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But Virginia just lay there. Maude pinched the nipple again.

“Wake up.”

Al watched it all and smiled, proud of his little actress, but his goofball haircut and those insanely thick glasses just made him look like a twit. Maude nodded over to the trash can, where Al reached inside for the silky torn slip and bloomers and tucked them into his pocket. He winked back at her.

Alice and Zey came back in the room, all bright smiles, and saying everything was going to be A-OK.

“Is she really in the pictures?” Alice asked.

Zey elbowed her like she was some kind of rube for asking.

“So?” Alice asked.

“Grab her feet,” Maude said, stumbling up, feeling sick herself, the world tilting a bit. Freddie Fishback was back in the room, the dark boy with a cigarette dangling from his lips, and he held Virginia’s arms while the showgirls held a leg each, Virginia, nude and suspended in space, wriggling like an alligator, as they carried her to the bathtub and plopped her in cold water, where she thrashed and cried and then slowly closed her eyes and nearly sunk beneath the lip of the tub.

She was awake then and moaning and sobbing, blood between her legs swirling in the water like a cloud.

When Maude walked back into the bedroom, Al Semnacher was gone. She ran from the room and down the long hallway to the elevators just in time to see the golden doors about to snap shut, a shit-eating grin on Al’s face, Virginia’s torn slip and bloomers in the breast pocket of his coat.

“Goddamnit,” Maude said.

“SO THEN WHAT HAPPENED?” Lowell Sherman asked.

“You were there. Or were you too drunk to recall?”

“Too drunk to call,” Lowell said. “That was yesterday.”

“Just why are you my friend again?”

“Because I bring a certain sophistication to the party.”

“That’s rich,” Roscoe said. “Thanks for reminding me.”

They watched the sun set over the hills of San Francisco, as the ferry made its way from the pier with a steady, slow wake, hugging the peninsula to the Pacific and then back south. Roscoe rolled a cigarette and leaned onto the ferry railing in the soft, perfect golden light. He removed the pair of leather gloves he’d donned while driving the Pierce-Arrow up the ramp and into storage below.

“I recall you and Freddie hoisting that poor girl up like a side of meat and taking her down the hall to another room.”

“I wanted her gone,” Roscoe said. “I was sick of all the foolishness, so I paid for another room.”

“She was pretty foolish,” Lowell said. “And silly, too. All that thrashing and moaning. No wonder she never had a part of distinction. Who brought her to Sennett’s?”

“Pathé.”

“Lehrman? What a gas.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

“I remember her lying on that bed completely nude and writhing around while those two drunk girls took turns trying to revive her. They were a hoot.”

“What else?”

“I remember the ice.”

Roscoe looked away and at the narrow little pass from the bay to the Pacific. “You know they’re planning to build a bridge right over the Golden Gate,” Roscoe said.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Lowell said. “You don’t want me to talk about the ice?”

“I was trying to snap her out of it.”

“With the ice?”

“Sure,” Roscoe said. “A physician told me that once.”

“Hell of a place to put a piece of ice.”

“What does it matter? It didn’t work anyway.”

The ferry chugged out past Alcatraz and down around the Presidio, heading toward the Gate and the fading western light. The men smoked some more and tossed their cigarette butts into the churning wake behind them. The sun looked like a golden skillet.

“I didn’t do a thing to that girl,” Roscoe said. “I swear to it.”

“You don’t need to.”

“Where is she?”

“Some hospital. What does it matter? It’s over now. And there’s always the Fairmont.”

“She called me a beast.”

“Who’s that?”

Roscoe flicked his last cigarette over the railing as the Harvard found the narrow pass, feeling safe and warm and moist, but cold as they hit the ocean.

“The Delmont woman. You know her?”

“She took advantage of me in the bathroom before all hell broke loose.”

Roscoe laughed, the ferry humming along under him, taking in a big breath of sea air and watching as a seagull kept up with them above. He squinted up at the bird looping and flying above the ferry and smiled. “If he makes it to L.A., I’ll take him home with me. Buy him a big fish dinner.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Go down and rest.”

“I don’t like boats.”

“You’d rather we drive back?”

“All that booze. I’ll never touch the stuff again.”

“You betcha,” Roscoe said, winking at him. “Me neither.”

Roscoe crooked his head, popping the collar on his Norfolk jacket, just like those the pilots wore in the war only double-sized. He scanned the horizon for the seagull, catching sight of him by the bow before he tilted off, slowing his wings and riding the wind back to the city.

“Do you think I’m better than Chaplin?”

“Of course, old boy,” Lowell said. “That prissy little Englishman stole half of what he knows from you.”

“You see the papers? They tore the clothes off him in London. Women faint when he passes by. I remember when he had to borrow my wardrobe at Sennett’s and I’d have to coach him through every gesture. The big shoes, the bowler? He borrowed those.”

“You’re better.”

“You seen Gasoline Gus?”

“No.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Don’t fret about the girl, sport. It’s all over.”

The gull overhead had gone, breaking away in the fading soft light for the coast, the wake of the Harvard churning south.

SAM STAYED IN BED all week, but he suddenly woke up long before day-break Saturday and turned to his pregnant wife, saying he was feeling much better now.

“And your skull?” Jose asked.

“Still soft.”

Jose pulled the covers up to her chin and turned on a bare shoulder, light spilling in from the streetlamps off Eddy. “Back to normal.”

Sam found his feet and the bathroom, his clothes and then his cap and laced boots, and he was walking toward Union Square, feeling good walking again, with his hands in his pockets, in and out of the foggy mist, and toward Powell at two a.m., loving the feeling of being in a city and the action and movement even in the middle of the night. Back in Maryland, people ate dinner, said their prayers, and went to bed at eight o’clock.

There was an all-night drugstore called the Owl on the ground floor of the Flood Building right below the Pinkerton offices on Market Street. At the counter, he ordered a cup of coffee and dry toast and smoked four Fatima cigarettes, feeling like a solid citizen again.

“You still working on that book?” Sam asked the girl refilling his cup of coffee. He couldn’t remember her name for the life of him. But he knew it was a double name, like a farmer would give a daughter.

“You know it,” she said. “And every college professor in America is going to read it.”

“That a fact?”

“You betcha,” she said. “Do you know how many times I’ve sat here at this counter and asked myself the question, Are human beings human?”

“Well, are they?”

“They’s gonna be a chapter on Fresh Guys, too. Being a Fresh Guy is sort of a habit, wouldn’t you agree? I guess I don’t know whether it’s got a cure or not, but I sure know how to diagnose one. Then they’s gonna be a chapter about Finicky Birds. They was born suspicious of food. They stand around weighing the merits of the crab salad against Irish stew until you want to call the Disarmament Conference in to decide the question. They usually finishes by ordering a glass of milk and a yeast cake.”