"Damn white stuff!" He hunched his shoulders more, pulled his neck down into the folds of his collar. "Puts a pure clean blanket over the whole world—but all you have to do is walk on it and you can see the dirt underneath!"
George climbed the steps to the elevated, bought a ticket to anywhere. Then he sat down and waited for a train.
There was a girl waiting with him. She was pretty. George watched her until the train pulled in, wondering what she was doing wandering around Chicago at this time of night.
She got on the train with him, sat down in the seat across from him. The train whined into motion.
"Hello," she said after a while.
"Hello," he replied, startled by her voice. People on elevated trains don't go around saying "hello" to each other!
"Do you mind awfully much if I talk to you?"
"Go ahead." Nor, he thought, do they ask such questions of strange men.
"Do you ever get lonely here in Chicago?"
George smiled. "Sometimes," he said. "You lonely, kid?"