Chapter 2
The Larrabee Street apartment was nothing A special. Terri would have been the first to admit as much, with Pam falling all over herself to second it. Certainly the cramped quarters weren't worth the $150 a month the house manager had so imperiously demanded. He knew its location, feeding into Sunset Boulevard scant blocks from Doheny, was its salient selling point, that if these two lovely green horns didn't snap it up, there were others coming up the street at that very moment who'd fight for the chance to do so.
The rent was much too rich for Terri's blood, but Pam had painted such glowing pictures of their new off-the-Strip address that she'd finally caved in. But Still, exciting surroundings notwithstanding, it wasn't much of an apartment. Not when it took 75 of her 325 hard-earned, lucky-bucks monthly just to pay for a place to change her nylons.
Pam's "closer" had been her argument that so long as Terri had ostensibly fled Waterloo, Iowa to escape a deadly rut, to go "Where things 'swing' once in a while," why didn't they go where things 'swing' once in a while? And Maywood ($80 a month) wasn't it.
Thus: Ho for the elusive, ephemeral shores of the Hollywood district.
Where they'd been living for the past two months Which was precisely one-third of the total time Terri Cavan had been in Los Angeles. There were many times now, when she found it almost impossible to believe that only a half-year ago she'd still been suffocating in the stifling, sterile confines of her Iowa environment.
Crazy. Time, like everything, was relative. What had seemed an eternity in Waterloo, had passed in the twinkling of an eye in exciting, swinging Los Angeles.
The apartment consisted of five skimpy rooms: a bedroom with twin beds, an efficiency kitchen, a dinette in an alcove off the living room, a bath, and a living room measuring twelve by fifteen. According to the fine print in their lease the apartment was furnished. And so it was. In what Pam acidly reviled as "Mid-Century-Salvage-Shop."
But then Pam was always one to take an overly dim view of things.
An eight-foot-long, lemon-colored davenport took up one wall. On the room's opposite wall, flanking the fake marble fireplace, two tired chairs stood. While near the door (undoubtedly someone's idea of a gag) was a maple colonial chair, its cushions done in an antique print.
Two captain's chairs, several coffee tables and end tables, four or five production line lamps, an ornate, Baroque, gilded mirror above the cluttered mantel, a fairly new portable TV, a portable stereo phonograph with its speakers strung out on stingy feeder lines helped fill in the remaining blank spaces. Sleazy carpeting hid the floors.
There was one other artifact of furniture. That a bookcase in stained birch, only two of its shelves containing books. The top two hosted Pam's incipient record collection, one phonograph speaker. The next shelf down displayed Tern's extensive conglomeration of dog statuettes.
The remaining shelves contained a hodge-podge of books and magazines, most of them residue of the previous tenants. There were over twenty paperbacks of dubious content which Terri hadn't dared to open. But for some reason, the pack-rat mentality of the unread taking over, deeming books sacred, she'd been unable to toss out the pulpy things.
On the next shelf stood five books, which because of their hard covers, seemingly deserved a better fate. A battered copy of Hawaii (Terri had started it) a copy of Lolita (Pam's challenge reading, a book that totally baffled her), Rona Jaffen's The Best of Everything, an edition of Sex and the Single Girl (which both girls had plowed through and discussed avidly). And finally an expensive volume, whose abandonment neither of them could account for: Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.
Hawaii or Lolita hadn't been touched in weeks. Needless to say, Terri and Pam were no great shakes as readers.
The apartment's kitchen and bathroom, though maddeningly small, were modern. This was Pam's harping point whenever Terri bemoaned the exorbitant rent they paid.
The bedroom was also a la moderne. The twin beds boasted bookshelf headboards, there was a suitable vanity and double dresser, closet space was ample. There were Danish chairs, several barrel lamps which gave off muted light, gave the room a comfy, inviting warmth.
"Hell," Pam was fond of saying, "if we just kill enough lights around here, it's almost like modern times. But put 'em on and ... Ich! Might as well live in a pawn shop. All we need are some banjos and saxophones hanging from the ceiling."
Tonight there was no such grousing in the Larrabee Street digs. It was 8:35 of a Tuesday evening, and Terri watched a television show. While Pam, lying on a blanket on the living room floor, dressed in only her lacy brassiere and sheer panties, went through her calisthenics, put on a show which, had a man been there, would have induced a raging, growling assault.
