Fall and Rise

CHAPTER SIX. Helene

I’m dancing and the band’s too loud and been going on too long and I’m also starting to feel sick, so I say “Really, I’m getting dizzy, mind if we stop?” and the man I’m dancing with, I don’t know his name, he told me it and I forgot, his name’s Allan or Aaron or some name with an A and I think an an or on at the end of it, well Adman I’ll call him just for the heck of it, since he said he was one or was that the last man I danced with, says “Anything you say, Miss Helene — just a-kiddin; too many old movies. But what is it? You’re not feeling too good?” We’ve stopped. People dance around us in twos, threes and groups plus a few snapping their fingers and with their eyes shut doing entranced oohing solos. “Too much champagne — Watch out for the whirling whale on your left — we’ll get rolled over. I always drink too much at these damn affairs. Not damn. It’s a nice affair and not Dorothy and Sven’s fault I don’t know how to drink. One glass, that should have done it, while I must have had three, maybe four. And this music. Excuse me, but you don’t think it’s God’s gift to modern ears, do you? Ears, Ears,” when he looks at me as if he didn’t hear, “because that’s exactly what it gives you, hearing problems. I find it too loud, fast, for children — give me Piranesi — Palestrina, if not to dance then just to listen and sing to. But I used to be able to dance furiously to this — liked it better then too. Eons ago, but now — I hated to be Miss Killjoy but if I had danced another few steps, and God forbid another big swirl, I would have thrown up.”

“Please, no excuses necessary. I’m in fact gratified,” bowing, “knowing the physical effect it would’ve had on you, since I am wearing my new party shoes and only renting this — but why am I being so gross?” He takes my upper arm, holds out his other hand and says to the dancers he parts us through “Pardon, scus-e moi, happy man, hapless damoiselle,” and we walk back to the dais where I have a seat next to Dorothy’s. Pleasant man, clever enough tongue, but so unattractive. And what an awful affair. From the bagel tree to the champagne fountain. How could she have let her mother throw it? Reminder if I ever marry again: take the ladder route, toots, even if I am eight flights up, then to relent to those insurmountable — unsurmountable? — whatever it amounts to — parental forces. “Thank you very kindly, Mr. — I’m sorry, my champagne head, and last names.”

“Arthur Rosenthal.”

“Arthur, right. With an A.”

“Vut den? The only way.”

“No, it’s just — Oh, out with it, girl — no more dissembling. Do you know who Satchel Paige was?”

“From what I read, still is. A great old baseball pitcher.”

“Well I had a friend who loved to repeat—”

“A male friend?”

“Yes, a man. Loved to repeat what Satchel Paige said about lying. He said, Paige did — oh God, what did he say? His mother — Something about if you’re going to lie — I wish my friend was around, but only to feed me the line. Anyway, I knew your first name started with A and while we were dancing I raked my brain to remember it. But the champagne again. Out goes memory, in goes whatever goes in. A headache tomorrow. But, don’t know how I would have made it back here without you, so thanks — Arthur? Artie? Art?”

“I prefer Arthur. Mind if I sit with you? Till Dorothy gets back?”

“Where is Dorothy? There she is. Hi, Dots. Great party. Dance it away, me lady.”

“She looks miraculous, doesn’t she? Brides. Boy, they all do, even the ugly ones, though she wasn’t ugly before. Till now she was near to being beautiful. A borderline beauty I’ll call her. Not a natural beauty I can say — not like you, if you’ll excuse me — tut tut, got carried away,” and he slaps his wrist. “But tonight — you do excuse me, don’t you?”

“Sure, but no more — for my own reasons.”

“What are they?”

“Please, my own reasons. Reverse egotism, which sounds like the reverse of it, but what do you want me to say? Tonight Dorothy what?”

“Tonight she’s truly beautiful, which isn’t merely her dress and happiness but is also very much tied up with her knowing we all know she’s a beautiful ecstatic bride.”

“I’m sorry, you lost me there a little. And sure, sit if you like; at least don’t stand. Don’t know how much chitchat I’m good for. I’m a bit tired tonight.”

“No problem, honestly. I usually don’t talk this much too.” He sits. “So, what do you do?”

“What do I do? I didn’t say so on the dance floor? I’m a dance instructress.”

“Of course you are.”

“Really showed. Stepped a few more times on your toes than I should have.”

“It wasn’t that. In fact, you were extremely graceful.”

“Graceful I’m not. And extremely? Would you believe I once studied to be a dancer? True, true, and people — ballet instructors, older dancers — said I had a gift for it too. But I lost the body for it. Got too top-heavy for one thing and a bit too bottom-heavy too.”

“You’ve a fine figure.”

“Fine, maybe — I don’t know — but for classical dancing? — no. By the time I was fourteen the figure had filled out too much, despite what I did to stop it — you just can’t reduce bones — and I couldn’t, well, float the way I wanted to over a ballet stage. I was devastated.”

“So what kind of work did you end up doing?”

“You still don’t believe I’m a dance instructress? No, we went over that.”

“Champagne?” the waiter says, pouring more champagne into my empty glass.

“Not for me thanks, really. Take it away.”

“It’s a wedding reception. Drink, be gay. It’s luck for the bride and groom if you do. You don’t and then he and next everyone here, this’ll all go to waste. It’s paid for and the barmen will hide the unused bottles as if they been drunk.”

“That’s the wedding couple’s problem,” Arthur says, “—the mother.”

“It should be ours too. Sophie should know.”

“Don’t tell her I told,” the waiter says. “Anyhow, it isn’t so. I only said it to get you to drink. Tell folks something’ll only go to waste and they stuff their faces with it, but nothing like a happy occasion. I love it when all my people I serve get drunk. They get zonked enough — hey, they don’t see me knocking down some too. Not serious. Yours?” he says to Arthur.

“Why not? Any one of these glasses. In fact, I’ll drink hers, mine and yours.”

“Hooo, bad guy — candy from babies. But it’s people like you who make for great parties.” He fills all the glasses on this side of the dais, says to Arthur “Persuade her,” and goes.

“Crazy guy,” Arthur says, downing his glass. “So, after all that, what do you do?”

