The crowd hissed, but Buckaroo hushed them again to silence, saying, "That's all right.  I am a half-breed.  This great country is full of us."

His measured words only slightly tempered her anger.  "What do you care?" she demanded. "What do you care who I am, or what happens to me?"

"I care," he replied.  "What's your name?"

"Peggy."

Feigning exhaustion, I think I nearly fell over.  I could see the blood racing to Buckaroo's temples as Rawhide stepped up to succor him.  If it was the girl's idea of a joke, it was an outrage.

"Did you say... Peggy?" Buckaroo said.

"Penny," was her response, her voice this time heard more clearly, and we all breathed more easily.  "My name is Penny.  Penny Priddy.  What's in a name?  It doesn't mean anything to you or anybody else.  Please, get on with the show.  I'm just a nobody."

"Nobody is a nobody," Buckaroo said. "Everyone has something to offer."

"Save the speech," she cried. "I don't need it."

"Then why are you crying?"

"I'm not crying," she scoffed, as one hand slipped unobtrusively into her plastic purse and felt the welcome barrel of a small-caliber pistol.  The thought of death made her strong.  Life was a hell, but there was hope!  She realized the longed-for-moment had arrived and felt the weapon coldly, examining its joints.  She would shoot herself on these premises, would cut once and for all the ropes which bound her fate to Buckaroo Banzai.  "It's like this guy said," she added, in a kind of trance, no longer even caring whether anyone heard her.  "The guy in the employment office... he said, as long as there's a sidewalk, I'll always have a job.  So how can I complain?  I think he was trying to be nice."

Nothing yet had happened, except that she had knocked over a glass on the table.  Those around her snickered insensitively before B. Banzai chastened them.  "Don't be mean," he said.  "The fates are cruel enough.  Remember: No matter where you go, there you are."

She saw only a blur as he went to the piano.  Memories floated across her mind, most of them unpleasant.  Shortly they would all disappear.  She would die and be reborn, perhaps go to that other dimension B. Banzai had discovered only this morning.  There was more than this life - that much was now known.  The thought of erasing the past, starting again with a clean slate and no memories - how alluring it seemed!

"This song's for Peggy, and anybody else a little down on their luck," announced Buckaroo at the piano.

"The name's Penny."  She heaved a sigh.  "But who cares?"

Earlier in her nocturnal expedition she had accepted an offer of drinks from the first stranger who had made a momentary impression.  In a cracked and pitted booth she had sat with him, enduring his filthy hands and coarse attentions while waiting for the liquor to blot out every feeling.  Then he had offered her stimulants to go to his room and had attempted to bar her way when she refused.  Only her little handgun had saved her, and now it would save her forever from men of his stamp.  She would put a bullet through her aching brain.

She knew there was no drawing back.  At the threshold now, she cocked the hammer.  Soon, she thought, I'll be steeped in blood... white-hot, then cold.

Now began a dreadful scene.  In my shorthand notes of the affair I have described what happened next.