Free Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! by M. E. Kerr

going to get it to her?”
    “I could pick it up now, I suppose,” Tucker said.
    “I guess it’s the only way,” P. John said. “Would you mind, Tucker?”
    Richter School was a private school, and most of the students came from what some people called “good families.” That was supposed to imply that the families were what Tucker’s mother liked to describe as “comfortable.” The fathers were in professions like law, medicine, public relations, banking, advertising, publishing.
    Most of the students lived in large apartment houses with doormen, and some lived in town houses like Tucker did.
    P. John lived on the third floor of a rickety old building on West 13th Street, no doorman and no elevator. It was Tucker’s first visit there.
    “My mother’s dead,” P. John said out of the blue as they climbed the worn stairs. “There’s just my father and me.”
    The first thing Tucker saw when P. John opened the door to his apartment was a huge poster of Mao Tsetung on the kitchen wall, and beside that, a poster reading BEAT THE SYSTEM!
    There was a lean, boyish-faced man at the stove. He was stirring a large pot of spaghetti sauce. He had an apron around his waist; he was wearing worn khaki pants, desert boots, and a white T-shirt with a picture of Bach on the front. He had long salt-and-pepper hair, and a wide, friendly grin.
    “Welcome!” he said. “I’m Perry. Who’re you?”
    “This is Tucker Woolf, a classmate,” P. John said. “He came by to pick up something.”
    “Stay to dinner, Tucker,” said Mr. Knight. “P. John, I’ve invited Mac to dinner, and Dewey. Dewey’s here from the Coast.”
    “Thank you, anyway,” Tucker said. “I’m expected home.”
    “Only four for dinner,” Mr. Knight said. “That’s a pity. I’m cooking enough for an army. I’m adding to what we had last night, Johnny.”
    “Only three for dinner,” P. John said. “I’m not going off my diet again.”
    “No one’s twisting your arm, Johnny. I really admire you, turning down your favorite dish.”
    P. John said nothing. He led Tucker into the next room. All four walls were bookcases. There was a card table filled with magazines and notebooks, and a large steel file cabinet beside it.
    “My father’s writing a book,” P. John muttered. He went across to a claw-legged bureau and picked up a gift-wrapped parcel that was obviously a book.
    There was an old couch with a worn throw across it, a threadbare rug on the floor, a few captain’s chairs, and a long coffee table made from a piece of slate and some bricks.
    “Do you want to sit down?” P. John said.
    “Maybe I just better go along,” Tucker said.
    “Sit down and stay awhile,” P. John’s father called from the kitchen. “Johnny never brings friends here. He’s ashamed of me.”
    “I’m not ashamed of you,” P. John called back. “I just don’t agree with most of your opinions.”
    P. John handed Tucker the gift-wrapped book. “Tell her there’s a card inside.”
    “What’s Johnny’s girl friend like?” P. John’s father called in. “He won’t tell me a thing.”
    “She’s very nice,” Tucker shouted, but Mr. Knight appeared in the doorway, wiping his hands on his apron, lighting up a cigarette.
    “Why don’t you call home and see if you can stay for dinner?” Mr. Knight said. “You’ll like these two old friends of mine. They’ve seen some hard times. They have a lot of interesting stories to tell.”
    “All adding up to one thing,” P. John said. “They’re out of work, and they want to borrow money.”
    “I really have to go home. Thanks anyway,” Tucker said.
    “Dewey just got a job in a department store,” Mr. Knight said. “But if Mac and Dewey wanted to borrow money, we’d lend them money. They’re our friends, Johnny.”
    “They’re your friends. I don’t make loans.”
    “Johnny thinks I’m a soft touch,” Mr. Knight said to Tucker.
    “I don’t think it. I know it,” P. John said. “It’s