She didn’t answer.

“Tell me, what is it you really want? Money doesn’t matter. What is it you want that you cannot have?”

She looked up, rather sullenly, her face blotched and red and swollen, and then she wiped at her nose with the back of her hand.

“You know what I wanted,” she said in a harsh, disagreeable voice, which was almost sexless it was so low.

“No, I don’t. Tell me what.”

Her face was so disfigured and her voice so strange that she frightened me. I was still woozy from the wine I’d drunk earlier, yet my mind was unaffected by the intoxication. It seemed a lovely situation. This body drunk, but not me.

“Who are you?” she asked. She looked very hard now, hard and bitter. “You’re somebody, aren’t you … you’re not just … ” But her voice trailed off.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

She turned her head even more sharply to the side, studying me as if it was all going to come to her suddenly. She’d have it figured out. I couldn’t imagine what was going on in her mind. I knew only that I felt sorry for her, and I did not like her. I didn’t like this dirty messy room with its low plaster ceiling, and the nasty bed, and the ugly tan carpet and the dim light and the cat box reeking in the other room.

“I’ll remember you,” I said miserably yet tenderly. “I’ll surprise you. I’ll come back and I’ll bring something wonderful for you, something you could never get for yourself. A gift as if from another world. But right now, I have to leave you.”

“Yes,” she said, “you’d better go.”

I turned to do exactly that. I thought of the cold outside, of Mojo waiting in the hallway, and of the town house with its back door shattered off the hinges, and no money and no phone.

Ah, the phone.

She had a phone. I’d spied it on the dresser.

As I turned and went towards it, she screamed at me, and hurled something at me. I think that it was a shoe. It struck my shoulder, but caused no pain. I picked up the receiver and punched the zero twice for long distance, and called my New York agent collect.

On and on it rang. No one there. Not even his machine. Most strange, and damned inconvenient.

I could see her in the mirror, staring at me in stiff and silent outrage, the blanket pulled around her like a sleek modern dress. How pathetic was all of this, down to the last jot.

I called Paris. Again it rang and rang, but finally there came the familiar voice—my agent roused from sleep. Quickly in French I told him I was in Georgetown, that I needed twenty thousand dollars, no, best send thirty, and I must have it now.

He explained that it was just sunrise in Paris. He would have to wait until the banks opened, but he would wire the money as soon as he could. It might be noon in Georgetown before it reached me. I memorized the name of the agency where I was to collect it, and I implored him to be prompt and see that he did not fail. This was an emergency, I was penniless. I had obligations. He gave me assurance that all would be handled at once. I put down the phone.