Paul Lavan had caught up with her too. She’d told him she’d read all the books. She hadn’t. He took her to several meetings.

She felt she had no right to be in the bare rooms with the rows of ordinary people, some of whom dropped cigarette butts on the floor and carefully smashed them out, all of whom listened to the speaker with silence and attention. “The inherent contradictions of monopoly capitalism.” What a roll of drums that was! They were so serious! If Lavan knew, if they knew what her life was like, if they had known about the movie music, the hamburgers, the men, the distraught midnight wanderings.

But Lavan did, apparently, know something. “You’re neurotic,” he said to her one evening after they’d heard a discussion on “art as a weapon.” He was taking her to her streetcar. He had his own car, but said his wife had a new baby and he really couldn’t take the time to drive her home.

“Neurotic?” she asked.

“Have you ever heard of Freud?”

“Yes,” she answered. She tried to recall the jokes she’d heard that somehow involved Freud.

“Listen,” he said with sudden uneasiness, “don’t mention what I said to anyone. Actually, I shouldn’t employ such phrases. It’s only that you seem so troubled and I—”

“I won’t say anything,” she said quickly. What did he care whether she “mentioned” what he’d said? Perhaps he knew she slept with men. Perhaps he felt bad for Walter. She went home that night, brooding about Walter, whose infrequent notes always ended with the admonition to keep her legs crossed. Why didn’t she feel something about Walter? About the men she “betrayed” him with?

She knew that people, once married, were not supposed to do what she did; somewhere in the back of her mind hung pale abstractions, motionless as painted clouds, God, orderliness of meals, gravity of mien, classroom papers, one’s name neatly written on the upper-right-hand corner, families grouped around the dining table, the elders teaching the young, undying love, music of the spirit, not of the kisses and deaths of movie stars.

She burst out laughing, and Sigrid said, “Jesus! You scared me!” and Annie said, “Only a thought, an old joke.”

“Tell me, I wanna laugh too,” Sigrid demanded. So Annie told her an old grammar-school series of jokes that had to do with book titles—The Halt in the Desert, by Mustapha Pee…And Sigrid shrieked with laughter.

It would be fine to travel on forever like this, safe in the car, carrying in the trunk a rag or two to throw on one’s back, plenty of cigarettes in the side pockets. But a large sign announcing the imminence of Laguna Beach dispelled the snugness. A touch of dread, familiar as morning light, made Annie’s hands tighten on the wheel.