She looked up at me, saw me there with eyes closed, and she didn’t know my thoughts. But maybe she did. Maybe that was why she said, ‘You’re tired. You must take a nap.’ Maybe that was why she pulled down the Murphy bed and insisted that I lie upon it, she beside me, her head in my arms. Maybe, studying my face, that was why she asked, ‘You love somebody else?’

I said, ‘Yes. I’m in love with a girl in Los Angeles.’

She touched my face.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I understand.’

‘No you don’t.’

Then I wanted to tell her why I had come, it was right there at the tip of my tongue, springing to be told, but I knew I would never speak of that now. She lay beside me and we watched the emptiness of the ceiling, and I played with the idea of telling her. I said, ‘There’s something I want to tell you. Maybe you can help me out.’ But I got no farther than that. No, I could not say it to her; but I lay there hoping she would somehow find out for herself, and when she kept asking me what it was that bothered me I knew she was handling it wrong, and I shook my head and made impatient faces. ‘Don’t talk about it,’ I said. ‘It’s something I can’t tell you.’

‘Tell me about her,’ she said.

I couldn’t do that, be with one woman and speak of the wonders of another. Maybe that was why she asked, ‘Is she beautiful?’ I answered that she was. Maybe that was why she asked, ‘Does she love you?’ I said she didn’t love me. Then my heart pounded in my throat, because she was coming nearer and nearer to what I wanted her to ask, and I waited while she stroked my forehead.

‘And why doesn’t she love you?’

There it was. I could have answered and it would have been in the clear, but I said, ‘She just doesn’t love me, that’s all.’

‘Is it because she loves somebody else?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

Maybe this and maybe that, questions, questions, wise, wounded woman, groping in the dark, searching for the passion of Arturo Bandini, a game of hot and cold, with Bandini eager to give it away. ‘What is her name?’

‘Camilla,’ I said.

She sat up, touched my mouth.

‘I’m so lonely,’ she said. ‘Pretend that I am she.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s it. That’s your name. It’s Camilla.’

I opened my arms and she sank against my chest.

‘My name is Camilla,’ she said.

‘You’re beautiful,’ I said. ‘You’re a Mayan princess.’

‘I am Princess Camilla.’

‘All of this land and this sea belongs to you. All of California. There is no California, no Los Angeles, no dusty streets, no cheap hotels, no stinking newspapers, no broken, uprooted people from the East, no fancy boulevards. This is your beautiful land with the desert and the mountains and the sea. You’re a princess, and you reign over it all.’