We stopped on the deep old porch to catch our breath for the stairs. Carlotta slumped against the wall.

“What are you going to do now?”

It was dark in the way of lighted towns. She looked to me like a figure in an old black-and-white photograph. I must have looked that way to her, too. Souvenirs of ourselves.

“I want to get to California. See my psychiatrist.” The scratches on her face were nearly invisible in the light from the streetlamps. “Do you know anything about psychic readers?”

“There seems to be one on every block. I always figured half of them must be whores. Why?”

“I want to try to contact my baby. There was something in his eyes that makes me think it might be possible.”

“What would he have to say? ‘Goo’?”

She turned away from me sharply.

“Carlotta, I’m sorry.”

“Are you going to open the door?”

“It’s not locked.”

She stepped inside. The vague yellow light in the hall colored her suddenly. She ran up the stairs. I followed her wet footprints. Arrived at the open door of my room with my laundry still bouncing under my shirt. Rennel’s face was inquisitive. His coffee cup was empty and stained.

Sam watched Carlotta, anxiously. She stood over him, gripping the clothes and glaring.

“Do you really want to go right now?”

She didn’t answer him, but turned and walked out the door without looking at my face. The stairs creaked beneath her.

Sam gave me a pained smile. “I thought you would be gentle with her.”

“I’m too vain.”

I threw my bundle of laundry into the cardboard box. Plopped myself onto the floor and dealt angrily with a cigarette. Rennel cleared his throat.

“I’ve been telling Han Shan about the valve job I did on the Rambler. That’s what his car needs. I’m going to get him started and then he is going to do it himself.”

“Lovely.”

Sam leaned forward with the light of another story on his face. “It might be interesting. I watched a man once who was a good mechanic. He was a simple guy. Wanted to make a good living for his kids. He kept stopping work to call his wife about her menstrual pains. The thing that struck me most was how much of the whole mechanic business was sheer superstition. He’d listen to the engine and run his hands over things. Then every once in a while he’d give some part of the contraption a slam with his wrench or jam a screwdriver into some hole and wriggle it around. All the time he’d talk to himself. He’d lean over the engine, staring at it with this bewildered look, saying, ‘What the fuck is that?,’ ‘Ho, here’s something,’ going on like that constantly. He was like a high priest trying on different little rituals to bring on rain. Very interesting. He didn’t really know why the things he did worked, but they did. Of course he didn’t call it religion. He called it experience.”