It was during a commercial, as she lay flat on her back, raised her legs in unison, dropped them, counting a steady 1-2-3-4, that Pam ceased her exercising, lay puffing, looked accusingly at Terri. "What's with you, Ter?" she asked. "Are you defecting to the flab brigade?"
The smallish blonde, still dressed in her secretarial uniform (white blouse, dark pencil-slim skirt, stockings) her pumps exchanged for wooly slippers, looked away from the TV, smiled a wan apology. "Not tonight, Pam. I'm tired. That Wexler creep had me on the go all day long."
Pam clucked disapprovingly. "Naughty, naughty. You know what happens when you start letting down. Pretty soon you're letting two days go past, then three, then a week. Before you know it you'll be a candidate for size eighteen."
Terri avoided her eyes. "Tomorrow night. I'm just too beat. We're going to the gym, aren't we?"
"That's right," Pam grunted, cesuming her exercise again, her trim, tawny body contrasting excitingly to her black bra and panties. "Wouldn't miss it. You aren't sorry, are you, Terri?"
"Sorry? About, what?"
"Because I talked you into that gym bit. I was only looking out for your own good. You were getting kind of flabby, no skin tone to speak of...."
"It's all right," Terri interrupted. "I need it. I feel better for it. But tonight...."
"Okay, doll. Only you've been goofing off quite often lately. Been kind of moody. Stiff exercise knocks that out of you. You can't help but feel good, feel alive. How you ever going to be a movie star if you don't keep yourself in shape?"
Terri smiled patiently. "How many times must I tell you, Pam? I don't want to be a movie star. I had completely different reasons for coming out here."
"Don't snow me, honey. T know you. You're just like me, just like the others." She was kicking now, rapidly, effortlessly. "You ... want ... be . mo'om ... pictures. Admit it now."
"There are other reasons a girl comes to Los Angeles besides movies and television."
"Like what, for instance?"
"Well, the weather for one thing."
"Smog, you mean."
"Besides, Los Angeles is an exciting city. There are millions of things to do. I've told you all this before, Pam."
"Yeah, you told me. But I still don't believe it. With your curves, your innocent, baby face, you're a natural. But you gotta go looking. They won't come looking for you. Those days are gone forever."
Terri tossed her head, watched television again. "You're impossible, Pam. The only reason I ever even consented to sit in on that drama class, even this gym thing, was to have something to do, to please you. The way you kept harping...."
"And I'm going to keep on harping, kid. Until you see the light. TV's begging for ingenues like you. After all it isn't as if you didn't have any talent. What about that thing in Waterloo? Carousel, was it?"
"King and I," Terri corrected. "It was a small part in a tank-town community theater group. It doesn't mean a thing. Now will you shut up? I'm trying to watch this show."
"Nuts," Pam retorted. "We're talking about you, about your future. I don't think that Tuptim's a small part. And a city like Waterloo, sixty-five-thousand, isn't it?"
"Skip it. I don't want to talk about it."
"Just how long can you live on the sights and sounds of Los Angeles?" Pam persisted. "How long you gonna be hung up in that crummy office of ours? Great Western Insurance! Nuts. Great Western Grave's more like it. What're you gonna do with your life?"
"Well," Terri sniffed impatiently. "You act as if I was fifty or something. I'm only twenty-two. I'm getting by, I'm enjoying myself. One thing certain: that movie bit's not for me. I've seen what it's done to other girls, it won't happen to me. Remember Jackie Trane? How she went to pieces when that agent took her up to Tahoe for the weekend? He did things to her it makes me sick just to think about. You know as well as I do what Jackie is today. A common call-girl. Where did all her hotshot dreams get her?"
Pam's face grew thoughtful; she stopped kicking in mid-stride. "Jackie was a kook. She never had it in the first place. She caved in too damned easy. I, both of us, we'll be different."
"Will we? Maybe you will, but I'm washing my hands of the whole mess. I like my life the way it is. Uncomplicated. Someday I'll meet Mr. Clean, we'll get married and...."
"And you'll stagnate, turn into a meatball hausfrau. You talk so stupid sometimes." Pam's voice teetered on the precipice of a snarl. "That's not for me. I'm gonna be somebody in this loony bin someday."
"Rots of ruck, dear," Terri teased. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to salvage what I can of this show."
Pam didn't answer. Instead she threw herself into a series of twist-overs with vengeful ferocity, her shoulders flat, her torso twisting, her bare feet flicking at her hands, the exertion causing her refined, small breasts to bob and quiver in sensuous frenzy.
Had a man been there he'd have flipped his skull.
