Very last traces of the Doris who tried to take Jim from him have vanished

from this shriveled mannequin, and, with them, the last of hate. As long as

one tiny precious drop of hate remained, George could still find something

left in her of Jim. For he hated Jim too, nearly as much as her, while they

were away together in Mexico. That has been the bond between him and

Doris. And now it is broken. And one more bit of Jim is lost to him forever.

AS George drives down the boulevard, the big unwieldy Christmas

decorations — reindeer and jingle bells slung across the street on cables

secured to metal Christmas trees — are swinging in a chill wind. But they are

merely advertisements for Christmas, paid for by the local merchants.

Shoppers crowd the stores and the sidewalks, their faces somewhat

bewildered, their eyes reflecting, like polished buttons, the cynical sparkle of

the Yuletide. Hardly more than a month ago, before Khrushchev agreed to

pull his rockets out of Cuba, they were cramming the markets, buying the

shelves bare of beans, rice and other foodstuffs, utterly useless, most of

them, for air-raid-shelter cookery, because they can't be prepared without

pints of water. Well, the shoppers were spared — this time. Do they rejoice?

They are too dull for that, poor dears; they never knew what didn't hit them.

No doubt because of that panic buying, they have less money now for gifts.

But they have enough. It will be quite a good Christmas, the mer-chants

predict. Everyone can afford to spend at least something, except, maybe,

some of the young hustlers (recognizable at once to experienced eyes like

George's) who stand scowling on the street corners or staring into shops with

the maximum of peripheral vision.

George is very far, right now, from sneering at any of these fellow

creatures. They may be crude and mercenary and dull and low, but he is

proud, is glad, is almost indecently gleeful to be able to stand up and be

counted in their ranks — the ranks of that marvelous minority, The Living.

They don't know their luck, these people on the sidewalk, but George knows

his — for a little while at least — because he is freshly returned from the icy

presence of The Majority, which Doris is to join.

I am alive, he says to himself, I am alive! And life- energy surges

hotly through him, and delight, and appetite. How good to be in a body —

even this beat-up carcass — that still has warm blood and semen and rich

marrow and wholesome flesh! The scowling youths on the corners see him

as a dodderer no doubt, or at best as a potential score. Yet he claims a distant

kinship with the strength of their young arms and shoulders and loins. For a

few bucks he could get any one of them to climb into the car, ride back with

him to his house, strip off butch leather jacket, skin-tight Levi's, shirt and cowboy boots and take a naked, sullen young athlete, in the wrestling bout

his pleasure. But George doesn't want the bought unwilling bodies of these

boys. He wants to rejoice in his own body — the tough triumphant old body of

a survivor. The body that has outlived Jim and is going outlive Doris.

He decides to stop by the gym — although this isn't one of his regular

days — on his way home.