He does so with obvious pleasure. After all, there’s something for him here too. The spectacle boasts scenes that you won’t catch anywhere else. For example, on the very first evening, the third from the right in the chorus line, a particularly sinewy and well-proportioned chorine, was irritated by her left-hand neighbor (softer, taller, more voluptuous), presumably because of the attention I paid the latter—an incessant torrent of flowers, a gigantic, sky-blue teddy bear, champagne between the numbers, whereby, needless to say, I drew the general attention of the audience to her. Finally, at the end of the performance, it was time for the curtain call and the artistes were presented by name, each one stepping forward and curtseying to our applause. The sinewy girl calmly waited for my favorite to bow and me to unleash universal jubilation (the pimps and beatniks and tourists attending the spectacle were amused by my clowning). Then, upon being called, the irritated chorine stepped forward very prettily, curtseyed, and sprang back with the agility of a monkey—planting the stiletto heel of her strapped shoe on the naked toes of her voluptuous colleague. The victim folded up in pain like a penknife.

Needless to say, it was the aggressor I took home that evening (to the apartment in the rue Jacob that I had been keeping for months to welcome the ruefully returning Dawn). I did not comfort the victim until the next evening. And needless to say, S., in his old rattletrap VW with double-H (Hanseatic Hamburg) license plates, tagged along both times. He pursued us straight across Paris to the Rive Gauche, even though I finally got sick of it and had fun steering my Ferrari very fast along the boulevards with lots of side streets, from which another car with the right of way could shoot out at any moment. But S. behaved courageously, downright heroically.

There was a third and fourth nocturnal drive (after all, the troupe had sixteen beautiful, coffee-brown girls), and we didn’t have an accident until the fifth. I stopped and put the car in reverse. I had just barely squeaked through a traffic light when it changed from yellow to red. Schwab, not far behind me, lost his nerve and slammed his heavy Teutonic foot on the brakes. He failed to notice that some guy in an old 204 had been tailgating him—an atavistic hunting instinct, as we know, aroused by an apparently fleeing object. He smashed right into Schwab’s rear.

Nothing much had happened, thank goodness. Just a lot of noise and banged-up metal. No one was hurt. Schwab complained about a whirring in his head, but then the old boy had been boozing rather heavily. It was a miracle he had been able to drive at all. The cars were wrecked, of course. The engine in Schwab’s Beetle had been shoved into the back seat, the hood of the old 204 was arched up. But it was three a.m. and no one cared about precise details. So the matter was settled on the spot and without the police. The two drivers exchanged insurance numbers and encouraging pats on the back while I interpreted. Then I loaded Schwab into the (rather cramped) back seat of the Ferrari.