“Sarah Kefalvian.”
“Where do you live, Miss Kefalvian?”
“Not far from here. But I wasn’t going home. I was going up to the boulevard.”
“Whereabouts?”
“To an art exhibit. Near Las Palmas.”
“Let me take you there.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
She was averting her eyes, but as we got to the corner of La Brea she gave me a spirited, defiant look that sent me. “You don’t like cops, do you, Miss Kefalvian?” I said.
“No. They hurt people.”
“We help more people than we hurt.”
“I don’t believe it. Thank you for escorting me. Good night.”
Sarah Kefalvian turned her back to me and started striding off briskly in the direction of the boulevard. I couldn’t let her go. I caught up with her and grabbed her arm. She yanked it away. “Look,” I said, “I’m not your average cop. I’m a draft dodger. I know that there’s a Picasso exhibit at that bookstore on Las Palmas. I’m hot to learn culture and I need someone to show me around.” I gave Sarah Kefalvian the crinkly smile that made me look a bashful seventeen. She started to relent, very slightly. She smiled. I moved in. “Please?”
“Are you really a draft dodger?”
“Kind of.”
“I’ll go with you to the exhibit if you don’t touch me or tell anyone that you’re a policeman.”
“It’s a deal.”
We walked back to my illegally parked car, me elated, and Sarah Kefalvian interested, against her will.
The exhibit was at Stanley Rose’s Bookshop, a longtime hot spot for the L.A. intelligentsia. Sarah Kefalvian walked slightly ahead of me, offering awed comments. The pictures were prints, not actual paintings, but this didn’t faze her. It was obvious she was warming to the idea of having a date. I told her my name was Joe Thornhill. We stopped in front of “Guernica,” the one picture I felt confident enough to comment on.
“That’s a terrific picture,” I said. “I saw a bunch of photographs on that city when I was a kid. This brings it all back. Especially that cow with the spear sticking out of him. War must be tough.”
“It’s the cruelest, most terrible thing on earth, Joe,” Sarah Kefalvian said. “I’m devoting my life to ending it.”
“How?”
“By spreading the words of great men who have seen war and what it does.”
“Are you against the war in Korea?”
“Yes. All wars.”
“Don’t you want to stop the Communists?”
“Tyranny can only be stopped through love, not war.”
_That_ interested me. Sarah’s eyes were getting moist. “Let’s go talk,” I said, “I’ll buy you dinner. We’ll swap life stories. What do you say?” I waggled my eyebrows a la Wacky Walker.
Sarah Kefalvian smiled and laughed, and it transformed her. “I’ve already eaten, but I’ll go with you if you’ll tell me why you dodged the draft.”
“It’s a deal.” As we walked out of the bookstore I took her arm and steered her. She buckled, but didn’t resist.
We drove to a dago joint on Sunset and Normandie. En route I learned that Sarah was twenty-four, a graduate student in History at U.C.L.A. and a first-generation Armenian-American. Her grandparents had been wiped out by the Turks, and the horror stories her parents had told her about life in Armenia had shaped her life: she wanted to end war, outlaw the atom bomb, end racial discrimination, and redistribute the wealth. She deferred to me slightly, saying that she thought cops were necessary, but should carry liberal arts educations and high ideals instead of guns. She was starting to like me, so I couldn’t bring myself to tell her she was nuts. I was starting to like her, too, and my blood was roiling at the thought of the lovemaking that we would share in a few hours’ time.
I appreciated her honesty and decided that candor would be the only decent kind of barter. I decided not to bullshit her: maybe our encounter would leave her more of a realist.
The restaurant was a one-armed Italian place, strictly family, with faded travel posters of Rome, Naples, Parma, and Capri interspersed with empty Chianti bottles hanging from a phony grape arbor. I decided to forgo chow, and ordered a big jug of dago red. We raised our glasses in a toast.