The doorman fingered the five, hesitated for an instant, then said impassively, 'Thank you, sir, and good evening,' in his thick impersonal brogue. The assistant said nothing.

'You can always tell a shipyard worker by the tips he gives,' Alice sneered when I got in beside her and dug off with a jerk.

'A fool to the bitter end,' I said, slumping down in the seat. 'I'm sorry you didn't like it.'

I didn't like Alice very much then, didn't even respect her.

'I did like it,' she snapped. 'Even with you acting boorish. The food was excellent.'

'Yes, the food was delicious,' I murmured.

She gave me a quick angry look and almost bumped into a car ahead as it stopped for the light.

'But for thirty dollars,' I added, 'I could have bought a hunting licence, gone hunting and shot a couple of pheasants, bought a quart of liquor and got drunk and gone to bed with two country whores and had enough money left over to buy gasoline home.'

She said, 'You don't have to insult me any more, Bob. I don't intend to see you after this anyway.'

I took a deep, long breath, let it out. 'It had to end sometime,' I said. 'I suppose you knew I wasn't going back to college.'

After that she didn't say anything. She kept out Hill to Washington, turned west on Washington to Western. I thought she was going home, but at Western she turned north again to Sunset, jerking the big car from each stop, riding second to forty, forty-five, fifty, before shifting into high. She pushed in the traffic, shouldered in the lines, tipped bumpers, dug up to sixty, sixty-five, seventy in the openings as if something was after her.

At Sunset she turned west, went out past the broadcasting studios, past Vine, turned left by the Garden of Allah into the winding Sunset Strip. At the bridle path she began tipping off her lid: seventy, eighty, back to seventy for a bend, up to ninety again. I thought she was trying to get up nerve to kill us both and I didn't give a damn if she did.