“I won’t sit down,” I said. “I’m going over to the hotel.”

I was very drunk. I was drunker than I ever remembered having been. At the hotel I went upstairs. Brett’s door was open. I put my head in the room. Mike was sitting on the bed. He waved a bottle.

“Jake,” he said. “Come in, Jake.”

I went in and sat down. The room was unstable unless I looked at some fixed point.

“Brett, you know. She’s gone off with the bullfighter chap.”

“No.”

“Yes. She looked for you to say goodbye. They went on the seven o’clock train.”

“Did they?”