I got the door unlocked and dragged him inside and spread him on the l.ng couch, threw a rug over him and let him go back to sleep, He snored like a grampus for an hour. Then he came awake all of a sudden and wanted to go to the bathroom . When he came back he looked at me peeringly, squinting his eyes, and wanted to know where the hell he was. I told him. He said his name was Terry Lennox and that he lived in an apartment in Westwood and no one was waiting up for him. His voice was dear and unslurred. He said he could handle a cup of black coffee. When I brought it he sipped it carefully holding the saucer close under the cup. "How come I'm here?" he asked, looking around. "You squiffed out at The Dancers in a Rolls. Your girl friend ditched you." "Quite," he said. "No doubt she was entirely justified." "You English?" "I've lived there. I wasn't born there. If I might call a taxi, I'll take myself off." "You've got one waiting." He made the steps on his own going down. He didn't say much on the way to Westwood, except that it was very kind of me and he was sorry to be such a nuisance. He had probably said it so often and to so many people that it was automatic. His apartment was small and stuffy and impersonal. He might have moved in that afternoon. On a coffee table in front of a hard green davenport there was a half empty Scotch bottle and melted ice in a bowl and three -empty fizzwater bottles and two glasses and a glass ash tray loaded with stubs with and without lipstick. There wasn't a photograph or a personal artide of any kind in the place. It might have been a hotel room rented for a meeting or a farewell, for a few drinks and a talk, for a roll in the hay. It didn't look like a place where anyone lived. He offered me a drink. I said no thanks. I didn't sit down. When I left he thanked me some more , but not as if I had dimbed a mountain for him, nor as if it was nothing at all. He was a little shaky and a little shy but polite as hell. He stood in the open door until the automatic elevator came up and I got into it. Whatever he didn't have he had manners. He hadn't mentioned the girl again, Also, he hadn't mentioned that he had no job and no prospects and that almost his last dollar had gone into paying the check at The Dancers for a bit of high class fluff that couldn't stick around long enough to make sure he didn't get tossed in the , or rolled by a tough hackie and dumped out in a vacant lot, On the way down in the elevator I had an impulse to go back up and take the Scotch bottle away from him. But it wasn't any of my business and it never does any good anyway. They always find a way to get it if they have to have it. I drove home chewing my lip. I'm supposed to be tough but there was something about the guy that got me. I didn't know what it was unless it was the white hair and the scarred face and the clear voice and the politeness. Maybe that was enough. There was no reason why I should ever see him again. He was just a lost dog, like the girl said.
