She made a slender, trumpet-shaped silhouette in the doorway, in her narrow, straight black dress that flared briefly at the hem, as was the current fashion - well, one of the current fashions.  I can't keep up with all of them.  She stepped inside quickly, and reached back a black-gloved hand to press the door gently closed behind her.  She was still dressed as she had left the Darrels', mink and all.  I took a step backward to leave a strategic amount of room between us.

Tina looked at my face and at the shotgun in my hands.  It wasn't pointed at her - when I aim a loaded firearm at someone, I like to pull the trigger - but it wasn't pointed too far away.  Deliberately, she slipped the glossy fur stole from her shoulder, folded it once, and draped it over her arm, from which a small black bag already hung by a golden chain.

"Why didn't you turn off those stupid lights?" she asked.

I said, "I was hoping you'd find them inconvenient."

She smiled slowly.  "But what a way to greet an old friend?  We are friends, are we not, chéri?"

She'd had no accent at the Darrels', and she wasn't really French, anyway.  I'd never learned what she was.  We didn't ask that kind of question back in those days.

I said, "I doubt it.  We were a lot of things to each other in a very short time, Tina, but I don't think friends was ever one of them."

She smiled again, shrugged her shoulders gracefully, glanced again at the shotgun, and waited for my move.  I knew it had better be good.  You can stand only so long threatening with a gun someone you don't intend to shoot before the situation beomes ridiculous - the situation, and you, too.

I couldn't afford to become ridiculous.  I couldn't afford to be the fat old saddle horse, long retired to pasture, now summoned, almost as a favor, for one last, brisk trot through the woods before the final, merciful trip to the fish-hatchery.  I was good for something besides fish-food yet, or at least I hoped I was.  I'd run my own shows during the war, almost from the start.  Even the one on which I'd met Tina had been mine after I joined her, in the sense that I carried and gave the orders.

Mac or no Mac, if I had to be in this one - and the dead girl in the bathroom didn't leave me much choice - I was going to run it, too.  But looking at Tina, I knew it would take doing.  She'd come a long way since the rainy afternoon I'd first made contact with her in a bar, pub, bierstube, or bistro - take your choice according to nationality - in the little town of Kronheim, which is French despite its Teutonic-sounding name.

To look at her then, she was just another of the shabby little female opportunists who were living well as the mistresses of German officers while their countrymen starved.  I remembered the thin young body in the tight satin dress, the thin straight legs in black silk stockings, and the ridiculously high heels.  I remembered the big red mouth, the pale skin, and the thin, strong cheekbones; and I remembered best the big violet eyes, at first sight as dead and dull as those with which Barbara Herrera was now contemplating the bathroom fixtures.  I remembered how those seemingly lifeless eyes had shown me a flash of something fierce and wild and exciting as they caught my signal across the dark and smoky room that was filled with German voices and German laughter, the loud, overbearing laughter of the conquerors....

That had been fifteen years ago.  We'd been a couple of cunning, savage kids, I only a little older than she.  Now she made an elegant, adult shape against the rough-plastered wall of my studio.  She had more shape and color, she was older and healthier and more attractive - and much more experienced and dangerous.

She looked at the shotgun and said, "Well, Eric?"