She put on the red coat and tied it around her waist and they sat on the front steps outside the rooming house. The stone was cold through Red’s thin trousers, and he sat on his hands until it warmed up. The stars were bright with the streetlamps dark, and no one walked by. They sat a long time saying nothing, and then the girl lay back on the hard stoop and put her hands behind her head like a pillow, and Red did the same.

“I’m going to France in the morning,” he said, after a while. It surprised him to think she didn’t already know.

She looked over at him. She was close enough to kiss if he sat up a little, but he didn’t want that. He just wanted her lying there. Her eyes were solemn.

“It’s going to be worse than you know,” she said.

Red looked back up at the sky. A mist had drifted in, obscuring the stars, which had moved some distance along their course, and soon the waiting would be over. After a while the girl moved her hand from behind her head and took Red’s in hers, and they lay on the chill stone like an old couple in an old bed, fingers intertwined, until the sky began to lighten, and it was time for Red to go.

AQUA BOULEVARD

EACH DAY I WALK to the Polo Club, while my wife is at work and my children at school. I have my lunch at the club, a little wine, and I walk home. I don’t work anymore; I worked long enough, and very hard. I could have a horse at the club, well groomed and cared for. I would not get any better, at my age, but I could ride. But I like only to ride in the country—going somewhere—not in a hall in the middle of Paris, going in circles. I would rather walk. So I walk to my lunch, I watch the horses, I walk back.