Max was back the next noon. He looked forbidding, abstracted.

“You weren’t here yesterday!” she said accusingly.

“I tried to enlist in the army,” he said.

He took her hand. “Close your mouth,” he said. “You’ll catch flies.”

“But why!” she cried.

“I’m bound to be drafted unless I get myself into some essential job here. I don’t want to do that.”

“You’re running away.”

“If you like. Only I’m not. They won’t take me because I’m married.”

“Max!”

“It would have been better all around,” he said, sighing heavily. “My motive wasn’t entirely personal. I do really believe Hitler is the devil himself.”

What did he mean, not entirely personal? What was more personal than belief in the devil? Her anger was intensified by her awareness that she had no claim on his confidences, that she was not someone he would take into account when he had decided on a course of action. She spoke with sulphurous resentment, trying, mid-sentence, to modify her tone. But it was too late. Her words snapped out like a whip: “I thought the comrades had decided it was an imperialist war?”

“You are a callow, ignorant girl,” he said, “and you have the impertinence to imagine your little political scrapings have something to do with the real world.”

She thought she would be able to leave the bench in a minute or two, if only her eyes would stop rolling around like a frightened cow’s. She caught sight of the tall metal can provided for trash. Walking in a crouch she took the remains of her lunch and threw them into the already overflowing can. She’d left her cigarettes on the bench, but she didn’t go back for them, and Max didn’t call her back. She walked the whole length of the shed to where Hannah Groops was talking with some other women and slipped in among them. One thing about the proletariat—they didn’t pay much mind to one’s comings and goings.

She’d been aware, off and on throughout the day, of the Catalan watching her. Just before her shift was finished, she met him near his locker.

“I can’t see you again today. I’m not feeling well.”

He took her hand in his. Involuntarily, she looked around to see if Max could see them. The Catalan touched each of her fingers. “I don’t understand,” he said gravely. “Please,” she said gently, holding his steady gaze with her own. Please what? She didn’t know herself what she was asking him.

Dreading the long drive back home alone, she offered a ride to one of the men who lived in Los Angeles. He had always spoken pleasantly to her, a tight-limbed, small man who reminded her physically of Walter’s friend, Junior.