“With no one?”
“With no one of your sex.”
“I don’t like that word your sex. It sounds as though you were practicing your trade.”
“I throw my trade out of that God-damn window into the Grand Canal.”
“There,” she said. “You see how quickly you practice it?”
“All right,” he said. “I love you and my trade can gently leave.”
“Let me feel your hand,” she said. “It’s all right. You can put it on the table.”
“Thank you,” the Colonel said.
“Please don’t,” she said. “I wanted to feel it because all last week, every night, or I think nearly every night, I dreamed about it, and it was a strange mixed-up dream and I dreamed it was the hand of Our Lord.”
“That’s bad. You oughtn’t to do that.”
“I know it. That’s just what I dreamed.”
“You aren’t on the junk, are you?”
“I don’t know what you mean, and please don’t make fun when I tell you something true. I dreamed just as I say.”
“What did the hand do?”
“Nothing. Or maybe that is not true. Mostly it was just a hand.”
“Like this one?” The Colonel asked, looking at the misshapen hand with distaste, and remembering the two times that had made it that way.
