 Why are Danny and the deli owner aghast?
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. 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. There were four men confronting him, evidently torn between the desire to make an angry exit and the impulse to stay and beat him up. All I know is five straight...." We left the proprietor with his mouth open and met Danny, the cop, looking in at the door, also with his mouth open. It turned sideways and, without any side-slip, went right up the stoop of a brownstone opposite, coming to rest with its nose inside the front door, which a man opened at that moment. The sight of this threw another driver into a skid, and when he and the taxi had stopped sliding around, they were face to face, arranged crosswise to the street. This gave them exactly no room to move either forward or backward, for the car had its back to a hydrant and the taxi to a lamp. Although rather narrow, this is a two-way street, and in no time at all, traffic was stacked up from both directions as far as the avenues.
 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