I pulled her to me and kissed her, hard, with my hands digging into her back. But she wasn’t wasting my time then. I was.

It was all nothing. She rolled with it like a passed-out drunk and didn’t even close her eyes. They just watched me coolly. She broke it up with her elbows without seeming to move them, the way they can, and said, “That wasn’t quite the deal I had in mind.”

“What’s wrong with it?” I said.

“Nothing, I suppose, under the right circumstances. But I asked you up here to talk business. Why don’t you sit down? You’d probably be more comfortable.”

I was still angry, but there was no percentage in knocking myself out. I sat down. She went into the kitchen and came back in a minute with two drinks.

She sat down in a big chair on the other side of the coffee table and crossed her legs. She put a cigarette in her mouth and waited for me to leap up and hold the lighter for her.

The hell with her.

She shrugged and reached for the lighter on the coffee table.

“What is it?” I asked.

She stared thoughtfully at me. “I’ve been trying to size you up.”

“Why?”

“I’m coming to that. I think I can see you now. A little tough—and, what’s more to the point, a little cynical, as anybody would be who was a hero at eighteen and a has-been at twenty-five. You sold things for a while, but you sold less and less as time went by and the customers had a little trouble remembering who Lee Scarborough was. You can stop me any time you don’t agree with this.”

“Go on,” I said.

“There was another thing I kept trying to remember. I’ve got it now. You got in trouble your last year in college and were almost kicked out and nearly went to jail.”

“So I smashed up a car,” I said.

“It was somebody else’s car. And the woman who was smashed up along with it was somebody else’s wife. She was in the hospital a long time.”

“She got over it,” I said. “Without any scars.”

“Yes. I guess you would know that.”

“All right. Look. There’s a type of babe who chases football players. What’re we supposed to do? Scream for help? Or wear chastity girdles?”

She smiled. “You don’t have to defend yourself. I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to see how you fit in the picture. And I think you’ll do, on all counts. I want to make you a proposition.”

“I hope you have better luck than I did.”

“You take women pretty casually, don’t you?” she said.

“There’s another way?”

“Never mind.