He wondered how many bars he had visited, starting with the spaceport administration building. There was a hazy recollection of copter-cabs and surface-cabs, of smiling, vapid faces and other smiling faces, not vapid, when the video-cast appeared on a television screen in one of the bars and there he was, squinting against the flash-camera glare, the rain seeping through the roof of umbrellas and rolling down his long, gaunt face and off the thin, long, drooping nose. And then someone recognized him or he recognized himself and drunkenly announced his identity, he wasn't sure which, and someone had bought drinks for everyone celebrating Allerton's return to blessed bachelorhood and they all had a fine old time except Allerton who had soon taken his leave and another cab and another bar.
Now the streets were familiar. There was the long, low bulk of the pie-wedge supermarket, big and wide in front and tapering in the rear, with great sweep of thermo-glass window staring at him and reflecting him in the lamplight so he could stare at himself.
And there was the schoolyard playground, deserted now, the swings wet and the teeter-totters dripping and the slicky-slide glistening. What does a man think about when he's out in space and knows he probably won't return? thought Allerton. About slicky-slides and a boy hollering in glee with an unknown voice out of an unknown face. And there were the apartment buildings, flanking their courtyard with the look of solid strength that only brick can give in this age of glass and plaster. He wondered if Nancy still had their old Republic family-copter parked on the roof near the television antenna, and then it suddenly occurred to him that Nancy might not be living here at all.
He wouldn't visit her, not yet. It was curiosity and not longing which made him enter the courtyard and the lobby of the second building on the left, past the dark, perfectly-cropped rows of California privet which in another few months would lose their glossy leaves to the coming of winter.
The illuminated dial of his wrist-watch told him it was 0230, hardly the time to go calling on a woman and her new husband and a child he had never seen. But there was the name, his name, opposite the apartment number on the call-phone. Allerton, with a hyphen after it, and the name Chambers. The widow Allerton lived here with her new husband, the legally declared widow Allerton who probably still received some mail and some callers under the old name but would one day soon be able to take Allerton and the hyphen out and leave Chambers alone. Nancy Chambers, his wife.
He pressed the buzzer and then drew back, startled. He was about to leave the lobby and run out between the rows of privet and keep on running when he heard his wife's voice, metallically, over the call-phone. "Yes? Who is it?"
He walked back and stared at the rows of names and buzzers. "Harry," he said.
There was a sob, a sucking in of breath. "I'll come right down."
"I'm coming up."
It was simple. It was as simple as waiting for the buzzer, opening the door, waiting for the elevator, pressing another button, waiting to be carried to the twelfth floor, waiting for the door to slide, walking across the hall to the apartment door, waiting for it to open, waiting, waiting, waiting....