To Have And Have Not

CHAPTER XIV
HE did not take the bicycle but walked down the
street* The moon was up now and the trees were
dark against it, and he passed the frame houses with
their narrow yards, light coming from the shuttered
windows; the unpaved alleys, with their double rows
of houses; Conch town, where all was starched, well-
shuttered, virtue, failure, grits and boiled grunts,
wider-nourishment, prejudice, righteousness, inter-
breeding and the comforts of religion; the open-
doored, lighted Cuban bolito houses, shacks whose
only romance was their names; The Red House,
Chicha's; the pressed stone church; its steeples sharp
ugly triangles against the moonlight; the big grounds
and the long, black-domed bulk of the convent,
handsome in the moonlight; a filling station and a
sandwich place, bright-lighted beside a vacant lot
where a miniature golf course had been taken out;
past the brightly lit main street with the three drug
stores, the music store, the five Jew stores, three pool
rooms, two barbershops, five beer joints, three ice
cream parlours, the five poor and the one good
restaurant, two magazine and paper places, four
second-hand joints (one of which made keys), a
photographer's, an office building with four dentists'
offices upstairs, the big dime store, a hotel on the
comer with taxis opposite; and across, behind the
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