That table was for four or six, not for two, and when the bar was busy, which between seven-thirty and nine o’clock it tended to be, other people would come to sit with us at that table.

One night, we were joined by two young American men in military uniforms. The two young men had crew cuts, were a few years older than Nicholas, and both were enormous examples of what they were. They sat in the low chairs with their legs wide apart and exuded, both of them, an expansive physical ease that was blatant.

Nicholas began to whisper his part of our conversation. I did not know why, but I began to whisper, too. We sat together on the couch, at the low table, whispering. I do not think either of us cared what we talked about. I think we both wanted to hear the huge young men.

Nicholas made a point of turning to the side. He leaned toward me in a way that he must have meant to look intimate and conspiratorial, and it did look intimate, and it looked conspiratorial. There were times in public when Nicholas did not act toward me like a brother, times when it suited him not to treat me as one. That night in the bar off the lobby of the Ritz in Madrid was one of those times. That night Nicholas whispered to me out of his profile. He lowered his head to an angle that he must have believed to be his most becoming.

It was becoming, and he did something with his eyes that made them look animated, a thing I always hated when he did it. It was a trick he had of looking up at someone while his face was looking down, so that the lower part of his eyes would turn up white. He must have thought it was alluring.

It was alluring, but I always hated it when he made himself alluring with me.

The huge young men in crew cuts did not acknowledge us. They sat with their legs wide apart and talked for a while about the bullfights they had seen that afternoon. After a while, they began to plan their evening. One of them, the one who was maybe not as huge as the other, wanted to see more bullfights, but the other one, the one who was maybe even bigger, told his friend that Madrid had no bullfights at night. He said there was nothing to do but go to dinner, eat some eels, and after that they could try a place he’d heard about, a nightclub he called it, where, he told his friend, female contortionists danced.

When the one who was maybe even bigger said that, the one who was disappointed about the bullfights shifted in his chair in such a way that Nicholas had to turn and look.

I had to, too. I could not help it, either.