"Yes. And that's the way it has been. Seems like the only people who can see Stanley are people like, well, like the ones down here around the Yard. The ones who are--how would you say it?--in the world but not of it, huh? I read that somewhere. People who are far enough out can see Stanley; only he is farther out than any of them." "Hm-m. Well, the world being what it is, maybe Stanley is lucky." "Ed, you don't really mean that." He was right, of course. This world positively was not built according to any specifications of mine, but still it is my world and I guess I am pretty fond of it at that. Couldn't ever have managed to leave skid row if I weren't. "So," Jones said, "poor Stanley, he always has been mighty dependent on me; more, maybe, since we been moving around. Until just lately." "Kind of a damn nuisance, huh?" "It never bothered me too much. Of course it keeps me down around this part of every town we make and maybe this isn't the kind of life I would have picked for myself. But Stanley has made me feel sort of responsible. And some kind of responsibility is good for a man, wouldn't you say?" I couldn't argue with it; not me. Anyway, it proved what I had felt from the start--Wino Jones wasn't a real or a natural skid-row type; he was forcing himself. "Well, Ed, Stanley has been trailing me around all the years--only somehow I don't believe Stanley ever did really like me much. He followed me because he couldn't do anything else, but he never took to me. I guess maybe I couldn't ever quite look up to him the way he wanted. So I suppose he has always been looking for something else. Well, before we came here, we were stopping in a mission one evening and I looked around when I finished my soup and I couldn't see Stanley. It gave me a turn. But after a little while, there he was again. I asked him where he went. He couldn't or wouldn't ever tell me much, only that there was someplace he was trying to get to and friends he wanted to meet. "'I can almost get there,' Stanley told me. 'There's the border and over there on the other side, they want me. I can feel they want me. They understand that I am important to them. They want me to come. If I could just find the way across to--' "He never told me who it was wanted him, or where, or what for. But ever since then, every once in a while I would look around and Stanley would be gone. First part of this last week he was gone again--and when he came back, he was changed. He was kind of superior-acting. Not pleasant. Wherever he was trying to get, he had got there. 'Now,' he told me, 'I have friends who know I am somebody.' He was real set up over it. Tonight he went back again." "Where?" I wanted to know. * * * * * Jones shook his head. "I told him, 'Stanley, we been together a long time. You got friends besides me, I'm glad. Only, you know, I kind of feel responsible. Maybe I ought to meet your friends, huh? Why don't you take me to meet them?'