“Really, it’s all sort of boring to me now, my work. But you’re so interested in learning what I do — no, this won’t make any sense — Hi, Soph, dance a jig, kid, ‘cause tomorra you’ll be broke. Not serious, as the waiter says. I’m not — Oh God, what did I say? — Sorry, Soph, but it’s your champagne. It’s too good,” and I try to roll my eyes while I roll my head. She waves, puts her fingers to her ears that she didn’t hear, foxtrots to the middle of the floor with Sven, people crowd around them clapping in unison, Dorothy taps Sven’s shoulder and cuts in to dance with her mother and the clapping crowd cheers them. “I’m so embarrassed. To bring up the cost of this overpriced garish party. And the cake hasn’t even been wheeled out yet. I’m supposed to — how am I going to? — stand beside them while they cut it, with its three different-colored tiers and the edible naked couple standing on top right down to the pink nipples, detumescent penis and Dorothy’s dark and Sven’s yellow pubic hair. Arthur, I’ve got to be crocked, or close to it. Say something that will make me think I wasn’t that crude to Sophia or that she really didn’t hear.”

“I don’t see how she couldn’t’ve.”

“Great help.”

“What do I do did you start to ask me before?”

“Right — good. I was. Then I don’t know what. Just answer. Pay no attention to what I say.”

“Lawyer. Tax law. Might sound boring, but it’s fairly exciting if you’re interested in psychology and people and petty — and, you know, right on up the ladder — thievery.”

“Doesn’t sound boring. Doesn’t sound too exciting, but everyone has to do something. See how smart I am? Ready for more painstaking cerebration and fancy wording? It’s nice to make a good living. I’m sure you do or enough to leave reasonably well on—live on.”

“I don’t complain.”

“I do because I don’t make enough to leave or live on. But I’m not really complaining either, even if it might seem, with my comment about how I can complain — forget it. Anyone for tied-up tongue tonight? Not quite on the menu. I don’t know why I even unconsciously suggested it, since I get paid well enough for what I do in the time I do it in. Yes I do, and health insurance, and I love my kids.”

“You’re married?”

“What do I do do you mean to make such an uncomplaining living and have such good kids? I teach. American literatures and languages. That was supposed to be amusing,” when he looks mystified. “Russian literatures and languages?” Still doesn’t get it. “Romance?” He smiles. “Ah, la love you understand. And maybe there is such a department in some university — American L and L — but I’m not aware of it — Hi, Sven. Do her the big dip again.” He does. Dorothy waves to me as her hair brushes the floor, then is upended again and I blow them a kiss and they each blow me one back. What will he think when he sees his pubic hair on top of the cake? Dot got it at the Erotic Bakeshop as a surprise for him. Good thing Sophie talked her out of having the couple recline postcoitally in bed, but I hope he scolds her for being so goddamn New York magazine.

“Dance with us, Helene,” Dorothy says.

“Too many bubbles. I’ll fall on my face.”

“That’s what you’re supposed to do at a wedding reception,” Sven says.

“And that’s what everybody’s been telling me to. But I have to grade papers and write a review the next few days, so I need that face. I’m enjoying myself just fine from here. And I danced on my face before just fine with Arthur.”

They dance away. Rock music’s been playing for thirty minutes straight. Flowers. Smell of so many of them makes me think of summer, Cape cottage, student-free.

“I’m really not a good dancer,” Arthur says, “but you simplified it for me. However much you say the alcohol affected you, you danced as gracefully as I said. Not like a gazelle, mind you, with dancing shoes on, but one without them. You carry well.”

“I carry well?”

“You let me carry you well, the few times I held you, and lead you well too. It felt, those times, as if I were dancing with a feather — it’s true.”

“Did I tickle you? Sorry. So, tax law, huh? Actually, my father used to be one. But just a plain lawyer.”

“You’re kidding. This is unbelievable. On his own or in a firm? Where, New York? Hey, we were made in heaven, and what’s your original last name?”

“In Vilna before the war. He was too weak when they got here to study for the bar, and the piddling hard jobs he took to keep us alive quickly did him in.”

“He died?”

“He didn’t, no, just got very disconsolate and sick.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Not that he got sick, and I didn’t mean to pry. But he was a lawyer — well, let’s say he eventually recovered and went back to it or was very successful in anything he did. Champagne,” picking up two glasses of it. “Moments like these we need it, as the beer commercials say.” He offers me one, I shake my head, he drinks it down and sips from the other. “You do forgive me?”

“Whatever for? Depression, the rest — I’d blame the Germans again ten more times before I ever would you. But then, hadn’t been for them, my parents never would have fled to the Soviet Union and met in a camp. So now I’m going to say something I’ve thought a lot about and really feel about the order of life. Never—”

“Helene,” a man says. I turn to him. Don, Ron, non — Lon. “Lon Friedensohn?”

“How are you, how are you, how are you? Haven’t seen you since Diana’s birthday party around this time a year ago. Schopenhauer, Stradivarius — remember? If I’m not stopping anything, would you like to dance? I love this number. From sixty-six. The Stones. Beggars Banquet. An abominable rendering of it — or was it sixty-seven?”

“Got me. And I’d like to but I’m exhausted. Too much champagne besides. Besides that, other things. I’ll collapse the moment I’m out there.”

“You’re expected to. Minimum of five times for everyone under thirty-five or the wedding’s not been sanctified. It’s in the Talmud — look it up. And all night I’ve been dying to dance with someone who’ll collapse with me to the floor and then just lie there laughing. Dance with me, Helene, dance with me, dance with me,” he sings as he dances in place.

“Wish I could, but thanks.”

“Say. Later.”

“You’re so admired,” Arthur says, “and desired. I never saw anything like it.”

“Only when I’ve drunk too much. Then, I must look like an easy mark and a good dancer.”

“No, it’s obvious. Everyone’s magnetized by you. Women, men. Strangers. The way the waiter spoke to you. He’s probably a sour fucker normally — excuse me — to most people, but you lit him up. I can tell: people are naturally pulled to you. I was, this Lon, and just the way half the men here look at you when they go past — even the little kids. It must get very distracting at times.”

