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of ground—almost as if he feared it were a scummed-over dust-camouflaged oil pool which might engulf us. You do run into such things in oil fields, though I’ve never heard of them in Venice.
    And two or three times, later that night, Daloway made excuses to go out and scan the light-patched darkness toward the Grand Canal, almost as if he expected to see tongues of petroleum running toward us across the low ground, or other shapes approaching.
    To quiet his nerves and put the thing on a more rational basis, I pointed out that, as he himself had told me, natural oil leakages are by no means uncommon in the Pacific Southland. Ocean bathers are apt to get bits of tar on their feet and they usually blame it on modern industry and its poorly-disposed wastes, seldom discovering that it is asphalt from undersea leakages which were recurring regularly long before Cabrillo’s time. Another example, this one in the heart of western Los Angeles, is La Brea tar pits, which trapped many saber-toothed tigers and their prey, as the asphalt-impregnated bones testify. (There’s a tautology there: brea means tar. Other glamorous-sounding old Los Angeles street names have equally ugly or homely meanings: Las Pulas means “the fleas,” Temescal means “sweat house,” while La Ciénega, street of the wonder-restaurants, means “the swamp.”)
    My effort was ill-considered. Daloway’s nerves were not quieted. He muttered, “Damned oil killing animals too! Well, at least it got the exploiters as well as the exploited,” and he stepped out again to scan the night, the growl of the pump growing suddenly louder as he opened the door.
    The report of the petroleum leakage turned out to have been much exaggerated. I don’t recall hearing how they fixed it up, if they ever did. But it gave me an uncomfortable insight into the state of Daloway’s nerves—and didn’t do my own any good, either.
    Then there was the disastrous business of Daloway’s car. He bought an old jalopy for almost nothing at about this time and put it in good shape, expending most of his dwindling cash reserve buying essential replacements at second hand. I inwardly applauded—I thought the manual work would be therapeutic. Incidentally, Daloway repeatedly refused my offers of a small loan.
    Then one evening I dropped over to find the car gone and Daloway just returned from a long, half hitch-hiked trudge and pitifully strained and shaky. It seemed he’d been driving the car along the San Bernadino Freeway when a huge kerosene truck just ahead of him had jack knifed in an underpass and split its tank and spilled its load and caught afire. I’d heard about the accident on the radio a few hours earlier—it tied up the freeway for almost half a day. Daloway had managed to bring his car to a swerving stop in the swift-shooting oil. Two other cars, also skidding askew, crashed him lightly from behind, preventing his car’s escape. He managed to leap out and run away before the fire got to it—the truck driver escaped too, miraculously—but Daloway’s car, uninsured of course, was burned to a shriveled black ruin along with several others.
    Daloway never admitted to me straight out that he had been escaping from Venice and LA, leaving them for good, when that catastrophe on the San Bernardino Freeway thwarted him. I suppose he was ashamed to admit he would go away without telling me his plans or even saying goodby. (I would have understood, I think: some partings have to be made with ruthless suddenness, before the fire of decision burns out.) But a big old suitcase that had used to stand inside the door of the trailer was gone and I imagine it burned with the car.
    Later the police neatly turned all this into an argument for their theory that Daloway’s ultimate departure from Venice was voluntary. He’d once started to leave without informing me, they pointed out—and