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“Darling Renata, in your case the very thought is blasphemous.” Renata’s breasts, when the support of clothing was removed, fell slightly to the right and to the left, owing to a certain enchanting fullness at the base of each and perhaps because of their connection with the magnetic poles of the earth. You did not think of Renata as having a chest in the usual human way—certainly not my brother’s human way, gray-haired and stout.

“You want me to go to Texas with you, don’t you,” she said.

“It would mean a great deal to me.”

“And to me, too, if we were husband and wife. I’d go there twice a week if you needed support. But don’t expect to take me in tow and show me off to a dirty old man as your floozy. Don’t go by my behavior as a single woman.”

This last was a reference to the night she locked me out and lay beside Flonzaley the mortuary king. She had been weeping, to hear her tell it, while I telephoned frantically. “Marry me,” she said to me now. “Change my status. That’s what I need. I’ll make you a wonderful wife.”

“I should do it. You’re a glorious woman. Why should I bandy arguments with you?”

“There’s nothing to argue about. I’m going to Italy tomorrow, and you can meet me in Milan. But I’ll be walking into the Biferno leather shop in a weak position. As a divorced woman who floats around with a lover I can’t expect my father to be enthusiastic, and, practically speaking it’ll be harder for him to have an emotional catharsis over me than if I were an innocent girl. As for me, I still remember how Mother and I were put out on the street—right on the Via Monte Napoleone, and how I stood in front of his show window with all the beautiful leather and cried. To this day when I go into Gucci and see the luxury luggage and handbags I feel almost like fainting from rejection and heartbreak.”

Some statements are meant to pass, some to echo. The words “my behavior as a single woman” continued to reverberate, as it was her tactical intention that they should. But it was impossible to marry her just to keep her honest for a few days in Milan.

I went up to the mansard room and got the operator to connect me with my brother in Corpus Christi.

“Ulick?” I said, using his family name.

“Yes, Chuckie.”

“I’m coming down to Texas tomorrow.”

“Ah, they’ve told you,” he said. “They’re going to hack me open on Wednesday. Well, come along if you haven’t got anything else to do. I thought I heard that you were going to Europe.”

“I can leave the country from Houston.”

He was of course pleased that I wanted to come but he was distrustful, and he wondered whether I might not be angling for some advantage. Julius in fact loved me but affirmed and even believed that he didn’t. My brotherly intensity flattered him. But he was too clear-headed to deceive himself. He was not a lovable man and if he held an important place in my feelings, and those feelings were intricate and keen, the reason was either that I was queerly undeveloped, immature, or that possibly without knowing what I was doing I was involved in a con. Ulick saw rackets everywhere. A stout character, sharp-faced, handsome, his eyes were big alert and shrewd. A mustache in the style of the late Secretary Acheson mitigated the greediness of his mouth. He was a strutting heavy graceful rapacious man who wore checks, stripes, gaudy but elegantly fitted. Somewhere between business and politics he had once made a fortune in Chicago, connected with the underworld although without being a part of it. But he fell in love and left his wife for the other woman. In the divorce he was wiped out, losing his Chicago possessions. However, he made a second fortune in Texas and raised a second family. It was impossible to think of him without his wealth. It was necessary for him to be in the money, to have dozens of suits and hundreds of pairs of shoes, shirts beyond inventory, cuff links, pinkie rings, large houses, luxury automobiles, a grand-ducal establishment over which he ruled like a demon. Such was Julius, my big brother Ulick, whom I loved.

“For the