“If it’s so, I don’t really notice it. If I do notice it, what’s it mean? It’s your face they’re looking at — or your body. Half of them are only thinking Oh boy, would I like to — what was the word you used? — fuck her. It’s not just to me, it’s to most of the younger women here. We’ve all touched up our faces, done our hair, shaved our armpits, put on our prettiest clothes, so what do you expect?”

“Not so, with you. It’s also your intelligence they’re seeing. And that particular complex of characteristics — your personableness, for instance — that distinguishes you from everyone in this room.”

“Really, except for minor variations, I’m no different than anyone here, woman or man.”

“What are you saying? You know, you need someone to make you believe more in yourself.”

“I believe plenty in myself, no problem there. I look at myself clearly and regard myself fairly and don’t think of myself excessively and that’s the extent to which I want to deal with myself that way. It’s because I don’t respond with open arms to cajolery and compliments that I don’t mind beating them back with self-deprecating jokes or something to discourage further flattery and complimentary attacks. Oh, compliments and the accompanying gushing attention can sometimes be all right, if in moderation and short order and, when the timing and setting’s okay, come from someone you really like. But not when I’m pooped, sweaty, bit of a headache coming on, little stomach-ache already there, diarrhea probably next, and I’m slightly grumpy and somewhat tight.”

“You’re absolutely right. Say, how about a dance?” and he gets up and dances in place.

“No, really.”

“I was only doing an imitation,” sitting down. “So, been teaching long?”

“Long enough. And you? Tax-lawyering long?”

“Twelve years. What grad school you go to for literature? I’m assuming you did. Ph.D., I betcha, and Yale, because it has the best. I went to Yale Law and while there audited several literature courses.”

“No, didn’t go there.”

“Where did you go?”

“Honestly, Arthur, I don’t want to talk about my schooling and job. It’s simply that the way I feel — but food, yes. Excuse me, but food should help me. A ladies’ room too. Water on my face, maybe soap and water on my face, and to retouch up my face, redo my hair.”

“You have absolutely — pardon me for coming right out with this—”

“Then don’t.”

“Glorious hair. I’ve never seen such hair. I can’t believe what it’d look like loose. The color looks like the inside of a fireplace. The fire, or place, when lit, I mean.”

“I was wondering.”

“The orange inside the fire when there’s lots of carbon in the wood, I think it is. But not red flames, just orange-red. It’s both eene and unearthly.”

“Thank you, but plenty of women have the same color hair and plenty of pussycats too.”

“But it’s so smooth. Smooth like a real eating orange almost. It makes me want to reach out and touch it, but I won’t.”

“It’s really messy and dirty. It should be combed.”

“Suppose I said — no, I shouldn’t say it.”

“Fine. Now let’s forget my hair. It’s just a slightly untypical mop.”

“It’s highly untypical. I’ve never encountered a woman with that particular color orange whose hair was so straight. Usually that orange is on a kinky-haired woman or at least one kinkier-haired. Yours isn’t kinky at all.”

“That’s because I washed it tonight, but now it’s full of smoke. Really. I should go to the ladies’ room. I also have to pee. Excuse me.” I stand up.

He stands. “I’m sorry. I pushed you away.”

“No, I’ll come back if you want. Stay here or go to the food table, better. Have some champagne while I’m gone. Go on. I’ll meet you over there because I think some smoked fish — they have some, don’t they?”

“About a dozen different kinds, but only three or four are left.”

“That’s what I’m sure will help sober me up. The Russians use it. One of them told me at a party I went to earlier tonight. They’d never drink as much as I did without lots of smoked fish. So I’ll see you over there.”

“I’ll be very surprised if you do come over.”

“Shoot, what am I going to do with you? Are you a friend of Sven’s?”

“Yes. Are all of them as unself-confident as I?”

“No, just wondering. Sven’s a lawyer, so it makes sense. I don’t recall Dorothy mentioning you, but maybe she did.”

“We’re not in the same firm and he’s not Yale. We served under the same district attorney.”

“You were an assistant D.A. too?”

“In Queens. I can’t say we’re the closest friends, but we’re evidently on friendly enough terms where he thought to invite me. Were you at the ceremony?”

“Sure, how could you have forgotten? I was her maid of honor.”

“I wasn’t there. That wasn’t what I meant. I wasn’t invited. I was very happy for them, of course, but anyway, I was out of town then on a tax case.”

“I see. Okay. At the smoked fish table. If you’re not there, don’t worry about it — I’ll know you found someone else to talk to.”

“Never. Why would I?”

I nod and smile, think Poor guy, and head for the ladies’ room. It’s at the entrance to this room and I have to walk around the dance floor to get to it. A man grabs my hand and says “Show me how to jitterbug. You look like you know how to do a great jitterbug.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

“You’re the best lady, be my best lady. You’ve got to be good if you’re Dorothy’s best, since she’s the best, so be good to me. Don’t be annoyed with what I say. I’m smashed, best lady.”

“Thank you. I’m a bit smashed too. Now please let me go.”

“Jitterbug one solitary jitterbug step with me first.”

“Leave her go, Teddy,” the woman he was standing with says.

“When she jitterbugs one solitary step with me.”

“I don’t know how to jitterbug,” I say to her. “Really, Teddy, I don’t.”

“I’ll show you.” He puts his arm around my waist, continues to hold my right hand with his left and walks me forward, walks me back, quickly switches hands and flicks his right leg around his left and faces me again.

“There, I did what you said, now let me go.”

“We have to do it once the same way from the other side.”

“Not fair,” Lon says, dancing by.

“It was an accident.”

“No accident,” Teddy says. “The best man gets the best lady wherever he goes, always.”

“Sven’s brother was the best man,” I say.

“So I’m Sven’s oldest cousin on both sides, so that’s why I’m here and who gets the best lady.”

“Leave her alone, Teddy,” the woman says. “Can’t you see you’re too old for this girl and a disgrace?”

“God,” I say, “is this what happens when everybody gets drunk? What have I been missing?”

“Me, sweetheart. Marry me tonight, best lady. My wife won’t mind.”

