“But . . . they no good, right?”

“People toil for years before they produce anything, and believe me, even experienced midlist authors don’t often find people who want to publish them. Writers in America now go away to school for four years and come back with just one short story and forty thousand dollars of debt. Your husband wrote five, what, six stories?”

“Tell me they bad. Tell me.” Tears were welling in her eyes again.

“Good and bad are very subjective terms. And as you probably already know, like everything else out there, the publishing world’s run by idiots.”

She nodded and rose to leave. He handed her the melamine platter by the door.

“Maybe my husband stories too dark?”

Now Raymond had to smile: “They’re not dark, dear. They’re just poorly lit.”

She headed to her house without looking back.

“Be brave, Mrs. Park,” he called after her.

Minutes later, he kicked himself for forgetting to ask her about that blue couch.

Late that night, way past his bedtime, Raymond was swirling his third glass of Muscadet and reading Johan Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle Ages while Josephine Baker sang “Blue Skies” on his faux Victrola. When he lifted his head to yawn, he was startled by a mop of black hair in the lower edge of his picture window. From its movements, he could tell that it was no hirsute Pekingese but something more intelligent—someone was watching him with eyes hidden behind that curtain of hair. It surveyed the living room, scanning it from one end to the other.

He stood up and waved his arms wildly. I can see ya, ya little cunt.

No reaction.

Then the curtain of hair rose with a sickening grandeur. A black tulip blossoming. Raymond shuddered. His spy stood lankily in the picture window, framed like a Goya of a girl completely in the nude, her skin pale against the dark velvet night. The hair remained over her face like a lustrous ebony mask. Her pubis, meanwhile, was tauntingly exposed—a bristly chimney sweep’s brush.

“Stop that! Come on, stop that right now!”

Arms akimbo, he gave her his most authoritarian stare. Peter Lorre, then Charlton Heston.

The girl took several steps back. Then, with no regard for her personal safety, she slammed her entire body hard against the glass. Thwack!

“Hey! Hey, I mean it!” He stopped himself from stepping outside lest it was a trap set by the unhinged Mrs. Park. He’d hate to be caught berating a naked girl, especially if the cops were already on their way.

Instead, he waved his finger at her from indoors like a chiding schoolmaster.

“Fuck off! Just go away, will ya?”

The girl peeled herself off the window. She took three slow steps back and again smashed herself against the glass. Thwack! And yet again—thwack!