A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

No Kick Coming

They were walking home in silence together. He takes all the kick out of everything, she thought, by the way he does things. If he would only give more snap, more suddenness, to what he does!

She knew, almost word for word, step by step, and move by move, what the wind-up of their evening was going to be like. At the last corner before her house he would say, “Did you have a good time?” Then when they were at the door, he would say: “Well, here we are. See you night after tomorrow.” Always that unnecessary “Here we are!” As though they could be any place else but where they were!

As though he had ever failed to call for her every other night in the week!

Then for a dramatic climax, he would follow her just inside the doorway, strike a match so that she could fit her key in without any trouble, and after the door was open and the match blown out ask: “May I kiss you?” Once, to her intense surprise, he had varied this by saying “Mind if I kiss you?” But two nights later he had gone back to his original wording again and never changed it after that. Why, oh why, did he have to ask like that each time and rob the kiss of all its kick? She shook her head as she walked along beside him. It wasn’t, no, it wasn’t very thrilling, that was all.

They arrived at the last street corner. Here it came now, always at this same spot, right where the electric lamp-post was standing. “Did you have a good time?”

“Very,” she answered patiently.

They stopped at the door. Say it! she thought irritably. Say it and get it over with!

He didn’t fail to. “Well, here we are,” he said. And then, “See you night after tomorrow.” She just smiled drearily at him and turned to go in. He came after her and struck a match and held it while she put her key in the door. Then “May I kiss you?” he murmured. It made the whole thing as tame as a handshake. She held up her face, coolly, briefly, and then slipped in and shut the door after her.

Inside the flat she flung her purse down with a violent, explosive gesture. Immediately the light flashed on and her roommate sat up in bed suddenly.

“Hello, Ivy,” she said. “You woke me up. What time is it?”

“It’s the usual time,” said Ivy sullenly. “Not a minute later, not a minute sooner. Everything’s run according to a schedule with him, you see.”

“Have a good time with Walter?” her roommate yawned.

“Oh, gorgeous!” snapped Ivy.

“You don’t sound like it. What happened? Did you have a quarrel?”

“A quarrel would be something at least,” Ivy exclaimed, running a comb repeatedly through her hair in what looked like a vicious attempt at scalping herself. “He hasn’t even got spirit enough to quarrel with me.” This was said complainingly rather than admiringly.

“Why, Ivy!” the roommate admonished, sinking back on the pillow and ruffling her hair in time with Ivy’s frantic combing. “He loves you. What more do you want? A steady, reliable fellow who’s devoted to you and intends settling down with you. You have no kick coming!”

“That’s just it,” agreed Ivy dismally. “I certainly have no kick coming!” She abruptly snapped the light out.

The next day, in a starched muslin frock and a peaked white cap to go with the surroundings, she waited on tables. The final touch of old Holland, the wooden shoes, had fortunately been omitted as conflicting with the necessary rapidity of movement. In this atmosphere, redolent of such native Dutch dishes as griddle-cakes and shredded wheat, the long hours slipped past her. The evening of the second day was one of Walter’s Saturdays. A picture show on Tuesdays and Thursdays, dancing on Saturdays. That was as immutable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. That they should go to a picture on Saturday, for instance, and dance together on one of the other two nights, why there was much more likelihood of the sun shining at midnight or snow falling in August than of that ever happening! Instead of feeling the way girls do a month or so before they get married, she thought rebelliously, I feel the way they do years afterward — all disinterested and blah! She was meanwhile preparing herself in a listless way to be ready at half-past eight, the hour when he would call for her, with no excitement and no anticipation.

All the faces would be the same, the tunes would be the same, for he always took her to the same place. And at the very same spot on the floor, where that thick post was set, he would go out of step again trying to get past it. It was difficult to recall, it seemed so long ago now, that she had once laughed about this, saying: “We’ll have to have that removed!” And that a week later, when the same thing happened, she said: “Here’s our old friend Mr. Post.” Now she no longer said a word. It was — well, just a part of Walter; it had to be taken for granted along with everything else that he stood for: good-hearted, reliable, devoted to her; altogether a calendar of virtues. But a calendar without a red-letter day for her. Her friend came in at eight, home from toil.

“You certainly are,” she remarked with a glance at the familiar pale-blue Saturday night dress, “getting your money’s worth out of that thing. Aren’t you afraid Walter will get tired of seeing you in it so much?”