“No, I won’t mind,” she says, “but I don’t think she wants to. Leave her go Teddy. I’m sure you’re hurting her.”

“Release me, sir,” I say commandingly.

“By your leave, best lady.” He lets go, gets down on his knees, cups my shoe between his hands and kisses the tip of it.

“Ouch,” I say. “Really, get up, this is terrible.”

“What’s happening?” Arthur says. “Make another conquest? You’re too unbelievable. Still want to meet at the food table? You don’t, my turn to understand.”

“I want to go to the bathroom, Arthur. Lead me there?”

I put out my hand. Teddy jumps up and takes it and whispers into my ear “I’ll ball you silly, you whore, just give me half the chance,” and I say to him “You son of a bitch. Go shit in your hat,” and stick my nails into his hand and he jerks it away. I walk to the ladies’ room.

“What the hell was that about?” Arthur says.

“Where’s that man now?”

“Still where you left him, staring at you and not too nicely, and showing a woman his hand. What he say? Should I have done something?”

“What a schmuck. And violent? That bastard hurt my hand. Ah: Ladies’.”

“Want me to wait outside?”

“No thanks.” I go inside, go into one of the stalls, put paper down in case I happen to graze the seat, squat above it and let go. Where’s it coming from? Usually I’m so regular. Once in the morning after exercises and that’s it for the day. Must be the food. The drink — what am I thinking of, the food? Maybe it’ll make me feel better. I stand up, wipe myself, get a sharp stomach pain and squat above the seat and more comes, worse than before. This is going to make my anus hurt. I stay that way for a minute. Then my thighs can’t take any more and I rearrange the papers so they’re all in place and sit. Smell is awful. I flush the toilet but don’t get up. Someone comes in. Sorry, ladies, who from the sounds of their handbags opening, apparently came in to fix their faces and hair.

“It smells like a pig factory in here,” one says.

“Wasn’t me,” another woman says.

“I wasn’t saying that. I know what it was.”

“It’s from one of the closets,” second one says much lower.

“It’s me and I apologize,” I say, “but I’m not feeling too well. Believe me, it doesn’t smell any better in here!”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know anyone was still in there,” the first one says. “I should have, by your door. You have any perfume on you?”

“I left my bag at my table. Brilliant. It’ll probably get stolen.”

“I have some,” she says. “I’ll spread it around,” and I suppose she sprinkles toilet water in the air, because I begin smelling it. “Also, flush your johnny.”

“I did.”

“Flush it again and again if it’s not too uncomfortable for your rear end. Just getting the new water around freshens up the area and it also assures the stuff of going all the way to the sewer and the smell of it from backing up.”

I raise myself off the seat a little and flush twice.

“That isn’t Ginny Scoletti in there, is it?” the second one says.

“No,” I say.

“There was someone by that name suddenly missing from the next table and people were worried, that’s why I asked.”

“No.”

“You from the Tallin bar mitzvah?”

“The Nustermann-Baker wedding. Please, if you don’t mind I’d prefer being anonymous right now, and silent. My stomach.”

“By all means,” the first one says. “But you’re not throwing up also?”

“No, it’s only from one end. Excuse me, I’m going to be silent.”

“By all means. Take care. But if you need help, yell. Just because we don’t know you doesn’t mean we shouldn’t help. Men are comrades like that to perfect strangers all the time.”

“Are they?” I say. “I suppose.”

“Well, how about it?” the first one says to the second. “You haven’t said yet, because I thought little Mickey this morning sang like a dream.”

“He sang it beautifully and read it well.”

“And Lillie looks so lovely. Does she look like the mother of a sixteen-year-old bar mitzvah kid?”

“He’s that old? I thought fourteen.”

“Sixteen. That’s why he sang so well. His voice has already changed. Mostly those kids sing awful, and at thirteen the worst. Cracked voice, like a cracked bell. Bong-g-g,” and they both laugh. “Here, take a whiff of this.”

“I’m high enough.”

“Go on, it’s the best. If you’re worried about Miss Anonymous inside, she won’t mind. She can even join us. Want a whiff, Silence-in-the-Closet?”

“Whatever it is, no thanks.”

“Whatever it is, I promise you will like. It’ll pacify your problems and make you dance like it was your last chance in your life.”

“That’s very generous of you, but I don’t touch anything but too much champagne. At least not for years. Drugs, which I suppose is what your whiff is, make me tired and dumb, which I already am.”

“This will make you feel lively, honey, and as for feeling dumb, feel dumb. That’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to feel high. You’re supposed to feel weird, cracked, bats, uninhibitively loose and detached and dumb. Every now and then, I’m saying.”

“Every now and then she’s saying,” the second one says, “but look at her: she isn’t giving. Here, might as well — for it smells too good.”

I’m all done, nothing else came, and I don’t want to stay in here any longer, nor do I want to see them. But I wipe up, pull up, push the paper in, flush the toilet, and leave. “Hi,” I say. They’re around my age. I wash my hands, say “Thanks” to the one with white powder on her fingertip she’s extended to me, “but I don’t want any, good as it looks. I once tried that stuff and everything felt and looked so cold for half an hour that I thought I was in a huge icebox. Enjoy your party,” drying my hands.

“And enjoy yours,” the second one says. “Maybe we’ll hop over for a visit. Any nice-looking guys there?”

“Some. All looking for women it seems, married and unmarrieds alike. Chances should be a lot better there than at your party, I’d think.”

“Tatlin, you said?”

“No, you said, and Tallin. I’m Nustermann-Baker.”

“There’s so many parties on this floor. It’s hard to know where to keep track where you are unless where you come in here.”

“You dummy,” the first woman says. “You’re so high you can’t speak straight.”

“Speak straight where? What are you speaking about, and about me? Freaking-A right. This shit is strong. Where in world am I? Ich, don’t tell me — I see. Think you better help lean me up against something for I’m gonna take a spill.”

“Does she really need help?” I say, grabbing the high woman’s arm.

“I’ll take care of her, honey, thanks,” snapping her powder tin shut and putting it in her handbag.

The high woman sits on the floor against the wall, head between her knees, crying. The other woman rinses a paper towl and pats it on the back of the high woman’s neck.

