"I'd be glad to," I answered, "if you will tell me where you live."
She gave me an address on Sunset, and this was Sunset, this lateral street, ending at the ocean. So, quite obviously, it was an address I could find.
I went over to climb in behind the wheel. There were two smells in that pretty car with the canvas top. One smell was of gasoline, the other was of alcohol.
"There's obviously alcohol in the gasoline," I said, "though that shouldn't prevent it from igniting."
"A funny, funny man," she said. "Keep the dialogue to a minimum, will you, Bogart? I'm not exactly sharp, right now."
I depressed the starter button, and the motor caught. I swung left onto Sunset, and started up the hill.
The car was clearly a recent model, but Jars had been wrong about the mechanical excellence of these huddlers. The machine simply had no life, no zest.
We drove past a shrine and around two curves, climbing all the while, past some huddled houses on the left, and the whole shining sea spread out on the right.
The woman said, "If you know a place where the coffee is drinkable, stop."