SHE WAS LONELY AND PROMISCUOUS—
in that well-bred-casual way of young women who have too much money, too much time and nobody to really give a damn what they do with it.
 
The affairs were always brief, always meaningless, hastily forgotten.

Then she stumbled onto Shelley, crude and sensual, one of the Beat Generation. It was all fire and passion and it threw an alluring light-until it raged out of control and began to destroy her.