He waited and she wet her lips and looked down at her dress. ‘Before the war I lived with a man.’

‘Lived with him?’

‘Yeh. You’d guessed there was something like that, didn’t you?’

‘I did, yes.’

‘Well, I did. It was in California.’

‘Hollywood?’

‘On the outskirts.’

‘Was he an actor?’

‘No, there was never any actors. I made it up about the actor.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I’m always making something up.’

‘Don’t cry. Go on. Please, Gert, don’t cry.’

‘I’m not.’

‘What happened ? Who was he?’

‘He was that dog manicurist I told you about.’

‘The one who was so nice to you?’

‘Yeh.’

‘How long did you live together?’

‘About three years. A little less.’

‘After you tried to sing in the movies.’

‘I was never a singer. Not really.’

‘What then?’

‘I was a typist in a studio. Typist-secretary. I took singing lessons on the side, but I couldn’t make it.’

‘I was wondering why you never sing for me.’

‘I can’t. I’m no good. But I tried to. I wanted to be a singer all my life. It was the only way to get into pictures. Me not being a knockout facially, I mean.’

‘Yes, you told me about the test.’

‘They never gave me a test.’

‘Oh.’

‘I tried for one but I was a typist and that’s what those Jews out there decided I was going to be.’

‘Oh.’

‘So I couldn’t stand it any more. Then I met this man and we got to be friends and I quit the job and we lived together.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘Well, he was all right for a while.’

He changed his hold on her hand. ‘Then what happened?’ he asked.

She glanced up at him, gauged him again, and looked at her dress once more. ‘He was all right. I mean he knew how to entertain. Good at a party, you know. I don’t make a secret of it, he was very nice and he had a good business. Then he got mixed up in the organization. They had another name for it out there but it was on the same order. There’s a million organizations like that out there. Against the Jews. You know.’

‘Yes. Like the Front here.’

‘That’s right. Naturally I didn’t pay much attention at first, although it was a good organization. They had a lot of good ideas which anybody would agree with.’

‘How do you mean.’

‘Well you know, like the Front. They wanted to make Hollywood gentile again. Get the Jews out.’

‘Oh,’ he said softly.

‘But after a while it got so he couldn’t talk about anything else so I had to get interested. He started bringing these people to the house and they would stay up all night talking.’

‘What’d they talk about?’

‘Ways and means. They would get together after Coughlin broadcast and go over what he said. Things like that.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘Well, when he first started going into it serious I didn’t think much about it, but after a couple of months I began to see that they meant business. He got to be a very big shot amongst them. When we’d go out to certain places where that crowd hangs out they’d all turn around when we came in. I started going to these meetings with him and typed letters for him and turned into his secretary, kind of. He sometimes had a hundred and fifty letters a week from all over the country to answer. We got another new car and …’