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a job cleaning cars I’ll get one.”
    “The way you’re going, you may get one sooner than you think. How old are you?”
    “Thirty. Why?”
    “Well, you haven’t set the world on fire so far or you wouldn’t be here in this place.”
    “I wouldn’t argue with you.”
    “You can’t sell dirty cars,” he grunted. “You want Gulick to do all the work keeping ’em clean while you skim off the gravy?”
    “I’ll take down my hair,” I said, “and we’ll both cry.” I got off the desk and went outside, disgusted with the argument and with everything. I leaned against a car, smoking a cigarette and watching Gulick work, and after a while I threw the butt savagely out into the street and went over and picked up one of the cloths.
    “You don’t have to do this,” he said, when I started in on the other side of the car he was working on. “I don’t mind it. I like to keep busy.”
    He had sad brown eyes, a little like a hound’s, and his health wasn’t good. The doctors had told him to work outside and he’d have to give up a job as book-keeper.
    “How long have you worked for Harshaw?” I asked.
    He stopped rubbing for a minute and thought about it. He did everything very slowly and deliberately. “About a year, I reckon.”
    “Hard guy to get along with, isn’t he?”
    “No-o. I wouldn’t say that. He’s just got troubles, same as anybody.”
    “Troubles?”
    “Got ulcers pretty bad. And then he’s had a lot of family trouble. Lost his wife a year or so ago, and he’s got a boy that—. Well, I guess you’d say he’s just not much good.”
    “That’s too bad.”
    “Yeah.” He straightened and stretched his back. “I always figure there’s a lot of things can make a man grouchy. He may have troubles you don’t even know anything about—.” He acted as if he intended to say more, and then thought better of it and went back to work.
    Harshaw came out of the office a little later and got in one of the cars. “Going out in the country for a while,” he said to Gulick. “Be back around noon.”
    It was Friday and there wasn’t much activity along the street. The sun began to get hot. We had only two cars left to dust off when I saw a young Negro in peg-top pants and yellow shoes wander on to the end of the lot and begin circling around an old convertible with a lot of gingerbread on it. He kicked the tyres and backed off to look at it.
    I nodded to Gulick. “Go ahead,” I said. “I’ll finish it.”
    I watched then as I rubbed off the last car. The Negro tried the big air-horn mounted on a fender, and then they both stood there with their hands in their pockets saying nothing at all. Just then a blue Oldsmobile sedan slid in off the street and stopped in front of the office. There was a woman in it, alone. She tapped the horn.
    I walked over. “Good morning. Could I help you?”
    The baby-blue eyes regarded me curiously. “Oh, hello,” she said. “I was just looking for George.”
    “George?”
    “Mr. Harshaw,” she explained. And then she added. “I’m his wife.”
    “Oh.” It took a second for that to soak in. Gulick hadn’t said Harshaw had married again. “He said he was going out in the country. I think he’ll be back around noon.” She must be a lot younger, I thought; she couldn’t be over thirty. Somehow she made you think of an overloaded peach tree. She wasn’t a big woman, and she wasn’t fat, but there was no wasted space inside the seersucker suit she had on, especially around the hips and the top of the jacket. Her hair was poodle-cut and ash blonde, and her face had the same luscious and slightly over-ripe aspect as the rest of her. Maybe it was the full lower lip, and the dimples.
    “Well, thanks anyway,” she said. Then she smiled. “You must be the new salesman. Mr.—uh—”
    “Madox,” I said. “Harry Madox.”
    “Oh, yes. George told me about you. Well, I won’t keep you from your work.” She switched on the ignition and pressed the