“Sure she’ll be all right? I’ll help, or get someone if you need.”

“That rag’s too cold,” the high woman says. “Warmer. I’m getting better but want a rag not so cold.”

“She’ll be okay. I’ll see to her. She talks a big game but she can’t hold anything.”

I leave. Arthur’s outside. “You were a long time. Two women walked in soon after you and I bet myself you all started chatting about hair waves or whatever women do. I never know what goes on in your toilets but always wanted to.”

“Dress in drag.”

“Ideally, I’d like to get a video camera and set it up in a woman’s room and watch it live off a monitor for a day. Or tape and record it — just like this one one night — but naturally when you’re not in there, or if you are, then when you know you’re on camera and you’re maybe even the star. And I’m talking about potties and tampon dispensers and anything else you might have in there that we don’t. It’d make a good thirty-minute movie, don’t you think? I’m serious, because I’m sure there’d be plenty for me and every man to learn from it.”

“Ask me anything. We shit, we pee, we get sick, we brush our teeth, and sometimes we even wash our hands and comb our hair.”

“Someone will do it before me, you’ll see, and make a small fortune from it and get all the awards. Some smoked fish?”

“What?”

“The smoked fish table. I was just there and they’re now down to two of them, though one’s sable, so we better hustle.”

“I don’t want anything to eat. Fact is, I’m about to go home.”

“You’re still tired. That’s too bad, because I was kind of getting used to you here. Listen, before you go, could I ask if it’d be all right if I called you.”

“I guess, but I have to tell you I’m a bit tied-up with someone these days.”

“Every woman is and every man isn’t, it seems.”

“I didn’t quite get that. But more to the point, the reason I’m not more than occasionally tied-up with someone is that I don’t want to see anyone regularly these days.”

“If the right guy came along, you’d see him. I’m not him. So it is. Believe me, sometimes I even meet someone who’s attracted to me and once in my life I even had to turn a woman down.”

“I’m sure you do. I think I even suggested as much. Look, Arthur, I don’t want to get into it. I wasn’t feeling well in there, which is why I took so long.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t say it for sympathy, just stating a fact.”

“I can still say I’m sorry, can’t I? That’s common human courtesy and compassion.”

“Please, Arthur, don’t argue with me. Because you are arguing and it’s too damn silly to. We don’t know each other.”

“That’s why I want to call you.”

“Call me — I said for you to if you want — but I don’t think I’ll be going out much with anyone for a while, even that occasional friend. I have things to do. I don’t mean to hit you with it, but papers, class preparations and exams, references to write, which can take a long time. Besides all that, my writing work, and not only reviews.”

“What other writing?”

“No other writing. At least no other right now. To talk about. You’re pressing me again and it’s not right or fair.”

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t do that. Sorry, sorry — an unbreakable habit I’ll break. But if I do call, you can always make it for a single drink, can’t you?”

“I suppose so if I’m not tied-up with work or friends.”

“Or a coffee or lunch some weekend afternoon.”

“Even there, you’ll just have to call. I work weekends too.”

“I’ll call, you can count on it. Can I see you to the door?”

“I’m not leaving this moment. I have to say my goodbyes first. I’m not even that sure I want to go yet. Look, I’m hungry. I guess my stomach’s better. Why don’t we go to the food table after all? Not the smoked fish. Too late to make good use of that one and I doubt I could take it for pure eating pleasure now.”

“Something more substantial? Potato salad. I’m serious — the oil in the mayonnaise should bind you. And the meatballs looked solid, simple and good.”

“Maybe just a plain cheese sandwich if they have.”

“They’ve got to. With all the meat, cheese and bread, I could prepare one for you.”

We head for the food table.

“Hi, Helene,” Agnes says. “Super reception, hm?”

“Super.”

“The band — who could afford it? I’m still waiting for you to get on the floor again. You were walking off when we came in before.”

“You saw all there’ll be. Hello,” I say to the man she’s with. “Helene Winiker, an old friend of Agnes’s. Arthur…Oh God, Arthur, help me out.”

“Arthur Rosenthal, like the china. That’s how people remember it.”

“Excuse me,” Agnes says. “My husband, Jim Walsh. We were all at P.A. together. Dot, Helene — you were already dancing at City Center then. The kitty corps, or one notch above.”

“So it’s true,” Arthur says.

“Why, she ever lie to you? I’d be surprised. Mademoiselle Truth, we called her. Signorina Social Conscious, if I have it right.”

“Not true,” I say.

“There, I lied. Never even fib in front of apreternaturallike — apredestiterminally — just a superhuman truthspinner when you’re hip she knows the truth. Funny, but I was always so good at making up bombastic maxims. Anyway, I was telling the truth, so don’t make me out a liar. And I think Dot and I were the only ones who stayed in theater of our group, true?”

“Shawn too,” Jim says.

“She didn’t go to P.A. I’m talking of my city high school friends.”

“She didn’t? I thought she had. And how’d I know till now Helene was a classmate of yours?”

“We’re off to the food table,” I say. “How’s work?”

“You know how it is, since it never changes. But Jim, the rotten dog, gets every TV commercial available. Every actor hates him, including this one, he’s so gorgeous, talented and lucky.”

“I am neither. I happen to have the looks and mannerisms of someone who genuinely seems like, when he’s lathering a product into his scalp or splashing it on his skin—”

He’s saying this to her, so I wave goodbye, nudge Arthur and we go.

“So you were really a dancer,” he says. “How about that. I bet you still dance exceptionally — classical steps. When I was a boy I wanted to be a poet. I was one. Won all the poetry prizes in school and some for money, making out a lot better than most poets today. I’d stay up nights with a flashlight writing that stuff. Then it just leaves you — it did me. My family said business is what I should be interested in — money, position and a sensible intelligent wife to go along with it, but one with her own burgeoning career so she won’t get bored and she could bring in something, and they were right. I love money. I can be honest about it — does it bother you to hear?”

“I already said money’s okay.”

