‘He was alright.’

‘He’s good, Arturo. You’d like him if you knew him better.’

‘I suppose.’

‘He liked you.’

I doubted that, after the scuffle in the parking lot. I remembered certain things about her relationship with Sammy, her smiles for him during work, her concern the night we took him home. ‘You love that guy, don’t you?’

‘Not exactly.’

She took her eyes off my face and let them travel around the room.

‘Yes you do.’

All at once I loathed her, because she had hurt me. This girl! She had torn up my sonnet by Dowson, she had shown my telegram to everybody in the Columbia Buffet. She had made a fool of me at the beach. She suspected my virility, and her suspicion was the same as the scorn in her eyes. I watched her face and lips and thought how it would be a pleasure to strike her, send my fist with all force against her nose and lips.

She spoke of Sammy again. Sammy had had all the rotten breaks in life. He might have been somebody, except that his health had always been poor.

‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘T. B.,’ she said.

‘Tough.’

‘He won’t live long.’

I didn’t give a damn.

‘We all have to die some day.’

I thought of throwing her out, saying to her: if you’ve come here to talk about that guy, you can get the hell out because I’m not interested. I thought that would be delightful: order her out, she so wonderfully beautiful in her own way, and forced to leave because I ordered her out.

‘Sammy’s not here any more. He’s gone.’

If she thought I was curious about his whereabouts, she was badly mistaken. I put my feet on the desk and lit a cigarette.

‘How are all your other boy friends?’ I said. It had bolted out of me. I was sorry at once. I softened it with a smile. The corners of her lips responded, but with an effort.

‘I haven’t any boy friends,’ she said.

‘Sure,’ I said, touching it slightly with sarcasm. ‘Sure, I understand. Forgive an incautious remark.’

She was silent for a while. I made a pretence at whistling. Then she spoke: ‘Why are you so mean?’ she said.

‘Mean?’ I said. ‘My dear girl. I am equally fond of man and beast alike. There is not the slightest drop of enmity in my system. After all, you can’t be mean and still be a great writer.’

Her eyes mocked me. ‘Are you a great writer?’

‘That’s something you’ll never know.’

She bit her lower lip, pinched it between two white sharp teeth, looking towards the window and the door like a trapped animal, then smiled again.

‘That’s why I came to see you.’

She fumbled with the big envelopes on her lap, and it excited me, her own fingers touching her lap, lying there and moving against her own flesh. There were two envelopes. She opened one of them. It was a manuscript of some sort. I took it from her hands. It was a short story by Samuel Wiggins, General Delivery, San Juan, California. It was called ‘Coldwater Catling’, and it began like this: ‘Coldwater Catling wasn’t looking for trouble but you never can tell about those Arizona rustlers. Pack your cannon high on the hip and lay low when you seen one of them babies. The trouble with trouble was that trouble was looking for Coldwater Catling. They don’t like Texas Rangers down in Arizona, consequently Coldwater Catling figured shoot first and find out who you killed afterwards. That’s how they did it in the Lone Star State where men were men and women didn’t mind cooking for hard-riding straight-shooting people like Coldwater Catling, the toughest man in leather they had down there.’