“Won’t you stay here in Hollywood, and let me help? I have a friend, a woman you might like. And that job. Do you really want to go to that drive-in? It’s hard work. People won’t treat you well.”

“I have to. I promised the waitress, Sigrid, I’d go with her. I’ll just try it. I can always come back.”

He had to leave now. He lit a cigarette, aware he hadn’t smoked since he’d been with her—he’d been waiting. She asked him for one and, when he gave it to her, said, “This time, I really don’t have any. When you gave me those cigarettes in the car, I had some in my bag. How crooked I’ve gotten! You know, that woman upstairs, she wants to be listened to. I listen to her because sometimes she makes cocoa for me while I’m sitting at the kitchen table. She says that now that she’s up against life, she sees it’s a cruel fraud. She likes to talk about that—she seems satisfied to have found it out.”

She was too young, he reflected, to know what people were like —she only knew what they did to her.

But he was struck by her expression. She was looking up at the ceiling as though she could see the beaten woman and her nervous child. She was smoking; she was thinking. The harrowing hours she’d spent with the worm had left her weak, but her thoughts were already on something else.

“What happened to that woman who drove the car?”

“Fern? Oh, Fern.”

“She thought I was foolish to be upset about that dog.”

“Fern casts her eyes beyond the bones at her feet.”

She looked puzzled.

“She’s the kind of person, she—” But he was bored already. Talking about Fern was like eating stale bread. She grinned at him. “She’s not so bad,” he said, a touch defensive. “She’s loyal, she does all the work no one else wants to.”

“I suppose that fellow, Lavan, came looking for me at the place I used to be. Walter wanted me to go to meetings. He wanted me to be in the party.”

“Why aren’t you?”

“What would they want with me?”

“What would you want?”

“I went to a meeting in New York. Bourgeoise, Walter calls me. I had never thought of that, belonging to a class, a class that oppresses others.”

“People suffer needlessly,” he said, exhausted now.

She flared up. “Everybody suffers. I don’t know what you mean —needlessly. You think suffering is a failing?”

“I mean, there are sufferings that can be stopped. There is slavery, corruption, exploitation of many by a few.”

“You think you can make it different?”