At ten o'clock that night, Tom was telling his troubles to a red-coated man behind a chromium bar on Forty-ninth Street. The man listened with all the gravity of a physician, and lined up the appropriate medicine in front of his patient.
By midnight, Tom was singing Christmas carols, in advance of the season, with a tableful of Texans.
At one o'clock, he swung a right cross at a mounted policeman, missed, and fell beneath the horse's legs.
At one-fifteen, he fell asleep against the shoulder of a B-girl as they rode through the streets of the city in a sleek police vehicle.
That was all Tom Blacker remembered, until he woke up in Livia Cord's cozy two-room apartment. He moved his head and winced with the pain.
"Hi," the girl said.
She was smiling down at him, and for a moment, her floating face reminded Tom of the episode which had just cost him twenty grand a year. He groaned, and rolled the other way on the contour couch.
"Hair of the dog?" she said. There was a gleaming cannister in her hand.
"No, thanks." He sat up, rubbing the stiff red hair on the back of his head. One eye seemed permanently screwed shut, but the other managed to take in his surroundings. It explored the girl first, and appreciatively.