“Cormack Traveler came in this morning. Couldn’t be Matson, kiddie,” said the man. “That’s passenger lines.” He waved a curved hook at the docks. “That’s the only one’s due in today. Nobody come off it yet.”

Annie didn’t know where to stand and wait. She didn’t want to ask any more questions of the hard-faced man with the wide leather strap around his wrist and the menacing hook. A man pushing a loaded dolly passed between them, and Annie moved back to lean against the wall of a dispatcher’s shed. After the dolly had gone, she saw the man with the hook swing off to join a group of men in work clothes who were watching the slow descent of cargo from a boom on the deck of a ship called the Molly Good. The net fell to the ground, a dozen hooks flashed in the sunlight as the men moved forward. Just beyond the aft section of the Molly Good, she saw the Cormack Traveler, whose decks appeared deserted. Then a man walked to the rail wearing a dark-blue watch cap. She was too far away to see whether it was Walter Vogel. She took a few steps forward and a young man cried out, “Look out, my beauty!” He was bent beneath the sack he carried on his back but as he went by, grinning, he reached out a large square hand toward her. She went back to the shed. Walter had written that she might have to wait; there was no telling when he’d come ashore.

It had grown very warm, and the tweed suit stolen for her by Johnnie Bliss from the Paramount costume department hugged her body like a rough-skinned animal. The boards of the shed, gray, splintered, salt-worn, glistened with heat; she felt sweat on her neck and face. When she rubbed her cheeks, her fingers came away stained with orange Max Factor make-up. She had hoped to look so dashing! So light! Johnnie had brought her the suit wrapped in newspapers. She had wanted to look new, unapproachable. No! Indifferent! That was it. Good clothes could make you indifferent.

She lit a Camel and smoked it as if she were thinking about something complicated. Men said things to her. She puffed. A new worry assailed her—had Max Shore known she’d had her own cigarettes? He’d looked at her handbag so often. Had he suspected? But he’d been so kind—she could have explained it all, not having any money, really any at all, how you did things that were shameful.