Sybil stared at him, then looked down at her protruding stomach. “This is a yellow,” she said. “This is a yellow.”

  “It is? Come a little closer.” Sybil took a step forward. “You’re absolutely right. What a fool I am.”

  “Are you going in the water?” Sybil said.

  “I’m seriously considering it. I’m giving it plenty of thought, Sybil, you’ll be glad to know.”

  Sybil prodded the rubber float that the young man sometimes used as a headrest. “It needs air,” she said.

  “You’re right. It needs more air than I’m willing to admit.” He took away his fists and let his chin rest on the sand. “Sybil,” he said, “you’re looking fine. It’s good to see you. Tell me about yourself.” He reached in front of him and took both of Sybil’s ankles in his hands. “I’m Capricorn,” he said. “What are you?”

  “Sharon Lipschutz said you let her sit on the piano seat with you,” Sybil said.

  “Sharon Lipschutz said that?”

  Sybil nodded vigorously.

  He let go of her ankles, drew in his hands, and laid the side of his face on his right forearm. “Well,” he said, “you know how those things happen, Sybil. I was sitting there, playing. And you were nowhere in sight. And Sharon Lipschutz came over and sat down next to me. I couldn’t push her off, could I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, no. No. I couldn’t do that,” said the young man. “I’ll tell you what I did do, though.”

  “What?”

  “I pretended she was you.”

  Sybil immediately stooped and began to dig in the sand. “Let’s go in the water,” she said.

  “All right,” said the young man. “I think I can work it in.”

  “Next time, push her off,” Sybil said. “Push who off?”

  “Sharon Lipschutz.”

  “Ah, Sharon Lipschutz,” said the young man. “How that name comes up. Mixing memory and desire.” He suddenly got to his feet. He looked at the ocean. “Sybil,” he said, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll see if we can catch a bananafish.”

  “A what?”

  “A bananafish,” he said, and undid the belt of his robe. He took off the robe. His shoulders were white and narrow, and his trunks were royal blue. He folded the robe, first lengthwise, then in thirds. He unrolled the towel he had used over his eyes, spread it out on the sand, and then laid the folded robe on top of it. He bent over, picked up the float, and secured it under his right arm. Then, with his left hand, he took Sybil’s hand.

  The two started to walk down to the ocean.

  “I imagine you’ve seen quite a few bananafish in your day,” the young man said.

  Sybil shook her head.

  “You haven’t? Where do you live, anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sybil.

  “Sure you know. You must know. Sharon Lipschutz knows where she lives and she’s only three and a half.”

  Sybil stopped walking and yanked her hand away from him. She picked up an ordinary beach shell and looked at it with elaborate interest. She threw it down. “Whirly Wood, Connecticut,” she said, and resumed walking, stomach foremost.

  “Whirly Wood, Connecticut,” said the young man. “Is that anywhere near Whirly Wood, Connecticut, by any chance?”

  Sybil looked at him. “That’s where I live,” she said impatiently. “I live in Whirly Wood, Connecticut.” She ran a few steps ahead of him, caught up her left foot in her left hand, and hopped two or three times.

  “You have no idea how clear that makes everything,” the young man said.

  Sybil released her foot. “Did you read ‘Little Black Sambo’?” she said.

  “It’s very funny you ask me that,” he said. “It so happens I just finished reading it last night.” He reached down and took back Sybil’s hand. “What did you think of it?” he asked her.

  “Did the tigers run all around that tree?”

  “I thought they’d never stop. I never saw so many tigers.”

  “There were only six,” Sybil said.

  “Only six!” said the young man. “Do you call that only?”

  “Do you like wax?” Sybil asked.

  “Do I like what?” asked the young man. “Wax.”

  “Very much. Don’t you?”

  Sybil nodded. “Do you like olives?” she asked.

  “Olives—yes. Olives and wax. I never go anyplace without ’em.”

  “Do you like Sharon Lipschutz?” Sybil asked.

