“Here you are, Mr. Broome,” she said, and came back into the kitchen. He took the dollar bill, tucked it into his wallet, and then put on his overcoat. “When you come to the city again, I hope you’ll be back for a room,” she said.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am, I will,” he said.

  “You’re a fine gentleman,” she said.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, embarrassed.

  “In this neighborhood…” she started, and then closed her mouth and shook her head.

  “I’ll be back later to pack,” he said.

  “Take your time,” she said.

  “Well, I have a few errands to do, actually.”

  “Take your time,” she said again, and walked him to the door.

  The drugstore was on the corner of Ainsley Avenue and North Eleventh Street. A lunch counter ran along the left-hand side of the store. The remainder of the place was given over to drugs and sundries. A rack of paperback books, their titles and covers screaming for attention, stood before a row of hot-water bottles. Beyond that, and somewhat apart from the heap of combs and syringes behind it, was a rack of greeting cards. He walked past the books—something called How to Do It on Airplanes caught his eye—and directly to the greeting cards. An assorted array of birthday cards was spread out on the rack—Birthday Son, Birthday Daughter, Mother, Father, Brother, Sister, Grandfather, Grandmother, and Miscellaneous Relatives. He scanned them quickly, glanced briefly at Condolences, Anniversary, and Birth, and finally came to the section devoted exclusively to valentines. More and more of the cards each year were comical. He didn’t care much for that kind of card. Most of them, matter of fact, he didn’t get the humor of. He looked down the row of labels at the top of the rack, and saw that these cards were classified, too, almost the way the birthday cards had been. There were cards for Sweetheart, Wife, Husband, Mother, Father; he didn’t bother going down the rest of the row because what he was interested in was a card for his mother. He looked at two or three of them, and then found a nice card with a real satin heart, and the word Mother in delicate gold script across the top of the card. He opened it and started to read the little poem inside. Sometimes, you found a nice-looking card but the words were all wrong. You had to be careful.

  He read the verse over again, and then read it a third time, pleased with the sentiment, appreciative of the way the lines scanned. He wondered how much the card cost. He liked it, but he didn’t want to go spending too much for a card. He walked over to the cash register. A colored girl was sitting behind it, reading a magazine.

  “How much is this card?” he asked.

  “Let’s see it,” she said. She took the card from him, turned it over, and looked at the price on the back. “It’s seventy-five cents,” she said. She saw his expression, and smiled. “There are cheaper ones there, if you look.”

  “Well, I like this one,” he said.

  “It is a nice one.”

  “Yeah, I like the poem. Most of them have terrible poems.”

  My Mother

  The joy you bring, to me each day

  Cannot in mere words be expressed.

  The million things you do and say

  Confirm you are the very best.

  And even when the day is done,

  And weary walk I up the stair,

  Who waits for me? The only one

  To smile, to greet, to love, to care—

  My mother.

  “It’s a nice poem,” the girl said, glancing at it.

  “Seventy-five, huh?”

  “Yes, that’s what it says on the back. See?” She turned the card over and held it out to him. She had very long nails. She pointed to some letters and numerals printed on the bottom of the card. “See where it says XM-75? That means seventy-five cents.”

  “Why don’t they just mark it seventy-five cents?” he asked.

  The girl giggled. “I don’t know. They want to be mysterious, I guess.”

  “Yes, well, XM-75 is sure mysterious,” he said, and smiled, and the girl smiled back. “Well, I guess I’ll take it,” he said.

  “Your mother’ll like it,” the girl said.

  “I think so. I need some stamps; do you sell stamps?”

  “In the machine,” the girl said.

  “And, oh, wait a minute…”

  “Yes?”

  “I want to get another card.”

  “All right,” she said.

  “Don’t ring that up yet.”

  “I won’t.”

  He went back to the rack and bypassed the Mother and Wife and Sweetheart section, searching for a section labeled Friend or Acquaintance, and finding one marked General, and then looking over the cards there until he found one that said simply, TO SOMEONE VERY NICE ON VALENTINE’S DAY. There wasn’t any poem inside the card. All it said was HAVE A HAPPY. He took the card back to the cash register and showed it to the colored girl.

  “Do you like this one?” he asked.

  “Who’s it for? Your girl?”

  “No, I don’t have a girl,” he answered.

  “Oh, sure, come on,” she said, “big handsome fellow like you.”

  “Really,” he said, “I don’t have a girl,” and realized all at once she was flirting with him.

  “Who’s it for?” she asked archly.

  “My landlady.”

  The girl laughed. “You must be the only man in this entire city who’s sending a card to his landlady.”

  “Well, I am,” he said, and laughed with her.

  “She must be something, your landlady.”

  “She’s very nice.”

  “A blonde, I’ll bet.”

  “Well, no.”

  “What then? A redhead?”

  “No, no, she’s—”

  “Or maybe you like darker girls,” she said, and looked him square in the eye.

  He looked back at her and said nothing.

