Yeah. She finishes her story and turns away from me and stares into the wine bottle with the most melancholy look. It’s almost as though by telling me her tale it’s called everything back up for her. I mean the sadness in her eyes is more than I can handle and I start thinking about the girl back at the hotel.

The one reading Proust?

It wasn’t Proust!

Just kidding.

I don’t know what it was but it wasn’t Proust!

Take it easy.

I can’t tell you anything without some underlying—

What? Some underlying what?

(They both go silent. A sharp wind creates a rippling line of surf like a miniature tidal wave heading straight toward them. Neither of them acknowledges the unaccountable terror it sparks in them. The man continues his tale but now it’s more like he’s talking to himself or maybe the reflections of puffy clouds racing across the lake.)

Suddenly I had this overwhelming need to be with her; to be back at the hotel, safe. I don’t know what it was. A panic or something. So I pay for my drink—the bourbon I’d ordered—say so long to the Norwegian girl, and head out the door. Well, this bar is kind of underground with a narrow set of stairs leading back up to the street, like a little dungeon kind of. And I’m negotiating these steps as best I can in the condition I’m in, kind of clutching the walls as I climb back up, and I realize I’m in much worse shape than I thought I was and this panic is starting to escalate. I’m starting to hallucinate that I’m in some mini-French hell with the guillotines and the stone walls running with blood and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, come these two bonehead muscleman types up behind me; these two Frog bouncers wearing black turtlenecks and gold chains and they look like they’ve just stepped out of a Jean-Paul Belmondo movie. They’re yelling at me in French, which I don’t understand, and one of them barges up in front of me and blocks my way out while the other one behind grabs me by the back of the neck.

What’d they want?

Well, the guy blocking my way figures out I’m American and tells me in broken English—really bad English—that I owe them fifty bucks or something for the bottle of rotgut wine. “What wine?” I say. “I was drinking bourbon.” Then all at once it dawns on me through my alcoholic stupor that the Norwegian girl’s a hooker and she’s just run a scam on me so I get stuck with the overpriced wine.

So, her whole story was just a—fabrication?