But then, inevitably she would find that those men began to make demands on her, sexual demands, demands that showed either an unwillingness or an inability to understand her reluctance to become intimately involved. And then would come the inevitable conversations that stretched painfully into the middle of the night, and then the arguments, and then the final break. Sometimes the break was clean, and Ann would be able to stay where she was, though more confused and frustrated than before. But at other times, the men in her life would not give up. They would be able to sense the restrained desire, the hidden but burning sexuality that twisted the young woman with its force, and would try to help her bring it out into the open, to deal with it, to come to terms with herself. And it was then that Ann fled, terrified, not only from their offers of help, but from herself as well.

The tired young woman left the freeway, and began to make her way up the small streets to her apartment. The houses all passed by her with a hypnotic sameness, colored in nauseous shades of dirty pastels, squeezed together as though trying to impress the curious observer of their solidarity with one another. But there were no curious observers in South San Francisco, and their solidarity had long since atrophied into mere congestion.

Turning into her parking space, the beautiful secretary cut the motor and wearily eased her voluptuous body from behind the steering wheel. She didn't bother to lock the car, but made her way toward the common entrance she shared with the 8 other apartments in her building, fill cramped cubicles exactly like her own. She stopped by her mail box hopefully, but it offered her nothing more than an old circular she'd never bothered to remove. She sighed, and turned to the stairs leading to her apartment.