2

HELLO, I SAID. SHE turned her perfect face to me, then turned away again. She said nothing.

I watched the column of that flawless throat: not a quiver of acknowledgment.

‘I gather you’d rather not talk.’

Ah, a quiver; but no more than that. A thought crossed my mind. Perhaps she couldn’t talk: a mute.

That was a possible explanation for her presence here, too. Instinctively I felt this was so.

‘What is this,’ I said, ‘some kind of trick? Putting a beautiful woman here to wait with me … subtle propaganda to change my mind. Beauty triumphant.’

She seemed to inch away, unnoticeably. But I wasn’t going to be thrown off. ‘I’ll stop if you tell me your name.’

She turned to me, then, with a look of such pleading that I was ashamed. The Director’s arrival saved me. He carried a tray on which was a cocktail shaker and four glasses. Behind him trailed a tall Negro whose face was a battlefield marked by pock-mark craters.