That evening, for variety, I had made my choice from the audience rather than the troupe: something uncommonly exotic, also coffee-brown but pure French (whereas the troupe came from Jamaica), extraordinarily elegant and expensively perfumed, luxuriously hung with real jewelry (discernible by the nasty flashing of the pure-water diamonds), yet quick, witty, obviously of above-average intelligence, yet also larger than life, with mammoth thighs and the gigantic face of a merry-go-round Moor—and she called herself Princess Jahovary! I found her fascinating. “Isn’t she fas-cinating?” I said to S. after picking her up (she was with some suspiciously chic cocktail-party types, but I quickly maneuvered her away from them and to the bar). She obviously enjoyed me too. She said she was an agent for popular music, a record manufacturer. So not a kept woman then, as the diamonds had led me to think. We drank two or three whiskeys at the bar. Then it was time to go. I took her by the arm and waved good-bye to Schwab (as on the previous nights). And as on all previous nights, he hurriedly paid the check and plunged after us into the Russian roulette of side-street traffic. The fact that he was shot down from behind was (as John would say) tough luck. The one who really took it amiss, however, was the chocolate-colored Princess Jahovary. She wanted to get out when I wedged my dazed friend S. past her fullness into the back seat. She asked me to see her to the nearest taxi. When I told her we were only a few minutes from the rue Jacob, she acted as if this were the first she’d heard that I intended to bring her there, and she staunchly demanded that I drive her to the sixteenth arrondissement, where (typically) she resided. Nor would she hear of my first dropping S. at his hotel. So I drove her to the sixteenth arrondissement. Slowly and carefully, at her express wish. She wasn’t just miffed, she was downright furious. “Un bel caratteraccio!” I mumbled to myself. She asked me where I had learned Italian. I said that knowing several languages wasn’t always a sign of a good education but often merely the dregs leftover from a checkered career. And did she, as Princess Jahovary, speak Romanian? No, she said, her mother had never spoken it to her. And her father? “He was an American.” Aha. No further comment.

But her anger had obviously cooled and she was cheery again. An Aries, no doubt? She cheerfully admitted it. Schwab had fallen asleep in the back. He had probably drunk a lot more than I realized. He was snoring and we laughed.

When we arrived at her building (a ponderous Second Empire façade, the thick leaded-glass panes of the entrance door safeguarded by numerous iron-rod flourishes crowned with brass buttons), she became affectionate but refused to ask me up. Nevertheless, there was some erotic grappling, and since Schwab appeared to be fast asleep in the back, we were not exactly cautious. I complimented her on her beautiful lips and said I’d love to give her a white rose to munch on—and she must have misunderstood, for she took me at my word, even though the bud was really cyclamen-colored.