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with you?"  
    "Maybe I'm scared of you."
    "Scared." She narrowed her eyes and peered at me. "Well, Mr. Scott, you wait. I will scare you to death."
    I didn't say anything.
    "The brassiere," she said. "I did not put it on. You are old-fashioned. This blouse." She sat up straight so I could get a good look.
    I got a good look.
    "You like?"
    I nodded. I was all wound up like spaghetti.
    "Look. It is a peasant blouse. I can wear it like this"—she pulled the top up high around her neck; looked good, too—"or I can wear it like this." She pulled it down over her creamy shoulders, down, down. Good God! Was she never going to stop? Down. "So. You like, Mr. Shell Scott?"
    I used up half my store of French. "Oui," I sighed. That's one word you can say when your tongue's stuck.
    "Oh!" Her eyes sparkled. "You speak French?"
    "Oui."
    "Ooh. Merveilleux! Quel homme remarquable, Monsieur Scott. Quels autres talents cachés avez-vous?"
    "Uh, oui."
    She frowned and looked at me strangely. "Comment? What a remarkable man you are! So well you speak French, you must also speak Spanish, no?"
    "Si."
    "Eres un marrano cochino. Verdad?"
    "Si, si."
    She laughed lightly, leanedforward across the table, and said, "I just told you, Mr. Scott, that you are a dirty pig. You are a big faker, no?"  
    "I'm a big faker, yes. Please, not a dirty pig."
    She tossed her head back and laughter rippled out of her throat and past her red lips. Guys at the next tables turned and looked at me as if they wished I'd dissolve. Lina stopped laughing and said, "We will have fun."
    "Sure. Tell me something, Lina. How come you're working here, letting a guy toss knives at you? You and Miguel been working together long? You a team?"
    "No team, Shell. That Miguel!" She screwed up her face in disgust. "It is like this. I am a singer. I come here to work—oh, two months ago. This Miguel and a Ramona, his partner then, they do the knife act. One night Ramona is not here. Later we find she had run away with a man and she is married. The husband will not let knives be thrown at her."
    "A logical development," I said.
    "Then Maggie says will I do the act? I tell her no, but finally she says I will get twice the money—from fifty dollars to one hundred dollars. For one week. So I say all right. Well," she shrugged her shoulders, "it is so good for the crowd they have me stay—but I make Maggie give me one hundred and fifty dollars. Six weeks now we have done the act. I do nothing; just stand there."
    "Doesn't it scare you?"
    "No longer. At first, a little, but not now. Miguel, he is at least good with the knives. Always just so."
    "This your home town, Lina? You live here?"
    "I was born in Venezuela, but I have lived here for many years. I am at the Coronet Hotel on Western Avenue." She leaned forward, grinning up at me. "Room Forty. Alone. You must visit me."
    "Uh-huh. Right now I've got to visit the boss. When's the show?"
    "It finished just before you came. The last one is at one-thirty. You watch me."
    "I'll try." I nodded to the door on the right of the orchestra. "That go back to the boss's office?"
    "Yes," she said. "Straight back. It says on the door, 'Private.'"
    I winked at her and walked over to the door. Inside was a short hallway with a yellow light burning over a door at the end. A faded wooden sign on the door said, "Private."
    I knocked. The floor shook a little under my feet, then the door was opened and Mrs. Remorse roared, "Whadda ya want, Mac?"
    "I'd like to talk to you."
    "Well, don't just stand there. Get your behind inside." Only she didn't say behind.
    It was a small room with a low pine desk opposite the door and, behind it, an overstuffed chair big enough to support Maggie's remarkable bulk comfortably. Two other wooden chairs, one in front of the desk, and that was all.
    Maggie spilled herself into the overstuffed chair, pointed at the chair in front of the desk, and said, "Squat, Mac."
    I squatted.
    The guy I'd seen talking to Maggie earlier, the one