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just above the waist, and she wore nothing under it. She was a fine-looking woman, if only she would not flaunt it so blatantly. She walked over to Tony, who was fixing Marianne’s drink, and hugged him from behind. Lea and I looked at each other and shook our heads, and when I turned to continue talking with Marianne, she had crossed over to Tony and stood possessively clutching his arm.
    I sipped my drink and joined Sean and Lea. Mike had gotten up and now the younger people were standing in a group and talking.
    “Have you known Mike long?” I asked Sean.
    “We were just talking about him, too,” said Lea.
    “Met him a few times. There is something about him, though, isn’t there?”
    Lea stared at him. “He seems a bit . . . I don’t know. I can’t place it at all.”
    Lea took my hand and squeezed it.
    “He works at a bar in town,” said Sean. “I’m not sure if he’s the bartender or waits tables, but he’s a nice enough guy. Plays a hell of a game of chess.”
    “So you do know him.”
    He shrugged. “The way one knows people here. He happened to be having a drink with Tony when I ran into them and asked them up.”
    “He seems perfectly normal now,” said Lea,
    “but just when he was sitting there, so quietly, it was . . . it was eerie, I suppose.”
    Sean laughed. “It’s this Spanish twilight. Alters all the shadows until they’re not quite recognizable.”
    “Or creates shadows out of nothing?”
    He remained smiling. “Maybe. But that’s the romance of this place. You sense a shadow, a mood, a mystery somewhere, but when you examine it, you find it was either the sun, or the heat, or the gin.”
    “There’s no real romance here, then?” I asked.
    “Depends on what you mean by real. It’s all real enough at a distance, so the trick, if you’re after romance, is to keep it there. If that movement in the bushes seems somehow strange, don’t walk out to the woods and find out it’s a bit of cloth dangling from a branch. Stay by your window and believe it’s a demon watching you.” He took a long drink. “Also depends on what you want to see.”
    Lea spoke. “So we imagined whatever it was about Mike?”
    “Just what was it you might have imagined?”
    “Well.” She paused. “I can’t really put my finger on it.”
    “Doug?”
    “I don’t really know, either.”
    “There,” he said, “you see. But go on believing anything you want. It makes life so much more interesting. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go hurry Berta.” He bowed, and disappeared into the kitchen.
    Lea looked at me. “I suppose he’s right, but it did seem . . .” She stopped. “It seemed, whatever it was, real enough to me.”

Four
     
    He turned out of the rutted backstreet and into the main road. Beside him on the seat was an open bottle of tinto, and from time to time he’d tip the bottle back as he raced along the curving road. He was anxious to get to the main road that ran out of Blanes, and get to his destination near Perpignan before daybreak.
    Already it was nearly four a.m. The bar had closed up late, and Victor, their singer, had stayed around to drink and swap songs for nearly an hour. Mike finally had to get him drinking Pernod laced with illegal absinthe, so that he’d get drunk and leave. Then there’d been the usual checking up to see that the graffa bottles were corked and ready for tomorrow. Luckily, it had been a quiet night. No one had been exceptionally drunk or obnoxious.
    That, at least, had been a relief. When he’d last gone to Perpignan, he’d spent all his closing time cleaning vomit from the floors. This cheap liquor really wasn’t the best thing to get drunk on. He took another swig of the tinto, and the trees whizzed by.
    Occasionally he’d see lights approaching and have to slow down. He didn’t know whether he preferred the private cars that tended to drift over into his lane, or the taxis that would always turn on their brights as they came