The following evening, she came home to find him drunk, crouched in the chair, his legs drawn up, a bottle of whiskey on the floor. She felt an inexpressible resentment, and dread, too. Walter, drunk, played cruel games with her. Her job had taken an unexpected turn. The store manager, a man of dark moods, apparently caused by his firm expectation of insubordinate behavior from his salesladies, had taken special measures with Annie, calling her out of the quiet, dead dark of the basement to set her on a new task, taking her from it before it was completed, setting her something else to do, interrupting that in turn, and so on until Annie was ready to scream with frustration. Every time she looked up, the manager’s face was turned toward her, swollen, lipless, and implacably stupid. She had to get some suitable clothes; the Los Angeles streets shimmered in the heat, the air was dense with dust. She sweltered in the tweed suit, the crape dress was wrinkled and stained with perspiration. The women in the store looked at her disapprovingly and one had said, “You ought to buy yourself some little blouses and skirts—you don’t want to look worse than our customers.”

And here was Walter, drunk, but clean and fresh and mean. “Annie, I’ve got a funny story.”

She let her pocketbook drop to the floor.

“I want to wash up,” she said coldly.

He gave her a quizzical look, which, for some reason, made her feel a little better.

As she walked to the basin, she saw a letter addressed to Walter lying on the three-legged table. He came to stand behind her. She rinsed the soap from her face. “You’ve got soap in your hair,” he said.

She shrugged. He smiled. “I like you when you’re stern and soapy.” She went and sat on the bed. Walter lifted a bottle of whiskey to his lips, then held it out to her. She shook her head.

“I went to see Paul Lavan today and I was there all day.”

“Where?”

“He’s a film cutter. At a studio. Listen, have a drink…”

She took a swallow. It was warm, unpleasant, medicinal. She didn’t want to hear the story. It was bound to be something nasty, she could tell by his expression. She wanted him gone; she wanted to be by herself; she wanted to look out the window at the miserable boring street and turn around and find the room empty and the bed up against the wall.

“Well, what about the story?”

“They had a strip of film of a Brazilian dancer doing a samba, one of those South American things, for a movie. She wasn’t wearing pants.”