She wondered how Jenny had obtained her phone number, which was not listed in the directory. One evening, when Pearl was doing her hair, she found out.

“Dis girl dat’s callin’ yo’ up,” said Pearl, “say she yo’ friend. But Ah don’ believe she no friend o’ yours. She don’ look like duh kind yo’d have any truck wit’, ma’am.”

Babe looked at Pearl in surprise.

“How do you know what she looks like, Pearl? Have you seen her?”

“Yes, ma’am. Ah done meet her up at Nigger Gert’s, dat’s a place Ah goes some times. She was dere when Ah was tellin’ some o’ duh girls how kind yo’ is to me, an’ she say, she an old friend o’ yours an’ dat she just dyin’ to see yo’. So Ah gives her yo’ telephone number.”

“You did?”

“Yes, ma’am. Ah hope Ah ain’t done wrong. She say she know yo’d be glad to heah fum her. She say she got somethin’ important to talk to yo’ about. So Ah asks her where yo’ could get a-hold o’ her. She says she ain’t got no way yo’ could get in touch wit’ her, she’d have to call yo’ up. So not knowin’ whut it was about Ah done give her yo’ number.”

Babe thought a minute.

“Well, the next time she calls up, Pearl, let me talk to her. I’ve got to stop her calling up here. She’s bad, Pearl, and I don’t want to have anything to do with her.”

“Yes, ma’am. She kind of dopey lookin’ like she hit duh pipe or somepin.”

Babe smiled. She surmised that Jenny was traveling the trail of dreams faster than ever, now that the breaks were against her.

She told Baldwin that Jenny was annoying her, and explained that she felt the girl was trying to shake her down.

“You’re right,” Baldwin told her. “She’s just trying to blackmail you. But don’t pay any attention to her. She can’t do you any harm.”

Babe was not so sure, but as Jenny did not call up for several days she began to think that perhaps Jenny had given up trying to see her, or perhaps was too doped to remember the past.

Babe was too happy to worry much about anything. Her apartment was so charming that she hated to go out alone during the day. The windows of her living room and bedroom looked out across the Drive to the Hudson, with its river life that appealed to her imagination. Some day, she thought, I will go with Wayne on a boat. A big boat sailing for Europe. It was all rather vague in her mind, for her longest voyage had been on a ferry boat to Jersey.