Helen Sears walked with Annie to the nursing home entrance. She hardened herself against the sardonic comment she expected. But Helen Sears said, “Lots of people don’t come at all. You were good to visit all these days. If I hadn’t had that fury given me by God’s curse, if I hadn’t been cursed with that old murderous bitch, I might have gone on a ship sometime, somewhere.”

That night, Annie packed her suitcases. She gazed for a long time at the passport that had arrived the week before and which now bore a British visa. Her passport photo smiled inanely up at her. In the space for next of kin, she had written Theda’s name and address.

“I’m going to England,” she said aloud. Then, just as her father’s laughter had issued forth so mysteriously in this bleak room a few nights earlier, she heard her own voice of five years ago, saying, “I’m going to California,” and the excitement, the expectation, the sense of having thwarted all the forces arrayed against her setting out on this new journey drained away like the fugitive euphoria of alcohol, thinning into sickness. “Hell!” she cried out. Then she sank to the floor and wept for Uncle Greg.

The morning was bright; the wind had died down. She ate breakfast in a drugstore and in the afternoon went to see a movie about gangsters. She had promised herself a call to Theda that night, and she felt calm and determined and even indifferent to whatever lay ahead. It was as though she had delivered herself over to the impersonal force which would bear her along through this night to the gangplank of the ship which she would certainly cross tomorrow morning.

A few minutes before eight thirty, at which time she had decided to go out to the drugstore and try Theda’s number, someone knocked at the door. She could not think who it might be. Surely Walter had gotten all he wanted from her! The knock sounded again. She unlocked the door and opened it. A soldier stood there looking at her, a duffel bag at his feet.

“Annie?”

She stared at Max Shore speechlessly. “Annie,” he said. They embraced. His hat fell to the floor. Beneath the coarse fabric, the insistent utility of his uniform around which her arms clung, she felt the substance of his bones, his flesh, his actuality.

At last, he did not so much release her grip as unlock them both from each other. He looked at her face; he examined her features minutely. “The door,” she said, barely opening her lips to speak so as not to interfere with his rapt inspection that brought her the weight and pain of her own corporeality.

He turned, dragged the duffel into the room, and shut the door. They went to sit on the studio bed. He put his arm around her.

“What did you do today?” he asked after a moment.

“I went to a movie about tough guys,” she said.