There's Gonna Be Hell to Pay," she says. "Now, all my babies." "All right," says Ida's boyfriend. "I'm just tired," she says. "When I saw him, it gave me a shock, 'cause I didn't expect him here. Then I remembered, that's our anniversary. It's September the twenty-third." We're back out on the street. "He sure had a lot of things on him, huh?" "He was carrying a suitcase and a bunch of bags." She is trying to walk faster but she is tired. "You okay?" Ida says to her. "Yeah," she says. "Just my feet are tired." # **X** The big news about the man in the street was that a week after he was seen on East Eighth Street, Mr. and Mrs. O'Leary discovered they had no milk for breakfast. Mrs. O'Leary, a pretty lady with brown hair and blue eyes and not enough on her to see herself through the mornings, spent the rest of the morning making sure her husband didn't need anything, but at eleven-thirty she became afraid and called their neighbors, Mrs. Shay and Mr. Jenson, who brought them a gallon of milk and a couple of loaves of bread and a half-gallon of whipping cream that they had bought in the morning market down the street. Mrs. Shay and Mr. Jenson said they had driven out to the O'Learys' house and seen the man in the paper sitting at the kitchen table with his feet on a chair, talking on the telephone. That was Friday. On Saturday Mrs. Shay was watching television when she heard Mr. O'Leary shout, "Where's the milk!" "I'm here," said Mrs. Shay. "And the bread," said Mr. O'Leary. "Where's the bread?" "And the butter." "Goddamn, Mary, where's the butter!" shouted Mr. O'Leary. "I thought you took it down to Mrs. O'Leary's house," said Mrs. Shay. "I did," he yelled. "The other?" "Goddamn, Mary, he sure is going to kill me. But not today. Today's Saturday. We're on our own until Tuesday." # **XI** The woman in the first house up from Mr. O'Leary's was the first to see the guy as he got out of his car and walked along the back of the house to the alley. She was sitting on her steps reading a newspaper and drinking a Coke and smoking a cigarette and looking at the trees and clouds. She did not say anything to her husband, because she had not wanted him to start talking about what he saw on television about the guy who murdered the doctor that had an abortion. She had read about it, and she still didn't know if it had been true or not, and didn't want to be reminded about it. She had noticed a guy in a pickup truck in the driveway of the house next door, and he had a big brown dog who was scratching and yelping in the driveway. She was smoking and looking at the clouds, so she wasn't paying much attention to the street. She wasn't feeling very good about things in the house or in the world or just about anything else. She was even depressed about the idea of her husband coming back from work, even though her husband was always in a good mood when he came home. Sometimes she thought she was just as big a troublemaker as her husband, and that they were two wrongs that made no right, so she sat on her steps with her coffee and cigarette and drank the last of the Coke and read the rest of her newspaper. And looked at the clouds. And noticed the man walking along the back of her house and down the alley to her driveway. She saw him step out of his car and walk down the driveway to the carport, and she heard the dog yelp when he saw him. She didn't know where he was going. He stopped in the carport with his back to her. She saw his reflection in the windshield, and she saw the dog look up and stand like it was going to bark. She didn't see him turn around. She just heard him, and she heard his voice. He said something to the dog, and the dog didn't bark. He walked across the carport and out of the screen door. The dog still hadn't barked when he stepped into the driveway. The woman looked out of the door at the street. There was no one coming up from the station. The man walked past the big tree by her garage, and she knew he was coming closer to her, but she still didn't see him, because she was looking at the trees and clouds again, and wondering why she didn't feel anything or feel anything more. She thought she saw him look at the street, then look at the houses as he walked through the street and down to the alley. He was wearing blue jeans and he was carrying a big blue duffel bag that was shiny with rain. The woman knew he was real close to her. She wasn't angry with him. She was thinking about all the times her husband, a truck driver and a salesman who wanted to see their two kids grow up and get married, had got drunk and called her a slag. He had called her a tramp and a slut when she had been drunk, too, and she would have said to him now if he had been around, Why don't you leave me alone? You don't understand. You're a big man and I'm a small woman, but I don't need you. I need a man who loves me. Or any man. But you come home from work and drink wine and have a stinking temper and a stinking life and tell me I'm a cunt. Her husband was still living in Los Angeles, and she wasn't sure if she still loved him. They had gotten along all these years, and she had tried to make the best of it, but she had found herself being a big troublemaker. She had the idea that she had married somebody she liked at first because her friends talked her into it. She had been the kind of girl that didn't make it on her own, but she got along all right. And then her friends started telling her that she had married the guy because he was good-looking, and that maybe they'd better get married before she got fat. She said to herself, If I've got to marry somebody who's good-looking and not get fat, and somebody doesn't try to make me do what I don't want to do, then I might as well marry him. But she never did get married to anybody. She kept seeing the man who was in the room when they shot the picture, and she never got married. Maybe she should have, but she never did. She closed the door and went back to the living room, and when she got back there, the man had gone back out of the yard. She went to the window and looked out at her backyard, and she couldn't see him. The sun was shining on the leaves, but she didn't feel anything. # **XII** The dog couldn't get at him. The dog chased him halfway across the front yard, with its nails snagging on the old broken asphalt driveway, then it gave up. The man had been holding the dog at arm's length with his right hand when he walked out of the driveway. The dog had stopped, and it didn't bark, and the man walked to the end of the driveway and around to the other side of the house, so that the dog was between him and the street, and he could get to the alley. He walked to the back of the driveway, looked through the opening, and saw the carport where his car was parked. The bag was sitting on the hood of the car. He had driven a new red Firebird when he got to town that afternoon. That was how he got to town. He had told his wife he was going to see his lawyer about some important business, and he was driving a new Firebird, which he didn't have yet. He didn't have it yet, but he would have it. He walked out to his car and sat on the hood with his hands on his knees, and held his stomach and felt a little better about things. He looked up when he heard somebody walking down the alley. The dog was coming back to get at him again. The man could hear the dog and smell the dog's breath, but he didn't see it yet. He had come close to the front of his house when the man in the doorway turned around and looked down at the street. When the dog got close enough to his right side, he stood up and reached for the dog with his left hand. The dog was about to get at his left leg when he bent down and picked it up by the back of the collar. He let the dog feel his fingers, and as soon as he did, the dog got into a frenzy. He didn't run out to the street, because he was still holding the dog by the collar, and he was still holding the duffel bag with his right hand, so that his body was between the dog and the street. The