2

Duvivier. He had seen the name on a brass plate under some painting or other. It had the quality of an infinitive, he thought. Yes. To revive. The fact that the name meant nothing of the sort did not intrude upon the sense of irony that he felt. He chose it, smiling.

But Duvivier was merely one of his names. The three under which he wrote included those of Paul Philippe Grisone and Jackson R.W. Bishop. His checks arrived and were deposited in the Bishop name. His fourth name, he assumed, had long been forgotten.

He heard the scrape of the milk cans on the pavement and the sound of the cart moving off. It was later than the light had led him to believe. He walked to the window, pushed back the curtain, and looked down into the street.

A gray day, a day that the tourists would complain about. The Ministry of Tourism routed them through the village regularly now that the restoration of the town was almost complete. He would leave Pedraza for good, he decided.

He had come here many years earlier. The water was sweet and the air was thin and few in the village could muster more than an English phrase or two. It had taken a half day by Land Rover to make the climb, and that, too, swayed him. There was nothing in Pedraza save what he, in one of his novels, had called an amniotic solitude.

Which novel? He could not remember. Nonetheless, it was a good line, a bright line. No matter how easily the words came, he would still entertain himself now and again by recalling those of his phrases he most admired. Only occasionally, say, on one of his infrequent trips to America, would he widen his audience, parading before his companions the very excellent and tested dialogue of one of his characters.

But his characters were not enough. He had created their authors as well.

Duvivier, for instance, was the least serious and most successful of the lot. He was a bit splashy, perhaps, given to bullying waiters and carrying enormous sums of cash. If he chose to sleep with a woman, it would be as Duvivier, who had a talent for gymnastic sex and who was not averse to impertinent coversation.

And were he to sleep with a man, he would be Paul Philippe Grisone, prone to exoticism and languor.

Jackson R.W. Bishop, though not yet fifty, was, alas, a crusty celibate.

“Señor Beeshop.”

“Si?”

“El correo.” The maid had brought his mail.

He instructed her to set it on the table in the hall. Even his Spanish was more fluent than was necessary here. He would definitely leave Pedraza.

He opened the packet from New York first. It was a scattering of reviews of the latest Duvivier book, the seventh to appear in the States. He read them, though he already knew what they would contain. His American audience saw how well he used the form, and missed, utterly, how brilliantly he mocked it. But even half-read, Duvivier made such a lot of money.

Jackson R.W. Bishop went down to breakfast.