Jimmie sat down in a chair beside his bed. He looked out of his window at the street. The truck driver was lolling in his seat with his feet propped on the windshield.
Jimmie kept his voice calm. “I assume that you have concluded Audrey is rather a—well—”
Sarah smiled. “She is—rather!”
“I see.”
“On the other hand—” Sarah sat up, after folding over the corner of a page in the diary—“well, a psychiatrist would be interested in her. She’s ruthless. She’s unconventional—to put it meagerly. She does as she pleases. She isn’t mean, exactly, although she’s hurt a lot of people in a big way. She seems to be sort of trying to find out something. That is, she seemed to be when she was eighteen and up through now—when she’s twenty. She doesn’t mind how hard she has to try, or what trying involves, or even being hurt, herself. She’s got nerve. Boy! What a nerve!”
“The search for happiness,” Jimmie said remotely.
“Happiness? I wouldn’t interpret it that way. I don’t think she gives a damn about being happy. Not in the cake and candy and comfort sense. She wants to be what she calls, ‘in the groove,’ doesn’t she? The times when she said she was weren’t necessarily comfortable times for her, were they? Don’t tell me you haven’t read these things!”
“No. I haven’t read them.”
“But they must have been here last night—”
“They’ve been here for a week or more.”