"Hamburger," I said. "Well done." I knew that would probably be all they had fit to eat at a place like this. It might be horse meat, but then I didn't have the local prejudices. I didn't look at the woman. I couldn't. But I kept remembering how clean she looked and I was aware of how clean she smelled. I was so dirty, so very dirty that I could never get clean if I bathed every hour for the rest of my life. The hamburger was engulfed by five black-crowned, broken fingernails and raised to two rows of yellow ivory. I surrounded it like an ameba, almost in a single movement of my jaws. Several other hamburgers followed the first. I lost count. I drank a glass of milk. I didn't want to black out on coffee with Doc waiting for me. "Could I have a few to take with me, miss?" I pleaded. She smiled. I caught that out of the edge of my vision, but mostly I just felt it. "That's the first time you've called me anything but 'ma'am'," she said. "I'm not an old-maid schoolteacher, you know." That probably meant she was a schoolteacher, though. "No, miss," I said. "It's Miss Casey--Vivian Casey," she corrected. She was a schoolteacher, all right. No other girl would introduce herself as Miss Last Name. Then there was something in her voice.... "What's your name?" she said to me. I choked a little on a bite of stale bun. I _had_ a name, _of course_. * * * * * Everybody has a name, and I knew if I went off somewhere quiet and thought about it, mine would come to me. Meanwhile, I would tell the girl that my name was ... Kevin O'Malley. Abruptly I realized that that _was_ my name. "Kevin," I told her. "John Kevin." "Mister Kevin," she said, her words dancing with bright absurdity like waterhose mist on a summer afternoon, "I wonder if you could help _me_." "Happy to, miss," I mumbled. She pushed a white rectangle in front of me on the painted maroon bar. "What do you think of this?" I looked at the piece of paper. It was a coupon from a magazine. Dear Acolyte R. I. S.: Please send me FREE of obligation, in sealed wrapper, "The Scarlet Book" revealing to me how I may gain Secret Mastery of the Universe Name: ........................ Address: ..................... The world disoriented itself and I was on the floor of the somber diner and Miss Vivian Casey was out of sight and scent. There was a five dollar bill tight in my fist. The counterman was trying to pull it out. I looked up at his stubbled face. "I had half a dozen hamburgers, a cup of coffee and a glass of milk. I want four more 'burgers to go and a pint of coffee. By your prices, that will be one sixty-five--if the lady didn't pay you." "She didn't," he stammered. "Why do you think I was trying to get that bill out of your hand?" I didn't say anything, just got up off the floor. After the counterman put down my change, I spread out the five dollar bill on the vacant bar, smoothing it.