  “Do you like dark girls?” she said.

  “I like dark girls,” he said.

  “I’ll just bet you do,” she said, very softly.

  They were both silent for a moment.

  “How much do I owe you?” he asked.

  “Well, let me take a look at the one for your landlady,” she said, and turned the card over. “Seventy-five and…twenty-five is a dollar.”

  He reached into his wallet and handed her a bill.

  “Didn’t you say you wanted stamps?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you have change for the machine?”

  “Yes, I think so,” he said.

  “Machine’s right over there,” she said, gesturing toward it with her head. She rang up his dollar bill, and then reached for a paper bag below the counter. “Are you from the neighborhood?”

  “No.”

  She watched him as he put his money in the machine and then pulled the lever for the stamps.

  “Out of town?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Carey, do you know it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It’s near Huddleston. Do you ski?”

  “Me?” the girl said, and laughed.

  He licked the stamps and put one in the corner of each envelope. “Do you have a pen?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she said, and handed him one from alongside the cash register. “Did you ever see a colored person skiing?”

  “Tell you the truth,” he said, “I’ve never been skiing, so I wouldn’t know.”

  “Oh, I’m sure there’s one or two,” she said. “There must be one or two in the whole United States, don’t you think?”

  “I guess there must be.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know any of them,” she said.

  “Neither do I.”

  She glanced at the envelope he was addressing. “Who’s Dorothy Broome?” she asked.

  “My mother.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Roger Broome.”

  “I’m Amelia,” she said.

  “Hello, Amelia.”

  “Amelia Perez.” She paused. “My father’s Spanish.”

  “All right, Amelia,” he said, and looked up at her and smiled, and then began addressing the other envelope.

  “This is the one to your landlady, huh, Roger?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Mrs…Agnes…Dougherty.” Amelia grinned. “Some landlady.”

  “She really is,” Roger said.

  “Mmm.”

  “Well,” he said, and looked up and smiled. “That’s that.”

  “Mailbox right outside,” Amelia said.

  “Thank you,” he said. They stared at each other for a moment. “Well.” He shrugged. “Well, so long.”

  “So long, Roger,” she said behind him.

  He stopped at the phone booth on the way out and opened the directory, first looking up POLICE, and then turning to the CITY OF section and finding a listing there for POLICE DEPT. His fingers skipped over the various headings, Alcoholic Unit, Bomb Squad, Central Motors Repr Shop, Hrbr Precinct, Homicide Squads, Narcotic, Safety, Traffic, Youth—where were all the individual precincts? What did a man do if he simply wanted a cop? He closed the directory and walked back to the cash register. Amelia looked up.

  “Hi,” she said. “Did you forget something?”

  “I’m supposed to meet a friend of mine outside the police station,” he said, and shrugged. “Trouble is, I don’t know where it is.”

  “Go across to the park,” she said, “and start walking uptown on Grover Avenue. You can’t miss it. It’s got these big green globes out front.”

  The big green globes were each marked with the numerals “87.” They flanked the closed brown entrance doors of the building, the building a soot-covered monotonous gray against the gray earlymorning sky behind it. Roger stood across the street near the low stone wall marking the park’s northern boundary on Grover Avenue, and looked at the building and wondered if anyone was inside; the doors were closed. Well, he thought, you can’t expect them to leave the doors open in the middle of winter. Anyway, the police are always there, that’s their job. They don’t close on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays.

  He looked at the building again.

  It wasn’t a very cheerful place sitting there across the street covered with the dirt of maybe half a century, its windows protected by wire-mesh grilles on the outside, the interior hidden by partially drawn and faded shades within. The only friendly thing about the place was the wisp of smoke that trailed up from a chimney hidden by the roof’s parapets. He wondered how many policemen were inside there, and then he wondered if he should go in. Maybe it was too early to be bothering them. He walked up some fifty feet to where there was an entrance break in the low stone wall, and then walked into the park and onto the gravel path paralleling the stone wall. He looked across at the police station again, and then sat on a bench with his head partially turned so that he could watch the building.

  As he watched, the front door opened, and a stream of uniformed policemen came down the steps chatting and laughing; it looked for a minute like all the cops in the city were pouring out of that door. They came down the low flat steps to the sidewalk and began walking off in different directions, some of them heading downtown and others heading uptown, some of them turning at the corner and heading north toward the river, and half a dozen of the rest crossing the street and coming directly to the wall entrance he himself had used not three, four minutes ago. Inside the park, two of them turned left and started heading up the gravel path in the opposite direction, and two of them cut across the grass and what looked like a bridle path and waved at the last two cops, who were coming right past the bench where Roger was sitting. He looked up at them as they went by, and he nodded at them briefly. One of the cops, as though he recognized Roger as somebody he greeted every morning (which was impossible since Roger had never been on this bench across from the police station in his life), sort of waved at him, and smiled, and said, “Hi, there,” and then turned back to the other cop and picked up his conversation as both of them continued on the path heading downtown.

