Andy rocked on her heels, amused by the handsome man who was trying not to look at her. She tore her ferry ticket into pieces, crumpled them up, and, with careful flicks of her finger, fired them at the back of Lee’s head. The last one connected, and he glared at everyone until he found Andy, who burst into laughter.

Then she was standing beside him. She pointed her white leather boots through the railing, angling them as if to show off the approximately four thousand eyelets each had. She waited for him to speak to her, and when he didn’t, she said, “Might I have your ticket? I’d like to throw it at you.”

“Listen,” he said, carefully. “You shouldn’t talk to me.”

It was not a reply she had expected. She could not tell if it was sincere, or the best conversational gambit she had ever tripped across. But either one was fine. She faced him, lips parted, mouth slightly upturned in a smile of astonishment.

Approximately one hour later, they were six stories above Sutter Street, in her flat, on her bed, with half their clothing on the floor. There were buttons everywhere, and he had actually used a knife to cut the laces of her boots.

Lee was aware every moment that he was a hick and a rube and just an amusement to her, but he proceeded with fatalistic abandon. Tomorrow he might be in jail, nothing much mattered except tonight, etc. Andy, for her part, enjoyed the fatalistic abandon. The combination of this, and how hard his biceps had felt through his coat, had propelled her as far as inviting him up for a drink; the rest of the momentum came from Lee himself. She had never heard of St. George Reef, but by the time her clock read two, she wanted every man she met from now on to have come from there.

By four, when they had finished, again, she was so exhausted that she did not want to believe that he was now adjusting all the lamps in her room and asking her sincerely if by this particular light he looked much like Wallace Reid.

When it became apparent he was not coming to bed until she admitted that, yes, he did look like Wallace Reid, Andy’s heart broke a little. This was followed by a half hour in which they lay together like spoons, Lee explaining to the nape of her neck that he was meant for bigger things, he hoped to escape registration—he had a plan—and he had once taken a screen test given by the famous Hollywood cameraman George Barnes, of Betsy’s Fatal Slip, and he had saved his half of an eight of diamonds, and would she like to see it? Here it was. See?