My footsteps carried me on down the block.
A little car spurted on past me. One of those foreign jobs, I decided.
Only it wasn't. I fixed the silhouette in my mind's eye and identified
it. A Henry J.
Still, I wasn't worried. It was actually too early in the day. It
wasn't as if it were evening or anything like that.
The little store was right where I left it, rotting quietly to itself.
The Back Number Store, the faded circus poster proclaimed in red and
gold, or now, pink and lemon. In the window, in cellophane envelopes,
were the first issue of _Life_, a recent issue of _Modern Man_ with
a modern woman fronting it, a Big Big Book of _Buck Rogers and the
Silver Cities of Venus_, and a brand-new, sun-bleached copy of _Doctor
Zhivago_.
There was a little car at the curb. This time I recognized that it
wasn't an import, just a Crosley.