it look like leather, and hinges of some kind pasted On. A great rip ran down the top; Dean lashed on a rope. Then he grabbed his seabag and threw things into that. I got my bag, stuffed it, and as Camille lay in bed saying, “Liar! Liar! Liar!” we leaped out of the house and struggled down the street to the nearest cable car—a mass of men and suitcases with that enormous bandaged thumb sticking up in the air.

That thumb became the symbol of Dean’s final development. He no longer cared about anything (as before) but now he also cared about everything in principle; that is to say, it was all the same to him and he belonged to the world and there was nothing he could do about it. He stopped me in the middle of the street.

“Now, man, I know you’re probably real bugged; ‘you just got to town and we get thrown out the first day and you’re wondering what I’ve done to deserve this and so on—together with all horrible appurtenances—hee-hee-hee!—but look at me. Please, Sal, look at me.”

I looked at him. He was wearing a T-shirt, torn pants hanging down his belly, tattered shoes; he had not shaved, his hair was wild and bushy, his eyes bloodshot, and that tremendous bandaged thumb stood supported in midair at heart-level (he had to hold it up that way), and on his face was the goofiest grin I ever saw. He stumbled around in a circle and looked everywhere.

“What do my eyeballs see? Ah—the blue sky. Long-fellow!” He swayed and blinked: He rubbed his eyes. “Together with windows—have you ever dug windows? Now let’s talk about windows. I have seen some really crazy windows that made faces at me, and some of them had shades drawn and so they winked.” Out of his seabag he fished a copy of Eugene Sue’s Mysteries of Paris and, adjusting the front of his T-shirt, began reading on the street corner with a pedantic air. “Now really, Sal, let’s dig everything as we go along ...” He forgot about that in an instant and looked around blankly. I was glad I had come, he needed me now.

“Why did Camille throw you out? What are you going to do?”

“Eh?” he said. “Eh? Eh?” We racked our brains for where to go and what to do. I realized it was up to me. Poor, poor Dean—the devil himself had never fallen farther; in idiocy, with infected thumb, surrounded by the battered suitcases of his motherless feverish life across America and back numberless times, an undone bird. “Let’s walk to New York,” he said, “and as we do so let’s take stock of everything along the way—yass.” I took out my money and counted it; I showed it to him.

“I have here,” I said, “the sum of eighty-three dollars and change, and if you come with me let’s go to New York—and after that let’s go to Italy.”

“Italy?” he said. His eyes lit up. “Italy, yass—how shall we get there, dear Sal?”

I pondered this. “I’ll make some money, I’ll get a thousand dollars from the publishers. We’ll go dig all the crazy women in Rome, Paris, all those places; we’ll sit at sidewalk cafés; we’ll live in whorehouses. Why not go to Italy?”

“Why yass,” said Dean, and then realized I was serious and looked at me out of the corner of his eye for the first time, for I’d never committed myself before with regard to his burdensome existence, and that look was the look of a man weighing his chances at the last moment before the bet. There were triumph and insolence in his eyes, a devilish look, and he never took his eyes off mine for a long time. I looked back at him and blushed.

I said, “What’s the matter?” I felt wretched when I asked it. He made no answer but continued looking at me with the same wary insolent side-eye.

I tried to remember everything he’d done in his life and if there wasn’t something back there to make him suspicious of something now. Resolutely and firmly I repeated what I said—“Come to New York with me; I’ve got the money.” I looked at him; my eyes were watering with embarrassment and tears. Still he stared at me. Now his eyes were blank and looking through me. It was probably the pivotal point of our friendship when he realized I had actually spent some hours thinking about him and his troubles,