“I love what it brings. Cars, vacations, any book I want to buy. Even a boat once, and an island last summer — rented one, didn’t buy. And I don’t do well compared to a lot of the lawyers in my graduating class. I’m satisfied with a hundred thousand a year — this year — who needs more? Uncle Schmuel only gobbles it up when you only have one deduction besides yourself every other year and no cooperative or house. I’m buying one though.”

“You have a child?”

“A boy — eight. Lives with his mother. She’s one who was in my class and nowhere near me in grades or on the Review and makes more than I. Corporate law, that’s why. And because she works harder and doesn’t like to play as much as I. No boats, only business trips — There, told you we should’ve hustled faster for the smoked fish. They always run out of it first. I can take you to a great restaurant if you crave some — even now. It’s open till one. Has the best smoked sturgeon and salmon in town.”

“Thanks, but this will do fine.” I help myself to a slice of bread and cheese and several slices of turkey and tongue.

“Cranberry sauce?” a man behind the food table says. “Homemade, not canned.” He plops a spoonful on my plate.

“Aren’t you eating?” I say to Arthur.

“Too full — I’ll just drink. Good champagne like this you don’t get every night. Though I always have champagne in my fridge. Right this moment, three bottles of Taittinger’s brut on the bottom shelf, but I have to admit I don’t pour it as freely as they do here.”

“You ought to throw wedding parties at your home. Then you’d — no, sorry.”

“Go on, what?”

“Really, for the time being I have to continue to be the judge whether what I’m about to say will make sense or not and then if I should stop.”

“Who are your favorite American authors, contemporary and late?”

“Wait. Let me eat first.”

“Quiche lorraine?” the man behind the table says. “It’s the old quiche lorraine, before all the rage. French recipe. The real McCoy.”

“Sure, a slice, please. Thin.” He does.

“And our curried veal? You won’t forgive yourself if you don’t.”

“My appetite’s got better but not that much, thanks.”

“Tomorrow or the days after your friends here, when you discuss the party, will ask if you had it. It’s the house speciality — one of a kind.”

“Go on, be brave,” Arthur says.

“You be brave. Grab a plate.”

He gets a plate and holds it out. The man gives us a portion each. “Now, how about a côtelette de mouton? It’ll melt in your mouth. I won’t even ask your permission.” He puts a piece on my plate. Arthur sticks out his plate and gets a piece. “Now you’ll have eaten our best except for the chicken breast l’orange.”

“No room for it,” I say, “in my stomach or on my plate.”

“Mandarin oranges flown-in for us expressly from Valencia, Spain? — Very well, but sit down while you eat. And drink a beverage with it. I don’t want you coming back to me saying I made you choke on the small servings I gave.”

“I promise I won’t. Thank you.” He bows and we walk away.

“That guy was another who had an instantaneous crush on you. And his language, when he was alluding to food to you, was so subtly erotic.”

“He was only being nice while doing his job.”

“How come he wasn’t as nice to me?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yes, I do.”

“No. As I said I don’t know you that well and I have a way of either being too much of everybody’s therapist or saying too quickly how I feel, which makes them think they or I need one. I just want to eat.”

“How do you feel? Well, do you think I need one? Then can I get you some Perrier or wine?”

“Perrier. Thanks. I’ll be sitting over there — give me your plate.” I go to an empty table and put the plates down. “And napkins, Arthur,” I yell. “There’s plenty of everything else here.”

“You betcha, Helene,” and he blows me a kiss. He blew me a kiss. I don’t want him blowing me those. Oh, let him blow all he wants to me, but I won’t give him my phone number when he asks. I’ll tell him it’d be useless. Not useless, but something. Pointless, because I know he’s so infatuated with me when I’m about as far from that to him as I can get. Like that other one tonight I told how to reach me, then shouting out the window at me like a goof. If that one calls I’ll tell him he truly embarrassed me. No, I’ll say I’m too busy to see him and then put him off forever. No, but I’ll be blunt. “Can you take a dose of truth? After I left Diana’s I immediately knew it was a mistake to have encouraged you to call, so that’s the way it is, goodbye.” No, I’ll tell him I’m too busy and put him off forever or maybe I will be that blunt. I have some veal. De-lish. Sublime. Quiche. Divine. I should have somehow made room on my plate for the breast. God, I love feeling and eating well. Then I see Peter. Last man I wanted to see tonight and maybe also the first. Be honest with yourself — no. Dorothy said there was a slight chance he’d be here but nine out of ten he’d be in Lucerne. Heading straight to me. Hello, Peter — why Peter, hello. Hiya, Peter, didn’t think you’d be here — Peter, what a surprise, even if Dorothy did say you might show. Oh, just let him say what he wants to say and I’ll say whatever comes to me too. I slice off some lamb.

“Helene, nice to see you,” and I look up and show surprise and say hello and stand up and stick my hand out to shake and he starts shaking it when he says “Shake? Come on now, I need a kiss. It’s been more than six months since we’ve had one — between us, of course,” and holds onto my hand as I give him my cheek to kiss and he kisses it and straightens my chin with his other hand and pecks my lips and lets go of me, steps back and says “What’s there to say? — you look great.”

“So do you — very good. Like some food?” pointing to mine.

“I’ll get my own later.”

“Mind if I continue?” and I sit and he sits at Arthur’s place.

“This somebody’s?” meaning Arthur’s plate.

“Champagne?” a waiter says, holding a tray of filled champagne glasses. Peter takes off two.

“Not for me. And there is someone I’m sitting with, but I can move his plate to one of the other chairs.”

“No, wouldn’t want to disturb anything,” and he gives me a glass, goes around the table and sits opposite me and says “And come on now, we have to drink to Dot and Sven.”

“All right, for them. I think I’m feeling better. I wasn’t before.”

“That-a-way.” He clicks my glass. “Oops, should have first made a toast. To Dorothy and Sven. May they have a long life together and a fruitful marriage with much abundance, which is redundant, but what a marriage often is. Well, came out of that one okay. But let’s drink,” and we click glasses and sip.

“Now,” he says, “—and eat, don’t let me stop you. What have you been up to lately? Much the same?”

“With minor backflips and minuscule variations. How about you? You’ve been to Cologne, Zurich, Lucerne—”

“Lausanne, not Lucerne.”

