“Don’t tell me your troubles,” Winthrop cut her off savagely. His face was deeply flushed and his lips came back and exposed the brand-new teeth. There was a sharp acrid smell in the room and blotches of crimson on its walls as the place adjusted to its owner’s mood. All around them the music chanced to a staccato, vicious rumble. “Everybody wants Winthrop to do a favor for them. What did they ever do for Winthrop?”

“Umh?” Mrs. Brucks inquired. “I don’t understand you.”

“You’re damn tooting you don’t understand me. When I was a kid, my old man used to come home drunk every night and beat the hell out of me. I was a small kid, so every other kid on the block took turns beating the hell out of me, too. When I grew up, I got a lousy job and a lousy life. Remember the depression and those pictures of the breadlines? Well, who do you think it was on those breadlines, on every damn breadline in the whole damn country? Me, that’s who. And then, when the good times came back, I was too old for a decent job. Night-watchman, berrypicker, dishwasher, that’s me. Cheap flophouses, cheap furnished rooms. Everybody gets the gravy, Winthrop got the garbage.”

He picked up the large egg-shaped object he had been ex-amining when she entered and studied it moodily. In the red glow of the room, his face seemed to have flushed to a deeper color. A large vein in his scrawny neck buzzed bitterly.

“Yeah. And like you said, everybody has someone to go back to, everybody but me. You’re damn tooting I don’t have anyone to go back to. Damn tooting. I never had a friend, never had a wife, never even had a girl that stayed around longer than it took her to use up the loose change in my pocket. So why should I go back? I’m happy here, I get everything I want and I don’t have to pay for it. You people want to go back because you feel different—uncomfort-able, out of place. I don’t. I’m used to being out of place: I’m right at home. I’m having a good time. I’m staying.”