ng?
Cora's face was a sight! I wouldn't have wanted to be in his boots when
she got him home. What's got into him, anyway?

Cora was a Wilson Avenue girl now. You saw her in and out of the shops
of the district, expensively dressed. She was almost thirty-six. Her
legs, beneath the absurdly short skirt of the day, were slim and shapely
in their chiffon hose, but her upper figure was now a little prominent.
The scant, brief skirt fore-shortened her; gave her a stork-like
appearance; a combination of girlishness and matronliness not pleasing.

There were times when Ray rebelled. A peace-loving man, and gentle. But
a man. "I don't want to go out to eat. My God, I'm tired! I want to eat
at home."

"Honey, dear, I haven't a thing in the house. Not a scrap."

"I'll go out and get something, then. What d'you want?"

"Get whatever looks good to you. I don't want a thing. We had tea after
the matinee. That's what made me so late. I'm always nagging the girls
to go home. It's getting so they tease me about it."

He would go foraging amongst the delicatessen shops of the
neighbourhood. He saw other men, like himself, scurrying about with
moist paper packets and bags and bundles, in and out of Leviton's, in
and out of the Sunlight Bakery. A bit of ham. Some cabbage salad in a
wooden boat. A tiny broiler, lying on its back, its feet neatly trussed,
its skin crackly and tempting-looking, its white meat showing beneath
the brown. But when he cut into it at home it tasted like sawdust and
gutta-percha. "_And_ what else?" said the plump woman in the white
bib-apron behind the counter. "_And_ what else?"

In the new apartment you rather prided yourself on not knowing your
next-door neighbours. The paper-thin walls permitted you to hear them
living the most intimate details of their lives. You heard them
laughing, talking, weeping, singing, scolding, caressing. You didn't
know them. You did not even see them. When you met in the halls or
elevators you did not speak. Then, after they had lived in the new
apartment about a year Cora met the woman in 618 and Raymond met the
woman in 620, within the same week. The Atwaters lived in 619.

There was some confusion in the delivery of a package. The woman in 618
pressed the Atwaters' electric button for the first time in their year's
residence there.

A plump woman, 618; blonde; in black. You felt that her flesh was
expertly restrained in tight pink satin brassieres and long-hipped
cors