“That’s it. What you call a simple favor. You’re pissed off because of Ernie.”

“That too. Son of a bitch promised…”

“Because of what you promised Ernie. You think I’m so stupid I don’t know Ernie wanted to fuck me?”

“That’s something to be proud of? Ernie’d fuck a snake if you held its head.”

“You think I don’t know you tried to pimp for me? To get that lousy job.”

“I don’t need you to get me jobs. Or for anything else. There’s enough accommodating cunt here and in Hollywood just waiting to be plowed.”

“Maybe if you had a decent job you’d have something more to think about than telling me what to do.”

Shock waves were looping and gyring all over the warehouse. His anger burgeoned, I think, from frustration about work and insolvency, but he also seemed imperiled by my unannunciated appearance. In my upward-mobility threads, I seemed to have imposed some imprecise threat on him. He’d glance at me furtively, then look quickly away, as if, once I was out of his purview, I no longer existed. Much of the time he wore a troubled frown of perplexity or discomfiture—why in the name of Sweet Jesus had Valerie reeled me home with her? Furious with blocked impulse and unanswered questions, Derek made a lame attempt to regain the offensive: “Shut the hell up,” he snarled.

“Not yet,” she snarled back. “Not till I tell you about your whining, your bullying, your self-pity, your flexing your abs in front of a mirror.”

“Can’t you for Christ’s sakes just listen?”

“To you? Never!” She was a volcano on erupt, a tigress sniffing blood. “Never,” she repeated, “never, never, never. And I’m not finished with you. With you brushing your hair for hours, like it’s some kind of goddam show dog. Scratching your nuts in ecstasy like King Kong with fleas. Hell with you!”

“Hell with you!” he yelled, running out of source material. “That’s enough of your shit.”

“Not half enough,” she said with a reckless quiver of pleasure. Seething with fed-up-edness, she flounced to the far end of the rookery, where her wardrobe on three or four metal hangers was suspended from a nail in the wall. She snapped back the lid of a cardboard carton (with the sound of the tether she seemed to have reached the end of), the repository of her shoes, a clutch of handbags. She stuffed a dress, a pair of slacks, two blouses, and a trenchcoat into the box, disappeared behind a door, came back, and dropped comb and brush, toothpaste and toothbrush on top of them.

She said, “You want to carry this?” It was seconds before I realized she was talking to me, and still I wasn’t sure.

“What?” I said.

“You coming with me or not?” she asked angrily.