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and woman heading somewhere with what looked like important business in mind, opportunities knocking for everyone to hear. Passing by the Granville Street cinemas festooned with midway bulbs, he decided that Mr. Hitchcock and Elizabeth Taylor—or some Technicolor Treat in the distance—would have to wait. The hubbub was wearying. He stepped outside the commotion. Back resting against the white glazed brick theatre, he turned his face southward. The huge vertical signs that jutted out—
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    CAPITOL
    PARADISE
    PLAZA
    ASTOR
    ORPHEUM
    VOGUE
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    â€”brought to mind the plans he and Alberta had made for visiting Las Vegas or Reno. Winston wanted to see desert cacti in bloom and Alberta said she had a yen for some sin: drinking and gambling and Hollywood crooners. Maybe Dean Martin or that little Negro fellow with the glass eye. Failing them: Liberace.
    Unlit now, the signs were potent and talismanic, promises for untold thrills once the sun had set. Even the cackling clown’s head that invited patrons into the bowling alley arcade below it offered Winston a moment of temptation. He’d never bowled a game in his life. Those run-down lanes in the Bend were for the lowest common denominator. The cigarette smoke alone, he’d heard, could choke a coal miner.
    Winston watched as the street’s determined throng—business-suited men, errand-running secretaries, lady shoppers with lists to check off—strode with purpose, appearing to have no time for idleness till their tasks were accomplished. Winston thought of ant farms and cooped chickens. In a sense, only the down-on-his-luck rummy he’d passed a few blocks past could be his boon companion. No one else took a minute to dawdle. Winston felt depleted from standing witness to the noise and the city’s antic style of living. A catnap would settle his nerves, he decided: he felt brittle as a wood chip. How many blocks would he have to walk? He surveyed the stretch with dismay. Or else—the sudden notion sparked like inspiration—a cup of tea with marmalade and a baking powder biscuit in some quiet corner. He stopped at the White Lunch cafeteria, an establishment that advertised its hospitality with typical city gaudiness: floating above the entrance was an immense yellow neon cup and saucer from which rose strands of white neon steam that flashed bright and then subsided into long periods of dullness. Who could deny its tout’s pitch? “‘When in Rome,’ I guess,” Winston muttered. He walked through the double doors.
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    The hotel’s beer parlour was cavernous, but as familiar as any he’d experienced in the Valley—lustrous panels of wood punctuated with mirrors and low lights, the dull murmur of talk, stains, laughter, tobacco, yeasty swill, clatter. Winston knew that he could become a teetotaler with no effort; drink was a social glue for which he’d found little use. He supposed that working men in their Sunday finest had been streaming into this basement to purchase their amber-coloured ticket to bonhomie and oblivion since the days of gas lighting and horse-drawn wagons. Spent years and replenished barrels: as cyclical and enduring as the seasons.
    He stood at the entrance and peered into the murky room. At a nearby table, a broad-shouldered man pointed two fingers at his companion sitting directly opposite. Menace was unmistakable in the gesture. Another typical sight, Winston noted. He walked toward an empty stool at the bar and sat at the polished oak counter. As he waited for a harried bartender’s “Yes, sir, what’ll it be?” Winston grimaced for a moment with discomfort. Out of habit, he’d run the nail of his index finger along a seam in the wood. This reflex test for cleanliness had dredged up a tarry paste that was in fact nothing except accumulated soil from who could say how long ago. He rubbed his fingernail on the side of the stool’s mushroom