With three quick “Ach! Ach! Ach!” Otto blew himself to the far end of the bar and turned his back. But he was careful to turn it so that he could still see Cub’s thick curly black hair and the way he jerked his head. So the internes said he was crazy! Otto rolled his own head, proudly.... You had to know Cub Sterling to understand him.... All the really famous doctors ... like Semmelweiss ... were queer. Dr. MacArthur, himself, said that Cub Sterling had the flare...!
Cub slid off the stool and started for the door, and Otto relented:
“Vus it satissfact’ry, Docturr?”
Cub jerked his head and grinned:
“Yeah. Always is. Send me a bill soon, Otto.”
“Sure, Cubbie. Sure!”
Outside, the sky was a pincushion of diamonds. So reachable, and yet so distant. An unexplained joy, that was ribbed with restlessness, pulled Cub’s feet away from the hospital. He began strolling down Beeker Street. A silent, tuneless whistle tickled his lips. The recesses of his brain squirmed over the flat vacant center which was usually crowded with sick people. The way he used to coast this hill on a bicycle when he was in medical school! Whew! Lucky there were so few automobiles, then, or he’d have busted up a sight more test tubes.
Lord, that was long ago! Ought to begin going to debutante parties again, just to keep his foot in. He turned the corner and made his way back into Wilson Boulevard, and started the long climb to the hospital.
A glittery night, no dying patients, a full stomach! An interior champagne began to flow, and then his eye caught, in front of him, the august figure of his head nurse, Miss Kerr, sailing toward the hospital. Walking carefully and firmly in the glare of the street lamps; her tightly rolled umbrella protecting her virginity.
His left shoulder began to rise. He stooped quickly, picked a brick-bat out of a trash can and slung it at the light just behind. The action was involuntary and unpremeditated. It was an active example of his inner abandon, and followed by all the reflexes natural to a little boy.