We drove in silence for hours, until the street lights came on and I couldn't recognize any landmarks. "Dinner?" I said. Brett sighed, which meant yes. "Café del Toros," I said to the driver, who grunted obligingly and turned us around. He didn't make small talk, which I appreciated. Some of these Spanish taxi drivers thought you paid them by the word instead of the kilometer.

The Café del Toros was on the second floor of a rickety old mill. I hadn't been to that old place in years, but they baked the best bread in Madrid. It was crowded with over-perfumed people in various states of drunkenness, but the building was still standing. The maître d' led us to a table in the center of the cafe and offered to bring out wine.

"Two bottles, please."

Neither of us were very hungry, but I ate anyway. The bread was fantastic. Brett watched the married couple talking and laughing behind us and drank wine.

"I'll go home and marry Mike," she said after they took their check and left. "He'll be glad to hear that. I'll telegraph tonight. That's what I'll do."

"How long have you been engaged?" I asked for something to say.

"Oh, ever so long. I forget."

"You were supposed to be married once already, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"Last year, or the year before?"

"Year before."

The candles were burning down, and the maître d' glanced at the few of us still sitting. He wanted us to leave. To hell with him. Our train didn't leave for two hours. "Another two bottles of wine," I said to show him. He frowned and disappeared. Two more parties trickled out of the cafe. These new bottles were better than the last. Brett seemed to think so, anyway. She finished one and a half before I'd drunk two glasses, and by the time her glass emptied for good she talked much more freely.

"You know what I think?" she said, her round face glistening from the heat. "I'll have the grandest wedding anyone's ever seen. The reception will last all weekend - doesn't that sound just fine? And I'll dance with every man there. You'll be there, of course. You're my best man."

"Isn't it Mike's best man?" I asked.

"He won't care. He's an old dear."

I laughed, harder than I should have.

"What?"

"He isn't."

"What are you talking about?"

"Isn't a dear."

"What is he, then?"

"He's an arrogant, loudmouthed ass, and you know it."

"You're getting pretty damned excitable over all this. I didn't know you cared."

"Damn it, Brett, I don't care what sort of games you play - or who you play them with-"

"Awfully big of you, darling."

"-but this isn't play anymore. He wouldn't think so, either. He'd make you settle down."

"See if I would! I'd leave him."

"Great, then there you are back where you started. And what's the good of tying yourself to an ass like him, anyway? What's it get you?"

She stopped, and her mouth quirked up. I noticed she was crying. She stood, and I followed her out onto the terrace. Someone was playing a mandolin below us, an old tune I recognized vaguely as having something to do with a lover killed in a duel. It was awfully cheerful. Brett rested against the railing, and I put my arms around her. She made a hell of a picture, just a golden outline in the streetlamp-light.

"I've postponed the wedding, you know." She wiped her eyes.

"I know."

"Lots of times."

"I know."

"At first I thought it was my fault. The divorce took too long, I wasn't ready to settle down, I wanted to have my fun, those old stories. I'm damn glad I did, too. I met Cohn - though he wasn't too fun afterward - and that dear old count, and...and Romero." She leaned against me. "It's not me, Jake - at least not all me. He's not interested."

"Like hell he isn't. Have you heard him talk?"

"I don't mean in me, I mean at all."

The music trailed off. "What?"

"I found out a few weeks before the first wedding day. I went to take a shower and there they were, the two of them, in our bed. I never took the other man for the type, but you learn something new every day, I guess." I whistled. "It was so funny, I couldn't stop laughing, really I couldn't. Mike doesn't know I know, isn't that even funnier? But I can't really marry him, can I? I go on and on, keeping up appearances because I can't figure how to break it off, but I can't marry him. It wouldn't feel right." Her voice broke.

"It wouldn't," I agreed. The air felt calm, and fireflies started winking at Brett. Everything that moves, I thought with a chuckle. Except Mike Campbell, apparently.

"But how am I to break it off with him?" she said. "He's been so good to me, and people will ask questions."

"Make something up. Isn't there one big beastly thing he's done you can't stand?"

She began to cry in earnest. She pressed her face into my shirt, shuddering against me like she'd shake herself to pieces. I touched her hair, and she looked up at me with a face like death itself. "Jake, darling."

"Yes?"

"I'm dying."

The mandolin started up again, this time with a violin above it, higher and angrier.

"Aren't we all?"

"I've got something dreadful. I thought it had gone away, but it's back, and so much worse. I'm going to die."

"You're not. You can't."

"Don't be grim about it, dearest. For me. Let's never speak about it again. I shan't die today, at any rate."

"What do we do in the meantime?"

"Hold me, darling." I obliged. She was burning up, or maybe I was just cold.

"It's Mike's fault, is it?" I asked, half afraid to bring it up.

"It must be. There. The one, big, beastly thing I can't stand."

A scrubby young waiter peered out and informed us that, if it pleased señor and señorita, the cafe was now closed, if we would be so kind as to vacate the premises at once, gracias. We would be so kind. In the absence of any taxis, we strolled down the boulevard, Brett's head on my shoulder and her hand gripping mine. We had missed our train.

We stopped next to a fountain supposedly shaped like Saint Mary de Cervellione. "Brett," I said. My voice echoed, too loud for the empty plaza. "Make a list of all the things you want to see in the States. How soon can you pack once you get home?"

"How long a trip?" she asked. She was a damn good-looking woman when she smiled.

"As long as your list. I need to get out of Paris, anyway. I hate the damn town."