 Which didn't distract Mr. Graham from getting dinner the first time?
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. Whizzing traffic held me up at each crossing and I was soaked when I reached the platform, just in time to miss the local. After an abnormal delay, I got one which exactly missed the express at Fourteenth Street. 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. "That's right, Danny, I just missed it," I said, and went on in. 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. By some curious chance, they all wanted the same place in the sky to turn in, and several collided and fell. 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. 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. "Judas!" he said, and started to pick them up. 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. 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. 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.
 his telephone was broken
 his wife coming home early  his telephone was broken  watching two men fight on the sidewalk  another encounter with the police officer