 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. 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. The Sun was out again and a man with a stick was exercising his flock of pigeons. 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. "Here!" he said, holding out a deck of cards, "For Pete's sake, look at 'em yourselves if you think they're marked!" All I know is five straight...." Someone must have rung, because at that moment the elevator arrived and the four men, with half frightened, incredulous looks, and in silence, got in and were taken down. At the delicatessen on the corner, the man gave me three bottles in what must have been a wet bag, because as he handed them to me over the top of the cold-meat display, the bottom gave and they fell onto the tile floor. 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