maybe , .richie thought , an engineer used to live there , a bachelor with no pants but jeans and lots of those gloves with the big stiff cuffs and four or five pillowtick caps-a fellow who would come home once or twice a month for stretches of three or four days and listen to the radio while he pottered in the garden ; a fellow who would eat mostly fried foods ( and no vegetables , although he would grow them for his friends ) and who would , on windy nights , think about the girl he left behind .