Marylin had a twenty-five-dollar-a-week job in Chicago.

Every morning she took the same L train to her office from her northwestern neighborhood in the city to the station at the corner of Wabash and Madison.

But what good did it do Philip to take the same train every day, to wait for this very same train six stops before Madison, and to leave it at the same time as Marylin?

The trains going into the Loop are so packed that you have to be happy just to be able to catch one. Then to arrange getting on one particular car, maybe just so you could be standing near a certain person, that’s totally out of the question.

Usually Marylin had a seat, so she must have gotten on several stops back in a neighborhood where the seats weren’t all already taken.

Philip had to be content with getting a spot to stand near the car door so he could hop out and pick her out in the crowd, then follow her along Madison for a couple of blocks.

He knew she took a left onto Dearborn and disappeared a few steps later into the entrance of one of the skyscrapers.

It was his daily game of chance whether, in some way or other—he had no clue exactly how—he might exchange a word or two with this girl.

Someday, he thought, his chance would have to come.

Philip knew Marylin to be wearing two dresses. The one she most often wore was sleeveless. That was the one he first saw her in. Her slender arms that might have been those of a fifteen-year-old had caught his eye. And when he was following after her on the crowded street, almost all he saw were these delicate childlike arms gently swaying back and forth, suspended from her shoulders.

In the surrounding hubbub Marylin strode slowly and confidently to the entrance as if knowing she would arrive on time. Her unforced upright gait increased this impression of calm.

Three weeks into his efforts Philip encountered the girl one afternoon as she was going home, and now he redoubled his efforts in this game of chance. From this point on he waited for her at the end of the workday up at the L station where the trains departed Madison heading northwest.