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played salsa on the jukebox. And whether the cards were with him or against him, whether he was lucky or not, he always kept enough bills in his shirt pocket to take a girl back to his room. They’d go all night, those Latin girls, they’d lick and suck and ride until the sun was rising and all he wanted was to sleep. They didn’t fake it, like all Greek whores who were only in it for the money. Greek girls were too inhibited; they had too much religion. Those Latinas just loved to fuck. One, he’d stuck with for a while—Flora, with that tiny waist and those massive hips, just begging for it. And the night he had to leave her, she brought her sister too, to make it memorable. Memorable! They’d tied him to the bed and made him watch the two of them together, unbuttoning each other’s blouse, kissing each other’s tits, playing with each other’s fannies—sisters, for the love of Christ!—until he was begging them to come to him. And they left him tied up and rode him all night, taking turns to slide onto him, taking their time to get what they wanted, until he was so sore he begged for them to stop. Next morning, his partswere so swollen he could hardly walk; he had to take a taxi to the train station. And the driver had known the girls he was talking about, had slapped him on the back, laughing commiserations at his discomfort, and told him it was good he was leaving town, that no man alive could take two nights with those two.
    He could feel a pleasant swelling in his trousers; if she hadn’t been here, he might have gone to bed, given it a pull and tried to make something of it. But she was here, and sitting next to him again. The memory could be conjured back, when she had gone.
    “It was hard to be away,” he said. “It’s the sacrifice some men make, to feed their families.”
    “Maybe marriage isn’t for everyone,” she said. “Maybe not everyone’s made to stay in one place. I know what you think, Uncle. You think I carry a torch for Thomas. Mother thinks the same. But it wasn’t him; I wasn’t in love with him. He was gone too long. But all those postcards—the cities, and the beaches, and the outback—all those places he’s seen, all the things he’s done, I want to go there too. Maybe not for a lifetime, but I want to see it all for myself. You think no one should have dreams. Andreas is the same. Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been, if I hadn’t married Andreas.”
    “What’s the point in wondering that?” he asked. “You shouldn’t think that way. We take the road we take. Then we make the best of it. There’s no gain in wondering where the path not taken would have led. Anyway. All women marry. When that first baby comes along, you’ll see I was right. A woman’s joy in life is in her family.”
    “Babies tie you to the house forever,” she said.
    “You’ll be surprised,” he said. “You’ll find there’s nowhere else you want to be.”
    She nibbled at the tip of a fingernail. There seemed nothing else to say: the price of oranges, the prime minister’s mistress, the postman’s sudden death had been exhausted between them, days ago. But she, having nowhere to go, was not inclined to leave; and he, having no other company, wanted her to stay.
    And so she said, “Shall I tell you what I dreamed last night? You can tell me what it means.”
    In anticipation, he leaned forward in his chair and steepled the tips of his fingers. He had invented himself a reputation as a student of dreams, as an interpreter of their meanings and warnings. It was, he claimed, a skill he had learned on his travels. But his talent was not in the reading of dreams; it was in persuading the credulous of his ability to do so. He possessed no special knowledge, outside the reading of popular texts of psychology and the handed-down interpretations of old women: a dream of fish was bad luck, a dream of crabs meant a difficult courtship, a dream of lizards meant an enemy’s knife in the