Only eighteen hours in New York, and he loved everything, every inch of it. Ah, the square! He crossed Waverly and stood at the corner by the playground. He beamed at the ferociously determined child aiming a scooter straight at him, and jumped out of the way of a chain of girl roller-skaters advancing rhythmically toward him. An enormous-busted, green-sweatered girl with a wild bush of hair, black skin-tight pants outlining thick thighs and mighty buttocks, came whooping along, clutching the legs of a screaming bearded young man she bore on her shoulders.

"Let me down, now! Now you let me down!" he yelled, waving his arms. A short muscular girl with ape face and crew-cut, in stained corduroy shorts and red knee socks, ran behind, shouting with laughter.

"Didn't I tell you that Shirley is the strongest dyke in Greenwich Village?"

The big gorilla girl stopped abruptly, letting the young man fall headlong over her shoulders and sprawl crabwise over the green.

"Don't you dare call me a dyke!" she shouted, shaking the smaller girl by the shoulders.

The lad snatched the moment to pick himself up, with a sheepish grin at Jonathan, and tore down the street, combing his long, sleek locks as he ran.

"Go ahead, Shirley, pick up this one, go ahead!" the small girl yelled, pointing at Jonathan while she wriggled neatly out of her attacker's hands. Too startled to move for a few seconds, Jonathan saw the big girl's eye fall on him with a speculative smile. He clutched his briefcase and ran, the girls howling behind him. He made for the fenced-in space where the smallest kiddies, drunk with popsicles, were wobbling on teeter-totters or reeling behind their buggies. He knocked one of these live dolls over and quickly snatched it up in his arms as Big Shirley came toward him.

"Look out, he's going to throw the kid at you, Shirley!" the short girl yelled warning. "Come on, let's go."

They loped away, stopping for the younger ape to leap expertly onto Shirley's back. With a sigh of relief, Jonathan set down the howling child carefully.

"Thank you very much, sir," he said to the child, picking up the raspberry Good Humor his savior had dropped and restoring it to the open red mouth. He remembered that he hadn't had anything to eat since last night's hamburger in the station and he was ravenous. A benign white-haired old gentleman, wide-brimmed black hat on lap, black ribbons fluttering from his spectacles, sat on a bench reading a paperback copy of The Dance of Life. Reassured by the title, Jonathan coughed to get his attention.

"Could you tell me where I can get a cup of coffee here?" he asked.

Without looking up from his reading, the gentleman reached in his pocket and handed out a quarter before turning a page. Jonathan stared at the coin in his palm.

"Thank you, sir," he said. "Thank you very much."

How strange New Yorkers were, he marveled, but he would get used to their ways.