She had called Jersey Lighter to tell him about the room and Elmira had answered, gurgling at her in some peculiar adult baby talk about their little girl. Annie had the impression that Elmira hadn’t the least idea who she was. Presumably as a result of that call, Walter Vogel appeared at her door one evening a day or so later. Standing behind him was a plump dark-haired young girl with a pouting mouth like a gulping fish. They entered the room. The girl stared unblinkingly at Annie; what on earth had Walter told her about her?

He had hardly changed at all, even his clothes looked the same, dungarees, a pea jacket, a watchcap. “This is Lou,” he’d said, the little smile on his lips, gesturing toward the girl with his thumb. Lou looked at the floor. He had come for the divorce decree; he and Lou were getting married. Just before he left, he whispered to Annie, “She doesn’t know anything. I had to teach her what shit meant!”

Lou had not spoken a word the half hour they were there. Only watched Annie. And Annie, possessed by monstrous embarrassment, had behaved like someone she’d never heard of or imagined, talking animatedly to Walter about her “plan,” shouting at him when he questioned her as to any details, laughing hectically at the slightest suggestion of criticism. He, too, had ended up looking at her fixedly, wonderingly. What had come over her? Mortified, she crawled beneath the blanket, cursing herself and imagining scenes in which she simply handed Walter the decree and shut the door in his face, or warned that idiot of a girl what she was getting into. So Lou didn’t know the word shit, did she? Oh, God! Oh, God! And how he’d looked at Lou once! He’d never looked at her like that. Had he? Why could she not name the quality of that look? Yet at the same time she knew what it meant.

Then quite clearly, as though it had materialized out of the floor, she heard her father’s laughter. She turned on the light, dressed and went out to the street. On Seventh Avenue, she found an all-night drugstore with a phone booth in the back. She had to step over cardboard boxes to get into it. As she dialed the long-distance operator, she saw by the clock over the soda fountain that it was just past midnight. In Massachusetts, the phone rang on and on. And then, as she was about to put away her quarters and dimes and go back to the room, a woman’s voice entered her ear intimately, sleepily.

“Yes?”

“Is Mr. Gianfala there?”

“Who is this?”

“His daughter.”

Silence.

“He’s drunk,” said the voice. “I’m sorry. Too drunk to talk, I think.”

“Could he—I’m leaving for England soon. I’m in New York. I only wanted to say good-by.”

“I’m Margo. It’s very late, you know. We go to bed early here.”

“But if he’s up—”