gosh, what a terrible way to live. And for a person who went to college, too."

He let W. C. Fields respond. "That's the way it is out there, my little chickadee. It's not a fit life for man nor beast!"

"You must be lonely."

"Yup," he said. "Sometimes a fella gets lonelier than one of those lonely things you see out there being lonely." Then he suddenly stopped clowning around. "I guess I'm nearly as lonely as a girl who gets all dressed up on the hottest night of the year and goes out to see a movie... all alone."

"Well I... I don't know many people here. And what with my night classes and all..." She shrugged. "Gee, I've really got to get home."

"Right. Let's go."

She glanced again at the clock. "And you're going to walk around until dawn?"

"Yup."

She frowned down into her lap, and her throat mottled with a blush. "You could..." She cleared her throat. "You could stay with me if you want. Just until it gets light, I mean."

He nodded, more to himself than to her.

They stepped out of the cool White Tower into the humid heat of the street. At first, the warmth felt good on their cold skin, but it soon became heavy and sapping. They walked without speaking. By inviting him to her room, she had made a daring and desperate leap into the unknown, and now she was tense and breathless with the danger of it... and the thrill of it.

He looked at her with feeling. 'This is it,' he said to himself. 'She's the one,' and he felt a thrill akin to hers. When he smiled at her, she returned an uncertain, fluttering smile that was both vulnerable and hopeful. There was something coltish in her awkward gait on those high heels, something little-girlish in the sibilant whisper of her stiff crinoline. He drew a long slow breath.

He followed her up three flights of dark, narrow stairs, both of them trying to make their bodies as light as possible because the stairs creaked and they didn't want to wake her landlady. She turned her key in the slack lock, opened the door, and made a gesture for him to go in first. After the dark of the stairwell, the room dazzled and deluded him. The streetlight under which they had first met was just beneath her window, and it cast trapezoidal distortions of the window panes up onto the ceiling, filling the room with slabs of bright light separated by patches of impenetrable shadow. His eyes had difficulty adapting to this disorienting play of dazzle and darkness because the brightness kept his irises too dilated to see into the shadows. The oilcloth cover of a small table was slathered with light, while the iron bed in the corner was bisected diagonally by the shadow of an oversized old wardrobe that consumed too much of the meager space. The only door was the one they had entered through, so he assumed the toilet must be down the hall. The room was an attic that had been converted at minimal cost, and the metal roof above the low ceiling pumped the sun's heat into the small space all day long.

"It's awful hot, I know," she whispered apologetically. Standing there with her back to the window, she was faceless within a dazzling halo of hair, while the light was so strong on his face that it burned out any expression; she wore a mask of shadow; he wore a mask of light.

"I'll open the window so we can get a little breeze," he whispered.

"You can't. It's stuck."

"Jesus."

"Sorry. Would you like a glass of water? If I run it a long time, it gets cold. Well... cool, anyway."

"Do we have to whisper?"

"No, but I..."

"But you don't want your neighbors to know you have someone up here?"

She nodded. "You see, I've never..." She swallowed noisily.

"I understand," He didn't whisper, but he spoke very softly. "Yes, I would like a glass of water, thank you." He sat on the edge of the bed, sunk up to his chest in shadow.

She turned the single tap above a chipped sink and let the water overflow the glass onto her wrist until it got cool. He could tell she was glad to have something to do-or, more exactly, to have something to delay what they were going to do.

The harsh streetlight picked out a two-ring hot plate on the table. Its cord ran up to a dangling overhead light. The bulb had been taken out and replaced by a screw-in socket. He deduced that cooking in the room was forbidden, but she did it anyway to save money. She probably unplugged the hot plate and hid it when she left for work. There was an open workbook and a pad of paper beside the hot plate: the Gregg Method. These everyday objects were abstracted, caricatured, by the brittle streetlight that set their edges aglow but coated them with thick shadow. The room had a shrill, unreal quality that put him in mind of a bright but deserted carnival lot, and something about it made him think of a kid jolting awake from a terrible nightmare to see the shadow of a tree branch dancing insanely on a window shade.

She brought him the glass of water; he thanked her and drank it down; she asked if he would like another; he said he wouldn't, thank you; she told him it wouldn't be any trouble; he said no thanks, and she stood there awkwardly.

"Hey, what's this?" he asked, holding up a glass sphere that his fingers had discovered beneath her pillow where they had been unconsciously searching for that coolness that children seek by turning pillows over and putting their cheek on them.

"That's my snowstorm."

He shook the heavy glass paperweight and held it up into the band of light across the bed to watch the snow swirl around a carrot-nosed snowman. "Your own private snowstorm. A handy thing on a hot night like this!"

"I won it at the county fair when I was a kid. I used my ride money to buy a raffle ticket, and I won third prize. I told my folks I found it at the fairground because they're dead against raffles and bingo games and all kinds of gambling. My snowstorm's the only thing I took with me when I left home. Except my clothes, of course."

"So your snowstorm's your friend, eh? A trusted companion through the trials and tribulations of life."

"I keep it under my pillow, and sometimes at night when I'm feeling real blue I shake it and watch the snow whirl, and it makes me feel safer and more... oh, I don't know." She shrugged.

"Back to your sentry post, loyal snowstorm." He returned the paperweight to beneath her pillow and patted it into place; then he reached up, took her hands, and drew her down to sit beside him.

"Please..." she said in a thin voice. "I'm scared. I really shouldn't of... I mean, I've never..."

He pressed her hands, clammy with fear. "Listen. If you want me to go, I'll just tiptoe down the stairs and slip out. Is that what you want?"

"...No, but... Couldn't we just..."

"You know what I think? I think I'd better go. You're scared, and I wouldn't want to talk you into anything you don't want to do." He rose from the bed.

"No, don't go!" Her voice was tight with the effort to speak softly.

He sat down again, but left a distance between their hips.

For a moment she didn't say anything, just sat there kneading the fingers of her left hand with her right. Then she squeezed them hard. She had come to a decision. She began speaking in a flat tone. "I was sitting at the table, like I do every night. Practicing my shorthand by the light of the street lamp because it's too hot to put on the light. And suddenly I was crying. I just felt so empty and lonely and blue! I wasn't sobbing or anything. The tears just poured out and poured out. I didn't think I had so many tears in me. I was so lonely."Her voice squeaked on the word. "I don't know a soul here in the city. Don't have any friends. Even back home, I never went on a date. My folks wouldn't let me. They said that one thing leads to another. They said boys only want one thing. And I suppose they're right."