The sudden flurry of activity distracted Terri, and covertly losing interest in the TV show, she studied the thrusting body on the floor.
Even at this disadvantage, her face shiny with perspiration, her hair disheveled, Pam Lyon was still a beautiful woman. Her legs were witchy, her calves lush, taut and lean, twin avenues to sensual paradise. Her body was slim and long, her shoulders and hips narrow. In a slinky gown, in skin-tight Patinos, she moved with panther-like rhythm and grace, there was a taunting aloofness in her bearing. Granted, her breasts were small, a major sin in this day of inflation, but they were a decided asset to Pam's aura of svelte coolness. In clothes, as well as out of them, like now, she was breathtaking.
Pam's olive complexion set off her dark hair and eyes perfectly. She wore it in a boyish cut, a modified page-boy, her flaring black brows, the long arch of her nose joining to give her an Inca-Princess look. Her lips were exquisitely formed, slightly pouty. Her cheekbones were high and prominent, glowed with inner flush, gave her an animal vitality, reminding Terri, of all things, of the polished gloss of an autumn-ripened russet apple.
Regarding the proud, lovely woman, Terri entertained not the slightest doubt that someday, in her hard, unflinching way, Pam Lyon would attain her goal. If any starstruck girl in Hollywood at this moment would make it, Pam would. She would gouge, bite, kick, connive and compromise. She'd sleep around to get to the top if she had to. Proudly, premeditatedly at that; she'd have no regrets, feel no shame afterward. No holds barred. The devil take anyone who happened to get in her way.
All at once, seeing the almost cruel curve to Pam's beautiful mouth, Terri felt a rain of goose bumps pelt her arms and back. She tried to turn away, to concentrate on the waning TV program. But caught up in an uncertain wonder, she could not. While a recurrent question boomed in her brain. Why do these girls do it? Why do they purposely court heartbreak?
Abruptly Pam had enough of physical fitness. She scrambled up, executed four more listless toe touches, a half dozen knee bends, her body rippling in exotic agitation. Then she was gathering and folding her blanket. "Soap time," she announced tersely. And went to prepare for her shower, her perky buttocks veritably swaying as she left the room.
Leaving Terri alone in the living room, staring with unseeing eyes at the fluttery picture on the television screen.
Her thoughts were very definitely elsewhere.
There was no sham modesty in Terri Cavan's refusal to consider a TV or movie career. Oddly enough, it was the unvarnished truth that she'd come to L.A. for the climate, to escape a rustic small-mindedness that threatened to mold her into a priggish automaton before she was 25. She'd fled Iowa to climb out of a deep rut, to escape her pious, sanctimonious and hypocritical parents. If, in so doing, she'd broken their hearts, she was sorry. But there'd been no other way.
Just once in her life, she'd justified her actions, she'd like to try something on her own, she'd like to see what the rest of the world was like.
A world that wasn't made of prudish pettiness, where blue laws didn't exist.
Often she'd contemplated leaving home, living in another part of Waterloo, acquiring a circle of new, free-thinking friends. Which plan invariably went into the discard. It wouldn't be enough of a break, she wouldn't be far away from her parents.
Which is not to say that Terri was a frustrated wanton, that she lusted after a life on nonstop sin. This wasn't true at all. What she yearned after was independence, a feeling of not being constantly spied upon.
Despite its size, it sprawling industrial complexes, despite its Chamber of Commerce ballyhoo that here was a city on the move, Waterloo was, in reality, nothing more than a crossroads country village multiplied a thousand fold. Its main industries were farm centered. Stockyards, packing plants, farm machinery manufacture, grain millers, storers and shippers. These were the forces that kept the city alive.
And on Sunday afternoon you could always take a drive in the country. To Grandy Center, to Eldora, to Dunkerton. You could smell the pigs all the way.
Thus she'd traded that smothering world for one that was absolute antithesis. She'd traded the hot, muggy summers, the cold, damp winters, the insularity of her packing-plant-stenched environment for Los Angeles's smog and desert-like heat, for its bustling hedonism and incredible liberality, for is infinite sensations, experiences and vistas.
And though often chagrined during those first six months in L.A., she'd never once been disappointed. For its heady atmosphere and mad whirl had more than lived up to advance billings. It had been like learning to live all over again, like being alive, really alive, for the first time. She'd received insights, good, rotten and indifferent, into the ways of the world, insights she might otherwise never have known.
And there were insights to come. Insights that would have sent Terri, screaming her bestialization, back to the mundane security of Iowa had she been possessed of clairvoyant powers.
