Over the next several days he roamed Hollywood at random. He had originally intended to go all over Los Angeles, but the city’s large size made that impossible. Instead, he spent his time wandering the length of Hollywood Boulevard, drinking in its diversity and yet still feeling unfulfilled. Bookstores and music shops, boutiques and emporia, even famous names along the Walk of Fame—nothing could lift the depression that had settled over him. He walked amid the bright lights and the chattering people like a premature ghost, in the world but not of it.
When he walked at night, he received solicitations from both men and women; he ignored them all and walked on. On his second night in Hollywood he encountered a prostitute he couldn’t easily get rid of, a woman in her forties with lipstick s
