"Take me into town," she ordered. Resting her elbow on the windowsill, she covered her eyes with her hand. After some hesitation, the truck started; she was on her way.

"You sick, miss?" the Pole asked.

Mary Anne didn't answer. Jogging with the motion of the truck, she prepared to endure the trip back to Pacific Park.

In the slum business section she made the Pole let her off. It was approaching noon, and the hot midsummer sun beat down on 'the parked cars and pedestrians. She passed the cigar shop and came to the padded red door of the Lazy Wren. The bar was closed and locked; going to the window, she began tapping with a quarter.

After an interval a shape made its appearance in the interior gloom: a paunchy, elderly Negro. Taft Eaton put his hand to the glass, surveyed her hostilely, then unlocked the door.

"Where's Tweany?" she asked.

"He's not here."

"Where is he, then?"

"Home. Anywhere." As Mary Anne started to push past him, he slammed the door and said through it: "You can't come in; you're a minor."

She listened to the door latch slide into place, stood indecisively, and then entered the cigar shop. Squeezing by the men clustered at the counter, she found the pay telephone. With difficulty, balancing the heavy phone book, she located his number and then dropped a dime into the slot.

There was no response. But he might be there asleep. She would have to go over. Right now she needed him; she had to see him. There was nothing else she could turn to.

The house, the great three-story house of gray fluting and balconies and spires, jutted from its yard of weeds, broken bottles, rusting tin cans. There was no sign of life; the shades on the third floor were down and inert.

Fear overtook her and she hurried up the path, across the cracked cement, past a bundle of newspapers and dying potted plants at the foot of the stairs. She climbed two steps at a time, holding fast to the banister. Gasping, she turned the corner of the long flight, felt the rotten slats sag under her, tripped on a broken step and pitched forward, scrabbling at the railing. Her shin struck the jagged old wood; pain made her scream and fall onto her open palms. Her cheek brushed a heap of dust-impregnated cobwebs that had caught over the green knit sleeve of her suit. A family of spiders clicked excitedly away; dragging herself to her feet, Mary Anne crept up the last steps, cursing and weeping, tears streaming down her cheeks.

"Tweany!" she screamed, "let me in!"

There was no response. From a long way off came the jangle of a traffic signal. And from the milk plant at the edge of the slums a clatter drifted up and spread over the town.

In a blind haze she reached the door. Below her the distant ground wheeled; for an interval she lay against the door, her eyes shut, trying not to let go and fall.

"Tweany," she gasped, her face against the closed door. "Goddamn it, let me in."

Through her suffering came reassuring noise: a person was stirring. Mary Anne settled in a heap on the top step, bent over, knees pulled up, rocking from side to side, the contents of her purse dribbling from between her fingers onto the steps, coins and pencils rolling out into the sunlight and dropping to the grass far below.

"Tweany," she whispered as the door opened and the dark, faintly luminous shape of the Negro appeared. "Please help me. Something's happened to me."

Frowning with annoyance, he bent down and gathered her up. With his bare foot-he had on only his pants--he kicked the door shut behind them. Carrying her, he padded down the hall, his blue-black face fragrant with shaving soap, his chin and furry chest dripping beads of lather. Around the girl's body his hands were brusque; she closed her eyes and clung to him.

"Help me," she repeated. "I quit my job; I don't have a job anymore. I met an awful old man and he did something to me. Now I don't have any place to stay."

7

At the corner of Pine and Santa Clara Streets was a swank hat shop. After the hat shop came Dwelley's Luggageware, and after that the Music Corner, the new phonograph record shop opened by Joseph Schilling in the early weeks of August 1953.

It was toward the Music Corner that the man and woman , moved. The shop had been open two months: it was now the middle of October. In the display window was a photograph of Walter Gieseking and two long-playing records half-slid from their bright covers. Customers were visible inside the shop, some at the front counter, others in the listening booths. The Saint-Satins Organ Symphony echoed through the open doorway.

"Not bad," the man admitted. "But he's got the loot; it should look okay."

In his thirties, he was dapper and fragile-looking, with shiny black hair, a bird-chested man who walked daintily. His eyes were quick and alive, and his hands, as he guided the woman into the store, fluttered against her coat.

The woman turned to see the sign over the doorway. It was a square of hardwood, with hand-carved fretwork, on which had been painted the words THE MUSIC CORNER, 517 PINE STREET. MA3-6041. OPEN 9-5. RECORDS AND CUSTOM-BUILT SOUND EQUIPMENT.

"It's cute," she said. "The sign, I mean."

She was younger than the man, a heavy, round-faced blonde who wore slacks and carried an immense leather bag which hung from her shoulder by a strap.

There was nobody behind the counter. Two young men were studying a record catalogue; they were involved in controversy. The woman did not see Joseph Schilling, but every aspect of the store's interior reminded her of him. The pattern of the wall-to-wall carpeting was characteristic of his taste, and many of the pictures on the walls-prints by contemporary artists-were familiar. The little vase on the counter-it held California wild iris-had been designed and fired by her. And the catalogues behind the counter were bound in a fabric of her choosing.

The woman seated herself and began reading a copy of High-Fidelity, which she found lying on a table. The man, less relaxed, inspected display racks and turned revolving wheels of records. He was poking at a Pickering cartridge when a familiar shuffling sound caught his attention. Up the flight of steps from the basement stockroom, his arms filled with records, came Joseph Schilling.

Tossing down the magazine, the woman rose to her feet. Plump and smiling, she advanced toward Schilling. The man joined her.

"Hi," the man muttered.

Joseph Schilling came to a stop. He was not wearing his glasses and, for a moment, he had trouble making them out. He imagined they were customers; their clothing informed him that they were fairly well off, fairly educated, extremely arty people. Then he recognized them.

"Yes," he said, in an unsteady, hostile voice. "The line forms ... amazing, how fast."

"So this is it," the woman said, glancing around. Her smile, fixed and intense, remained; a frozen smile, made up of heavy lips and teeth. "It's lovely! I'm so glad you finally got it."

Stiffly, Schilling set down his records. He wondered where Max was; they were afraid of Max. Probably down at the corner cocktail lounge, sitting in a booth constructing a tower of matches. "It's not a bad location," he said.

Her blue eyes danced. "This is what you always wanted, all these years. Remember," she said to her companion, "how he always talked about his store? The record store he was going to open up someday, when he got the money."

"I decided not to wait," Schilling said.

"Wait?"

"For the money." It didn't sound convincing; he was bad at games. "I'm broke. Most of this stuff is on consignment. My capital went into the remodeling."