The transition wasn't achieved without certain setbacks and second thoughts.
Most grievous among these was the defection of her close friend Sue Watson, who'd been, from the start, the main instigator of their "escape" from Waterloo. The total impact of L.A. had been too much for Sue, and stricken by acute homesickness, she'd tearfully surrendered, returned to Iowa. To the last she'd tried coaxing Terri to join her. Terri had almost succumbed, but in the end, still intoxicated with the newness of her environment, she'd resisted, had remained in "The City of Angels."
The week following Sue's departure, as Terri returned nightly from her secretarial rounds at Great Western to face up to her Maywood apartment, was pure hell. An empty apartment, a room even, in Waterloo would have been endurable. But here she was utterly alone.
It was during that week that Terri Cavan had come closest to throwing in the towel, going home herself.
Then, on the following Monday, as she'd been busy in new policy filing, the tall, raven-haired girl had approached.
"Hi, Terri," she'd said. "It is Terri, isn't it? You the gal who's got the apartment? Bonnie Kief was telling me you need a roomie."
Pam Lyon had moved in the very next night.
Had someone purposely set out to find two opposites in character and purpose, he couldn't have done better that Terri and Pam had he dedicated his life to the matching. For where Pam was brash, poised and aggressive, Terri was timid, unsure and introverted. When Pam was tall and dark, Terri was small and blonde. Where Pam was endowed with a slim, classic body, her allure understated, Terri's attributes were more blatant, her breasts large, surging, taunting grapefruits, her hips and buttocks waggled and fought vigorously inside her skirts.
Where Pam was possessed of an indomitable, fiery drive, having come from New York with a half-dozen little theater credits, a stint as a department store model under her belt, Terri was content to drift, to let each day take care of itself, the most crucial decision in her life thus far being that which had brought her to California in the first place.
In reality it had been no great task for Pam to talk Terri into the drama course, into the gym sessions. For Terri, greedy for experience, was susceptible; she welcomed any and all emissaries from the outside world. It became something painfully close to envy with Terri. If she could ever become half as confident, as knowledgeable as Pam-
The woman who faced the TV set, her shoulders slightly slumped, her mouth curved in sad smile, was beautiful, but not beautiful in an obvious way. Hers was a loveliness that took second and third looks to be recognized, a subtle flowering that surpassed mere prettiness, became the essence of beauty.
The face was round, the brown eyes a trifle too small, the nose somewhat stubby. There was a sleepy puffiness look in her eyes, a .fullness of her under-jowl to reinforce the aura of fresh-waked innocence that clung to her. When Terri smiled it seemed she held back a secret, promised an unknown something to the man who would really care, who would champion her reticent, unstated cause.
A look of sad loneliness and seeking. A promise of monumental thaw to come.
Terri's hair was done in a bouffant, slightly ratted style; it was disarranged now, several wisps dangling over her forehead. At Pam's insistence she'd had it tinted a champagne tone, had let the hairdresser skillfully streak this with gray. She'd let Pam teach her to do her eyes so they appeared larger, more alluring.
The two touches were perfect, sheer inspiration on Pam's part, and intensified the ingenue lostness in her expression added a muted sexiness besides.
Often, studying Terri unobserved, admiring her tiny figure, the ebullient burst of her breasts', hips and buttocks, appraising the child's fine hands and wrists, the curve of her throat, the exquisite line of ankle and calf, Pam was hit by a strange sadness.
That greenhorn, she thought. That poor, simple greenhorn.
Once the plaint had even been articulated. Terri suddenly looking up, catching Pam's pitying stare, had said, "Pam? What re it? Why're you looking at me like that?"
"You poor kid," Pam had answered, caught off-guard. "You're really in for it. With that body, all those goodies. Then that baby face. You've got a long way to go."
Terri's face had fallen. "What're you talking a-bout, Pam? What kind of riddles...?"
"Skip it, Ter," Pam had recovered. "It's a riddle all right. One you have to solve for yourself."
But the implication of Pam's enigmatic statement hadn't gone completely over Terri's head. For, after all, no girl could be that naive. Terri wasn't as dumb as her bedazzled gaze would have her appear.
If the truth were known, Terri was no babe-in-the-woods at all. She was a non-virgin, twice-removed, having learned telling lessons in practical biology before she was nineteen.
Her initiation had occurred the summer after her high school graduation, an act of rebellion against her father who'd adamantly refused Iowa U. for her, insisted instead that she take a short term secretarial course at a local business college. Vengeful and defiant, she'd let a surprised Jim Clausen take her for a ride in the country after a movie. She'd all but seduced him herself.
