I’m not such a bad liar, she says, trying to smile.

Maybe not for an amateur, he says. But the professionals, they’d find you out, all right. They’d open you up like a package.

They’re still looking for you? Haven’t they given up?

Not yet. That’s what I hear.

It’s awful, isn’t it, she says. It’s all so awful. Still, we’re lucky, aren’t we?

Why are we lucky? He’s back to his gloomy mood.

At least we’re both here, at least we have…

The waiter is standing beside the booth. He has his shirt sleeves rolled up, a full-length apron soft with old dirt, strands of hair arranged across his scalp like oily ribbon. His fingers are like toes.

Coffee?

Yes please, she says. Black. No sugar.

She waits until the waiter leaves. Is it safe?

The coffee? You mean does it have germs? It shouldn’t, it’s been boiled for hours. He’s sneering at her but she chooses not to understand him.

No, I mean, is it safe here.

He’s a friend of a friend. Anyway I’m keeping an eye on the door—I could make it out the back way. There’s an alley.

You didn’t do it, did you, she says.

I’ve told you. I could have though, I was there. Anyway it doesn’t matter, because I fill their bill just fine. They’d love to see me nailed to the wall. Me and my bad ideas.

You’ve got to get away, she says hopelessly. She thinks of the word clasp, how outworn it is. Yet this is what she wants—to clasp him in her arms.

Not yet, he says. I shouldn’t go yet. I shouldn’t take trains, I shouldn’t cross borders. Word has it that’s where they’re watching.

I worry about you, she says. I dream about it. I worry all the time.

Don’t worry, darling, he says. You’ll get thin, and then your lovely tits and ass will waste away to nothing. You’ll be no good to anybody then.

She puts her hand up to her cheek as if he’s slapped her. I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.

I know you do, he says. Girls with coats like yours do have those wishes.

Is this where you’re living? she says. She twists the gloves in her hands, as if they’re wet and she’s wringing them out.

This is where I’m staying, he says. It’s a different thing.

The house is one of a row, all red brick darkened by grime, narrow and tall, with steeply angled roofs. There’s an oblong of dusty grass in front, a few parched weeds growing beside the walk. A brown paper bag torn open.

Four steps up to the porch. Lace curtains dangle in the front window. He takes out his key.

She glances back over her shoulder as she steps inside. Don’t worry, he says, nobody’s watching. This is my friend’s place anyway. I’m here today and gone tomorrow.

You have a lot of friends, she says.

Not a lot, he says. You don’t need many if there’s no rotten apples.

There’s a vestibule with a row of brass hooks for coats, a worn linoleum floor in a pattern of brown-and-yellow squares, an inner door with a frosted glass panel bearing a design of herons or cranes. Birds with long legs bending their graceful snake-necks among the reeds and lilies, left over from an earlier age: gaslight. He opens the door with a second key and they step into the dim inner hallway; he flicks on the light switch. Overhead, a fixture with three pink glass blossoms, two of the bulbs missing.

Don’t look so dismayed, darling, he says. None of it will rub off oh you. Just don’t touch anything.

Oh, it might, she says with a small breathless laugh. I have to touch you. You’ll rub off.

He pulls the glass door shut behind them. Another door on the left, varnished and dark: she imagines a censorious ear pressed against it from the inside, a creaking, as if of weight shifting from foot to foot. Some malevolent grey-haired crone—wouldn’t that match the lace curtains? A long battered flight of stairs goes up, with carpeting treads nailed on and a gap-toothed banister. The wallpaper is a trellis design, with grapevines and roses entwined, pink once, now the light brown of milky tea. He puts his arms carefully around her, brushes his lips over the side of her neck, her throat; not the mouth. She shivers.

I’m easy to get rid of afterwards, he says, whispering. You can just go home and take a shower.

Don’t say that, she says, whispering also. You’re making fun. You never believe I mean it.

You mean it enough for this, he says. She slides her arm around his waist and they go up the stairs a little clumsily, a little heavily; their bodies slow them down. Halfway up there’s a round window of coloured glass: through the cobalt blue of the sky, the grapes in dime-store purple, the headache red of the flowers, light falls, staining their faces. On the second-floor landing he kisses her again, this time harder, sliding her skirt up her silky legs as far as the tops of her stockings, fingering the little hard rubber nipples there, pressing her up against the wall. She always wears a girdle: getting her out of it is like peeling the skin off a seal.

Her hat tumbles off, her arms are around his neck, her head and body arched backwards as if someone’s pulling down on her hair. Her hair itself has come unpinned, uncoiled; he smoothes his hand down it, the pale tapering swath of it, and thinks of flame, the single shimmering flame of a white candle, turned upside down. But a flame can’t burn downwards.

The room is on the third floor, the servants’ quarters they must once have been. Once they’re inside he puts on the chain. The room is small and close and dim, with one window, open a few inches, the blind pulled most of the way down, white net curtains looped to either side. The afternoon sun is hitting the blind, turning it golden. The air smells of dry rot, but also of soap: there’s a tiny triangular sink in one corner, a foxed mirror hanging above it; crammed underneath it, the square-edged black box of his typewriter. His toothbrush in an enamelled tin cup; not a new toothbrush. It’s too intimate. She turns her eyes away. There’s a darkly varnished bureau scarred with cigarette burns and the marks from wet glasses, but most of the space is taken up by the bed. It’s the brass kind, outmoded and maidenish and painted white except for the knobs. It will probably creak. Thinking of this, she flushes.