. . . Friday night at Buddy’s Circle Café and there was great amusement at: Mary Beth’s panic when a hard-shelled beetle fell (from the ceiling?) into her hair; Mary Beth’s plight when, her bladder swollen from beer, she had to go to the women’s lavatory but the women’s lavatory (a single squalid room, a single toilet) was in use, in use, in use, in use . . . and, finally, under Buddy’s protection, with Sherrill Ann also standing guard, she used the toilet in the men’s room. (“Absolutely filthy,” Monica said afterward, stung with humiliation, “—sickening,” and Sheila said, laughing, indifferent, “I’ve been in worse and was grateful enough at the time—you’re just spoiled.”) A Thursday night at Walt’s Bowling Emporium outside Swedesboro, much noise, gaiety, gaiety that seemed in fact sheerly noise, and there was Sherrill Ann the divorcée and mother of two (or was it three) strutting about, clowning, in a new shiny-leather jumpsuit (funky overlarge zippers, trousers pegged at the ankles), drawing the attention of men she and Mary Beth had never met before, drawing their attention rather too successfully, so that, before long, there was an unpleasant exchange—which hadn’t any air of romance about it, or intrigue, or simple interest—“cock-teasing bitches,” they were called, “dykes who ought to have their heads knocked together,” they were dismissed as, finally: which Sherrill Ann professed to find amusing.

(“Don’t you think it might be dangerous,” Monica said, “—now that they’re coming to know us.” “They don’t know ‘us’ at all,” Sheila said curtly. “That’s the point: no one knows ‘us’ at all.”)