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moments, and then said, “Long as only your arm is cut, that don’t affect my business at all. Not at all.”
    They left the theatre, and he gave her the money for a jug, and then waited in the darkness of a hallway while she bought it in a brilliantly lighted liquor store. When she came back, she walked on the side of his wounded arm, blocking it effectively from inquisitive eyes.
    â€œWhat are you doing so far east?” he asked her.
    â€œHow do you mean?”
    â€œWith the wops,” he said.
    The girl shrugged. “The ofay likes it black now and then.” In Harlem, ofay was simple pig Latin for “foe.”
    â€œAnd do you like it white?” he asked suspiciously.
    â€œBusiness is business,” she said.
    â€œYou ever operate in Harlem? Our Harlem?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI got my reasons. Listen, who’re you, the D.A.? Do you want this, or don’t you?”
    â€œI want it,” he said, thinking, I only want the room, baby. You can stuff the rest.
    They walked in silence to a brownstone set next to a delicatessen. She led him up the steps and opened the wooden door to her room. It was a small room, with a bare bulb hanging overhead and a dresser in one corner. A bed occupied most of the room, and there was a table with an enamel washbasin on a stand alongside the bed.
    â€œLike I said,” she told him, “it ain’t the Waldorf.”
    She was not as big as he’d thought she was in the movies. She was, in fact, almost small except for the breasts that crowded the woolen sweater. He unconsciously compared her to Cindy in his mind, and his eyes roamed her body candidly. She saw his eyes on her and said, “Look O.K.?”
    â€œLooks fine,” he answered. He could not manage a smile.
    â€œWhich shall we treat first? The arm or the gullet or whatever?”
    â€œHave a drink, if you want,” he said. “I can wait.”
    â€œYeah, but you’re bleeding on my imported Persian rug.” She grinned and went to the dresser, taking out a bottle of peroxide and a roll of gauze.
    â€œI already had the peroxide treatment,” he said bitterly.
    â€œLittle more won’t hurt.” She led him to the basin, took off his jacket, and then rolled up the sleeve of his shirt. “Besides,” she said, “don’t kick about the service. You’d never get this on the Market.”
    â€œDon’t I know it,” he said.
    She studied the cut more closely. “You run into a buzz saw?”
    â€œNo, a hophead.”
    â€œSame thing,” she said, pouring the peroxide onto the wound. He winced, holding back the scream that bubbled onto his lips.
    â€œYou got glass in there.”
    â€œPull it out, if you can.”
    She looked at him curiously. “Sure,” she said. She wrapped absorbent cotton around a toothpick, and then began fishing for the glass splinters. Each time she got one, he clamped his teeth down hard, and finally it was all over. She drenched the arm in peroxide again, and then wrapped the gauze around it, so tight that he could feel the veins throbbing against the thin material.
    â€œThat rates a swallow,” she said. She broke the seal on the fifth, poured whisky for them both into water glasses, and handed him one. “Here’s to the hophead,” she said.
    â€œMay he drop dead,” Johnny answered, tossing off the drink. It burned a hole clear down to his stomach, and he remembered abruptly that he hadn’t eaten for a good long while.
    The girl took another drink, and then put the glass and the bottle on the dresser top again. “Well, now,” she said. “Let’s try to forget that arm, shall we?”
    She moved closer to him, and he thought of Cindy and of his real reasons for coming up here. “Look …” he started.
    The sweater moved in on him, warm and high, soft, beating with the soft muted beat of her heart