Every Thursday morning, Marcy shook herself out of the drugged heat-sleep of a summer night, pulled on her overalls, and went off to clean Ernest's apartment. The whole thing had started with one of his jokes. On an evening early in the summer, he'd been over for dinner, and Marcy, mostly out of boredom, had emptied his ashtray twice before he'd even finished his cigar. The idea had come to him in a flash. "Look at this, Shirley! She's at it again. What an instinct! Why not put these talents to work, Kid, get up a business? Hell, start with my place." He was her mother's boyfriend, a large man with a tobacco smell and a sense of humor that got on Marcy's nerves. But he gave her 15 dollars whenever she cleaned, no matter how long it took her to finish.

On Thursday nights, when Ernest came to visit her mother, Marcy went over to Shelley's house. She and Shelley were both 13, born two days apart, though sometimes, listening to Shelley talk, Marcy found this hard to believe. Shelley referred to Marcy's mother as "Shirlo," her own parents as "Boopse" and "Rack." She read nothing but movie magazines and loved to go on and on about her favorite stars. "Oh, his life is just slapped together," she'd say about this one or that one. "When his wife left him, they seriously feared for his mind," She often baited Marcy about Ernest, and sometimes, if Marcy felt in the mood, she defended him, sometimes she simply kept quiet When necessary, Shelley was easy to ignore. She had a color TV in her room, a lunatic dog named Skipper, and an older brother who would sometimes sell them a bottle of Ripple.

One Thursday morning, the telephone rang as Marcy sat on her bed, waking up. She grabbed some slippers and made it to the kitchen on the second ring.