In the mirror on the wall, a woman was standing only a few yards away from me, and the woman was holding a bottle in one hand and a walking-stick in the other. Both were white, and so were the hills reflected in the distance.
“I don’t want to go out,” she was saying, “unless you promise you’ll come back again.”
The walking-stick was still in the basket.
“You can come back again,” I said. “You promised.”
She took the stick out of the bag and held it up to me.
“I am about to put the bottle on you,” she said. “But first I must ask you a very special thing.”
I was speechless.