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"And it’s still around"

"I’ll tell Dot I’ular line We won’t need Pablo"

"Pablo?"

"It’s not iot plenty of money, and I think I can inal reason I got into it And I just realized so else"

"Oh?"

"The real reason I didn’t explain Jenny’s na It’s the same reason I didn’t sleep with her"

"It would be long and drawn out and sheso that’s just for you and me I didn’t think of it in those terms, I just knew I didn’t want to do it Sleep with her or explain to her But that’s why" He drew a breath "I suppose that sounds pretty silly"

"No," she said "Not to me"

"I’ll call Dot"

She put her hand on his arm "There’s no rush," she said "Call her in a little while"

KELLER’S OBLIGATION

Forty-Nine

Well, I guess you could walk there," the bellested that the whole idea of walking anywhere struck hi to the notion "You go out the door, you take a left, you go one, two, three blocks to Allen Street, turn right, and once you cross Pearl Street you’re pretty much there You can’t miss it, really"

Keller repeated the directions and the bellet to the Y "That’s it," he said, when Keller had finished "There’s one-way streets involved, but you don’t have to pay any attention to that, not if you’re going on foot"

That, Keller agreed, was the beauty of walking, along with not needing a quarter for the parking ?

"You can’t ain "It’s three or four stories tall, and it’s got a big red A on the top of it"

Keller had read The Scarlet Letter in high school Or at least he thought he had, but he ht have scraped by with the Classic Coo he’d read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which he’d always thought he’d read in school, but the book turned out to be much richer and fuller than what he re visual memory of Huck and Jim on the raft, and decided it owed less to Mark Twain’s description than to the broader strokes of a comic book artist So maybe he’d read Hawthorne and maybe he hadn’t, but either way he recalled the woet a nanificance of the title The scarlet letter was an A, and she’d been branded with it to indicate that she was an adulteress

And the building, the YMCA, was one he couldn’t miss Because it had an A on its top

The bellht on the , four stories tall, with a classic limestone facade and, no question, the letter Alike an ember to tell the whole world what poor Hester Prynne had done Keller posted hionally across the street and kept an eye on the entrance, then gave it up when he realized he didn’t knoho or what he was looking for He crossed the street and mounted a few steps and went inside, and a pleasantly plump woman with a kind face told him he’d find the staet off the elevator," she said, "or to the right if you take the stairs"