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this happy again.”
    â€œWere you?”
    â€œWas I what?”
    â€œEver that happy again?”
    â€œOf course I was. You’re never just happy
once
in your life. Life isn’t like that.” She paused. “Will you have a small Drambuie with me? It’s up there in the cupboard over the fridge. Yes, there, right behind your hand. Could you heat it up? Just put it in those snifters and pop it into the microwave.”
    â€œDid Marek like Drambuie?”
    Deadpan. Eyebrows raised. “Marek liked everything. It’s wonderful to be with a man who adores a woman’s body. Every inch of it. But wait.” She pointed to the microwave. “Yes. Thirty seconds should be enough.”
    â€œIs that too hot?”
    â€œNo, it’s perfect. Smell that. I’ve been saving this for a rainy day.”
    I sat back down. It was eleven o’clock.
    â€œMy little sailboats caught on. I did a craft show in Memphis. A rep from a middle-sized American chain saw my stuff and bought me out. I like that about Americans, how they do business. They come in, they look around, and they write a cheque. No pussyfooting. So suddenly there I was, with a bunch of money and two teenage children. What to do?
    â€œPeter Ungster was trying on a new hat in my mirror, and he said in that funny voice, ‘Why don’t you move to
Mex
ico? There’s an artists’ colony in San Miguel de Allende. That sounds like baloney, I know, and there
is
a lot of baloney down there, but not entirely. You could open a little shop—you could paint—do whatever you want. Leonard Cohen lives there. Or people
say
he lives there. Nobody ever seems to
see
him. For a while I had a friend there, an antique collector,
soi-disant
, but it turned out he was just looking for some Mexican boy to fuck him in the bum and leave him for dead. Which isn’t far from what happened. But don’t get me get started on that one.’
    â€œSo I went. San Miguel is a pretty town nine thousand feet up in the air with a sweeping cathedral right in the centre. Somebody in the Cucaracha bar told me it was designed entirely from a single European postcard. But people start drinking early in those towns and they kind of make stuff up. One moment it’s not true, next moment it is. No one seems to care.
    â€œI took Chloe with me. She was twelve years old. I couldn’t leave her with Bruce. That would have been like leaving her in a black-and-white television show. Besides, she wanted to go. She was very adventurous. She could hardly wait.”
    â€œWhat did Bruce say?”
    â€œHe threatened to take me to court. But I called his bluff. I wasn’t rattled by him anymore. I said, ‘Okay, Bruce, I’ll leave her up here with you.’ That scared the shit out of him. He wasn’t a mean spirit, he just didn’t want me to have my cake and eat it too. As if you’d do anything else with your cake
except
eat it. But the notion of a gangly, phone-hogging, incessantly hungry, expensive, operatic teenage girl running up and down the stairs with a pair of school friends really shook him up.”
    â€œSo he folded?”
    â€œLike a deck chair. In fact, he
gave
me money. He pretended it was for Chloe’s expenses, but I think it was to make sure she actually
went.
”
    â€œAnd her brother, Kyle? Can I ask what happened there?”
    Her face clouded. “You know that story,” she said softly. “I made a mistake. I was so hungry to be happy that I made a mistake.” She looked toward the window.
    I said, “We don’t have—” but she went on.
    â€œKyle was seventeen. He wanted to stay with his friends. Besides, I didn’t want to strip Bruce of everything. I worried he’d kill himself. But I should have tried harder, I should have insisted.”
    I could see her sinking into a fog of distress. I said, “Did he know about Marek?”
    Sally had