“Count me among the second clan,” I tell her, as I settle myself at the lunch counter with a cup of coffee.

“You’ll be all right? I should be back in a couple of hours.”

“I’ll be just fine.”

She looks to the cat before she leaves. “Keep an eye on her for me, will you? Don’t let her get into any trouble.”

Though I tried and tried that autumn of 1944, I could not get Velázquez to tell me anything more about Sam Mallory. He said he had promised Mallory never to reveal what he had done in Spain, and he—Velázquez—had already broken that vow for my sake, which was unconscionable and must not be repeated. You have a way of disarming me, he said to me, but now I am on my guard.

As September passed into October, however, I went on meeting Velázquez. I told myself this was because I still had some hope of disarming him again, and because the strain of war on one’s nerves required some carnal release, which nobody understood better than Velázquez. Sometimes he would join me at the Scribe in Paris, when he could get a few hours’ leave from his duties at the airfield, which were largely administrative; sometimes I would travel out to Orly and meet him there. In the beginning, the terms of our association were clear and simple. Since we had the good fortune to share an electric physical attraction and libidos of roughly equal strength, we should screw each other silly, as often as we could arrange to meet.

But as the weeks went on, we began to spend time together that was not entirely devoted to sex. We would go on walks or drive a Jeep into some village and look at the local cathedral, if it still stood; after making love, instead of getting dressed or falling asleep, we would have these conversations about art and politics and ethics. I was surprised to find that despite his cynicism Velázquez was an idealist, a believer in fate but also a devout Catholic, even though the Republicans in Spain had hated the church; he did not understand how I, a nonbeliever, could adhere to any moral code at all, and he was deeply worried for my immortal soul. Velázquez spoke in precise, beautiful language, and our discussions had this transparent quality, this clarity of expression, so that you could perceive each thought in the same way you could observe an object with your eyes. I remember I would watch his mouth as he spoke, or the bridge of his nose, or the wisp of smoke from his cigarette. He used to trail his other hand along my skin, to draw some diagram with his fingers to illustrate a point. Often he would turn on his side to fix me with a serious expression and ask me some question that stopped me in my tracks, that required me to walk back all the way along some path of logic and start again, in a new direction I hadn’t imagined, while he listened intently. Then we would make love again, and the texture of him was somehow different, and the texture of me.

In October he took me to the opera. I wish I could remember which one. I didn’t understand a word, though the music stirred me. Sometime near the end, as the soprano lay dying yet miraculously sonorous, Velázquez snatched my fingers with one hand and wiped his eyes with the other. Afterward he apologized for this weakness and told me about his childhood in Spain, how his parents owned a great estate that was lost during the war, and how they used to take him to the opera in Madrid when he was a boy. He first saw this particular opera we had just witnessed when he was twelve, and it affected him deeply, so that he could not help but respond with emotion tonight because of all he had lost since then. He hoped this had not distressed me.

All this he explained as we sprawled in bed in the tiny room in the Hotel Scribe to which I had been assigned. We had started to make love inside the elevator, because the mechanism was so slow and this was wartime, and finished hard against the headboard an hour later; Velázquez was a disciplined man and always made sure I came at least twice (sometimes more, if he had gone to confession recently) before he finished off. He used to say it was the man’s duty to give the woman satisfaction, because a woman who was not sexually satisfied was liable to cause trouble. I saw no reason to argue with him about this.

A few days after the opera I was sent away on some assignment for a week or two, and it was only when we reunited that I realized that matters had gone too far. We devoured each other like a pair of desperate animals, driven by some lust out of all proportion to the length of our abstinence, and after Velázquez rose to dispose of the condom, he settled himself back on the bed and lit a cigarette, which we passed back and forth. An air of quiet despair settled between us. Finally he turned on his side to face me. “You will not like what I’m about to say, but I will say it regardless. I think I am in love with you.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“No, I’m afraid it’s true. Listen to me. I had word today that I am to be reassigned back to my old squadron, to conduct some reconnaissance over Germany.”

“But I thought you were finished with combat missions. Haven’t you flown enough already?”

“Well, it seems they have run short of experienced pilots. It is careless of them, of course, but that’s the English for you. I will not ask you to be faithful. That is like asking a cat not to catch mice. But I believe we are going to win this war, we are going to beat the Fascists at last, and when it’s over I would like to marry you.”

I was so shocked, I nearly tumbled off the bed.

“Me? You’re nuts. You should marry some girl from home. You know we won’t suit. You’d want me to give up my freedom, and I’d never obey you, which would make you miserable, because you love to be obeyed.”

He picked up my hand and held it to his lips. “The girl I was going to marry is dead now. I have no home left to me. For many years I said I would never marry at all, that the world was too terrible a place to bring children into it, and I was too poor in any case. But now there is hope. There is some possibility of a future. And though I am too gruff for you, and autocratic, and ugly—”

“You aren’t ugly at all.”

“But you are beautiful, and I have no right to you. Still, I promise I will make you a good husband. I will do my best to make you happy. All I ask is that you consider what I say. Then when the war’s over, the day Hitler surrenders, I will come back to you and ask again and again until you relent and become my wife. What do you think of this idea?”

“I think it’s nuts. You’ll want a dozen kids, for one thing.”

“That’s not true. Three or four would suffice.”

“What about your mistress in London?”

“I will keep her, of course,” he said gravely. “Every man needs a little variety.”

That was the night I took that photograph of him, while he was trying to pin me down, as it were. I then put down the camera and performed an act on him that made him howl, made him curse all my ancestors, made him collapse at last on the sheets and swear the most exquisite vengeance on me, to which I replied that it was a woman’s duty to give her lover satisfaction, because he was otherwise liable to cause trouble. Then I laid my head on his thick, furry chest and listened to the thud of his heartbeat through his bone and skin until we both fell asleep.

But I’m afraid I didn’t promise to marry him, or even to consider his proposal. We met only twice more before he transferred to his old squadron, flying reconnaissance out of some air base in The Netherlands, and I never saw him again after that, because he was shot down over Cologne in January. When I heard he was dead, I wept with rage, because I thought now I would never find out what had happened to Mallory. I wept and raged and wept until there was nothing left of me.

Though I’m supposed to be looking after this cat, it seems to have the opposite idea. It settles on the counter, about a yard away from my coffee cup, and stares at me. Its movements are stiff, and its eyes are rheumy, and its fur seems to be missing a patch or two, but other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, you’d never guess it’s nearly two decades old. I mean it can still leap from floor to stool, and from stool to counter, and I don’t for a minute imagine I could do that.

“So you were Mallory’s cat first,” I observe.

The cat makes some adjustment of its forelegs that might be a shrug.

I reach for my pocketbook and light a cigarette. “Believe me, I know how you feel.”

The bell dingles on the door. I look over my shoulder to inspect the newcomer, and what do I see but Irene Lindquist in some kind of plain, neat uniform, sliding a pair of gloves over her long fingers.

“Ready?” she says.

“Ready for what?”

“I’m afraid I told you a lie. The passengers canceled last night, when they learned about the pilot change.”

“What the devil? Then why did you—” I catch sight of her steely expression. “Oh, no. Not on your life, Lindquist. I don’t fly.”

“You will today.”

“I will never. That’s final. It’s nonnegotiable. It’s the one single incontrovertible fact of my life.”