The front page was all about a flying saucer scare in Marin County. She read the headline, then thumbed on through the paper, stopping to read the movie reviews and the comic page. * * * * * At the back section, she was attracted by a headline that read: "Liquor Strong These Days--Customer Turns Green, Says Bartender." It was a brief item, consciously cute. "John Martin, 38, a bartender of 152 Mason Street, was arrested early this morning, charged with drunkenness and disturbing the peace, after firing several shots from a .38 revolver on the sidewalk in front of his address. No one was injured. Martin's defense, according to police records, was that he was attempting to apprehend a 'pale-green, claw-handed' customer who fled after eating a live mouse and threatening Martin. "Upon questioning, Martin admitted that the unidentified customer had been in the bar for several hours and appeared perfectly normal. But he insisted, 'When I refused to serve him after he ate the mouse, he turned green and threatened to claw me to death.' Martin has a permit to carry the gun and was dismissed with a fifty dollar fine and a warning by Judge Greely against sampling his own stock too freely." Drunken fool, thought Ellen. With fresh indignation, she remembered the disturbance in her own hall this morning. Nothing but drunks and gangsters in this neighborhood. She thought vaguely of looking at the "For Rent" section of the want ads. There was a noise on the fire escape. Ellen reached over and lifted up the shade. The janitor was standing there with a big paper sack in his hand. Ellen opened the window and asked, "How do you think it got there, Pete?" "I dunno. Maybe fall offa the roof. Musta been in a fight." "What makes you think so?" "Neck's all torn. Big teeth marks. Maybe dog get him." "Up here?" "Somebody find, maybe throw here--I dunno." Pete scratched his head. "You don't worry any more, though. I take away now. No smell, even." He grinned at her and scuttled to the other end of the fire escape where he climbed through the window to the fourth floor corridor. Ellen poured herself a second cup of coffee and lighted another cigarette, then turned to the woman's page in the paper. She read the Advice Column and the Psychology and glanced through the "Help Wanted--Women" in the classifieds. That finished the morning's reading. She looked at her watch. Almost ten. She carried her coffee cup to the sink, rinsed it out and set it on the drainboard. There was still a cup or more coffee left in the pot. That could be warmed over later, but she took out the filler and dumped the grounds into the paper bag that held garbage. The bag was almost full. I'll throw it in the incinerator now, she thought, before I straighten the apartment. She emptied the ashtrays--the one beside her bed and the other on the breakfast table--then started down the hall with the garbage bag in her hand.