“Lausanne, Lucerne, Lorraine, Laraine. Excuse me, but just for a moment there I thought I had a private joke going between my fork and me. Dorothy said for a curators’ convention and then on a buying-selling trip for your museum, but she didn’t think you’d be back in time.”

“That could have been cause for jubilation.”

“Why, what’s it to me? You’re here, good. Was it a good trip? I’m sure it was, so, good again. A third good coming up might be my own going to Europe next summer for a few weeks. Italy. Maybe France. Maybe just Italy.”

“Remember ours? I still have dreams of us — real dreams, when I’m asleep — of the barge we stayed on, the canals and frogs. It kills me when I wake up.”

“So? Go back with someone, or alone. That’s how I plan to do it: solo.”

“Greetings,” Arthur says, putting a glass of bubbling water with a lime slice in it in front of me.

“Peter, this is Arthur Rosenthal, as in the china. Peter Gray, as in the color, spelled the American way. Sorry I went at my food before you got back. Couldn’t resist.”

“I can see. This my seat?” He sits, pushes his plate away.

“Arthur’s a lawyer. We just met here. He’s an old friend of Sven’s.”

“Sven and Dorothy’s, and not old. Served in the Queens District Attorney’s office with him. You in law too?”

“No,” Peter says.

“So, tell him what you do. It’s not fair not to.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“You still haven’t told him. What is it with you? Peter curates for the Met. The new primitive wing.”

“Being built. An assistant curator. One of.”

“And you’re an assistant or associate professor,” Arthur says to me, “or just a lecturer. Not that I’ve anything against lecturers. I want to see if we’re all assistants here tonight or once were. Sven and I — assistant D. A.’s. But Dot wasn’t one that I know.”

“I’m sure we can make her an assistant in something,” Peter says. “Assistant organizer for this wedding. Wait. Wasn’t she an assistant editor for a theater mag before she—”

“Associate,” I say. “Maybe assistant. Anyway, I’m an assistant. Listen, I’m not feeling too well again and I have to leave.”

“I’d take you home,” Arthur says, “but I actually would like to stay. I have no excuse for going.”

“Why should you go? I’ll grab a cab downstairs.”

“I was about to go myself,” Peter says. “I know — I just came — but I only drove down to do my courtesies, since I’ve a long workday tomorrow. And you’re on my way home.”

“I’m twenty blocks north of you.”

“I’ll drive you — you’re not feeling well.”

“Go with him. This time of night — who even knows if cabs come down this far?”

“I’ll say my goodbyes and get my coat,” I say.

“First, someone has to make an official toast to the bride and groom,” Peter says. “Has anyone done it?”

“Several.”

“But a wedding toast? I came all the way down here to hear one. I’m a minister’s son, what can you expect? Doesn’t reinforce my argument, does it? But with the band on a break, it’s the best time for one.” He stands up, clinks his glass with a fork and says “Attention, everyone — please. I know several toasts have been made, but I haven’t heard them. And being a minister’s son, I feel called upon to make at least one official one. Another toast — what the hell, right?”

Most of the room of about a hundred people get quiet. A few people near the food table are still talking and laughing.

“Shh, shh,” some people say.

“I won’t make a toast till the room is totally quiet.”

“Boy, this fellow really takes command,” Arthur says to me.

“A toast, everyone,” Peter says louder. “Everyone has to be quiet. A toast, everyone.” The room’s now quiet. “Waiters, please see that everyone has a fresh glass of champagne or fresh champagne in their glasses.”

“I can’t believe this friend of yours,” Arthur says. “No let-up. What’s he think the waiters are, his slaves?”

The waiters bring in several trays of glasses and bottles of champagne. In a couple of minutes nearly everybody’s holding up a glass of champagne.

“Dorothy and Sven,” Peter says. “Please come to the middle of the floor.” They do. “Join hands.”

“Hey, get on with it,” Arthur says in a disguised voice. “We’re thirsty; our hands are getting heavy.”

“Maybe I should,” Peter says to Arthur, who looks around as if someone else had yelled it out. “Thank you, sir — Dorothy and Sven. I’m not good at toasts — not even at making toast. I burn my toast half the times I make it. Maybe that means I should get a new toaster. But even a halfway good toaster doesn’t blame his bad toasts on his toaster. But it is true that while my toaster’s dial is always aimed at ‘light,’ my toasts, if I don’t watch it, always end up dark. I don’t like dark toasts. But my toaster also doesn’t pop, which is another reason why my toast is usually hard and dark. But the champagne tonight certainly has popped. And months before tonight one of you must have popped the question to the other and the other accepted that pop. And maybe one day not too far off one of you will be a pop, and the other will be what in most traditional families goes with that pop, as in a mom and pop store — so, what’s in store for you. You might think this is funny”—Dorothy and Sven are laughing—“but it’s very serious. But one thing neither of you will ever be is seriously burned, unlike my toast, nor will you be roasted by this toast. You were made for one another, like toast is made for breakfast and roasts are made for supper. You are bread and butter for each other, one spread on top of the other, but which of you will be the bread and the other the butter nobody can say, since those rolls are transposable today. As far as putting rolls into my toaster, that’s out of the question and one that can’t be popped. Since how can the rolls pop if they can’t fit into the toaster? And if they can’t fit, they also can’t be burned or toasted and certainly not roasted, since nothing gets roasted in a toaster. But I’m sure both of you will always fit together and keep the other toasty — something on the order of a perfectly functioning toaster. So, I toast to your order of that perfectly functioning toaster and the bread that won’t be burned that goes into the toaster. And the butter that will be spread but won’t go into the toaster, though will be closely associated with it after the toast — perfectly toasted, the way you love it and each other and the way toast and bread love butter — pops out, but not to the floor. Pops out for you both to handle easily and without it burning your fingers. So here’s to all of those and lots of rolls and no more toasts tonight at least from this imperfectly functioning toaster and especially to you both, Dorothy and Sven Baker — and I swear only now do I see the connection between your last name and my toast — sip sip away.”

Almost everybody says “Sip sip away,” and drinks up. Peter drinks up, puts the glass on the floor and crushes it with his foot. There’s lots of applause, he sits and says “Drink. You haven’t touched a drop.” I drink a little.