  Roger watched them until they were out of sight.

  He turned on the bench again and busied himself with looking at the police station across the street.

  He supposed he would have to talk to a detective. That was probably the thing. You probably went in and said you wanted to talk to a detective, and they probably asked you what it was in reference to, something like a bank or a business office, he supposed.

  He didn’t like the idea of talking it over with somebody before they let him see a detective. That bothered him a little. He wanted to see a detective right out and clean, get it over with, instead of a lot of talk with a uniformed cop.

  “That’s what they are in there, all right,” the voice said.

  He turned, startled. He had been so absorbed with watching the building that he hadn’t heard footsteps on the gravel path, and was surprised now to see a man sitting on the bench opposite him. It was still maybe quarter of 9:00 in the morning, maybe a little earlier, and the temperature was, oh, he would guess somewhere in the twenties or even the upper teens, and the two of them were the only ones sitting in the park, facing each other on opposite benches.

  “What?” he said.

  “That’s what they are in there, all right,” the other man said.

  “That’s what who is in where?” he asked.

  “Cops,” the other man said. He was a small dapper man of about fifty, wearing a black overcoat with black velveteen collar and cuffs and wearing a gray fedora pulled rakishly over one eye. He had a small pencil-line black mustache and a black bow tie with yellow polka dots, the tie showing in the opening of his coat like the gaily painted propeller of an airplane. He gave a small meaningful contemptuous jerk of his head toward the police station across the street. “Cops,” he repeated.

  “That’s right,” Roger said.

  “Yeah, sure that’s right,” the man said.

  Roger looked at him, and nodded, and then dismissed him with a brief shrug and turned back to study the police station again.

  “Have they got somebody in there?” the man asked.

  “What?” Roger said, and turned again.

  “In there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are they holding somebody?”

  “I don’t think I know what you mean.”

  “Of yours,” the man said.

  “Of mine?”

  “In there.”

  “What?”

  “Are they holding somebody of yours in there?” the man said, impatiently.

  “Oh. No. No, they’re not.”

  “Then why are you watching the building?”

  Roger shrugged.

  “Look, you don’t have to put on airs with me,” the man said. “I’ve been in and out of that place more times than you can count on your fingers and toes.”

  “Mm?” Roger said, and was about to get up and move out of the park, when the man rose and crossed the gravel path and sat on the bench alongside him.

  “They’ve had me in there on a lot of little things,” the man said. “My name’s Clyde.”

  “How do you do?” Roger said.

  “Clyde Warren, what’s yours?”

  “Roger. Broome.”

  “Roger Broome, well, a new broom sweeps clean, eh?” Clyde said, and burst out laughing. His teeth were very white. His breath plumed vigorously from his mouth as he laughed. He lifted one hand to brush away a frozen laughter tear from the corner of his eye. His fingers were stained with nicotine. “Yessir,” he said, still laughing, “a new broom sweeps clean, they’ve had me in there on a lot of little things, Roger, oh yes, a lot of little things.”

  “Well, I guess I’d better be getting along,” Roger said, and again made a move to rise, but Clyde put his hand gently on his shoulder, and then removed it immediately, as though suddenly aware of Roger’s size and potential power and not wishing to provoke him in any way. The sudden retreat was not wasted on Roger, who felt himself subtly flattered and hesitated on the bench a moment longer. After all, he thought, this man’s been inside there, he knows what it’s like inside there.

  “What do they do?” he asked. “When you go in?”

  “When you go in?” Clyde said. “When you go in? You mean when they take you in, don’t you?”

  “Well, I suppose so.”

  “They book you, if they’ve got anything to book you on, and then they take you back to the detention cells on the first floor there and keep you locked up until it’s time to go downtown for lineup and arraignment, that’s if your offense was a felony.”

  “What’s a felony?” Roger asked.

  “Death or a state prison,” Clyde answered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The punishment.”

  “Oh.”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, what sort of crimes would that be?”

  “Burglary is a felony, murder is a felony, armed robbery is a felony, you get the idea?”

  “Yes,” Roger said, nodding.

  “Indecent exposure,” Clyde said, “is only a misdemeanor.”

  “I see.”

  “Yessir, only a misdemeanor,” Clyde said, and grinned. His teeth were dazzlingly white. “They’re false,” he said, following Roger’s gaze, and clicked the teeth in his mouth to prove it. Roger nodded. “Sodomy, on the other hand, is a felony,” Clyde said. “You can get twenty years for sodomy.”

  “Is that right?” Roger said.

  “Absolutely. They’ve never had me in there on sodomy,” Clyde said.

  “Well, that’s good,” Roger said, not knowing what sodomy was, and really not terribly interested in what they had had Clyde in there on, but only interested in what it was like once they got you inside there.

  “For them to have a case of sodomy,” Clyde said, “it’s got to be against the other person’s will, or by force, or under age, you know what I mean? They’ve never had me in there on that.”