"Quit," she told him. "Why keep a job you don't like?"

"Shut up," the shipping clerk said.

Mary Anne let go of the completed table and watched the welder fuse the legs in place. She enjoyed the sputter of sparks: it was like a Fourth of July display. She had asked the welder to let her try the torch, but he always grinned and said no.

"They don't like your work," she said to the clerk. "Mr. Bolden told his wife that unless your work picks up, he isn't going to keep you on."

"I wish I was back in the army," the clerk said.

There was no use talking to him. Mary Anne, with a swirl of her skirts, left the work area and returned to the office.

At his desk was elderly Tom Bolden, the owner of California Readymade; and, at the adding machine, was his wife. "How's he coming?" Bolden asked, presently aware that the girl had returned. "Sitting around loafing, as usual?"

"Working very hard," she said loyally, seating herself before her typewriter. She didn't like the shipping clerk but she refused to involve herself in his downfall.

"You have that Hales letter?" Bolden said. "I want to sign it before I leave."

"Where are you going?" his wife asked.

"Up to San Francisco. Dohrmann's says there's defects in the last load."

She found the letter and passed it to the old man to sign. It was a faultless page she had done, but she felt no pride; chrome furniture and typing and the problems of a department store blurred meaninglessly into the clatter of Edna Bolden's adding machine. She reached within the material of her blouse and adjusted her bra strap. The day was hot and empty, as always.

"Should be back by seven," Tom Bolden was saying.

"Be careful of the traffic." That was Mrs. Bolden, who was holding the office door open for him.

"Maybe I'll bring back a new shipping clerk." He had almost left; in the girl's ears his voice receded. "Ever seen out there? Filthy as a pigsty. Rubbish everywhere. I'm taking the panel truck."

"Go up El Camino," Mary Anne said.

"Whatsat?" Bolden halted, cocking his head.

"El Camino. It's slower but a lot safer."

Muttering, Bolden slammed the door. She heard the panel truck start up and move off into traffic ... it didn't really matter. She began examining her shorthand notes. The noise of the power saws filtered through the walls into the office; and there was a series of taps as the shipping clerk pounded at his chrome tables.

"He's right," she said. "Jake, I mean."

"Who in the world is Jake?" Mrs. Bolden asked.

"The shipping clerk." They didn't even know his name. He was a pounding machine ... a faulty pounding machine. "There has to be litter around a shipping bench. How can you wrap without litter?"

"It's not for you to decide." Mrs. Bolden put down her adding-machine tape and turned toward her. "Mary, you're old enough to know better-talking this way, as if you're in charge."

"I know. I was hired to take dictation, not to tell you how to run your business." She had heard it before, a number of times. "Right?"

"You can't work in the business world and behave this way,"

Mrs. Bolden said. "You've got to learn that. You simply must have respect for those above you."

Mary Anne listened to the words, and wondered what they meant. They seemed to be important to Mrs. Bolden; the heavyset old woman had become upset. It amused her a little, because it was so silly, so unimportant.

"Don't you want to know things?" she asked curiously. Apparently they didn't. "The men found a rat in the fabric shed. Maybe rats have been eating the fabric rolls. Wouldn't you want to find out? I should think you'd want somebody to tell you."

"Of course we want to find out."

"I don't see the difference."

There was an interval of silence. "Mary Anne," the older woman said finally, "both Tom and I think the world of you. Your work is excellent-you're bright and you're quick to learn. But you must face reality."

"What reality is that?"

"Your job!"

Mary Anne smiled, a slow, meditative glimmer. She felt light-headed, filled with a buzzing sound. "That reminds me."

"Reminds you of what?"

"I think I'll pick up my brown gabardine coat from the cleaner." With deliberation, she examined her wristwatch; she was conscious of Edna Bolden's outrage, but the old woman was wasting her time. "Can I leave early this afternoon? The cleaner closes at five."

"I wish I could reach you," Mrs. Bolden said. She was troubled by the girl, and her distress showed. Mary Anne could not be appealed to; the usual promises and threats meant nothing. They fell on closed ears.

"I'm sorry," Mary Anne said. "But it's so stupid and mixed up. There's Jake out there hating his job-if he doesn't like his job he should quit. And your husband wants to fire him because his work is sloppy." She gazed up intently at Mrs. Bolden, distressing her even more. "Why doesn't somebody do something? It was like this a year and a half ago. What's the matter with everybody?"

"Just do your work," Mrs. Bolden said. "Would you do that? Would you turn around and finish your letters?"

"You didn't answer me." Mary Anne continued to scrutinize her, without compassion. "I asked if I could leave early."

"Finish your work and then we'll discuss it."

Mary Anne considered a moment and then turned back to her desk. It would take fifteen minutes to get to the cleaners, if she walked from the factory directly into town. She would have to leave at four-thirty to be sure of arriving in time.

As far as she was concerned the matter was settled. She had settled it herself.

In the tired brilliance of late afternoon she walked along Empory Avenue, a small, rather thin girl with short-cropped brown hair, walking very straight-backed, head up, her brown coat slung carelessly over her arm. She walked because she hated to ride on buses, and because, on foot, she could stop when and wherever she wished.

Traffic in two streams moved along the street. Merchants were beginning to emerge and roll up their awnings; the stores of Pacific Park were shutting for the day.

To her right were the stucco buildings that made up Pacific Park High School. Three years ago, in 1950, she had graduated from that school. Cooking, civics, and American history; that was what they had taught her. She had been able to use the cooking. In 1951 she had got her first job: receptionist at the Ace Loan Company on Pine Street. In late 1951, bored, she had quit and gone to work for Tom Bolden.

Some job that was-typing letters to department stores about chrome kitchen chairs. And the chairs weren't very well built, either; she had tried them out.

She was twenty years old, and she had lived in Pacific Park all her life. She did not dislike the town; it seemed too frail to survive dislike. It, and its people, played odd little games, and the games were taken seriously, as were the games of her childhood: rules that could not be broken, rituals that involved life and death. And she, with curiosity, asking why this rule, why that custom, and playing anyhow ... until boredom came, and, after it, a wondering contempt that left her cut off and alone.

At the Rexall drugstore she halted a moment and inspected the rack of paperbound books. Bypassing the novels-they were too full of nonsense-she selected a volume entitled Thirty Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary. That, and a copy of the Pacific Park Leader, cost her thirty-seven cents.

She was coming out of the drugstore when two shapes encountered her. "Hi," one said, a young man, well-dressed. A salesman from Frug's Menswear; his companion was unknown to her. "Seen Gordon today? He's looking for you."

"I'll telephone him," she said, starting away. She disliked the odor of flowers that hung over Eddie Tate. Some men's cologne smelled all right; Tweany's was like the smell of wood. But not this ... she had no respect for this.