“It’s just the other way round,” Ivy corrected her. “I wear it each time as a special favor to him; he’s asked me to time and again, doesn’t like me in new things. That night I wore the other one for a change, his face dropped and he said something about having to get used to me all over again.”

“Well,” observed her friend enviously, “he’s just about ideal. You don’t have to worry about what to wear to go out with him. Are you lucky!”

“So I’ve been told,” Ivy agreed desperately.

Eight-thirty came, then went again. Thirty seconds past, then a whole minute, then two — and for the first time in months the doorbell didn’t give its familiar ring. He had never been as unpunctual as this before.

“I honestly believe,” Ivy said hopefully, as though discovering a new trait to be admired in him, “he’s going to be all of five or ten minutes late. And yet it can’t be possible; it must be our clock that’s fast.”

“I’m not put out,” she was saying a quarter of an hour later. “At least for once he’s done something to break the awful monotony. It’s a habit should be encouraged.”

The telephone rang. It was Walter. He had been unavoidably detained. He was apologetic, almost abjectly so in fact. He was on his way now.

“Instead of your coming all the way up here,” she suggested, “I’ll wait for you at the place instead. That’ll save time.”

When she came back to the room, she remarked, “I’m going to do something I’ve wanted to do for months.”

“What?” asked her friend, slightly alarmed.

“I’m going down there alone to that place, ahead of him, and find out what it feels like to dance with somebody else for a change.”

“Ivy,” her roommate remonstrated, “you’re just doing this because you’re peeved at him. You don’t really want to go down there without an escort—”

“Don’t I!” said Ivy. “Don’t I? If you only knew! Listen,” she said intensely. “I have an enemy down there, and tonight is my chance to get even. Don’t get frightened,” she added as her friend’s eyes widened. “It’s only a post, but tonight for once in my life I’m going to get past that post without having a hitch thrown into my dancing!” Then she flung the door open and departed, leaving her roommate to close it after her with a puzzled look on her face.

Ivy bought her own way into the dance hall and seated herself in the first vacant armchair she came to. “No,” she said almost at once, over her shoulder, and then “No” again, and still a third time “No” with an added “Thank you” by way of afterthought. She hadn’t come there to indulge in flirtation; those who had noticed her on former occasions in the company of Walter and now approached with a doubtful, furtive air about them wouldn’t do at all.

“He’s got to come up and stand right before me, whoever he is,” she told herself, “not sneak up sideways hoping no one will notice.”

Her glance wandered across the sleek floor to the opposite side of the room. There’s someone, she thought, who would do nicely. Almost as though he had heard her, he started over, then and there, neither hurriedly nor yet slowly, cutting directly across the vacant floor with an air of assurance that was all to his credit. I shouldn’t have looked over at him, Ivy thought remorsefully, now that it was too late. She turned her face away. Even when she knew that he was standing there, she pretended not to see him.

“The next?” he said in a resonant voice.

“What would you have done if I had refused?” she asked curiously once they were out on the floor.

“Just what I’m doing now,” he said. “Dance with you anyway.”

“With somebody else, you mean?”

“With you, I said,” he corrected. “When I want to dance with someone bad enough to ask them, I dance with them!”

“Well!” she said, a bit rashly. “This is something, anyway! I have no kick coming so far.”

The famous post bore down on them. Instinctively she bunched herself together, waiting for the misstep that was to come. There was no misstep. Expertly he detoured in a half circle, and it receded harmlessly in back of them. There, she thought triumphantly. I’ve accomplished what I set out to do tonight — now I’ll leave him as soon as the music stops and wait for Walter.

She did leave him as soon as the music stopped, and the next time it stopped, and the time after that too. In fact, each and every time it stopped, she left him to wait for Walter, and each time it began, no matter how inconspicuous and out-of-the-way a refuge she had chosen for herself, he found her and dragged her out into the open again. She said “No” and “No more tonight, thanks,” and found herself dancing with him anyway.

“You’ve been saying for nearly an hour now,” he objected, “that you expect your friend any minute. Well, he isn’t here yet.” He came to an abrupt decision. “Come on, let’s go,” he ordered. “I didn’t dance with you all evening to turn you over to someone else! I’m taking you home myself.”

