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come up until later, but somehow it did.”
    â€œWhere is Jack’s draft board?”
    â€œIn his hometown. He went back to Ohio for his physical. They don’t see as many starvation cases there as in New York.”
    â€œThese two boys are from the same town, they’re the same age?”
    â€œRight. So what?”
    â€œThen it’s quite possible that Danny was drafted in Jack’s place. Does he realize that?”
    Arthur was incredulous. “Drafted in Jack’s place?” he said. “Come on, Dmitri.”
    He changed the subject. “It’s the end of the month,” he said. “I don’t have enough money to pay for this.”
    I handed him a wad of crumpled twenty-dollar bills. And made him sign a receipt with a thumbprint. Immediately afterward he rubbed his eye with his thumb and got ink in it. Crying “Ouch!” he splashed water on himself.
    When he turned blindly from the sink, beard dripping, I handed him a towel.
    â€œRemember the script,” I said. “Have a lively conversation. Discuss everything from women to politics. Let Danny get drunk. Draw them out. And don’t ask for the check until after I leave.”
    Back in the dining room, Peter had arrived. He, too, had demanded a table at the back of the restaurant, just across the narrow room from Jack and his friend Danny. Seated beside Peter on the banquette was a sloe-eyed girl wearing a white silk dress that clung to her body. As was then the fashion she wore no bra, and her erect nipples were discernible beneath the fabric. Like all of Peter’s girls all over the world this one was striking, almost a model, with a crackling mane of dark hair in which she wore a large waxy tropical flower. She also wore a wedding ring, a broad gold band. In her shimmering sarong, cut at the knee, she looked like a Tahitian maiden in a Hollywood film. Even I, the enemy of impossible dreams, couldn’t look at her without wanting to fuck her.
    The effect she had on Jack was even more urgent. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She felt him looking at her, and in that slow self-aware way that good-looking women have, she turned her head to return his stare. If she expected Jack to look guiltily away like an ordinary male, she was disappointed. He stared boldly back. Their eyes locked. It became a staring contest. Neither would be the first to break off.
    Jack’s friend Danny watched in the mirror, grinning. Obviously he had seen this happen before, and he was looking for a familiar outcome.
    He did not have long to wait. Suddenly, to my great surprise, the girl blushed. She turned away, hair tossing, and with an ostentatious laugh pretended that Peter had said something witty to distract her.
    Danny laughed. “She had the vision!” he cried. His voice was distinct, flat, midwestern. Penetrating. The girl could hear every word he said even though his back was turned.
    Arthur said, “The what?”
    â€œShe saw Bwana Devil,” Danny said. “The one-eyed lion. Jack looks at a girl, and if she gives him a hard-on, he concentrates on that and looks deeeeep into her eyes. Nothing on his mind except Bwana Devil. After about two minutes, the girl sees it too. Like a vision of the future—the immediate future. No shit. I’ve had ’em admit it. Right, Jack?”
    Jack shook his head, grinning: What a comedian.
    The girl drank wine and lifted her eyes, looking at Jack again. He smiled at her, as if apologizing for his friend.
    The smile was a sunburst—everything that Arthur and his spies had reported. The girl was startled, as if she had just realized that she knew Jack, that she had seen him before but could not quite place him. She studied him for a long moment, then shook her head, hair tossing, as if to tell herself that she was mistaken. But before she turned away she brushed Jack with a look that was like a tongue flickering across skin.
    After that, for a