I stretched out on the bed and slept. It was twilight when I awakened and turned on the light. I felt better, no longer tired. I went to the typewrit… - John Fante

I had come to the limits of shooting pool, playing poker and bullshitting over beers, of driving off with other guys and broads into lonely orchards, clawing clumsily at skirts and panties, clawing in vain. Women were fine but demanding, you hurt easily at nineteen; you thought women were sweet and submissive but find them alley cats; you find comfort in whores less deceitful, and if you are lucky you learn to read.

I watched him tiptoe toward the barn door. I cursed him and waited tensely. In a little while I heard the mooing of a cow. It was a piteous cry. Then I heard a thud and a scuffle of hoofs. Out of the barn door came Hellfrick. Across his shoulder lay a dark mass, weighing him down. Behind him, mooing continually, a cow followed...It was a calf, blood spurting from a gash between the ears...I was sick, very sick. It was plain murder.

I tried to answer but she interrupted and went off in a Barrymore manner, speaking deeply and tragically; murmuring of the pity of it all, the stupidity of it all, the absurdity of a hopelessly bad writer like myself buried in a cheap hotel in Los Angeles, California, of all places, writing banal things the world would never read and never get a chance to forget.