She was getting real dramatic. I'd have been more impressed if I hadn't remembered that she'd played Hedda Gabler in her highschool dramatics course. I didn't want her back on that broken record.

``Nothing's free in the whole goddam world,'' was all I could think of to say. When I'd delivered myself of that gem there was nothing to do but order up another drink.

``I am,'' she said.

I'd forgotten all about Thelma and the Kentucky Derby and how it was Thelma's fifty dollars I was spending. It was just me and Eileen getting drunk together like we used to in the old days, and me staring at her across the table crazy to get my hands on her partly because I wanted to wring her neck because she was so ornery but mostly because she was so wonderful to touch. Drunk or sober she was the most attractive woman in the world for me. I was crazy about her all over again. It was the call of the wild all right.

That evening turned out to be hell like all the others. We moved down Broadway from ginmill to ginmill. It was the same old routine. Eileen got to dancing, just a little tiny dancing step to a hummed tune that you could hardly notice, and trying to pick up strange men, but each time I was ready to say to hell with it and walk out she'd pull herself together and talk so understandingly in that sweet husky voice about the good times and the happiness we'd had together and there I was back on the hook.