“No. He lives in an international youth hostel up on the Drive where foreign students can stay while they go to school. There’re damn few youths among them. It’s worth the trip just to watch the Chinese students ignore the Japanese, and the Texans ducking behind furniture every time a Negro walks into the lobby.”

“Couldn’t we just stay here? I am going away tomorrow…”

“No,” he said amiably. “Anyhow, I’ll be seeing you sooner than you think. I went down to the NMU hiring hall today and I’ll probably get a Panama run to the West Coast.”

Chapter 5

The room Annie had rented, about which she had told Walter as little as possible that morning in San Diego, was on the second floor of a small stucco apartment house midway between Hollywood and Los Angeles. The area itself was desolate, and it throbbed day and night with sickly pulsation, as though Hollywood was continually flushing its rejects down the abject streets with their clumps of runt palmettos. Here were bit actors who’d never been successful enough to fail, dim luminaries from the silent movies who talked to themselves in rooms where they feared they would die, and old folk from all over the country who’d come to California, ending up in this backwash, with their mouse savings, hoping to stretch the money just a little further. Country boys and girls, escaping the deathly boredom of towns that had begun to die in the twenties, stayed a few days in sour rooms, never even unpacking their suitcases.

Annie’s room held a few pieces of rickety furniture, a washbasin, a stove of sorts, a toilet in a closet, and the wall bed. She often wondered how the old people got their beds down at night, and she visualized grotesque scenes of struggle and defeat, the aged bodies hanging helplessly from the pull bar like dead fruit from a bough.