"The following day we are set to move on to New Jersey (although, offhand, I have no idea why). Geoff tells me that he will not be coming the rest of the way with us – as if this might make any difference. His investment secured by the signatures on the contract, Geoff is not quite interested enough to endure a second American gig. I am then led across the hallway to where Mike has his room, and there he sits upright in bed – a mass of large red sores covering his face and upper body. It is explained to me that Mike had shared his bed last night and that the unlucky dalliance left him with an outbreak of Lebanese warts. This now means that our trips to New Jersey and Boston must be scrapped, yet we cannot leave the country until the infected body is able to travel. I pass several more days in New York by myself. Johnny is nowhere to be seen, and I do not lay eyes on him once during my entire stay at the Algonquin. I am baffled, or mentally deficient, or both, but certainly I am deliberately cut off from everyone, as a prearranged plot kicks into full gear. I am being frozen out. It is a difficult week of rigid iceberg weather, as I dig despairingly at the Strand Bookshop and cough my way through the cheap eateries of Times Square slime, and I now fully realize that the other three Smiths are taking great steps to oust me. Why, I do not know. New York has not yet been daubed with New World flash and brightness – no sign, as yet, of the computer age, and here in the wrong section of Fifth Avenue it is still a quagmire of midnight cowboys and sterile cuckoos. Perhaps it is the best of times for New York City. I am never troubled or approached as I sit alone in Washington Square. Smells abound unique to this city, and a warring settlement moves too fast, and the lonely traveler is engulfed. When we all finally meet at the airport there is enough silence to indicate the end."
