"I'll telephone him," she said, starting away. She disliked the odor of flowers that hung over Eddie Tate. Some men's cologne smelled all right; Tweany's was like the smell of wood. But not this ... she had no respect for this.

"Whatcha reading?" Tate asked, peering. "One of those sexy books?"

She appraised him in her fashion: calmly, with no intention to do harm, merely wanting to know. "I wish I was sure about you.

"What do you mean?" Tate said uneasily.

"One day I saw you standing around the Greyhound terminal with a couple of sailors. Are you a fairy?"

"My cousin!"

"Gordon isn't a fairy. But he's too stupid to tell the difference; he thinks you've got class." Her eyes widened; the sight of poor Eddie Tate's dismay amused her. "You know how you smell?

You smell like a woman."

The man's companion, interested in a girl who would speak so, waited close by, listening.

"Is Gordon at the gas station?" she asked Tate. "I-wouldn't know."

"Weren't you hanging around there today?" She didn't let him go; she had the creature stuck.

"I was by for a minute. He said maybe he'd drop over to your house tonight. He said he came around Wednesday and you weren't home."

Tate's voice diminished as she, collecting her coat, started off, not looking back at either of them. Not caring, really, about either of them. She was thinking about home. Discouragement set in, and she felt her pleasure, the lift that fairy-baiting gave her, fade.

The front door was unlocked; her mother was in the kitchen fixing dinner. Noise clanged in the six units of the building: television sets and kids playing.

She entered, and faced her father.

In his easy chair Ed Reynolds sat waiting, muscular and small, with gray hair like strands of wire. His fingers gripped the chair and he half-rose, gurgling and blinking rapidly; a beer can fell to the floor and then he swept newspaper and ashtray aside. He wore his black leather jacket and beneath it his undershirt, his cotton undershirt, stained with sweat and dirt. Smears of grease crossed his face, his neck; by the chair were his heavy work boots, lumpy with grease.