“I didn’t forget you,” he said. “But now I can.”

“What do you mean?”

He laughed pleasantly. “Now I see you, I mean. You know, I guess it was Samuel said I’d never seen you, and it’s true. I remember your face but I had never seen it. Now I can forget it.”

Her lips closed and straightened and her wide-set eyes narrowed with cruelty. “You think you can?”

“I know I can.”

She changed her manner. “Maybe you won’t have to,” she said. “If you feel all right about everything, maybe we could get together.”

“I don’t think so,” said Adam.

“You were such a fool,” she said. “Like a child. You didn’t know what things to do with yourself. I can teach you now. You seem to be a man.”

“You have taught me,” he said. “It was a pretty sharp lesson.”

“Would you like a drink?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I can smell your breath—you’ve been drinking rum.” She got up and went to a cabinet for a bottle and two glasses, and when she turned back she noticed that he was looking at her fattened ankles. Her quick rage did not change the little smile on her lips.

She carried the bottle to the round table in the middle of the room and filled the two small glasses with rum. “Come, sit over here,” she said. “It’s more comfortable.” As he moved to a big chair she saw that his eyes were on her protruding stomach. She handed him a glass, sat down, and folded her hands across her middle.

He sat holding his glass, and she said, “Drink it. It’s very good rum.” He smiled at her, a smile she had never seen. She said, “When Eva told me you were here I thought at first I would have you thrown out.”

“I would have come back,” he said. “I had to see you—not that I mistrusted Samuel, but just to prove it to myself.”

“Drink your rum,” she said.

He glanced at her glass.

“You don’t think I’d poison you—” She stopped and was angry that she had said it.

Smiling, he still gazed at her glass. Her anger came through to her face. She picked up her glass and touched her lips to it. “Liquor makes me sick,” she said. “I never drink it. It poisons me.” She shut her mouth tight and her sharp teeth bit down on her lower lip.

Adam continued to smile at her.

Her rage was rising beyond her control. She tossed the rum down her throat and coughed, and her eyes watered and she wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. “You don’t trust me very much,” she said.

“No, I don’t.” He raised his glass and drank his rum, then got up and filled both glasses.

“I will not drink any more,” she said in panic.

“You don’t have to,” Adam said. “I’ll just finish this and go along.”

The biting alcohol burned in her throat and she felt the stirring in her that frightened her. “I’m not afraid of you or anyone else,” she said, and she drank off her second glass.