“Really?”

“Can’t stand being ignored. Isn’t that true, Michael?”

I looked at the boy. He was still linking wet circles to wet circles. She didn’t mind the bang bang bang and he didn’t seem to mind being discussed like this.

“Are you contrite?” the girl said.

“Contrite?”

“Penitent. That’s what Michael predicted you’d be. That’s why he said you asked us here for cocktails.”

“Michael’s right.”

“You are penitent?”

“Yes.”

“There,” the girl said to Michael. “He’s penitent. Now you can forgive him.”

“I’d like to be forgiven.”

“He never does, you know,” the girl said.

“What does he never?”

“Forgive. He’s terrible. He just sits there and gnaws away at it. Are the cocktails an atonement?”

“For yesterday?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I suppose they are.”

“How did you insult Michael?”

“Didn’t he tell you?”

“Asher darling, can I call you Asher darling?, Michael never tells anybody anything. I tell him but he never tells me. He just gnaws on it.”

“Well, we sat. In a dark room. Then Michael said: I guess I’ll go. That’s all that happened.”

“Oh?”

She looked at the boy.

“Is that all that happened?” she said. She looked back at me. She seemed just a little surprised it was no more than that. “You didn’t say anything to him like for example if he applied himself he might be a good writer one day? You didn’t patronize him?”

“Not consciously.”

“Well: unconsciously?”

“Perhaps. I didn’t intend to. I apologize for the unconsciously.”

She looked again at me. Then at the boy.

“But Asher’s nice, Michael,” she said. “He isn’t a shit at all.”

The word produced its small expected shock.

“Is that what Michael said I was?”

“Not exactly. Exactly, he said: a rich shit.”

“I’m not rich,” I said, stiffly.

“Aren’t you?” She looked very disappointed. “Michael says you’ve made scads of money.”

“Once. Not any more.”

“Isn’t that exasperating? I always meet them in their not-any-more period. Are you asleep, Michael?”

“No.”

“You look asleep.”

“It must be the dialogue.”

“Well, wake up. Asher’s apologized. Isn’t he the most awful somnambulist?”

“Are you tired, Michael?”

“Oh, he isn’t tired. He’s just bored. Are you going to observe us, Asher?”

“Observe you?”

“Michael said you were going to observe us.”

“I’m not quite sure yet what I’m going to do with either of you.”

“But you will observe us, won’t you? Michael says it’s a whole school. The observers, or something. Are you observing us now?”

“Minutely.”

“That’s terrif. Michael, he’s observing us. Isn’t that terrif?”

“Terrif.”

“Well, if you’re observing us, minutely and all that, I think I’ll tell you what Michael said to me this afternoon just before we came to the hotel.”

“What did Michael say to you just before you came to the hotel?”

“Shall I tell him what you said, Michael?”

“Hoof and mouth disease,” the boy said. “It’s sweeping the land.”

“Well,” Aurora said, “Michael had a funny look on his face after you called him.”

“Were you there when I called?”