  “Yes. Yes, I do,” said the young man. “What I like particularly about her is that she never does anything mean to little dogs in the lobby of the hotel. That little toy bull that belongs to that lady from Canada, for instance. You probably won’t believe this, but some little girls like to poke that little dog with balloon sticks. Sharon doesn’t. She’s never mean or unkind. That’s why I like her so much.”

  Sybil was silent.

  “I like to chew candles,” she said finally.

  “Who doesn’t?” said the young man, getting his feet wet. “Wow! It’s cold.” He dropped the rubber float on its back. “No, wait just a second, Sybil. Wait’ll we get out a little bit.”

  They waded out till the water was up to Sybil’s waist. Then the young man picked her up and laid her down on her stomach on the float.

  “Don’t you ever wear a bathing cap or anything?” he asked.

  “Don’t let go,” Sybil ordered. “You hold me, now.”

  “Miss Carpenter. Please. I know my business,” the young man said. “You just keep your eyes open for any bananafish. This is a perfect day for bananafish.”

  “I don’t see any,” Sybil said.

  “That’s understandable. Their habits are very peculiar.” He kept pushing the float. The water was not quite up to his chest. “They lead a very tragic life,” he said. “You know what they do, Sybil?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, they swim into a hole where there’s a lot of bananas. They’re very ordinary-looking fish when they swim in. But once they get in, they behave like pigs. Why, I’ve known some bananafish to swim into a banana hole and eat as many as seventy-eight bananas.” He edged the float and its passenger a foot closer to the horizon. “Naturally, after that they’re so fat they can’t get out of the hole again. Can’t fit through the door.”

  “Not too far out,” Sybil said. “What happens to them?”

  “What happens to who?”

  “The bananafish.”

  “Oh, you mean after they eat so many bananas they can’t get out of the banana hole?”

  “Yes,” said Sybil.

  “Well, I hate to tell you, Sybil. They die.”

  “Why?” asked Sybil.

  “Well, they get banana fever. It’s a terrible disease.”

  “Here comes a wave,” Sybil said nervously.

  “We’ll ignore it. We’ll snub it,” said the young man. “Two snobs.” He took Sybil’s ankles in his hands and pressed down and forward. The float nosed over the top of the wave. The water soaked Sybil’s blond hair, but her scream was full of pleasure.

  With her hand, when the float was level again, she wiped away a flat, wet band of hair from her eyes, and reported, “I just saw one.”

  “Saw what, my love?”

  “A bananafish.”

  “My God, no!” said the young man. “Did he have any bananas in his mouth?”

  “Yes,” said Sybil. “Six.”

  The young man suddenly picked up one of Sybil’s wet feet, which were drooping over the end of the float, and kissed the arch.

  “Hey!” said the owner of the foot, turning around.

  “Hey, yourself! We’re going in now. You had enough?”

  “No!”

  “Sorry,” he said, and pushed the float toward shore until Sybil got off it. He carried it the rest of the way.

  “Goodbye,” said Sybil, and ran without regret in the direction of the hotel.

  The young man put on his robe, closed the lapels tight, and jammed his towel into his pocket. He picked up the slimy wet, cumbersome float and put it under his arm. He plodded alone through the soft, hot sand toward the hotel.

  On the sub-main floor of the hotel, which the management directed bathers to use, a woman with zinc salve on her nose got into the elevator with the young man.

  “I see you’re looking at my feet,” he said to her when the car was in motion.

  “I beg your pardon?” said the woman.

  “I said I see you’re looking at my feet.”

  “I beg your pardon. I happened to be looking at the floor,” said the woman, and faced the doors of the car.

  “If you want to look at my feet, say so,” said the young man. “But don’t be a God-damned sneak about it.”

  “Let me out here, please,” the woman said quickly to the girl operating the car.

  The car doors opened and the woman got out without looking back.

  “I have two normal feet and I can’t see the slightest God-damned reason why anybody should stare at them,” said the young man. “Five, please.” He took his room key out of his robe pocket.

  He got off at the fifth floor, walked down the hall, and let himself into 507. The room smelled of new calfskin luggage and nail-lacquer remover.

