There were many who had not swallowed Hitler, friends he could no longer see. He looked at Fern’s thin mouth, opening, closing, opening, closing…He was violently irritated. Beyond Fern’s voice, the unsettling malaise of the girl in the back seat, the heated interior of the car, was the glittering Pacific, the white sand of the shingle far below, the cloudless May sky, a string of sea gulls riding the wind. He was sick of women.

“The Nazis are in Belgium today,” he interrupted Fern. She opened her mouth. Impulsively he placed his hand over her lips.

“Is this your first trip to San Diego?” he asked the girl.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes so wide she looked blind. “I’ve never seen this part of the coast before.”

His hand fell from Fern’s mouth. He felt a faint dampness on his fingers as though her words had left a foggy imprint on them. Fern smiled angrily. “I sometimes wonder, Max, just what you’re up to.”

So did he.

They had reached the outskirts of San Diego, and he suggested to Fern that she drive as close as she could to the waterfront.

“We haven’t got time,” she said.

Yes, he thought, she is yearning for those camp chairs, the thrilling silence that followed the opening speaker’s first word, “Comrades…”

“We do have time,” he said.

The girl leaned forward; Max felt the proximity of her face just behind his shoulder.

“I wonder if you know where I can get a room in L.A. or Hollywood?” she asked. “I have a place now, out on Hollywood Boulevard. But there’s a man next door who beats his dog all night. I can’t sleep, the dog cries so.”

Fern glanced quickly at Max; her mouth twitched with incipient laughter.

“That’s dreadful,” Max said.

“They’re so helpless,” the girl murmured.

Fern’s face seemed to swell, but not with laughter. It was indignation. “There are worse things in the world than crying dogs,” she said.

“The man’s German, I think,” the girl said apologetically.

“I know an actor who’s planning to leave for New York next month,” Max said. “Although you can’t tell about actors. He has a room on Sycamore Street. I’ll write down his name and you can call him. I’ve forgotten the number. He may know of something, even if you can’t get his room.”

“I pay eight dollars a week now. I can’t really pay more than that,” the girl said.

“You’d better stick with what you have,” Fern said. “You can’t get anything for less than that.”

“His name is Jake Cranford,” Max continued. “You can tell him I gave you his name.” He needn’t have added that last part, giving the girl a link to him. It was taking on too much; he’d done it only to spite Fern.