He straightened his tie, leaned toward me, his thumb on the corner of his chin, his knuckles riding his jaw.

“You’re being ridiculous, you know?” he said.

I rubbed my arm.

“Yeah, I know.”

Outside, he stood behind me, both hands on my shoulders.

“I can’t pretend I liked your book. I can’t lie about that. But I do love you, Manda-Panda.”

I said nothing. We walked, holding hands.

“What are you going to tell Panda?” he asked.

“I’m not going to tell her anything.”

He let my hand go.

“What sort of witch are you?”

But I had no gag lines, none.

55

“Do you want to come into town with me? I’m going shopping,” said Miandra.

I was sitting in a corner of the dining room writing up travel notes, using the light from the window. This was the first time she had spoken so civilly to me. Gwendolyn Brooks has an expression—“civilize the space.” For the first time, she had tried to “civilize the space” around us.

“Yes, I’d like to,” I said, surprised and made awkward by her friendliness. I put the notebook down on the window ledge.

“That’s not a diary too?” she asked.

“No.”

“I was going to say, if there were personal things in there you’d better hide it. The girl is so nosy.”

They had a servant girl from one of the mountain villages. She wore her hair in what looked like the sort of knots you see on trees. “Why do you wear your hair in that old way?” Miandra had asked once. Her name was Vahila. That’s all I knew.

“Will Vinandratsy go with us?” I asked, as I stood.

“No.” She frowned. “It’s just us, just you and me. I hope you don’t mind if it’s just us?”

“No, of course not,” I said.

I still stood by the chair, as if I were growing up from the floor. “Sometimes I ride the mule in, but I bet you’ve never ridden one?” she asked.

“No.”

“Then we’ll take the jeep.”

She was putting thin white gloves over her slender dark hands. The gloves were so thin you could see her skin through them—especially the darker pigmentation of her knuckles. She picked up her purse from the dining room table. The purse was one of those made of tan, Moroccan leather—made not with handles or straps but with a rectangular hole through the top where you put your hand through to carry it. I went into the bedroom and got my shoulder bag.

“Are you ready?” she asked when I came back in the room. She had been standing looking out the window and turned from it when she heard my footsteps. I wondered momentarily whether she’d been looking into my notebook, whether it had been her own self she distrusted, and whether she suspected me of writing things about her, but both hands were clutching her purse. “Yes,” I said.

Outside I stood on the porch and waited while she drove the jeep around to the front, then I ran down the steps and climbed in. “I’ve never learned to drive,” I said, to make conversation.