“A man,” he said.

“Okay, is an apple a man?”

“No.”

“Then how can the apple be a bachelor?”

“But an unmarried bachelor doesn’t exist,” Trigo barked.

“So?”

“Neither does your ridiculous nonfruit apple. Nothing is nothing. Nothing equals nothing.”

“Hold out your paw,” I instructed. I also held out my empty hand. “What is in your paw?”

“Nothing.”

“What is in my hand?”

“Nothing.”

I nodded. “So, you would say that my hand and your paw are both full of nothing. Would you agree with that?”

Trigo nodded.

“Is my hand bigger than your paw?”

“It is.”

“Then my hand holds more nothing than your paw. If my hand holds more, then how can what you hold be equal to what I hold?”

Trigo bit me.

As promised, if not believed, I showed up at Peterman’s giant split-level at nine thirty the following morning. He was not waiting in the driveway as he had been previously, so I rang the doorbell. The soon-to-be ex-wife answered.

She looked alarmingly like Peterman himself. She was dressed in tennis whites and her platinum-blond hair was pulled dangerously back, adding further tension to her last, but not final, face-lift. “What do you want?” she asked.

“Is Mr. Peterman here?” I asked.

“Why?”

“I’m here to buy his car.”

“You are, are you?”

“Perhaps I should come back later.”

She looked furtively back into the house, then back at me, smiling. “No, maybe I can help you.”

“I don’t think so. Your husband told me that you hate the car and that you’re getting divorced and that you’re very spiteful.”

“He told you that, did he? How did that come up?”

“He thought you sent me to, as he put it, fuck with him about the car, though I’m unsure what that means. Then he said you were spiteful and encouraged me to avoid divorce and marriage. Not necessarily in that order.”

“How much is he asking?”

“He called you a shrew. Though I don’t see the resemblance. I should come back,” I said.

“Don’t be silly, Mister—?”

“Kitu.”

“Mr. Kitu, that car is half mine. What did he say he wants for it?”

“I have thirty-five thousand with me.”

“You have what?”

I said it again and watched her face become even more masculine. For some reason I recalled the joke about the horse walking into the tavern and the bartender asking, Why the long face? I laughed.

“What’s funny?” she asked.

“He’s also supposed to teach me to drive,” I said.

“What?”

“I don’t know how to drive a car. I offered him an extra five thousand dollars to teach me.”

Mrs. Peterman started to laugh, nodding as if understanding something. “Very funny. This is like a double-agent joke, right? That son of a bitch put you up to this.”

“Listen, I just need a car. I know how they work, mechanically that is, but I don’t know at all how to operate one. Beyond the principles. Your husband didn’t put me up to this. I’m going to go now.”