She was seventeen and tired of collecting china roosters and peach-can labels. She was tired of seeing the same stupid people every day. Somewhere there was someone handsome and perfect, and she had to find him and become perfect too. She couldn't waste all her life being stupid like her mother.
It took her two hours to see that Brendel was the perfect person. He was handsome, aggressive, easy to be with. He quarreled all the time and he even had a full-time job.
She married him. She dropped her little-girl collections and diversions. She was no longer a formless adolescent. She was very solid, very adult.
But the solidness had gone. She had found that Brendel's aggressiveness masked fear; his quarrelsomeness masked insecurity. Worst, he had no imagination. He plodded.
It had begun two weeks before. Brendel had come home from work tight and tense. He tried eating, he tried opera and quarreling, he tried exercises. Finally he said, "I'm gonna go see Latsker Smith. Wanta come?"
"Who the hell's Latsker Smith?" Already she was sick of the opera routine—and a little sick of Brendel.
"Drives a car. From Boston. Fella at the plant told me he's in centercity."
Minutes later they gridded out of the suburban maze. They materialized on a corner grid in centercity. There was no one on the dusty street. There was no car near the gaunt brick building where Latsker Smith was staying. They plopped on the doorstep.
Brendel fidgeted and talked. Latsker Smith was the son of a rich industrialist. His father wouldn't support him unless he worked, and Latsker wouldn't work. So he had to live on government non-employment allowance. His pre-grid automobile and airplane were his only diversions. Since he couldn't leave Boston by automobile, Boston being walled up like any city by the streetless suburbs, he saved his allowance until he could commercial-grid his car to another city. There he raced and squealed and spun through the deserted streets of centercity until he had saved enough to commercial-grid the car elsewhere.