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that maze of alleys off Washington Street and he must have come close to it two or three times without realizing that he was in the vicinity. He had always disliked asking strangers for advice and tried to zero in on his own, without any luck. Finally he had to ask a man where the Moth was, feeling an ass as he pronounced the name, and the man said, ‘You just passed it,’ and there it was.
    Joe decided to spend some of the Yale money on a good meal, so he entered as a customer, but he must have been very transparent, for the doorman said, ‘I suppose you want to see Gretchen Cole.’
    ‘I want to eat,’ Joe said.
    The menu was on the expensive side but offered a good selection of seafood, which Joe had grown accustomed to in the Portuguese restaurants of Southern California. He found the meal better than average and did not begrudge the money spent, and when the entertainment began, it consisted of a rock-and-roll band accompanied by a girl singer. Music was important to Joe, and now he responded to its visceral beat; he also appreciated the animal shoutings of the girl, but this night he was looking for a guitar player, and when the band was replaced by a male trio singing folk songs, only a few of which he knew, he grew restless. Toward midnight the folk singers gave way to a different girl with a sensational bellowing voice, and Joe went out on the sidewalk and asked the doorman, ‘When does Gretchen Cole sing?’
    ‘She don’t.’
    ‘I came here to meet her.’
    ‘When you came in I asked if that was it and you said you wanted to eat.’
    ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
    ‘You said you wanted to eat. I should drive away business?’
    ‘Will she be in tomorrow?’
    ‘Nope. She don’t sing here no more … after her accident with the police.’
    ‘Dope?’
    ‘Not her. Something with the police in Chicago, I think it was.’
    ‘How can I find her?’
    The doorman drew back, studied Joe, and asked contemptuously,‘You one of them draft dodgers? Borrowin’ money from a girl.’
    ‘I want to see her.’
    The doorman gave him an address and said, ‘Maybe if I was young I wouldn’t have any guts, too.’
    The next afternoon Joe found out where the official center was and asked if he could speak to Gretchen Cole. A clergyman said, ‘She doesn’t work here any more.’
    ‘At Yale they told me to look her up.’
    ‘Professor Hartford?’ When Joe nodded, the clergyman brightened and said, ‘One of the best. If he sent you, Gretchen’ll want to see you.’ He made a phone call, then handed Joe an address in Brookline, a suburb of Boston. An hour later Joe was walking up to a handsome Colonial-type house set back among trees. He knocked at the door and was met by a girl about his own age. She was not beautiful, but her face was radiant and well scrubbed. She wore her dark brown hair in two braids and her informal clothes looked quite expensive. Joe noticed two things about her: she moved with unusual grace and she was nervous as a hawk.
    ‘Professor Hartford sent you?’ she asked. ‘Come in.’ She led him into a meticulously arranged living room in which nothing looked conspicuously expensive, yet everything seemed right. The floor was covered by a large elliptical rag rug of a type not known in California but most effective when edged with red-maple furniture. Joe was looking at the rug when the girl said, ‘My name is Gretchen Cole and I suppose you’re heading for Canada.’
    ‘I am.’
    ‘Good!’ She became crisp and businesslike, but after a few sentences of instruction she changed completely and became once more unbelievably nervous and insecure.
    ‘You feel all right?’ Joe asked.
    ‘Yes … yes,’ she said, blushing from her collarbone to the top of her forehead. ‘Now first thing you must do is get a haircut. You’ve got to look as square as possible, because if the Canadian border patrols catch even a suspicion that you might be a hippie or a draft dodger, they’ll turn you