"Don't be irrational," he whispered. "If I want to take a walk, I shall take a walk." "Well! I don't think you ought to, or you might catch a cold." He rose and dressed, donning a tee-shirt and tweed trousers. With snake-swift Marlon Brando hands, he tossed his plaid scarf in her face. "Excuse me, Louise," he whispered, "but I gotta make it...." Then, laughing softly, he strode from the room. * * * * * At three o'clock in the morning, even a large city is quiet and dark and almost dead. At times, the city twitches in its sleep; occasionally it rolls over or mutters to itself. But only rarely is its slumber shattered by a scream.... "Johnny! Hey, Johnny!" cries Chester McRae, his eyes as dull and poisonous as two tiny toads. "Let's make it, man ... let's split...." whispers Bartholomew Oliver, one finger brushing his nose like a rattler nosing a dead mouse. "I don make no move without my boys," says Oswald Williams, his hands curled like scorpion tails. Together they walk down the street, moving with slow insolence, their lips curled in snarls or slack with indifference, their eyes glittering with hidden hatreds. But they are not alone in the city. The college boys are coming, in their dirty jeans and beer-stained tee-shirts; so too are the lawyers, in dusty jackets and leather pants; so come the doctors and the businessmen, on stolen motorcycles; the bricklayers and gas station attendants, the beatniks and dope pushers, the bankers and lifesaving instructors, the butchers, the bakers, the candlestick makers... they are all coming, flocking into the city for reasons not their own, wandering in twos and threes and twenties, all of them sullen and quiet, all of them shuffling beneath darkly-hued clouds of ill intent, all of them proud and deadly and virile, filling the streets by the thousands now, turning the streets into rivers of flesh.... "Hey, Johnny," says Chester, "let's cool this dump." "Man, let's make it with the skirts," says Bartholomew. "I don see no skirts," says Chester. "You pig," snarls Ozzie. The mob is monstrous now, like a pride of lion cubs, beyond count in their number, without equal in their leonine strength, above the common quick in their immortal pride, milling through the hot black veldt, swarming in the city streets. Millions of them, more than the eye can see or the mind can bear. It seems that no man sleeps, that every male in the great city must walk tonight. "Johnny," says Chester, "I don dig no chicks on the turf." "Eeee, colay. What a drag," whispers Bartholomew. "You goddam logical positivist," snarls Ozzie. * * * * *