War in Europe, a speech by Hitler, trouble in Poland, these were the topics of the day. What piffle! You warmongers, you old folks in the lobby of the Alta Loma Hotel, here is the news, here: this little paper with all the fancy legal writing, my book! To hell with that Hitler, this is more important than Hitler, this is about my book. It won’t shake the world, it won’t kill a soul, it won’t fire a gun, ah, but you’ll remember it to the day you die, you’ll lie there breathing your last, and you’ll smile as you remember the book. The story of Vera Rivken, a slice out of life.

They weren’t interested. They preferred the war in Europe, the funny pictures, and Louella Parsons, the tragic people, the poor people. I just sat in that hotel lobby and shook my head sadly.

Someone had to know, and that was Camilla. For three weeks I had not seen her, not since the marijuana on Temple Street. But she was not at the saloon. Another girl had her place. I asked for Camilla. The other girl wouldn’t talk. Suddenly the Columbia Buffet was like a tomb. I asked the fat bartender. Camilla had not been there for two weeks. Was she fired? He couldn’t say. Was she sick? He didn’t know. He wouldn’t talk either.

I could afford a taxicab. I could afford twenty cabs, riding them day and night. I took one cab and rode to Camilla’s place on Temple Street. I knocked on her door and got no answer. I tried the door. It opened, darkness inside, and I switched on the light. She lay there in the Murphy bed. Her face was the face of an old rose pressed and dried in a book, yellowish, with only the eyes to prove there was life in it. The room stank. The blinds were down, the door opened with difficulty until I kicked away the rug against the crack. She gasped when she saw me. She was happy to see me. ‘Arturo,’ she said. ‘Oh, Arturo!’

I didn’t speak of the book or the contract. Who cares about a novel, another goddamn novel? That sting in my eyes, it was for her, it was my eyes remembering a wild lean girl running in the moonlight on the beach, a beautiful girl who danced with a beertray in her round arms. She lay there now, broken, brown cigarette butts overflowing a saucer beside her. She had quit. She wanted to die. Those were her words. ‘I don’t care,’ she said.

‘You gotta eat,’ I said, because her face was only a skull with yellow skin stretched tightly over it. I sat on the bed and held her fingers, conscious of bones, surprised that they were such small bones, she who had been so straight and round and tall. ‘You’re hungry,’ I said. But she didn’t want food. ‘Eat anyway,’ I said.

I went out and started buying. It was a few doors down the street, a small grocery store. I ordered whole sections of the place. Gimme all of those, and all of these, gimme this and gimme that. Milk, bread, canned juices, fruit, butter, vegetables, meat, potatoes. It took three trips to carry it all up to her place. When it was all piled there in the kitchen I looked at the stuff and scratched my head, wondering what to feed her.