That was the first paragraph.

‘Hogwash,’ I said.

‘Please help him.’

He was going to die in a year, she said. He had left Los Angeles and gone to the edge of the Santa Ana desert. There he lived in a shack, writing feverishly. All his life he had wanted to write. Now, with such little time remaining, his chance had come.

‘What’s in it for me?’ I said.

‘But he’s dying.’

‘Who isn’t?’

I opened the second manuscript. It was the same sort of stuff. I shook my head. ‘It stinks.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But couldn’t you do something to it? He’ll give you half the money.’

‘I don’t need money. I have an income of my own.’

She rose and stood before me, her hands on my shoulders. She lowered her face, her warm breath sweet in my nostrils, her eyes so large they reflected my head in them and I felt delirious and sick with desire. ‘Would you do it for me?’

‘For you?’ I said. ‘Well, for you — yes.’

She kissed me. Bandini, the stooge. Thick, warm kiss, for services about to be rendered. I pushed her away carefully. ‘You don’t have to kiss me. I’ll do what I can.’ But I had an idea or two of my own on the subject, and while she stood at the mirror and rouged her lips I looked at the address on the manuscripts. San Juan, California. ‘I’ll write him a letter about this stuff,’ I said. She watched me through the mirror, paused with the lipstick in her hand. Her smile was mocking me. ‘You don’t have to do that,’ she said. ‘I could come back and pick them up and mail them myself.’

That was what she said, but you can’t fool me, Camilla, because I can see your memories of that night at the beach written upon your scornful face, and do I hate you, oh God how I loathe you!

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I guess that would be best. You come back tomorrow night.’

She was sneering at me. Not her face, her lips, but from within her. ‘What time shall I come?’

‘What time are you through work?’

She turned around, snapped her purse shut, and looked at me. ‘You know what time I’m through work,’ she said.

I’ll get you, Camilla. I’ll get you yet.

‘Come then,’ I said.

She walked to the door, put her hands on the knob.

‘Goodnight, Arturo.’

‘I’ll walk up to the lobby with you.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said.

The door closed. I stood in the middle of the room and listened to her footsteps on the stairs. I could feel the whiteness of my face, the awful humiliation, and I got mad and I reached my hair with my fingers and howled out of my throat as I pulled at my hair, loathing her, beating my fists together, lurching around the room with arms clasped against myself, struggling with the hideous memory of her, choking her out of my consciousness, gasping with hatred.