Overall, though, I had to say the room was refreshingly uncluttered for a girl these days. No stuffed toys, no photos of rock stars. No frilly decorations or flower-print wastepaper bin. Just a built-in bookcase lined with anthologies, volumes of poetry, movie magazines, painting-exhibition catalogs. There were even some English paperbacks. I tried to form an image of the girl whose room this was, but the only face that came to mind was that of my ex-girlfriend.

The woman sat her middle-aged bulk down on the bed and looked at me. She had been following my line of vision all along but seemed to be thinking of something entirely different. Her eyes were turned in my direction, all right, yet she wasn’t actually seeing anything. I plunked myself down in the chair by the desk and gazed at the plaster wall behind the woman. Nothing hung there; it was a blank wall. Stare at it long enough, though, and the top began to tilt in toward me. It seemed sure to topple over onto her head any minute. But of course, it wouldn’t; the light just made it look that way.

“Won’t you have something to drink?” she asked. I told her no.

“Really now, don’t stand on ceremony. It’s not like you’re going to kick yourself afterward for having something.”

So I said okay, I’d have the same, pointing to her vodka tonic, only watered down a bit, please. Five minutes later, she returned with two vodka tonics and an ashtray. I took a sip of my vodka tonic. It wasn’t watered at all. I decided to smoke a cigarette and wait for the ice to melt.

“You’ve got a healthy body,” she said. “You won’t get drunk.”

I nodded vaguely. My father was that way, too. Still, there hasn’t been a human being yet won out in a match against alcohol. The only stories you hear are about people who never catch on to things until they’ve sunk past their noses. My father died when I was sixteen. A real fine-line case, his was. So fine I can hardly recall if he’d even been alive or not.

The woman remained silent all this time. The only sound she made was the tinkling of ice in her glass each time she took a sip. Every so often a cool breeze would blow in through the open window from another hill across the way to the south. A tranquil summer afternoon that seemed destined to put me to sleep. Somewhere, far off, a phone was ringing.