We went to a Longchamps for dinner--the gold and vermilion decorations made bearable by air conditioning. Traffic was light; only a few people were about--people going tiredly in the heat-choked night. After dinner, we rode back in a cab to the Astolat and strolled over to the Park where we sat together on the Mall, listening to the concert. Thousands of people had spread out newspapers in the lamplit dusk and lay upon them, asleep, talking, making love. The police had suspended the bans that one night. Tenements and penthouses were ovens; their refugees gasped on the grass. Kids played in the fountains and no one interfered. The city itself had an evacuated feeling; all who were able had fled the heat wave and the rest were in parks, in cool restaurants, or in the movie theaters. Stars shone hazily above the trees and the stagy skyscrapers. Music, coming down the Mall, was distorted by invisible eddies that still rose from the sun-baked cement; it soared and fell and wobbled through the furnace atmosphere. Tom, as I said, is given to inquiry. This is not surprising in a man who practices several sciences. If we were old friends, we were also dedicated, in different ways, to the examination of all that surrounded ourselves and each other. Our sensibilities were tuned to the fact; they lacked the common diffidences of most such attachments. "How's it going?" That was his first question, when he arrived at my hotel rooms. "Okay." He put down the black bag that lies within easy reach of his whole life. "Jittery?" "Not that I know of." "Tell Ricky?" "No." "How is she?" "All cured--we hope." His pale eyes fixed on me. "Let me have another look at the throat." He had another look--rearranging lights. "I did a little reading on it, Phil. I can't say for sure what it is." "I'm going on the assumption that it is--what-for." "Yes. You would. Most people would take the opposite attitude--until the last possible fraction of the last possible second." "Why?" He shrugged and put his tools away. "Wishful thinking." "More fun to know than wish--look than dream." "Not many agree with that." "They don't know enough--look far enough. If you're going to get yourself free--you've got a lot of illusion to hack through first." "Do you feel really free?" I shook my head. "Not free at all. But I do feel I know what freedom is--what it means--what it's for. Maybe that's as near as you can get--these days." He went to the toilet and washed--in an absent-minded, habitual manner. "Hot night." "Hot." "You've been told your number was up before now. I've been considering that. You know what it's like." "Sure." "What's it like?" He asked it eagerly, and yet academically, as if there were a formula for the reply. "Changes from minute to minute." "I suppose so." He seemed disappointed. That was when we started for Longchamps. He took the bag along. He always does....