As a matter of male principal Jim had let his hands wander, had put the heretofore inviolable Terri Cavan to another test. When he'd kissed her passionately, had felt her melt, had heard her breathing quicken, it had been impossible to keep his hands off those fast rising and falling mounds beneath her nylon T-shirt.
"Terri, baby...." he'd sighed as she'd let him cradle and caress each breast, as she'd hissed with delight and surprise at the tingling sensations he'd sent through her when he'd twirled and fingered her nip-plies. "You mean...."
"Yes, Jim," she'd breathed, her pulse insane in her ears, "if this is what you want. I do too." And she'd fallen back, had wanted to scream at the maddening feelings he was igniting for her. Her nipples had felt swollen, monstrous. Yet, as much as they'd pained her, she didn't want him to stop.
Brazen, vengeful to the last, she'd become impatient when Jim hadn't hurried things along. "Please, Jim," she'd finally said, "take off my shirt, my brassiere. Don't just..
The astonished boy had eagerly complied. And minutes later he'd stripped her to the waist, had sprawled her on the car seat. Where, kneeling on the floor, he'd run his lips all over her torso, from her lips to her waist. But mostly he'd centered at the magnificent, quaking breasts, he'd teased the nipples with his fingers, he'd made them alternately soft, then turgid. Terri had felt like someone was touching live coals to the raw nibs.
And she'd become, by the moment, more wild, more impatient.
Then, moments later, when his hands had slid on her bare legs, from ankles to knees, had tickled and tortured her. He'd let his hands slide, inch by inch, beneath her skirt.
She'd frozen, had wanted more of the deliriously wicked sensation, had felt she'd die if she didn't get more. Her vitals had bubbled, she'd turned to so much mush in his hands. Shortly, his lips working wildly to supply a smokescreen for what his hands were doing, he had touched her, had caressed, had become the very first male to know her.
She'd thought she'd faint from the delirious, intoxicating pain his touch awoke. When he'd gone further, rolled down her panties, let his hands caress and explore, she'd been unable to stand any more.
"Please, darling," she'd wailed, sitting up, holding his hands away, "not here. Take me somewhere. Out of the car...."
Thus Jim had escorted her to a grassy hollow some 400 feet from the road. And there, on a blanket, he'd moved into the final, transfiguring phase of the seduction. There, callow and insensitive tyro that he was, he'd proceeded to ruin everything.
To this day Terri could still remember the warmth of that July night, the way the full moon had glistened on Jim's tanned, nude body. She still got the shivers to recall her awe at seeing a man naked for the first time, at seeing the effects of his excitement, feeling a wondrous pride that she'd been able to do that for him.
But then, as Jim had moved to her, "No, no!" she rebelled shrilly as he had touched her, had begun to pressure her. "Please, no Jim! You hurt terribly. I can't stand the pain. Please, no! I've changed my mind."
"No, baby," he'd choked. "I can't stop now. I have to have you, to finish. I'll go nuts if I don't!" And no matter how Terri had pleaded and sobbed and thrashed, the lust-inflamed boy wasn't to be denied.
In the end, he had his way.
Blessedly that had only lasted a short time. As Jim, beginner that he was, had died almost as soon as he'd begun.
Afterward, both penitent, Terri still sobbing intermittently, Jim had taken her home. Terri hadn't slept most of that night. Shame-ridden and fearful, she'd lived the vicious evening over and over again in her mind, had wondered incessantly over the fact that some people actually derived pleasure from this humiliating, animal battle.
She'd seen Jim the rest of that summer, but only once, after a screaming argument with her mother, had she surrendered to him again. This time in her own living room, her parents out for the evening. Steeling herself, she'd found the pain less intense. He had lasted longer, had become slightly pleasurable. The tension and excitement had risen, had driven her partially out of her senses.
Only Jim had failed her again, had been delivered prematurely, had been of no further use to her. Had it not been for that she might have discovered the true meaning of love that night, the true meaning of being a woman.
But Jim hadn't helped. In the final summation he'd proved to be nothing more than a shallow boy, a greedy child.
"I'm sorry, Terri," he'd apologized afterward, so stupid in those matters that he didn't know that there were other ways of helping a woman find release and satisfaction. "I didn't mean for that to happen so soon. Baby, did you find anything at all?"
"Nothing," she'd hissed spitefully. "Did you expect I would? With you?"
