 Why are Danny and the deli owner aghast?
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] The present downtown temperature, according to the radio, was eighty-seven degrees, but according to my Greenwich Village thermometer, it was ninety-six. I didn't notice the impending rain storm and had no umbrella when I reached the sidewalk, to find myself confronted with an almost tropical downpour. The same thing happened at both ends of the crosstown shuttle, but I found the rain had stopped when I got out at Fifty-first and Lexington. As I walked across to Madison Avenue, I passed a big excavation where they were getting ready to put up a new office building. At the moment of the explosion—if so feeble a thing can be called one—I felt something sting my face and, on touching it, found blood on my hand. During the day, by actual count, I heard the phrase "I'm just spitballing" eight times, and another Madison Avenue favorite, "The whole ball of wax," twelve times. However, my story had been accepted without change because nobody had noticed my absence from the conference room. There you have what is known as the Advertising World, the Advertising game or the advertising racket, depending upon which rung of the ladder you have achieved. "That's right, Danny, I just missed it," I said, and went on in. I went into our little kitchen to make a drink and reread the directions Molly had left, telling me how to get along by myself until she got back from her mother's in Oyster Bay, a matter of ten days. My wife used to be a trained nurse and she is quite convinced that I cannot take a breath without her. Intimidated, I took my drink into the living room and sat down in front of the typewriter. I noticed one that I had missed, pinned to the door of the dumbwaiter: "Garbage picked up at 6:30 AM so the idea is to Put it Here the Night Before. The Sun was out again and a man with a stick was exercising his flock of pigeons. They wheeled in a circle, hoping to be allowed to perch, but were not allowed to. Since our building is usually very well behaved, I was astonished to hear what sounded like an incipient free-for-all, and among the angry voices I recognized that of my neighbor, Nat, a very quiet guy who works on a newspaper and has never, to my knowledge, given wild parties, particularly in the late afternoon.
 Alec drops his belongings from a tall height without breaking them
 Alec drops his belongings from a tall height without breaking them  Alec breaks the top of a glass bottle and continues to drink the contents  Nat continues to win significant poker hands in the deli  Alec has the nerve to try and steal items from the deli