“I think I knew that at heart I was an aging spinster.”

A troubled mother and daughter spend their first day in Los Angeles.

"I wonder what we looked like then, that day we drove over into California. My mother could probably still tell you what we wore. We were driving to California from Bay City, Wisconsin, just the two of us, so I could be a television star. We'd taken Ted's Mobile Credit Card and stayed in motels, charging gasoline and Cokes on the bills. We dug up to our shoulders in the ice chests, bringing the cold pop bottles up like a catch. We'd stolen vegetables all across America, anything we could eat without cooking. My mother spotted the trucks."

This is what I learned: he was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it.