Guest
Piano player Al Roberts (Neal) is drinking coffee at a roadside diner in Reno, hitchhiking east from California, when a fellow patron plays a song on the jukebox that reminds him of his former life in New York City. He remembers a time when he was bitter about squandering his musical talent working in a cheap nightclub. After his girlfriend Sue Harvey (Claudia Drake), the nightclub vocalist, leaves to seek fame in Hollywood, he sinks into depression. After some anguish, he decides to go to California and marry her; with little money, though, he is forced to hitchhike his way across the country. In Arizona, bookie Charles Haskell Jr. (Edmund MacDonald) gives the tired and disheveled Al a ride in his convertible and tells him that he is in luck: he is driving all the way from Florida to Los Angeles to place a bet on a horse. During the drive, he has Al pass him pills on several occasions, which he swallows as he drives. That night, Al drives while Haskell sleeps. When a rainstorm forces Al to pull over t
