Providence. Prohibition: for the Latin, politics for the Irish, invented He them.”
Fairchild filled his glass again, unsteadily. “Might as well make a good job of it,” he said. Gordon yet leaned against the wall, motionless and remote. Fairchild continued: “Italians and Irish. Where do we homegrown Nordics come in? What has He invented for us?”
“Nothing,” the Semitic man answered. “You invented Providence.” Fairchild raised his tumbler, gulping, and a part of the liquor ran over thinly and trickled from both corners of his mouth down his chin. Then he set the glass down and stared at the other with a mild astonishment.
“I am afraid,” he enunciated carefully, “that that one is going to do the business for me.” He wiped his chin unsteadily, and moving he struck his empty glass to the floor. The Semitic man groaned.
“Now we'll have to move again, just when I had become inured to them. Or perhaps you’d like to lie down for a while?”
Fairchild sat and mused a moment. “No, I don’t,” he stated thickly. “If I lie down, I wouldn’t get up again. Little air, fresh air. I’ll go outside.” The Semitic man rose and helped him to his feet. Fairchild pulled himself together. “Come along, Gordon. I’ve got to get outside for a while.”
Gordon came out of his dream. He came and raised the bottle to the light, and divided it between his mug and the Semitic man’s tumbler, and supporting Fairchild between them they drank. Then Fairchild must examine the marble again.
“I think it’s kind of nice.” He stood before it, swaying, swallowing the hot salty liquid that continued to fill his throat. “You kind of wish she could talk, don’t you? It would be sort of like wind through trees. . . . No... not talk: you’d like to watch her from a distance on a May morning, bathing
