“This is an old buggy,” he said, looking at the panel. He told her that when the war came to the United States, he was going on the graveyard shift, where you could make a lot more money. First thing he was going to buy was an Oldsmobile. He explained why in exhaustive automotive detail. She hardly listened. Then, without any change of tone, he told her how his wife’s sister, who’d come out to stay with them in the hope of getting a good job in the plant, had climbed into bed one night with his wife and himself. He described what had followed. Annie looked at her pocketbook and wondered if a stray cigarette might be lying in the bottom. They were driving along Sunset Boulevard. They passed an enormous nightclub, but it wasn’t a nightclub; it was a funeral parlor.

She said, “Is that true, what you’ve been telling me? And if it is, what the hell makes you think I want to hear it? And if it isn’t true, why are you making it up? Aren’t you embarrassed? What are you trying to do anyhow?” Her voice rose. “You’re just scaring me! Why don’t you unbutton your fly, you little runt!”

She came to a full stop in front of the Trocadero. The man was trembling, his hands clutching his lunch box, and his breathing whistled as though someone were choking him. Annie trembled along with him. The pain that had bothered her the night before came back with violence as though her shouting had alerted it.

“No!” the man said to her hand as it started to turn the handle of the door. “No! Please! Drive me to Hollywood! I’m sentimental about my wife and her sister’s a hag…I made up part of it …but it could happen. She, the sister, sits around with her legs up on the furniture. I’ve got a very soft heart. You ask anybody. …What’s the matter? I didn’t mean to make you feel so bad!”

“I’ve got a terrible pain in my stomach.”

She leaned back against the seat, and he got out and waved her to the passenger seat and drove her to the boardinghouse. As she started to open the door, he said, “Is there something I could do? You look bad. I know a doctor in Pasadena. He’s a chiropractor but my wife says he’s good. You want me—”

“No, no. I’ll be okay. I’ll lie down for a while.”

“I want to say I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too, that I yelled that way.”

He gave her a somewhat sly look, then walked down toward the boulevard.

She got out of the car quickly.