Derek stood very still, his breath hissing angrily through clenched teeth. He dragged his memory for an appropriate quotation… something Shakespearean and devastatingly apropos to the ingratitude and treachery of youth.

He couldn’t come up with anything.

His mind was blank!

The blood drained out of his face and he clutched the stair rail. With a titanic effort he straightened his shoulders and turned so the young actors wouldn’t see. He was out on the sidewalk before he trusted himself to breathe again.

I couldn’t improvise a comeback to devastate those cretins! What’s the matter with me?

For an instant an unwelcome idea penetrated… the possibility that Peter had been right, that these punks were right.

The thought seared. It was too hot to be allowed to settle in. He drove it out by thinking about…

About getting high.

Yeah. Somewhere there must be a drug to help. Uppers did the trick when there was work to do. Downers helped him sleep. Somewhere there had to be a drug that’d bring back happiness.

All I need is a little peace. Then I could get my thoughts together. Make a plan. There oughta be a jizz to help me get through the summer. I’ll straighten out this fall.

Melissa won’t approve, of course. She’ll want me to clean up my act overnight—

What am I saying? Melissa’s been gone almost a year!

He felt very odd, like a man standing at a crossroads, undecided over which way to go and afraid that it was already too late to turn back. That sense of déjà vu returned again, filling him with a dreadful feeling that he had been this way before, and was doomed to choose wrong again. And again.

Unsteadily, he walked down Forty-seventh street, past the shops and the pedicabs, and the occasional licensed automobile. Flywheel jitneys hummed by, picking up tourists on their way to the Village or downtown.