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her out.
    â€œCome on, puss,” I coaxed her. “It’s tuna time!”
    Malkin trotted after me into the kitchenette. I scraped the remains of our tuna steaks onto one plate and set it down on the floor. Malkin immediately started to wolf it down.
    I stood and watched her, feeling unexpectedly bereft. If there was one thing I had already learned about life, it was that the happiest moments are always over, and in the end we are always left alone again, with nothing but the plates to clear away, and the sun sinking down behind the trees.

Eight
    Margot thought it was brilliant.
    â€œIt’s
brilliant
! A wonderful new apartment, in a street with a bend in it! An adulterous affair with the wife of an international realtor with halitosis! How come you
always
fall on your feet, Lalo?”
    â€œDon’t forget the demented nude model upstairs.”
    â€œEven
more
brilliant! It’s like
Alice Through The Looking-Glass
!”
    We were sitting on a bench in James A. Walker park, enjoying the sunshine. It was warm enough to go out without a coat, but it wasn’t as balmy as it had been the previous week, and around the corner I could feel the first cold drafts of winter, coming from the northwest. Margot was wearing a chunky red sweater with green apples embroidered on it.
    Not far away from us, an old man in a raincoat tied up with string was slowly pacing around the grass, bending over now and again to pick up something. Cigarette butts? I couldn’t really tell.
    â€œSo what are you going to do, Lalo? Are you going to see her again? You
have
to see her again!”
    â€œI think so. I’m not entirely sure. She said we had just gotten started, but half of the time I don’t really understand what she’s talking about.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, you don’t understand what she’s talking about?”
    â€œIt’s hard to describe. It’s like if I said, ‘How do you like my haircut?’ and you said, ‘Maybe next Wednesday.’ Like it
could
make sense. It’s perfectly good English. But somehow, when you try to analyze it, it doesn’t make any sense at all.”
    â€œDoes it matter, if she’s good in bed? At least she doesn’t make love in a way that you can’t understand. My last boyfriend did, Patrick. You remember Patrick? I swear he learned the facts of life from a goatherd, in Uzbekistan or someplace like that. When I was trying to do one thing, he was always trying to do something else.”
    After a while, the sun sank behind the buildings, and it began to grow chilly.
    â€œLet’s go inside,” I suggested. “I’ll make you some Russian tea, with honey.”
    Before we left the park, though, I went across to the old man in the raincoat and I held out a ten-dollar bill. He looked at it suspiciously.
    â€œWhat’s that for?”
    â€œAnything you like. Food, cigarettes, hooch. I’m not telling you how to spend it.”
    He came up close to me. His chin was thick with white stubble, but he looked reasonably clean. He reminded me of the late Rod Steiger, for some reason. He didn’t take his eyes off me, not for a second, not even to look down at the ten-spot.
    â€œYou should be careful,” he said.
    â€œOh, yes? And why is that?”
    â€œBecause some people can seem like they care for you, if you know what I mean, but all the time they have an agenda. They’re playing you.”
    â€œI see. And you think that’s happening to me?”
    â€œJust warning you, that’s all. I used to take people at face value, and look what happened to me.”
    He eased the folded bill from between my fingers as if he were trying to take it without me being aware that he had done it.
    â€œYou’re a good man,” he told me. “You watch out for that young lady of yours.”
    â€œOh, we’re just friends,” said Margot, taking hold of my arm.
    â€œI know that,”