“At least, it doesn’t snow here,” he said. “It must be awful to have nothing in a cold climate.”

“It’s awful to have nothing anywhere,” she said.

They both heard the rumble and clank of an approaching streetcar. He said, “Let’s have supper tomorrow?”

“Okay.”

“At the Greek’s, around seven?”

She waved at him from the car window. There was only one other passenger sitting in the rear. She took a seat in the middle of the car. A minute or so later, she heard movement behind her. The man had moved up to take the seat directly back of hers. She kept her head stiffly forward until just before her stop when she glanced out the window.

Beyond the sidewalk, she saw the dark apartment house. A flicker of white was reflected for an instant in the trolley window. She heard the rustle of a newspaper, and, caught between reluctance and curiosity, she darted a look at the other passenger. He was old; his eyes were half closed; in one hand he held up a furled newspaper revealing for her his naked genitals resting on his lap like a newborn cluster of hairless animals.

Johnnie Bliss was not waiting for her tonight. She was relieved. She’d had enough talk for the day. The bed dropped down with its hideous squawk. She listened tensely for a moment, her head against the wall, but there was no groan, no whimper from the room next door.

The people she’d met the last forty-eight hours were like beads from a broken string, rolling senselessly all over Southern California. Except for Walter, whom did she know who had purpose? She shuddered at the thought that she too might roll away into some corner and die, grow crazed like Ivan, grow old in a room like this, become a witch like the crone down the corridor and frighten some young girl not yet even born.

She had liked Jim St. Vincent and Jake, and especially Max Shore, even Ivan. But Walter might save her. She did not, she whispered to herself, like Walter much.

Chapter 7

Whatever notion Annie might have had about becoming a regular wage earner, she was by the end of her first day in the dress shop so disheartened that she wondered where she had gotten the idea that working for a living would give her a sense of legitimacy, the appearance, at least, of being like everyone else. She had wanted to break out of that precarious and anarchic life in which only chance ruled.

Still, to live, one had to eat.

By late afternoon, it struck her that anyone with an ounce of sense would never have agreed to confinement in a basement for nearly nine hours each day in order to collect eleven dollars at the end of a week.