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didn’t mean to crumple you with my rhetoric.”
    “I egged you on.”
    He gazed into the twilight. “You’re right, of course. I have always known that Dad’s a tremendous talent. There’s not much triumph in being a perpetual spindly sapling dwarfed by a tremendous oak.”
    “You mean you write too?”
    “It’s the Fernauld family disease. I’m not like BJ. She can go to him for help. Not me. Never! All I can do is snarl and skulk like a wounded cub. Let’s face it, the war came as a benison. On the
Enterprise
there’s no need for me to peck at the old Remington and inform myself that Joshua Fernauld is pouring out Pablum for the masses whereas Lincoln Fernauld is writing erudite, lyrical prose, the great American novel.”
    “Linc—”
    “Will you let me finish? Marylin, when this war is over, I’ll be a plumber, a ditchdigger, a bank robber, anything except a writer.”
    “I shouldn’t have argued. It’s not like me. And I don’t know anything about literature or screenwriting.”
    “You’re remarkably astute about both,” he said. “And anotherthing. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to make you, but that’s not all there is.”
    “It’s not?”
    “You’re one of nature’s masterpieces, Marylin Wace. Though I long to touch, I enjoy looking.” There was a huskiness in his voice. Something had crept into the big car, an electricity that made her quiver. She felt prized open, vulnerable, submissive, waiting.
    You’ve known him all of one hour, she told herself.
    “Friends?” he asked.
    “Friends,” she murmured.
    “My parents must be home by now, and they’ll expect to see me,” he said. “Marylin, where do you live?”
    She gave him her address, and they drove through the mistshrouded twilight.
    The Waces’ apartment had been added on, an afterthought that perched like an out-of-place mortarboard atop a detached two-car garage. This undistinguished part of Beverly Hills was R1, to rent out any part of the small bungalows constituted a zoning violation, but with the wartime housing shortage the city fathers bent their straight backs enough to turn slightly in the other direction, so no police came to question the apartment’s legality.
    The blackout blinds were pulled every which way, and light blazed unevenly at the bottoms and through the rips at the sides. Climbing rickety wooden stairs, Marylin recollected their brief stop on North Hillcrest Road to let BJ out of the car. The Fernaulds lived in a commodious mansion that crouched like a placid Tudor lion on rolling, lovingly watered, expensive green real estate. She felt a shame that Linc was a witness to her poverty.
    The smell of frying increased and NolaBee’s cheerful rendition of “Poinciana” grew louder at every step, and Linc, grasping Marylin’s hand, took her books.
    As Linc and Marylin reached the top of the steps, NolaBee’s song halted abruptly. Linc peered down at Marylin, silently handing her back her books. Then, without a good-bye, he turned, loping down the steps. Marylin watched him go, the outline of a tall, lankily graceful man disappearing into the evening shadows.

  
4
  
    The apartment was square except for the narrow bite given over to the bathroom, and was unobstructed by walls. Into this space the Waces had crowded their eccentric conglomeration of possessions: three dented metal folding chairs circled an heirloom mahogany gateleg table, two looming, overgarnished Victorian wardrobes jutted out from the walls, forming an alcove for NolaBee’s box springs and mattress, which was covered not with a normal bedspread but with a worn rubicund oriental carpet.
    None of the Waces had any conception how to keep house, and personal possessions were strewn over every available surface.
    A metal screen, haphazardly collaged by NolaBee with covers from fan magazines, leaned against the wall near the makeshift kitchen where she tended a hissing skillet full of chicken. A flowered apron swathed her