“Leave here with you?” she gasped. “Why, I should say—”

“Come on, no use arguing about it,” he repeated impatiently, and taking her by the elbow lifted her to her feet.

After all, she decided, it was no more than Walter deserved for being so late. He’d kept her waiting here for him for nearly an hour. “You’d make a good kidnaper,” she told him tartly. But at the same time she inconsistently let him lead her toward the entrance and out of the place. It was rather nice for a change to have your mind made up for you. It put the blame for whatever you did on the other person and not on yourself. It made you feel carefree and irresponsible.

“Well,” she said ungraciously as they reached the street, “now that you’ve had your way, what next?” And shot him a look that was meant to be cold and disapproving.

“We’ll go and get something to eat,” he said.

“No we won’t,” she said immediately. “I’m not hungry.”

“I am,” he told her, “so we’ll get something to eat.”

“Didn’t I just tell you—?” she began. By the time she was through telling him, they were already seated at a table somewhere.

“And a chicken sandwich for the lady,” he informed the waiter.

“Nothing of the kind!” Ivy corrected bitingly. “I’m not having a thing.”

“And like I just told you, a chicken sandwich for the lady.”

The man nodded and went to get the order; he seemed to have no doubt as to which voice of the two was the deciding one.

“He can bring it,” said the irate Ivy, “but that doesn’t mean I’m going to eat it!”

Somewhat later, after she had replaced her fork on the empty plate, they stood up to go. “He thinks he’s good,” she told herself knowingly. “I simply changed my mind, that was all.”

On the way to her house they passed a jewelry store, the same one Walter always stopped to look at whenever he brought her by there.

“Wait a minute. Let’s see what they’ve got here,” he said. But he didn’t have as much trouble as Walter did making up his mind, he did not bother calculating how long it would take at the rate of five dollars down and five a week or anything like that. All he did was point to the very biggest diamond ring on the tray and say: “There’s a beaut. Want me to get you that?”

“Are you crazy or something?” she gasped. “We’ve only seen each other tonight for the first time!”

He looked at her in surprise. “What’s wrong about that?” he wanted to know. “Isn’t that the way to do things, right on the dot? I happen to like you!”

That was the way she had always felt about it herself — make life a breathless, thrilling thing. But this was going too far.

“Not so fast, slow down,” she said coldly.

“Why, we’re just cut out for each other.” But she had turned resolutely away from the window and wasn’t listening any more. “I’m going to get that for you,” he said briskly, coming after her, “that one I just showed you.”

“Better forget it,” she smiled. “It’s priced too high.”

“When I want something,” he said stubbornly, “I go ahead and get it!”

They passed the lamp-post on the corner.

“I enjoyed myself tonight,” she said suddenly, without being asked.

All he said was “What’d you expect?” as though that was to be taken for granted; it was needless to mention a thing like that.

“But, Ivy,” her friend asked when she let her in a few minutes later, “what on earth possessed you to pound on the door the way you just did? Didn’t you have your key with you?”

“Yes,” gasped Ivy, “but I didn’t have time to use it. It’s a good thing you came to the door when you did!”

“That’s not like you at all,” her friend persisted. “And poor Walter has been ringing up constantly all evening long saying he couldn’t locate you—”

“Walter?” said Ivy with an effort. “Oh, yes — I forgot.”

She had a mid-afternoon station at the Old Dutch Corner the next day. As she was walking along leisurely toward the restaurant in the two o’clock sunshine, something made her stop and stare in surprise. There was the familiar jewelry shop, but quite a change had come over it. Two boards, crossed to form an X, protected the place where the glass showcase had been until now. And where the glass showcase had been, there were just splinters and jagged ends sticking out of the frame, with the sidewalk below it well iced with innumerable fragments of broken glass. A policeman on guard before the doorway kept advising loiterers to move on and not stand there.

Which advice Ivy took herself only when she found herself being addressed in person. Held up! she thought, continuing reluctantly on her way. I wonder what Walter will say when he hears about it? Then suddenly a horrible intuition that had nothing whatever to do with Walter flashed through her mind and was quickly dismissed. “I’m imagining things,” she told herself. “He wouldn’t dare.”

