‘He liked it here.’

‘He’s a great writer, alright. That story he wrote over your left eye is a masterpiece.’

‘He doesn’t talk his guts out like you. He knows when to be quiet.’

‘The stupe.’

A fight was brewing between us. I decided to avoid it. I got up and walked towards the kids in the street. She asked where I was going.

‘I’m going to get in the game,’ I said. She was outraged. ‘With them?’ she said. ‘Those Japs?’ I ploughed through the sand.

‘Remember what happened the other night!’ she said.

I turned around. ‘What?’

‘Remember how you walked home?’

‘That suits me,’ I said. ‘The bus is safer.’

The kids wouldn’t let me play because the sides were evenly numbered, but they let me referee for a while. Then the good passer’s team got so far ahead that a change was necessary, so I played on the opposite team. Everybody on our team wanted to be quarterback, and great confusion resulted. They made me play centre, and I hated it because I was ineligible to receive passes. Finally the captain of our team asked me if I knew how to pass, and he gave me a chance in the tailback spot. I completed the pass. It was fun after that. Camilla left almost immediately. We played until darkness, and they beat us, but it was close. I took the bus back to Los Angeles.

Making resolutions not to see her again was useless. I didn’t know from one day to the next. There was the night two days after she left me stranded at Terminal Island. I had been to a picture show. It was after midnight when I went down the old stairway to my room. The door was locked, and from the inside. As I turned the knob I heard her call. ‘Just a minute. It’s me, Arturo.’

It was a long minute, five times as long as usual. I could hear her scurrying about within the room. I heard the closet door slam, heard the window being thrown open. I fumbled with the doorknob once more. She opened the door and stood there, breathless, her bosom rising and falling. Her eyes were points of black flame, her cheeks were full of blood, and she seemed alive with intense joy. I stood in a kind of fear at the change, the sudden widening and closing of her lashes, the quick wet smile, the teeth so alive and stringy with bubbled saliva.

I said, ‘What’s the idea?’

She threw her arms around me. She kissed me with a passion I knew was not genuine. She barred my entrance by a flourish of affection. She was hiding something from me, keeping me out of my own room as long as she could. Over her shoulder I looked around. I saw the bed with the mark of a head’s indentation upon the pillow. Her coat was flung over the chair, and the dresser was strewn with small combs and bobby pins. That was alright. Everything seemed in order except the two small red mats at the bedside. They had been moved, that was plain to me, because I liked them in their regular place, where my feet could touch them when I got out of bed in the morning.