  He glanced at the girl lying asleep on one of the twin beds. Then he went over to one of the pieces of luggage, opened it, and from under a pile of shorts and undershirts he took out an Ortgies calibre 7.65 automatic. He released the magazine, looked at it, then reinserted it. He cocked the piece. Then he went over and sat down on the unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet through his right temple.

  Down at

  the Dinghy

  It was a little after four o’clock on an Indian Summer afternoon. Some fifteen or twenty times since noon, Sandra, the maid, had come away from the lake-front window in the kitchen with her mouth set tight. This time as she came away, she absently untied and re-tied her apron strings, taking up what little slack her enormous waistline allowed. Then she went back to the enamel table and lowered her freshly uniformed body into the seat opposite Mrs. Snell. Mrs. Snell having finished the cleaning and ironing was having her customary cup of tea before walking down the road to the bus stop. Mrs. Snell had her hat on. It was the same interesting, black felt headpiece she had worn, not just all summer, but for the past three summers—through record heat waves, through change of life, over scores of ironing boards, over the helms of dozens of vacuum cleaners. The Hattie Carnegie label was still inside it, faded but (it might be said) unbowed.

  “I’m not gonna worry about it,” Sandra announced, for the fifth or sixth time, addressing herself as much as Mrs. Snell. “I made up my mind I’m not gonna worry about it. What for?”

  “That’s right,” said Mrs. Snell. “I wouldn’t. I really wouldn’t. Reach me my bag, dear.”

  A leather handbag, extremely worn, but with a label inside it as impressive as the one inside Mrs. Snell’s hat, lay on the pantry. Sandra was able to reach it without standing up. She handed it across the table to Mrs. Snell, who opened it and took out a pack of mentholated cigarettes and a folder of Stork Club matches.

  Mrs. Snell lit a cigarette, then brought her teacup to her lips, but immediately set it down in its saucer. “If this don’t hurry up and cool off, I’m gonna miss my bus.” She looked over at Sandra, who was staring, oppressedly, in the general direction of the copper sauce-pans lined against the wall. “Stop worryin’ about it,” Mrs. Snell ordered. “What good’s it gonna do to worry about it? Either he tells her or he don’t. That’s all. What good’s worryin’ gonna do?”

  “I’m not worryin’ about it,” Sandra responded. “The last thing I’m gonna do is worry about it. Only, it drives ya loony, the way that kid goes pussyfootin’ all around the house. Ya can’t hear him, ya know. I mean nobody can hear him, ya know. Just the other day I was shellin’ beans—right at this here table—and I almost stepped on his hand. He was sittin’ right under the table.”

  “Well. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “I mean ya gotta weigh every word ya say around him,” Sandra said. “It drives ya loony.”

  “I still can’t drink this,” Mrs. Snell said. “. . . That’s terrible. When ya gotta weigh every word ya say and all.”

  “It drives ya loony! I mean it. Half the time I’m half loony.” Sandra brushed some imaginary crumbs off her lap, and snorted. “A four-year-old kid!”

  “He’s kind of a good-lookin’ kid,” said Mrs. Snell. “Them big brown eyes and all.”

  Sandra snorted again. “He’s gonna have a nose just like the father.” She raised her cup and drank from it without any difficulty. “I don’t know what they wanna stay up here all October for,” she said malcontentedly, lowering her cup. “I mean none of ’em even go anywheres near the water now. She don’t go in, he don’t go in, the kid don’t go in. Nobody goes in now. They don’t even take that crazy boat out no more. I don’t know what they threw good money away on it for.”

  “I don’t know how you can drink yours. I can’t even drink mine.”

  Sandra stared rancorously at the opposite wall. “I’ll be so gladda get backa the city. I’m not foolin’. I hate this crazy place.” She gave Mrs. Snell a hostile glance. “It’s all right for you, you live here all year round. You got your social life here and all. You don’t care.”

  “I’m gonna drink this if it kills me,” Mrs. Snell said, looking at the clock over the electric stove.

  “What would you do if you were in my shoes?” Sandra asked abruptly. “I mean what would you do? Tella truth.”

