“Talking to yourself again?” asked Eddie, awakening.

“Only time I ever have an intelligent conversation,” said Jack.

“Most amusing.” Eddie now looked all about himself. “Shame,” said he. “As you know, we bears never dream, but I really hoped that I might have dreamed this last night.”

“I’m sure there’s nothing to get alarmed about, Eddie. As I was just saying to myself, I come from a town exclusively inhabited by men.”

“Nice place, was it?” Eddie asked.

“Well,” said Jack.

“Well,” said Eddie, “I seem to recall that you hated it so much that you ran away from it.”

“Which doesn’t mean to say that this Hollywood place won’t be nice. Chin up, Eddie, let’s look on the bright side, eh?”

Eddie’s tummy rumbled. “Breakfast would be nice,” he said. “Perhaps there’s a farm nearby where we could steal some eggs, or something.”

“Steal some eggs? Have you decided to give up detective work and pursue a life of crime?”

“You possess local currency, then?”

“Well.”

Eddie was up now and peeping through the door crack. “Much as I hate to do it, then,” he said, “let’s wander carefully into this world of meatheads and see what there is to be seen.”

“Trust me,” said Jack. “Everything will be fine.”

And so down Mount Lee they went,[21] with Jack whistling brightly in order to disguise his nervousness and Eddie quoting and requoting Jack in his head. “Everything will be fine,” he requoted. “What a load of old toot.”

Eventually they reached a fence, climbed over it and found a road.

“See,” said Jack, “nothing to be worried about.”

“I’ve never had a particular terror of roads,” said Eddie. “You gormster.”

“There are houses here, nice houses,” said Jack. “Should I knock and ask for a glass of milk or something?”

“Let’s head on down,” said Eddie. “We saw all the lights last night – this must be a very big city. Big cities have alleyways, many of them behind restaurants. We’ll just rifle through some bins.”

“I’m not doing that!”

“Well, you make your own arrangements, then. I’m as hungry as.”

It’s a long walk down to LA proper. But you do pass some very nice houses on the way. Homes of the Hollywood stars, they are, although Jack and Eddie weren’t to know this yet.

“These are really swish houses here,” said Jack.

“Probably the homes of the local P.P.P.s.” Eddie peered in through magnificent gates, curlicues of bronze and steel, intricate and delicate, held fast by padlock and chain.

“Ra! Ra! Ra! Ra! Ra!” It was a most excruciating sound, loud and raw and fierce. Something huge slammed against the gate, causing Eddie to fall back in alarm. A monstrous hound yelled further Ras! and snarled with hideous teeth.

“Down, boy,” called Jack. “Nice doggy, down.”

“Run for your life,” howled Eddie.

“It’s all right, it can’t get through the gates.”

“I hate it here, Jack, I hate it.”

They walked along the centre of the road. To either side of them now, growly dogs appeared at padlocked gateways and bid them anything but a warm welcome.

“You don’t think,” said Jack, “that you might have got it all wrong, Eddie? We’re not in Dog World, are we?”

“Gormster.”

And then they had to get off the road and off the road with haste.

“Ba! Ba! Ba! Ba! Ba!” went this scary something.

And then something wonderful rushed by.

Jack looked on and he did so in awe. “An automobile,” he said.

And such an automobile was this. An electric-blue Cadillac Eldorado, circa 1955. Big fins, fabulous tail-lights, all the trimmings. Nice.

“Wow,” went Jack as the Cadillac sped on. “Did you ever see anything quite like that?”

Eddie shook his shaken head. “Did you see the size of it?” he said. “I’ve seen swimming pools smaller than that. And …” And Eddie rubbed at his nose and coughed a little, too. “That wasn’t clockwork, was it, Jack? It had smoke coming out of the back.”

Jack shrugged and Jack said, “Let’s keep moving.”

“I’m hungry.”

“So am I.”

And so they wandered on. But for the Ra-ing dogs and the Ba-ing car they saw no more signs of life.

“Where is everybody?” Eddie asked.

“Sun’s just up,” said Jack. “I suppose it’s early yet.”

“What time do you have on your wristwatch?”

Jack checked his watch, shook it, put it to his ear. “It’s stopped,” he said. “That’s odd, it’s never stopped before, although –”

“Although what?”

“Well, I never understood how it worked anyway – it doesn’t have any insides, just a winder connected to the hands.”

“I thought that was all a watch needed,” said Eddie.

“No,” said Jack, and they wandered on.

And at last reached Hollywood Boulevard.

Eddie looked up and Eddie was afeared. “Jack,” whispered Eddie, “Jack, oh Jack, those are very large buildings.”

“A world of men,” said Jack. “Look – there’s a hotel, what does it say? The Roosevelt.”[22]

Jack looked up with considerable awe. “I love that,” he said.

“I hate it,” said Eddie. “But there is one thing I do know about hotels: they always have a lot of dustbins round the back.”

Now it is a fact well known to those who know it well, and those who know it well do not necessarily harbour a particular interest in the foibles of architects, that the rears of hotels are always rubbish. Which is to say that whilst the front façades display all the architectural splendours that those who commissioned their construction could afford, the rears of the buildings are a proper disgrace. They’re all waste pipes and rusty fire escapes and dustbins, lots of dustbins.

Jack stood in the alleyways to the rear of the Roosevelt, looking up at the waste-pipe outlets and rusty fire escapes; Eddie sniffed his way along the dustbins.

“This one,” said Eddie. “Lid off please, Jack.”

“This is disgusting, Eddie.”

“Look,” said Eddie, “I’m not proud of this sort of thing, but it’s a bear thing, okay? We bears might be noted and admired for our exquisite table manners, but we do like a good old rummage around in a dustbin now and then. You do things that I find abhorrent, okay?”

Jack lifted the dustbin lid. “What things do I do that you find abhorrent?” he asked.

Eddie shinned into the dustbin. “You shag dollies,” he said.

“I … em …” Jack sniffed in Eddie’s direction. There was a rather enticing smell issuing from the dustbin.

“They must have had a big do on last night,” said Eddie. “Look at all this lot.” And he passed Jack an unnibbled cake and a piece of cheese.

“It might smell nice, but I could catch something horrible.”

“Wipe it clean on your trenchcoat … No, on second thoughts …”

There was a remarkably large amount of edible food to be found in that dustbin, and it appeared to have been gift-wrapped in paper napkins and needed next to no wiping off.

Jack had a rumbling stomach, but dined without any joy.

His repast complete, Eddie sat with his back against the dustbin and his paws doing pattings at his swollen belly. “Now that was what I call breakfast,” he said. “I couldn’t eat another thing.”

“Not even this wafer-thin mint?” asked Jack, which rang a bell somewhere.[23]

Jack sat down beside Eddie. “Well, on the bright side,” he said, “and we must always look on the bright side, much as I loathe the idea of dining from dustbins, it looks like we’ll never starve in Hollywood.”

“What the Hell, fella? What d’ya think you’re at?”

Jack looked up in startlement. A ragged man looked down.

If Jack had known anything of the Bible, Jack might have described this man as biblically ragged. He was wild of eye and wild of beard, of which he had more than his share. What face of him was to be seen above the beard and around the eyes was tanned by grime and sunlight. His clothes hung in ribbons; his gnarled hands had horrid yellow nails.