“I’m hungry. Let’s go eat something at the Greek’s.”

He said, “I won’t be able to keep my mind on food with all those young caddies bending over the ski-ball game.”

He parked near the Greyhound station on Cahuenga and they went into a small restaurant owned by a hugely fat, bald Greek. The place was deserted at this time of the afternoon and no one was bending over the ski-ball game near the bar. The Greek brought them minute steaks, and they ate with passionate absorption. Annie thought if she could just have three meals a day, she’d be willing to sleep on the sidewalk.

Just as they were leaving, a prosperous-looking, middle-aged man with a shaggy mop of red hair walked in. The Greek laughed and clapped his hands over his ears. The man gave him a sly wink and went to the jukebox and made his selection. Annie peered curiously over his shoulder and saw he had pressed the button for a record called Finlandia. As it began to play, the red-headed man hid his face in his hands and swayed back and forth as though grief-stricken. The Greek shouted, “Why you play that goddamn thing alla time. I’m going to throw that record out. Whyn’t you go back to Finland, for crissake?” He winked at Annie and shrugged his shoulders.

Johnnie dropped her off in front of a ramshackle shingled house bulging with oriel windows. Several cats lay on the steps leading to the wide porch like merchandise on shelves, asleep in the late-afternoon sunlight.

“Listen, darling,” Johnnie said. “Don’t give in to impulse. Don’t just take the room because it’s available. I know you and men! I think you’d lay down on a third rail even if it was me asking you to. Don’t be so available yourself!”

Annie walked up the steps, over the cats, through the open front door into a dim hallway that smelled of dust and cat urine and age-soured wood. She heard the noisy flush of a toilet somewhere up the stairs. An elderly woman limped toward her from a room leading off the hall and stood silently, looking at her.

“You wanted something?” she asked at last, her voice shaped into a squeak by a mouth so small it looked as though it been stitched solidly at either end.

“Mr. Cranford.”

“Mr. Cranford,” repeated the woman, and shook her head as though she’d hoped for better news. “Go on up, then. He’s on the third floor, first door as you pass the clock.”

A cat padded down the stairs. Except for the black-painted doors, everything in the house, wallpaper, furniture, ceilings, was faded brown or gray. Cats came out of corners, from beneath tables, ignoring Annie’s presence, in search of patches of warmth beneath the dusty windows.