At the lunch with my coleague I was able to convince Paula to accompany me to dinner that evening. I assured myself it would be the best way to get back at Sara. 

Of the chapter I was working on, I could not write that day, or any of the subsequent days and months that I spent knowing Sara. That is what she had taken. A freind of mine, or rather an acquaintance, explained this occurance to me once. When writers fall in love, particularly men, they often lose their capacity to write. The reason, he explained, was that all of the angst and loathing they had that fueled them to continue their work often evaporated with the calming that good women brought. I did not finish that novel, and even now the manuscript is piled with the starts of many others in a suitcase in Tallahasse with my mother Martha, who lives alone, and tells me from time to time that she enjoys the works that I left with her. 

At the lunch my colleague expalined the war and how he was a correspondant in the East for a Polish publication. Sara began to rethink her position. Most of the time I made small talk with Paula who had a brohter who lived Stateside and was convinced that he had gone off to war and that is why he had not written or spoken to his parents for so many years. I was grateful for the more lively discussion with Paula and very much wanted her to come back to my room at Chvoski’s and spend the weekend nude, listening to Jazz. I told her this and she agreed, but quitely and away from the ears of the others. 

Paula and Sara departed and my colleauge picked up the bill, it was his turn, and last time we had eaten together he had brought his wife and two dauthers with him knowing I would pay. He patted my back with a grin when I brought guests this time. It was the nature of our relationship to humor the other and slightly compete when it came to members of the opposite sex. He was not faithful to his wife. 

That night Paula and I made love the way that only Spanish women know how. I had never encountered an American woman with such ferocity and coupled reverance. Her breasts were small, but Paula was small and thin and so they were magnificent. Her hair was dark brown as were her eyes, and her hand seemed much older than her features let on. HEr hands had the folds and lines of someone who had seen war and peace and then war agian. The hands of a bosun or leather worker that had retired and the callouses of the profession had finally worn away to leave delicate hands that resembled the ropes and hides of their trades. In any case Paula was beautiful and we made love with passion and equal satisfaction. 

Afterwards we spoke of Sara. She had brought her up. Paula was laying naked on her back looking at me upside down as I sat in a chair by the window looking out at the street that was plain and without much activity. Paula smoked a cigarette.

“Do you love her?” she asked.

“Who?” I asked turning to her. I knew who she ment. 

“Sara.” She said rolling the ‘r’ in her name and saying it slowly. 

“I don’t know her that well. Besides I’m with you.”

“But this will not last, and we will tire of one another soon. Probably within the week,” said Paula turning onto her breasts and setting the cigarette in a brass ashtray next to the bed. 

“It won’t?” I asked. I liked Paula all the more now and part of me knew I would be sad to see her go. 

“No.”

I got up from my seat and kissed her neck and with my thumb and palm of my hand felt my way down her side until her hip. We made love until the early morning and then Paula left Chvoski’s and we did not speak any further, even at the parties we attended the rest of the summer.