* * *

As the day wore on, she tried to put Dirk out of her mind, but she found herself slamming drawers and balling trash paper until the sheets were like wooden balls. She went down to talk to her friend Elise, who listened patiently and then suggested that she might be overreacting. It was then that she realized big blond Elise had worked at the bank a very long time, and was also ambitious.

At quitting time Colette’s silver car sailed out onto the boulevard on a quest of someone to talk to. She dialed her neighbor on her car phone, a retired woman from Nebraska, but she wasn’t in. Colette began to understand why several of her coworkers went to analysts. She stopped at a traffic light, and when it turned green, she did not press the accelerator. The amplified insect beep of the car behind chased her through the intersection and then she drove around the same block twice, not knowing where to go. She took a cross street and began to wander, taking rights and lefts at random, in and out of residential and commercial neighborhoods, palm trees and stucco, granite and glass. The steering wheel turned as though over a Ouija board, and eventually she parked in front of an apartment building. When he answered the door, he still had his coveralls on and smelled like Liquid Wrench.

“Babe, what’s up?” He did not look especially happy to see her.

She walked past him and into his little kitchen. “I got to talk to you a minute about work.” Looking up, she saw that he had a bump high over his temple. “You bang your head on a milling machine again?”

“Smoke-box door fell off its hinges. Son of a bitch weighed a hundred pounds.”

“You have something to drink?”

He opened a cabinet and looked. “I might have some beer. Manuel left some tequila when we were playing poker the other night.”

“Tequila’s fine. You have some mixer?”

“No. All I got’s Sprite.”

“That’ll do.” She fixed herself a drink and took a long swallow, then leaned back against a counter.

“You drink hard stuff every day?” He looked at her glass.

“No. And don’t start getting on me about drinking. I came by to tell you something and get some feedback.” She told him about her job and about the troubles with Dirk. Her hands were trembling, but he knew better than to take them.

He folded his arms and looked down at the checkered tile, listening. When she finished, he looked up. “Why you telling me this? You want me to go down to the bank and press his suit with him in it?”

“You can’t do that in Los Angeles.”

“What you want from me, then? Advice?” He laughed. “Get a lawyer and sue him for wanting to have sex with you. But you’ll have to sue every straight man in the state who’s got eyeballs.” He pulled open the refrigerator, grabbed a beer, and turned for the living room.