She entered the Old Dutch Corner, made her way to the back, and descended the narrow stairs that led down to the waitresses’ locker-room. When she came up again, she was in the muslin frock and peaked cap. “The six tables along the wall in back,” the manager directed her. “And fill the sugar bowls. People have been putting wet spoons in them all morning.” Into the fray she plunged for the next five or six hours. Endless hours of serving tomato-juice, finger-bowls, and all that went in between. Until ten came, and she was through.

She had just scratched off her last meal-check and was turning to go downstairs and take off her uniform when a new customer pushed through the revolving doors. She groaned inwardly and waited to see if he would sit at her station. That would mean another half-hour. But he didn’t select any table at all. Instead he leaned intimately across the cashier’s desk. She glanced over in surprise, thinking he must have a pretty bad cold the way his scarf was thrown up over his chin. Then she saw the cashier raise his hands; his face was white and drawn. He stayed that way without moving, while the customer reached over and did something to the drawer on the inside of the counter where the money was kept.

After that things began to happen too quickly for Ivy to grasp what it was all about. The blast of a whistle sounded faintly outside on the street somewhere. The two or three diners in the place stood up excitedly, craning their necks; a chair fell over backwards. A voice, the voice of that man up front, barked out: “Just stay where you are, all of you!” The revolving door began to spin violently around, and two policemen could be seen flattened against it in a hurry to get in from the outside. On top of all this there was a crashing, shattering noise, as though a giant firecracker had gone off, only much louder than that even, followed by a sound of scampering feet going toward the back, where there was a delivery-exit on the side-street. But by now Ivy was crouching down under a table, her head bunched between her shoulders, as a precaution against whatever might come next.

There were, however, no further explosions like the first one; instead everyone in the place began talking at once, and there was an incessant rushing from front to back and back to front. “He got out the back way!” she heard someone say. She straightened up and ventured out into the open once more. The whole front of the restaurant was boiling with excitement. The night-manager, greatly upset, was conferring with one of the policemen.

“They oughta know better than to build a place with two entrances these days,” the policeman was saying disgustedly.

“Mr. Simms,” ventured Ivy timidly, “may I go home now?”

“Don’t annoy me at a time like this!” Mr. Simms exclaimed abruptly. “Go ahead if your time’s up.”

She hurried to the back room and down the steps to the locker-room. She quickly opened the locker with her key, took her street-dress off the hook, pulled the Dutch cap from her head, and then sat down momentarily on the long bench to rest her feet and get her breath back. It was then that, glancing into the mirror before her on the wall, she saw his reflection for the first time. He had wedged himself into the corner between the wall and the end locker and couldn’t be seen as you opened the door. She froze from head to foot.

“Wait a minute. Keep your head,” his voice said. “You know me.” And he came out and stood there and, of all things, smiled nonchalantly at her.

“You!” she squeaked. “You — last night!” They stood looking at each other, she up at him and he down at her. It never occurred to her, somehow, to scream for help. After all, when you have danced and eaten a sandwich with a person, you don’t usually scream for help the very next time you see him. “I should have known there was a catch in it somewhere,” she declared bitterly. “So this is what you are and what you do! And now I suppose you think I’m going to help you get away or something—?”

He kept right on smiling at her; he even seated himself negligently astride the bench, opposite to her. “Go ahead,” he invited with a sweep of his arm. “Call them in.” He said this with complete indifference. She felt, somehow, that he really meant it; he wasn’t just bluffing. “I didn’t even know you worked here,” he went on. “If you think I’d trade on your liking for me to get myself out of this jam, you’re all wrong.”

“My liking for you?” she exploded violently. “You’ll find out in a minute just how much I like you! You — you criminal!” She leaped up and took a step toward the door, a determined and furious one. Then there was loud knocking and confused voices from outside. “Don’t come in. I’m undressed!” she shrieked wildly, and threw her whole weight against the door to hold it. Over her shoulder she saw that reckless fool still grinning at her, his eyes on the uniform that clothed her from neck to calf. She couldn’t help admiring his nerve; maybe that was what made her do what she did.

“There’s no one in there but you, is there, Ivy?” the manager’s voice called in.

She evaded the question. “How could there be, Mr. Simms?” she shouted back. “I’ll be out in five minutes!”

The confusion of voices melted away on the other side of the locked door.

“Such a lot of trouble,” he grinned, “to save a criminal!”

