Hastings crept back among us, diffidently pushing a star and a producer in our direction. “I think you all ought to know each other, Clarissa ... and, ah, Gene too. This is Miss ... and Mr ... and here in Hollywood ... when you get to New York ... house on the river, wonderful, old ... new film to cost five million ... runner-up for the Academy Award.” He did it all very well, I thought. Smiles gleamed in the patio’s half-light. The star’s paste jewels, borrowed from her studio, glimmered like an airliner’s lighted windows. I moved toward the house, but Clarissa’s high voice restrained me at the door: “You’ll call Iris tomorrow, won’t you?” and she shouted an exchange and a number. I waved to show that I’d heard her then, vowing I would never telephone Iris, I rejoined the party and watched with fascination as the various performers performed in the living room to the accompaniment of a grand piano just barely out of tune. 3 I waited several days before I telephoned Iris. Days of considerable activity, of visiting friends and acquaintances, of attending parties where the guests were precisely the same as the ones I had met at Hastings’ house: every one of them bent upon combating boredom with boredom, creating a desert in a dry land. But I was capable of evoking mirages which decorated for me _their_ desert, made unusual (for myself at least) what, with familiarity, might become impossible. I met Iris at the house where she was staying near the main beach of Santa Monica: a fairly decorous Spanish house, quiet among palms and close to the sea. The day was vivid; the sea made noise; the wind was gentle, smelling of salt and far countries. I parked my rented car and walked around to the sea side of the house. Iris came forward to meet me, smiling, hand outstretched, her face which I had remembered as being remarkably pale was flushed with sunlight. “I hoped you’d come,” she said, and she slipped her arm in mine as though we’d been old friends and led me to a deck chair adjoining the one where she’d been seated, reading. We sat down. “Friends let me have this place. They went to Mexico for two months and lent me the house.” “Useful friends.” “Aren’t they? I’ve already put down roots here in the sand and I’ll hate to give it back.” “Don’t.” “Ah, wouldn’t it be wonderful.” She smiled vaguely and looked beyond me at the flash of sea in the flat distance. An automobile horn sounded through the palms; a mother called her child: we were a part of the world, even here. “Clarissa told me you’ve been out several months.” Iris nodded. “I came back. I think I told you I was going to.” “To see the man?” “Would you like something to drink?” She changed the subject with a disconcerting shift of her gaze from the ocean to me, her eyes still dazzled with the brilliance of light on water. I looked away and shook my head.