I kept getting letters from a lady who lived only a mile or so away. She signed them Nicole. She said she had read some of my books and liked them. I answered one of her letters and she responded with an invitation to visit. One afternoon, without saying anything to Lydia, I got into the Volks and drove on over. She had a flat over a dry cleaner’s on Santa Monica Boulevard. Her door was on the street and I could see a stairway through the glass. I rang the bell. “Who is it?” came a woman’s voice through a little tin speaker. “I’m Chinaski,” I said. A buzzer sounded and I pushed the door open.

Nicole stood at the top of the stairs looking down at me. She had a cultured, almost tragic face and wore a long green housedress cut low in front. Her body seemed to be very good. She looked at me with large dark brown eyes. There were lots of tiny wrinkles around her eyes, perhaps from too much drinking or crying.

“Are you alone?” I asked.

“Yes,” she smiled, “come on up.”

I went up. It was spacious, two bedrooms, with very little furniture. I noticed a small bookcase and a rack of classical records. I sat on the couch. She sat next to me. “I just finished,” she said, “reading The Life of Picasso.”

There were several copies of The New Yorker on the coffee table. “Can I fix you some tea?” Nicole asked.

“I’ll go out and get something to drink.”

“That’s not necessary. I have something.”

“What?”

“Some good red wine?” “I’d like some,” I said.

Nicole got up and walked into the kitchen. I watched her move. I had always liked women in long dresses. She moved gracefully. She seemed to have a lot of class. She returned with two glasses and the bottle of wine and poured. She offered me a Benson and Hedges. I lit one.

“Do you read The New Yorker?” she asked. “They print some good stories.” “I don’t agree.”

“What’s wrong with them?

”They’re too educated.”

“I like them.”

“Well, shit,” I said.

We sat drinking and smoking.

“Do you like my apartment?”

“Yes, it’s nice.”

“It reminds me of some of the places I’ve had in Europe. I like the space, the light.” “Europe, huh?”

“Yes, Greece, Italy . . . Greece, mostly.”

“Paris?”

“Oh yes, I liked Paris. London, no.”

Then she told me about herself. Her family had lived in New York City. Her father was a communist, her mother a seamstress in a sweatshop. Her mother had worked the front machine, she was number one, the best of all of them. Tough and likeable. Nicole was self-educated, had grown up in New York, had somehow met a famous doctor, married, lived with him for ten years, then divorced him. She now received only $400 a month alimony, and it was difficult to manage. She couldn’t afford her apartment, but she liked it too much to leave.

“Your writing,” she said to me, “it’s so raw. It’s like a sledge hammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness. . . .”

“Yeah,” I said.

I put my drink down and looked at her. I cupped her chin in my hand and drew her towards me. I gave her the tiniest kiss.

Nicole continued talking. She told me quite a few interesting stories, some of which I decided to use myself, either as stories or poems. I watched her breasts as she bent forward and poured drinks. It’s like a movie, I thought, like a fucking movie. It seemed funny to me. It felt as if we were on camera. I liked it. It was better than the racetrack, it was better than the boxing matches. We kept drinking. Nicole opened a new bottle. She talked on. It was easy to listen to her. There was wisdom and some laughter in each of her rales. Nicole was impressing me more than she knew. That worried me, somewhat.

We walked out on the veranda with our drinks and watched the afternoon traffic. She was talking about Huxley and Lawrence in Italy. What shit. I told her that Knut Hamsun had been the world’s greatest writer. She looked at me, astonished that I’d heard of him, then agreed. We kissed on the veranda, and I could smell the exhaust from the cars in the street below. Her body felt good against mine. I knew we weren’t going to fuck right away, but I also knew that I would be coming back. Nicole knew it too.