  This was the sort of question Mrs. Snell slipped into as if it were an ermine coat. She at once let go her teacup. “Well, in the first place,” she said, “I wouldn’t worry about it. What I’d do, I’d look around for another—”

  “I’m not worried about it,” Sandra interrupted.

  “I know that, but what I’d do, I’d just get me—”

  The swinging door opened from the dining room and Boo Boo Tannenbaum, the lady of the house, came into the kitchen. She was a small, almost hipless girl of twenty-five, with styleless, colorless, brittle hair pushed back behind her ears, which were very large. She was dressed in knee-length jeans, a black turtleneck pullover, and socks and loafers. Her joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was—in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces—a stunning and final girl. She went directly to the refrigerator and opened it. As she peered inside, with her legs apart and her hands on her knees, she whistled, unmelodically, through her teeth, keeping time with a little uninhibited, pendulum action of her rear end. Sandra and Mrs. Snell were silent. Mrs. Snell put out her cigarette, unhurriedly.

  “Sandra . . .”

  “Yes, ma’am?” Sandra looked alertly past Mrs. Snell’s hat.

  “Aren’t there any more pickles? I want to bring him a pickle.”

  “He et ’em,” Sandra reported intelligently. “He et ’em before he went to bed last night. There was only two left.”

  “Oh. Well, I’ll get some when I go to the station. I thought maybe I could lure him out of that boat.” Boo Boo shut the refrigerator door and walked over to look out of the lake-front window. “Do we need anything else?” she asked, from the window.

  “Just bread.”

  “I left your check on the hall table, Mrs. Snell. Thank you.”

  “O.K.,” said Mrs. Snell. “I hear Lionel’s supposeta be runnin’ away.” She gave a short laugh.

  “Certainly looks that way,” Boo Boo said, and slid her hands into her hip pockets.

  “At least he don’t run very far away,” Mrs. Snell said, giving another short laugh.

  At the window, Boo Boo changed her position slightly, so that her back wasn’t directly to the two women at the table. “No,” she said, and pushed back some hair behind her ear. She added, purely informatively: “He’s been hitting the road regularly since he was two. But never very hard. I think the farthest he ever got—in the city, at least—was to the Mall in Central Park. Just a couple of blocks from home. The least far—or nearest—he ever got was to the front door of our building. He stuck around to say goodbye to his father.”

  Both women at the table laughed.

  “The Mall’s where they all go skatin’ in New York,” Sandra said very sociably to Mrs. Snell. “The kids and all.”

  “Oh!” said Mrs. Snell.

  “He was only three. It was just last year,” Boo Boo said, taking out a pack of cigarettes and a folder of matches from a side pocket in her jeans. She lit a cigarette, while the two women spiritedly watched her. “Big excitement. We had the whole police force out looking for him.”

  “They find him?” said Mrs. Snell.

  “Sure they found him!” said Sandra with contempt. “Wuddaya think?”

  “They found him at a quarter past eleven of night, in the middle of—my God, February, I think. Not a child in the park. Just muggers, I guess, and an assortment of roaming degenerates. He was sitting on the floor of the bandstand, rolling a marble back and forth along a crack. Half-frozen to death and looking—”

  “Holy Mackerel!” said Mrs. Snell. “How come he did it? I mean what was he runnin’ away about?”

  Boo Boo blew a single, faulty smoke-ring at a pane of glass. “Some child in the park that afternoon had come up to him with the dreamy misinformation, ‘You stink, kid.’ At least, that’s why we think he did it. I don’t know, Mrs. Snell. It’s all slightly over my head.”

  “How long’s he been doin’ it?” asked Mrs. Snell. “I mean how long’s he been doin’ it?”

  “Well, at the age of two-and-a-half,” Boo Boo said biographically, “he sought refuge under a sink in the basement of our apartment house. Down in the laundry. Naomi somebody—a close friend of his—told him she had a worm in her thermos bottle. At least, that’s all we could get out of him.” Boo Boo sighed, and came away from the window with a long ash on her cigarette. She started for the screen door. “I’ll have another go at it,” she said, by way of goodbye to both women.