"Sure. Aren't you?"
"I don't know. You never know in this town."
"Don't you like Paris?"
"No."
"Why don't you go somewhere else?"
"Isn't anywhere else."
"You're happy, all right."
"Happy, hell!"
Pernod is greenish imitation absinthe. When you add water it turns milky. It tastes like licorice and it has a good uplift, but it drops you just as far. We sat and drank it, and the girl looked sullen.
"Well," I said, "are you going to buy me a dinner?"
She grinned and I saw why she made a point of not laughing. With her mouth closed she was a rather pretty girl. I paid for the saucers and we walked out to the street. I hailed a horse-cab and the driver pulled up at the curb. Settled back in the slow, smoothly rolling fiacre we moved up the Avenue de l'Opéra, passed the locked doors of the shops, their windows lighted, the Avenue broad and shiny and almost deserted. The cab passed the New York Herald bureau with the window full of clocks.
"What are all the clocks for?" she asked.
"They show the hour all over America."
"Don't kid me."
We turned off the Avenue up the Rue des Pyramides, through the traffic of the Rue de Rivoli, and through a dark gate into the Tuileries. She cuddled against me and I put my arm around her. She looked up to be kissed. She touched me with one hand and I put her hand away.
"Never mind."
"What's the matter? You sick?"
"Yes."
