Out on the sidewalk, Peter Fallow could see the cars and taxis speeding uptown on West Street. Christ God, how he longed to be able to crawl into a taxi and go to sleep until he reached Leicester's. No! What was he thinking? No Leicester's tonight; not a drop of alcohol in any form. Tonight he was going straight home. It was getting dark. He'd give anything for a taxi ... to curl up in a taxi and go to sleep and head straight home . . . But the ride would be nine or ten dollars, and he had less than seventy-five dollars to last him until payday, which was next week, and in New York seventy-five dollars was nothing, a mere sigh, a deep breath, a passing thought, a whim, a snap of the fingers. He kept looking at the front entrance to the City Light building, which was a dingy Moderne tower from the 1920s, hoping to spot some American from the newspaper with whom he could share a taxi. The trick was to find out where the American was heading and then to pick out some destination four or five blocks short of there and announce that as one's own destination. No American had the nerve to ask one to share the cost of the ride under those circumstances.

After a bit there emerged an American named Ken Goodrich, the City Light's director of marketing, whatever in God's name marketing was. Did he dare once more? He had already hitched rides with Goodrich twice in the past two months, and the second time Goodrich's delight over the opportunity to converse with an Englishman on the ride uptown had been considerably less intense; considerably. No, he did not dare. So he girded his loins for the eight-block walk to City Hall, where he could catch the Lexington Avenue subway.