The young woman raises a cigarette to her lips.

"Okay, tell me something else."

"What's so funny?"

"You're right." Her expression turns serious. "There is nothing funny about civilization."

She hates civilization. She feels betrayed by it.

"What is it that they have against the police here?"

"The dockworkers are pretty cocky. They think they're police enough. At least here on the coast -- I can't say about the rest of the city."

"Your room is almost next to mine. Did you hear anything last night?"

"There was the usual ruckus." She shrugs. "Loud disco music."

"Did I have any visitors?"

"I couldn't say -- it's impossible to hear people speaking from over here." She nods toward Room #3.

"Loud disco music?"

"Oh yes, various artists. Ostentatious Orchestrations prime among them." She raises an eyebrow, waiting for the name to connect with you.

Oh, that. Yeah, whooh... The less said about OO, the better.

"OO were huge where I come from. I was very young then, of course. Like seven. 'Life gets haaard!'" she sings, "'But we go ooooooon!'"

In that case, doesn't life get hard because we go on?

"It mostly just gets hard, doesn't it?"

"It would appear so. At around two o'clock, the disco stopped, and there was a change of pace."

"What happened?"

"A slow, sad song started playing. Like organ music, on repeat. That went on for quite a while. Some of the time you were yelling along to it."

"I've heard enough."

"Okay."

"What was I singing?"

"That it doesn't matter anymore. And that we're alone now. It was difficult to tell -- the song itself was very quiet and soft, but you sounded like a wounded boar, sir. It was hard to understand what you were singing on top of it."

"Then what happened?"

"Then you started screaming and trashed the place."

"That's so me. What did I do?"

"A window was smashed. The tape player probably -- the song stopped -- and furniture too. A real destructothon. There was screaming. Then, I think, you passed out."

"Please tell me there wasn't anything else."

"There was. I think you screamed that you... didn't want to be 'this type of animal' anymore. I may have misheard, but it was sort of memorable."

Sounds like you were in some real fundamental pain there, muscle-man.

"I went out afterwards. Everything was quiet by then. Around four or five." She nods. "And that was it."

"It prides me to hear this. Tell me there was more."

"Was there anything else?"

"You're making this up. I would never behave like that."

"Yes." She looks at you. "Never."

"What happened then?"

"Are you sure I wasn't being assaulted?"

"No, it didn't sound like there was a fight. It sounded like someone was trashing their room."

"When you say wounded do you mean that in a cool way? Like a wild beast?"

"Yes. It was very cool."

It's impossible to say whether she's being sarcastic or really means it.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be, I was going out later anyway. It didn't bother me."

"Was I singing this?" (Show her the empty case of "The Smallest Church In Saint-Saëns".)

"Yes! There was a church in there. A really small church. Like the smallest, saddest church in the whole world. It was about that. And also..."

"What else?"

"Maybe we should stop going on then? Doesn't the 'going on' cause the 'getting harder' part?"

"I think you might have come to the same conclusion last night. At around two o'clock, the disco stopped, and there was a change of pace."

"Yeah, we go on, alright."

"I don't know about that... At around two o'clock, the disco stopped, and there was a change of pace."

"Tell me something else."

"Okay. You can go now." [Leave.]

"Glad to have been of assistance."

Let the moment pass.

"Before you go I have some questions for you."

"And no, it never stops."

"Goodbye."

Something stirs in you as she's about to go. Call it an instinct, a need -- the need to ask questions. It's like you've said the words a million times before...

The words have already left your mouth...

"I want to have fuck with you."