“You certainly don’t deserve it!” she admitted bitterly. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me, anyway! Now get out of here before they find you!”

He came up behind her. “All right, let’s go,” he agreed. “I’ll turn my back while you’re changing.”

“Me, you mean?” she said in a barely audible voice. “Go with you!” And froze in consternation.

“Life is short and sweet; that’s the way to live it. Here, slip this on.” And that very large diamond ring he had pointed out to her last night behind the glass showcase passed into the palm of her hand. “We’ll pick up a car outside, send it back tomorrow C.O.D. We’ll make our getaway into Jersey or Connecticut, and what happened upstairs tonight won’t happen any more if you don’t want it to.”

“But it would always be hanging over us. It would only spoil everything,” she said. “The only thing I like about you is your suddenness — your courage. Only why couldn’t it have been something on the square, like saving a child from fire? Right is right and wrong is wrong.” She shook her head. “Hurry up and get away if you can,” she pleaded, clenching her hands. “I don’t want to have to call them in here!”

He simply saluted her with two fingers at his temple. He opened the door an inch or two with infinite precaution and stood there listening. He crept as far as the stairs to reconnoiter and then looked back at her. He winked. He could think of winking at a time like this!

“They’re all up front at the other end of the restaurant,” he reported elatedly. “Now’s my chance. Watch me go out the back way!” The last thing she heard him say was: “Too bad I have to leave you behind, baby. We were made for each other.” Then he slipped from sight and was gone.

She stood there waiting, listening. No disturbing sounds came back to her. He had gotten away. It was over. She gave a peculiar sigh. If only she had had the courage! What was life after all? If you were going to be afraid of it, you were better off dead. Suddenly she found her street-coat wrapped around her uniform, found herself racing up those stairs after him. A skyrocket seemed to have exploded within her, brilliant, flashing; stars were in her eyes.

“Wait!” she gasped. “Wait! Life can’t pass me by; it mustn’t! Wait, I’m coming!”

Out the back way, from the lighted restaurant into the dark street she sped. Halfway down toward the corner the red tail-light of a car lurched out of a line of parked machines. Instinctively she felt that he was in it, knew he must be. She didn’t even know his name, didn’t know what to call him. Life has no time in its headlong rush. Her despairing scream rent the quiet night air.

“Wait, wait for me! Take me with you!”

The car didn’t stop. He wasn’t the kind would stop, ever. Instead it went crashing into reverse and heeled backwards toward her. The door swung open; his arm reached out to take her — to take what he wanted out of life. She found the running-board with one foot and before she could even get in next to him they were careening madly down the street and the city and the world went flashing by, left far behind. Out in the darkness somewhere in back of them came the eerie wail of a police siren. He only laughed, and even in the act of swerving crazily from side to side, so that any minute threatened to be their last, turned to her and their lips met in the bitter sweetness of a kiss stolen on borrowed time.

“Again!” she pleaded. “Again! We may never have time for another—” The windshield cracked and there was a powdered seam in it directly between their two heads — or where their two heads had been only an instant before.

“Crouch down low, darling,” he grinned, “and away we go! A miss is as good as a mile!” She slipped down to the floor and rested her head against his knee and never took her eyes from his face after that. From time to time in their long mad flight through darkness he would reach down and stroke her hair with one hand and say: “How does it feel to be alive?” She knew what he meant; he didn’t mean because of the bullets — he meant to be alive in this new way, the way she had always longed to live; the way that was to be her way from now on.

The sleepy-eyed clerk in the little upstate hotel pushed the register toward them at three in the morning, and Eddinger turned to her and kissed her before he signed it. A recklessly happy kiss, an exulting kiss at having outwitted death one more time. The clerk had never seen two people with such shining eyes; he wondered disapprovingly if they’d been drinking. Mr. and Mrs. Smith the book recorded.

“The best you’ve got,” he told the clerk, and carelessly tossed a crumpled bill on the desk.

“You don’t have to pay your bill until you leave,” said the clerk. Eddinger looked at Ivy and they both laughed, as though they shared some private joke between them.

