"It's against my religion to have to do with medicine," Ollie improvised. "Besides, I'm perfectly well."
"Yeah? What about your voice—or lack of one?"
"A coughing spell. I'm over it now. And my voice is coming back." It was.
The steward unbuttoned his coat and scratched his belly meditatively. "If you don't want treatment you don't have to have it," he said finally. "The joint's overcrowded now."
Ollie didn't congratulate himself when he got out. He was now a fugitive from both the geriatricians and the underworld. Soon the police would want him for bail-jumping, and meanwhile they'd grab him for vagrancy if they caught him off skidrow.
He headed that way at once, walking over to Mission and down it toward Third. A clock on a store-front said five twenty. He felt overdue for supper and bed.
He counted his change—three dollars and forty-two cents. He had no bedroll; no overcoat, either. Even in this nice summer weather it might be a little tough for a fellow to get by on the road with so little plunder. Eighty-six was a trifle old for the rugged life.
What he needed, of course, was a white-collar job. Not only needed, but deserved—he was a good clerk. Therefore he should go to the Hearst Building at Third and Market and scan the want ads posted there. As he'd been doing when in San Francisco for forty years.
He thought of some of the many times he'd stared at that bulletin board. He'd gone there often during the years he'd worked as a construction timekeeper, before that skill became obsolete. Then there'd been an interval when he'd sold rebuilt window washers—for a firm which still owed him money. And he'd haunted the board during the months he'd had that job in the automatic grocery, replenishing the dispensing machines' merchandise.
None of his jobs had come from a want ad. But he had to go look. It was a ritual.