Her parents had come home within the hour. And that had been that.
But neither of these events had been as repugnant as the night with Kent Lindner, a handsome, much-sought-after young man. A well-brought-up youth whom Mrs. Cavan was wild to have Terri snare.
The same boy who, before the night was out, had taken Terri to a roadhouse, had plied her with furtive jolts of wine from a hip flask, with innuendo and pawings of the rankest sort. Who, when sure that Terri was blotto, had hurried her from the hall, had been so excited that he'd hustled Terri into the car's back seat, had taken her right there in the parking lot.
After Jim's somehow respectful love-making, it seemed bestial that Kent hadn't even undressed her. Instead he'd flung back her skirts, unclasped her stockings, let them slither down her legs until they'd tangled in her pumps. Then he'd attacked her underpinnings. A metallic hiss then, and seconds later he'd crowded closer, jammed her head against an arm rest, twisted her back to a painful arc.
"You dig Ken, don't you?" he'd goaded as he'd claimed her. "You do, don't you? He's a good stud, ain't he?"
Afterward they'd driven back into Waterloo, stopping once more on a side road, where, once more in the back seat he'd abused her. Terri remembered little of that night. Except that at the end 'she'd dashed from the car, had vomited loud and long beside the road.
Needless to say, there was never a second date with Kent Lindner.
Yes, ma'am, Terri thought dourly, rousing abruptly from her introspective trance, focusing in the TV picture all at once, surprised at the depths of reverie into which she'd sunk. I know all about life.
I don't want any more. Not right away, and not outside of marriage at any rate, Helen Gurley Brown to the contrary. There must be something more to loving than pain and remorse, more than that residue of shame that hangs on for days afterward. Love's something that should be learned slowly, with someone who truly loves you. Something you don't acquire in ugly, hit-and-run fiascos in automobiles. Not from pigs like Kent.
She straightened in her chair, concentrated on the sounds in the bathroom. As the steady drumming of the shower suddenly stopped. She heard the tub squeak when Pam climbed out.
Terri returned to her goading thoughts, wondered what it had been in the first place that had triggered the remembrances of Clausen and Lindner. Those were things beside forgotten. Or was it like Sex and the Single Girl said? Was she getting that way?
She shunted the thoughts aside. It wasn't so. This was just one of those bad nights. She didn't need a man; there wasn't room or time in her life for a man now. She'd be stupid to let herself get involved m a romance right now. Especially when she'd just escaped from a restricting, stifling cage. There were too many things to get settled first.
Terri fell back in her chair and felt a small impact of wonder. Things like what? That nothing job at Great Western? The movies we take in when we get too shook? Our classes? The walks we take along the Strip? The stop-ins at the Villa Nova, at Cyrano's when we can raise extra loot? Things like this exciting evening at home?
The television was dead, Terri was staring into space when Pam emerged from the bathroom jerking at the ties of her white negligee. She looked puzzledly at Terri, then turned the TV back on. "The news, baby," she smiled. "Aren't you with it?" She sensed Terri's mood, tried joshing her out of it. "Or do you Iowa corn-shuckers only tune in the livestock receipts?"
Terri worked at a smile.
Pam adjusted the fine tuning, evaluated her fuzzy results. "That damned set. Don't tell me we're gonna get stuck for another service call." She shrugged, turned toward the kitchen. "How about a drink? Call it, I'm fixing. "
"No," Terri said, twinges of revulsion hitting her after remembering Kent. "Nothing, thanks."
"Get with it, Ter. Alcohol's the oil that keeps this smog-drenched fairyland going. C'mon, take an Orange Blossom or something."
Terri's voice firmed. "Nothing, Pam. I don't figure you. Here you work an hour to slim down, then turn right around and belt down calories a mile a minute."
"Don't be a nag, dear. I need joy juice, everybody does. Keeps us from going off the deep end. You'll learn one of these days. You'd better, in self defense if anything. Around here a gal that can't hold her liquor is asking for trouble. These Hollywood wolves eat little girls like you alive."
"Not this little girl," Terri said, finding herself wincing involuntarily, Pam's dig touching a tender spot.
"You'd better learn," Pam insisted, "before it's too late. No time like the present to start."
"Try me again tomorrow. Or next week."
Miffed, Pam wheeled, went into the kitchen.
Leaving Terri alone, seemingly shrunken and defeated in her chair, her eyes staring into space with steely determination, as though an invisible screen had been set up before her, as though flickering, mocking pictures were being projected upon it.