He reached into his wallet and handed her a bill.
"Didn't you say you wanted stamps?"
"Yes?"
"Do you have change for the machine?"
"Yes, I think so," he said.
"Machine's right over there," she said, gesturing toward it with her head. She rang up his dollar bill, and then reached for a paper bag below the counter. "Are you from the neighborhood?"
"No."
She watched him as he put his money in the machine and then pulled the lever for the stamps.
"Out of town?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Carey, do you know it?"
"I don't think so."
"It's near Huddleston. Do you ski?"
"Me?" the girl said, and laughed.
He licked the stamps and put one in the corner of each envelope. "Do you have a pen?" he asked.
"Sure," she said, and handed him one from alongside the cash register. "Did you ever see a colored person skiing?"
"Tell you the truth," he said, "I've never been skiing, so I wouldn't know."
"Oh, I'm sure there's one or two," she said. "There must be one or two in the whole United States, don't you think?"
"I guess there must be."
"Yeah, but I don't know any of them," she said.
"Neither do I."
She glanced at the envelope he was addressing. "Who's Dorothy Broome?" she asked.
"My mother."
"What's your name?"
"Roger Broome."
"I'm Amelia," she said.
"Hello, Amelia."
"Amelia Perez." She paused. "My father's Spanish."
"All right, Amelia," he said, and looked up at her and smiled, and then began addressing the other envelope.
"This is the one to your landlady, huh, Roger?"
"That's right."
"Mrs… Agnes… Dougherty." Amelia grinned. "Some landlady."
"She really is," Roger said.
"Mmm."
"Well," he said, and looked up and smiled. "That's that."
"Mailbox right outside," Amelia said.
"Thank you," he said. They stared at each other for a moment. "Well." He shrugged. "Well, so long."
"So long, Roger," she said behind him.
He stopped at the phone booth on the way out and opened the directory, first looking up POLICE, and then turning to the CITY OF section and finding a listing there for POLICE DEPT. His finger skipped over the various headings, Alcoholic Unit, Bomb Squad, Central Motors Repr Shop, Hrbr Precinct, Homicide Squads, Narcotic, Safety, Traffic, Youth - where were all the individual precincts? What did a man do if he simply wanted a cop? He closed the directory and walked back to the cash register. Amelia looked up.
"Hi," she said. "Did you forget something?" "I'm supposed to meet a friend of mine outside the police station," he said, and shrugged. "Trouble is, I don't know where it is."
"Go across to the park," she said, "and start walking uptown on Graver Avenue. You can't miss it. It's got these big green globes out front."
The big green globes were each marked with the numerals "87." They flanked the closed brown entrance doors of the building, the building a soot-covered monotonous gray against the gray early-morning sky behind it. Roger stood across the street near the low stone wall marking the park's northern boundary on Grover Avenue, and looked at the building and wondered if anyone was inside; the doors were closed. Well, he thought, you can't expect them to leave the doors open in the middle of winter. Anyway, the police are always there, that's their job. They don't close on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.
He looked at the building again.
It wasn't a very cheerful place sitting there across the street covered with the dirt of maybe half a century, its windows protected by wire-mesh grilles on the outside, the interior hidden by partially drawn and faded shades within. The only friendly thing about the place was the wisp of smoke that trailed up from a chimney hidden by the roofs parapets. He wondered how many policemen were inside there, and then he wondered if he should go in. Maybe it was too early to be bothering them. He walked up some fifty feet to where there was an entrance break in the low stone wall, and then walked into the park and onto the gravel path paralleling the stone wall. He looked across to the police station again, and then sat on a bench with his head partially turned so that he could watch the building.
