The old man sat behind a fortress of magazines and books, treacherously reading the funnies in a newspaper. His bald head swiveled on the hunched shoulders of his sweater which was azuring toward white. He grinned, toothless.

"Came back for more of the stuff, did you?"

He laid down the newspaper. (That subheadline couldn't really be making so nasty a suggestion to a noted general, could it?)

"Yes," I laughed, not very true.

"I know what a craving can be. I shouldn't smoke, but I do. I've tried to stop but I lie there thinking about cigarettes half the night. Long ones, short ones, smoked ones, ones unlit. I feel like I could smoke one in each hand. It like that with you?"

"Not that bad. To me it's just—"

"Don't tell me reading isn't a craving with some of you fellows. I've seen guys come in here, hardly two threads stuck together on them, and grab up them horror magazines and read and read, until sweat starts rolling off the end of their nose. I've hardly got the heart to throw 'em out."

Horror magazines. Ones with lovely girls about to have their flesh shredded by toothy vampires. Yes, they were a part of it. Not a big part, but a part.

"That's not what I want to see. I want—"

The old man snickered. "I know what you want. Indeed I do. This way."

I followed his spidering hand and sure enough, there they were. Stacks upon stacks of air-war pulp magazines.

"Fifteen cents for ones in good condition," the old man pronounced the ritual, "a dime for ones with incomplete covers, three for a quarter, check 'em at the desk when you go."

I ran my hand down a stack. Wings, Daredevil Aces, G-8 and his Battle Aces, The Lone Eagle, all of them.

The old man was watching me. He skittered back across the floor and snatched up a magazine. It was a copy of Sky Fighters with a girl in a painted-on flying suit hanging from the struts of a Tiger Moth.

"This one, this one," he said. "This must be a good one. I bet she gets shoved right into that propeller there. I bet she gets chopped to pieces. Pieces."

"I'll take it."

Reluctantly he handed over the magazine, waited a moment, then left me.

I stared at the stacks of flying story magazines and I felt the slow run of the drop of sweat down my nose.

My sickness was terrible. It is as bad to be nostalgic for things you have never known as for an orphan who has never had a home to be homesick.