He straightened up, gave her a weak smile, and took a medicine bottle from his pocket; there was hardly anything in it. He poured out the few remaining drops of green liquid, swallowed it quickly, then sank back into the chair. “I’m supposed to eat baby food and take phenobarbital. But that chewed-up stuff makes me gag and the phenos make me blue.”

“But what is it?”

“I’ve had it for years. Colitis…my colon goes into spasm. It hurts, but it passes. See, it’s going away already. You know, they looked at my gut once through a fluoroscope. I digest five times faster than a normal person. If it showed, I could go on tour. Come on, it’ll help me to walk. A man on a bus told me the trick was to walk, brings the blood to where—Oh, hell! I don’t know.”

Annie was looking at his roughened hands, one of which still grasped the medicine bottle. He caught her thought. “I know I look as if I were going to keel over any minute, but I was a good hand.” He stuck the bottle in his pocket. “I worked for my father on the farm all the time I was going to high school. I was up at 5:00 A.M., you bet, working like a fool.”

“I’m going to work tomorrow,” she said. “I got my first job.”

“Yeah?”

“In L.A. It’s a dress shop. I’m called a stock girl.”

“What’s the pay?”

She hesitated. But, she realized, she didn’t have to lie to him. “Eleven dollars a week,” she said.

“That’s pretty skinny pay,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s one thing I’ll give Max. It’s a crime the way people get paid. I mean, you get eleven dollars a week, and St. Vincent gets ten thousand bucks for a script—”

“But I don’t really know how to do anything,” she said.

“Listen, you could make a lot more, waiting on tables or in a drive-in. The picture people give big tips. Or you could model—if you have any clothes. Have you? I guess not. Well, that’s not such a hot idea. These model agencies, some of them are no better than —” he paused, leaving the sentence unfinished.

He hadn’t wanted to offend her, and she thought of Samuel and Johnnie, of Walter and her own father, who did not spare her. Jake was really innocent.

“You mean, they get girls for men?” she asked softly.