perhaps you have experienced this yourself�how a trained pianist may run a practiced finger up the white keys and then back down the black. she was traveling with a man like that, up and back across the keyboard of the world, he with his vast unbuttoned shirt and his tie off, she in her deep patois, singing along. i have experienced many devices of seduction, most of them unremarkable, but nothing like that, so effortless! the way she poured her heart out of his heart, and into mine. it was an odd mixture of french and english she spoke, but i understood her well enough, i told her. he took her for granted, she explained�and i suppose i took advantage of that. we went walking through a north african night flinched with the sound of gunshots (i should tell you, algiers was considerably more dangerous in those days). the north african night! a single elegant fingertip extended in accusation into the hotel lobby. i experienced the taste of the sirocco in her mouth. and later, in the hotel room�her eyes spinning like the tires of an overturned taxi; my heart raging like the headlights of a policecar, one of them shot out.