‘Why here?’ I said.

‘You wanted to walk,’ she said. ‘Get out and walk.’

‘I feel like riding again.’

‘Get out,’ she said. ‘I mean it, too. Anybody that can’t shoot any better than that! Go on, get out!’

I reached for my cigarettes, offered her one.

‘Let’s talk this over,’ I said.

She slapped the pack of cigarettes out of my hand, knocked them to the floor, and glared at me defiantly. ‘I hate you,’ she said. ‘God, how I hate you!’

As I picked up the cigarettes the night and the deserted factory district quivered with her loathing. I understood it. She did not hate Arturo Bandini, not really. She hated the fact that he did not meet her standard. She wanted to love him, but she couldn’t. She wanted him like Sammy: quiet, taciturn, grim, a good shot with a rifle, a good bartender who accepted her as a waitress and nothing else. I got out of the car, grinning, because I knew that would hurt her.

‘Good night,’ I said. ‘It’s a fine night. I don’t mind walking.’

‘I hope you never make it,’ she said. ‘I hope they find you dead in the gutter in the morning.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I said.

As she drove away a sob came from her throat, a cry of pain. One thing was certain: Arturo Bandini was not good for Camilla Lopez.

Chapter Sixteen

The good days, the fat days, page upon page of manuscript; prosperous days, something to say, the story of Vera Rivken, and the pages mounted and I was happy. Fabulous days, the rent paid, still fifty dollars in my wallet, nothing to do all day and night but write and think of writing: ah, such sweet days, to see it grow, to worry for it, myself, my book, my words, maybe important, maybe timeless, but mine nevertheless, the indomitable Arturo Bandini, already deep into his first novel.

So an evening comes, and what to do with it, my soul so cool from the bath of words, my feet so solid upon the earth, and what are the others doing, the rest of the people of the world? I will go sit and look at her, Camilla Lopez.

It was done. It was like old times, our eyes springing at one another. But she was changed, she was thinner, and her face was unhealthy, with two eruptions at each end of her mouth. Polite smiles. I tipped her and she thanked me. I fed the phonograph nickels, playing her favourite tunes. She wasn’t dancing at her work, and she didn’t look at me often the way she used to. Maybe it was Sammy: maybe she missed the guy.

I asked her, ‘How is he?’

A shrug: ‘Alright, I guess.’

‘Don’t you see him?’

‘Oh, sure.’

‘You don’t look well.’

‘I feel alright.’

I got up. ‘Well, I gotta go. Just dropped in to see how you were getting along.’

‘It was nice of you.’