He’s running out of cash again. He hopes she’ll bring a cheque, from one of the P.O. boxes not in his name. He’ll endorse it, she’ll cash it for him; with her name, at her bank, she’ll have no problems. He hopes she’ll bring some postage stamps. He hopes she’ll bring more cigarettes. He’s only got three left.

He paces. The floor creaks. Hardwood, but stained where the radiator’s leaked. This block of flats was put up before the war, for single business people of good character. Things were more hopeful then. Steam heat, never-ending hot water, tiled corridors—the latest of everything. Now it’s seen better days. A few years ago when he was young, he’d known a girl who’d had a place here. A nurse, as he recalls: French letters in the night-table drawer. She’d had a two-ring burner, she’d cooked breakfast for him sometimes—bacon and eggs, buttery pancakes with maple syrup, he’d sucked it off her fingers. There was a stuffed and mounted deer’s head, left over from the previous tenants; she’d dried her stockings by hanging them on the antlers.

They’d spend Saturday afternoons, Tuesday evenings, whenever she had off, drinking—scotch, gin, vodka, whatever there was. She liked to be quite drunk first. She didn’t want to go to the movies, or out dancing; she didn’t seem to want romance or any pretense of it, which was just as well. All she’d required of him was stamina. She liked to haul a blanket onto the bathroom floor; she liked the hardness of the tiles under her back. It was hell on his knees and elbows, not that he’d noticed at the time, his attention being elsewhere. She’d moan as if in a spotlight, tossing her head, rolling her eyes. Once he’d had her standing up, in her walk-in closet. A knee-trembler, smelling of mothballs, in among the Sunday crepes, the lambswool twin sets. She’d wept with pleasure. After dumping him she’d married a lawyer. A canny match, a white wedding; he’d read about it in the paper, amused, without rancour. Good for her, he’d thought. The sluts win sometimes.

Salad days. Days without names, witless afternoons, quick and profane and quickly over, and no longing in advance or after, and no words required, and nothing to pay. Before he got mixed up in things that got mixed up.

He checks his watch and then the window again, and here she comes, loping diagonally across the park, in a wide-brimmed hat today and a tightly belted houndstooth suit, handbag clutched under her arm, pleated skirt swinging, in her curious undulating stride, as if she’s never got used to walking on her hind legs. It may be the high heels though. He’s often wondered how they balance. Now she’s stopped as if on cue; she gazes around in that dazed way she has, as if she’s just been wakened from a puzzling dream, and the two guys picking up the papers look her over. Lost something, miss? But she comes on, crosses the street, he can see her in fragments through the leaves, she must be searching for the street number. Now she’s coming up the front steps. The buzzer goes. He pushes the button, crushes out his cigarette, turns off the desk light, unlocks the door.

Hello. I’m all out of breath. I didn’t wait for the elevator. She pushes the door shut, stands with her back against it.

Nobody followed you. I was watching. You’ve got cigarettes?

And your cheque, and a fifth of scotch, best quality. I pinched it from our well-stocked bar. Did I tell you we have a well-stocked bar?

She’s attempting to be casual, frivolous even. She’s not good at it. She’s stalling, waiting to see what he wants. She’d never make the first move, she doesn’t like to give herself away.

Good girl. He moves towards her, takes hold of her.

Am I a good girl? Sometimes I feel like a gun moll—doing your errands.

You can’t be a gun moll, I don’t have a gun. You watch too many movies.

Not nearly enough, she says, to the side of his neck. He could use a haircut. Soft thistle. She undoes his four top buttons, runs her hand in under his shirt. His flesh is so condensed, so dense. Fine-grained, charred. She’s seen ashtrays carved out of wood like that.

That was lovely, she says. The bath was lovely. I never pictured you with pink towels. Compared to the usual, it’s pretty opulent.

Temptation lurks everywhere, he says. The fleshpots beckon. I’d say she’s an amateur tart, wouldn’t you?

He’d wrapped her in one of the pink towels, carried her to the bed wet and slippery. Now they’re under the nubbly cherry-coloured silk bedspread, the sateen sheets, drinking the scotch she’s brought with her. It’s a fine blend, smoky and warm, it goes down smooth as toffee. She stretches luxuriously, wondering only briefly who will wash the sheets.

She never manages to overcome her sense of transgression in these various rooms—the feeling that she’s violating the private boundaries of whoever ordinarily lives in them. She’d like to go through the closets, the bureau drawers—not to take, only to look; to see how other people live. Real people; people more real than she is. She’d like to do the same with him, except that he has no closets, no bureau drawers, or none that are his. Nothing to find, nothing to betray him. Only a scuffed blue suitcase, which he keeps locked. It’s usually under the bed.

His pockets are uninformative; she’s been through them a few times. (It wasn’t spying, she just wanted to know where things were and what they were, and where they stood.) Handkerchief, blue, with white border; spare change; two cigarette butts, wrapped in waxed paper—he must have been saving them up. A jackknife, old. Once, two buttons, from a shirt, she’d guessed. She hadn’t offered to sew them back on because then he’d know she’d been snooping. She’d like him to think she’s trustworthy.

A driver’s licence, the name not his. A birth certificate, ditto. Different names. She’d love to go over him with a fine-toothed comb. Rummage around in him. Turn him upside down. Empty him out.

He sings gently, in an oily voice, like a radio crooner:

She laughs. Where’d you get that?

It’s my tart song. It goes with the surroundings.

She’s not a real tart. Not even an amateur. I don’t expect she takes money. Most likely she gets rewarded in some other way.

A lot of chocolates. Would you settle for that?

It would have to be truckloads, she says. I’m moderately expensive. The bedspread’s real silk, I like the colour—garish, but it’s quite pretty. Good for the complexion, like pink candle-shades. Have you cooked up any more?

Any more what?

Any more of my story.

Your story?

Yes. Isn’t it for me?

Oh yes, he says. Of course. I think of nothing else. It keeps me awake nights.

Liar. Does it bore you?

Nothing that pleases you could possibly bore me.

God, how gallant. We should have the pink towels more often. Pretty soon you’ll be kissing my glass slipper. But go on, anyway.

Where was I?

The bell had rung. The throat was slit. The door was opening.

Oh. Right, then.

He says: The girl of whom we have been speaking has heard the door open. She backs against the wall, pulling the red brocade of the Bed of One Night tightly around herself. It has a brackish odour, like a salt marsh at low tide: the dried fear of those who have gone before her. Someone has come in; there’s the sound of a heavy object being dragged along the floor. The door closes again; the room is dark as oil. Why is there no lamp, no candle?