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It was only nine in the evening, but Patrick wanted the man's wife already. Venice in the early sixties was not as romantic as decades earlier it had wanted to be for its name sake. Even though the beach shanty was full of people who knew how to use bottles and glasses for two purposes; Patrick's emersed judgement let the easy sway of alcohol glide nobly himself to the side of a preconceived unwed mother. The Platers were still playing on the rolling box. They sung their high pitch back when sparrows danced apples from the trees. Patrick was thin. And he had buck teeth. But there were the darting eyes, the black hair literally sticking up from the brain the way a crows nest does for a pirate. The veins in his wrists popped long and circular. His forehead was similar, and his nostrils were a bit wide. With ears like a clowns, and a neck long like a hunter, he was even more interesting, because his hands seemed that they should have been unknotted for music. Back then, the sons of hillbillys had started to gather into what would evolve into a distinct Los Angeles culture. They counted their counties with gutars strung out with beat-up cords. Patrick and his family were from Ohio. They wern't into the gutar very well, and they wouldn't oneday become movie writers who have friends that are cowboys; but they were tough, and excited with hell-raising to be out there by the sea.