Her voice suddenly became flat and cold. "I am beginning to get very tired of you, Mr. Wylie."

I looked at her.

You have only to apologize, to crawl about for a moment, to resume flattery or a suggestion thereof, to dance again, to put your hand gently on her—in such a way that she would remove it firmly. Then everything will be stardust again. She will be a beautiful young woman enjoying, with world sanction, the company of a suitable guy. Toying, perhaps, with the thought of an affaire. Toying would be her word and toy, her inept function.

And what had I been doing?

I looked for the waiter. If he had been visible in the smoke-spun, light-pulsing, low altitude of the big room, I would have asked for the check and taken her straight to her door and to hell with her. This was my night to howl, maybe. It was turning into my night to die. I had the right—or intended to make the right—to howl and die as I pleased and with whom I chose.

But while I was looking, she sensed my intention. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to be rude! You hurt my feelings."

So I dissembled. "I was hunting for our waiter. Let's go someplace else."

We walked down the staircase of a Latin spot off Eighth Avenue called the Cuban Paradise. A spot with a still lower ceiling, and no air conditioning or ventilation. Two small rumba bands alternate, so the music is constant, and nine-tenths of the customers are Cubans or Puerto Ricans or South Americans. The orchestras are not pretentious, but such as may be heard on a hundred side streets in Havana.

We took a little table at the wall. New Yorkers spend a good deal of their lives with their backs to walls, looking at things, eating things, drinking. We ordered coffee and the waiter dutifully told us there was a small minimum. It was Cuban coffee—thick and sweet—and we listened to rhythms musically naïve but emotionally more sophisticated than those of the big, smooth, uptown bands. Music is like accent in speech, and very few foreigners learn the language of another nation so well as to lose all traces of their own tongue—to talk like natives. At the Cuban Paradise, the Latins danced as they were supposed to and wanted to. Working people having fun. Immigrants remembering tropical nights—and sounds never heard in Manhattan—trees never seen on its streets—flowers never sold in its markets.

There were pairs of girls dancing together—hopefully—and when I saw them, executing the slow, insidious steps of a bolero—I glanced at Yvonne. She was watching them, too—watching them so intently that my glance became a stare. She noticed and swept from her face its look of participation.