“You’d better take it now,” he said. “There’s no telling—” When the door upstairs had closed upon them and they were alone, they flew into each other’s arms like two wild birds in a storm. Stolen time! Every moment was stolen time. Every minute might be the last. That perhaps saved the situation from cheapness, tawdriness; that made it more than just a one-night stand in a country hotel with Mr. and Mrs. Smith on the register. Though she was inexperienced as far as those things went, Ivy somehow knew the difference just as any woman would have. He wasn’t just playing with her; whatever his past had been, he was as sincere tonight as she was. No one could have feigned the real admiration, the basic respect, that showed amidst all the wildness of his kisses. The broken inchoate murmurs he poured into her ears came from the heart; they lacked the smoothness of hypocrisy.

“My kind of a girl, found my kind of a girl at last! You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

“No — all my life I’ve been waiting — you don’t know what this means, do you? If you put your head on my shoulder tonight in this room, it means forever, for always. If not, say so now.”

“From now on is the word,” he said. “It may end in five minutes — it may last for fifty years.”

“With this kiss,” she breathed, “I thee wed.” Darkness suddenly flooded the room. Strangest of wedding-nights, a revolver in a holster slung across the foot of their marriage bed, neither of them daring to undress, every footfall in the corridor past their door a sudden menace.

When it finally came, just before dawn, there was no warning, not even a stealthy footfall outside. A sudden surging rush of many bodies that buckled their door and almost burst it in. The chest of drawers barricading it alone kept it in place. And then the thundering summons that Ivy heard now for the first time and the last. “Open in the name of the law!” They had leaped spasmodically apart, torn from each other’s arms like a pair of puppets dangling on strings. The gun was already in his hand, aimed at the door, ready, as he swept her toward the wall with one arm.

“Into the closet, sweet, and flat on the floor! Hell’s going to break!”

“We know you’re in there, Eddinger; open or we’ll shoot!”

Vainly she clawed at the knob of the closet-door. “It’s locked, Ed. I can’t get in!” He took a single step toward it, swerved his gun for a minute toward the keyhole, and fired. It shattered into a dozen metal fragments and the door was open.

“Get in and keep it shut!” Then he dropped flat on his stomach and was smiling as the first thundering volley came crashing through the room door from outside.

That was the last thing she saw — his smile in the face of death. She shrank back into the closet and pulled the door shut after her. Then suddenly she found that there was no wall at her back. It was not a closet at all, it was the next room — that had been the connecting door between that he had blasted open for her. The noise from the room she had just left was deafening for a minute, and then the silence that followed was even more deafening.

“Got him, I guess,” said a voice from out in the hall in the midst of the sudden stillness. And a moan escaped from her:

“No — oh, no!”

There was a sudden crash and they had broken in the door. Her heart had stopped beating as she put her ear to the connecting door.

“Got him all right,” said the same voice. “Full of holes as a Swiss cheese.”

She turned and staggered blindly out into the hall from the room where she had taken refuge and found other guests creeping out of their rooms one by one and no one noticed her in the crowd. As she stumbled downstairs and out into the night, all she could see before her was a smile — his smile in the face of death.

Half an hour later and a mile away, a big milk truck lumbering toward New York came to a stop beside her.

“Want a lift?” offered the driver. “Something happen to you? Been hurt?”

The girl who had been stumbling along the side of the darkened road took his hand and climbed in next to him.

“Yes, I have,” she answered in a quiet voice. “Right here.” And she placed her hand over her heart for a moment.

Her roommate said: “Oh, you had me frightened! I didn’t know what had happened to you! You look as though you’ve been out in a storm. Your hair’s all—”

“Yes,” said Ivy. “A strong wind caught me up, a wind called life, for just an hour or so. Then it passed on and left a dead calm.”

Her roommate wasn’t much on riddles; she changed the subject.

“I see they finally killed that awful Eddinger,” she said. “It’s in all the papers. I’m certainly glad they did, too!”

“Some women,” said Ivy with the ghost of a smile, “would stick to a man like that to the bitter end.”

“By the way, Walter dropped around to see you last night. He waited hours for you to come home. He left a message for you. He told me to tell you he made the first payment on a ring yesterday. He said you’d know what that meant.”

“I do,” said Ivy bleakly.

“But,” protested her friend, “why are you so downcast about it? You should consider yourself lucky. A steady, reliable fellow who thinks the world of you, wants to settle down. You have no kick coming.”

“You’re right,” agreed Ivy dismally. “I certainly have no kick coming.” But she didn’t mean it in quite the same way.