I was nervous and edgy when I arrived and I was afraid that she would notice. The doors of the dining room were wide open and there was a sweet smell coming from the garden and the sound of crickets and the hiss of a garden hose. The wine was rich and strong, and the food was good, and she looked beautiful across the table from me. I enjoyed things about her: her teeth and the smoothness of her hair. In the glow of that dinner I almost loved her and I understood what it would be like for us to want each other, knowing that there was nothing in the way. As I thought about this I felt she knew what was on my mind. I could imagine myself lying with her, caressing her face and her breasts. She smiled. One of the servants came and took the dishes away. She asked me if I was following the shifts in oil share prices and suggested that I might invest some of my salary, perhaps even borrow money, to buy shares over the next six months while prices were still low. The accountant, she said, could probably arrange a loan.

“The accountant?” I said. “Do you think there is any blood inside him? If you pricked him, do you think he would bleed?”

“I wouldn’t relish pricking him,” Susan said.

The servant came in with coffee, a bottle of brandy, and brandy glasses on a tray. A small wind blew up and the white curtains billowed in the breeze. It was like a moment from an advertisement for something. I wanted to tell her about Pablo: I knew how sordid it would sound, how alien, and I wondered if it would also sound pointless, if it had haunted me for days but would probably seem to her merely an odd coincidence, hardly worth telling.

We talked until it grew dark and one of the servants came to light a lamp and take the cups away. It must have been the heat of the evening, or the power of the wine and the brandy, but I found myself thinking again about going to bed with her, her arms around me, her lips against my chest.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“I’m thinking about shares,” I said.

“There’s something funny about you always,” she said. “Some parts of you are strong and really serious, and then you change suddenly and you seem all weak, you hesitate. I like all that about you, how hard it is to know you.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“No, nothing. I like you, that’s all.”

She poured more brandy and then yawned and stretched. I felt that things would never be like this again for us: the quietness in the house, the heat of the night, the way we seemed to spend our days idling, like players on a chessboard waiting to be deployed when the need came. I wanted to ask her about herself, what she was doing here, what her marriage was like; I wanted to bring her closer to me; and I suppose I wanted her to ask me about myself as she had done once before and this time I would answer her and tell her all I knew.