Arthur says to him “I might have been a smart-ass before but only because I’m jealous of any guy who can take over the way you did. But that was without doubt the best toast I ever ate. I didn’t want to like it. In point of fact I hate all toast: dark, light or roasted — but I liked yours. It was palatable and kosher and I now think you ought to send them a real toaster as a present, maybe one that can take rolls. If you don’t, I will, but not your old one or my toaster-oven-broiler. I drink to you, sir — you’re a clever sonofabitch as there ever was one.”

They click glasses and then mine on the table. I drink all my champagne, say “Excuse me,” and go over to Dorothy and Sven and kiss them both. The music’s started. They take my hands. “No, I couldn’t.” We start dancing, just holding hands, sort of a Jewish dance to Jewish music. Other people take our hands and soon twenty to thirty people are holding hands in a circle and doing this dance. Arthur breaks the circle, takes my hand and the hand of the person I’ve been holding and dances around with us. Peter takes my other hand and the other hand I’ve been holding — Sophie’s. Soon about half the guests are part of the circle and the other half and most of the waiters are clapping in rhythm to us. I see the two women from the ladies’ room in the circle. The one who was sick drops her hand and waves to me and I nod and she takes back the hand of her friend and kisses it. The music stops. I’m panting from all the dancing. Sophie hugs me and says “My darling, all the same for you,” and I say “One day, maybe, but no rush.” Dorothy and Sven kiss Sophie and then me and then one another and Peter puts his arms around their shoulders and squeezes them into him and then hugs Sophie and then me and kisses my cheek and says “Why can’t I stop thinking about you? This is no b.s. I’m such a fucking fool. Can’t live with, can’t without, that’s my problem.”

I get out of his grip. “It’s all right, please, and stay. You’re having fun. I am too, but too much partying tonight.”

“No, I promised, and my work tomorrow starts early.”

I tell Dorothy and Sven I’m leaving. “Peter’s driving me home.” She raises her eyebrows. My look back says “Not what you think.”

“Before you go,” Sven says, “have you seen the view?”

“I’ve looked outside. We’re very high up.”

“But from the outside? Half of what Soph’s paying for is the balcony view. It’s memorable and I want the party to be remembered. You too, Peter. Arthur. Nils. Who else? Everybody who can fit out there, come with us to the balcony. Sophie, you too.”

“I can’t,” Arthur says to me. “I’m phobic when it comes to heights. They were lucky to get me up here, but I haven’t looked outside once tonight and did you notice how I stay away from the windows? Minimum of fifteen feet. I couldn’t get near the crudités table because of it, and I love those things, so someone had to bring me over a plate.”

Sven takes my hand and Dorothy’s and leads about twenty people out to the balcony. It overlooks the Staten Island ferry station and Statue of Liberty and New Jersey or Staten Island and some ships in the water and a liner all lit up heading out to the ocean.

“A cruise ship,” Dorothy says. “That’s what Sven and I should be on. Instead, what? A posh hotel here and tomorrow Atlantic City.”

“I like to gamble,” he says.

“Listen. You can even hear the music from it seventy stories up. Let’s dance,” and she grabs Sven and dances one turn around and lets go.

“I don’t hear anything,” Sophie says.

“I’m a little cold,” I say to Peter. “I’m going in.”

“No, all of us,” Sven says, “me and mine included, stay and don’t make jokes or start dancing — just look. It was a lot nicer the night we came up here to see if we wanted to rent it. Clearer, more stars, the skinniest of quartermoons, but you can’t predict the weather months ahead, and all the nights that same-sized moon was due, the room was booked. Look — the plane up there. Cloudy and all, it’s still a remarkable sight. Only in New York.”

“I think Chicago has a catering place like this on top of one of its lakefront office buildings,” a woman says. “And taller, but with different type food. But it is very nice indeed. I’m glad you brought us out here — I would have missed it.”

“And no comparisons, if you can. Experience it for what it is, if I can sound vaguely familiar — which is great. I also, while we’re out here in front of this view, want to make an announcement.”

“You’re getting married,” a man says.

“No, and not that I love Dorothy and she loves me and we shall cherish each other forever, which is all so, but that we’re going to have a baby. That’s something else I wanted to tell you, my best friends and relatives who braved it out here at my behest. Sophie, did you hear?”

“What am I supposed to do now — say no? Dorothy told me.”

“Snitcher,” he says to Dorothy. “But did she tell you it’s going to be a girl and we’re calling her Marina Claire?”

“I knew and I’m thankful. Girls are better than boys.”

“I didn’t know any of it,” I say. “It’s wonderful, what could be better?” I kiss them both.

“But is this the fantastic place to hear that kind of news?” Sven shouts.

“Unbeatable,” Peter says, “and appropriate. The heart of the New York harbor and with Brooklyn in the foreground and Manhattan in back and a jet going west overhead and the two rivers splitting up and going their own way. And my mom and pop store speech was pretty prescient, eh?”

“That’s what I whispered to Dorothy on the floor. ‘Does Peter know?’ She didn’t answer. Why didn’t you answer?” he asks her.

“Now I really have to go,” I say.

“Of course,” Peter says. “Goodbye to you all. It’s freezing and gorgeous out here and the news was a knockout — Wait up,” he says to me.

“Marry her,” Sven yells after Peter. “Don’t be a boob not to.”

“Sven, that’s an awful thing to say,” I say. “People have to work things out their own way.”

“But you’re a terrific couple and two of my favorite people and I’m deliriously happy, so what else could I say? I’d love to see you married and in a family way, which is my next big fantasy for you two and no doubt another one I should have omitted saying, but that’s just tough titty on me.”

“All right, I hear, and probably at your wedding reception you should be allowed to say anything you like.” I go back, kiss him, he’s been crying, says “Forgive me, Helene, I get too enthused and emotional,” say “Bye Sophie, many thanks,” blow a kiss to Dorothy and say “Hope I didn’t dampen things,” and she says “Pay no mind, nothing but a nuclear holocaust on us could ruin this day,” go into the room, Peter says “Truthfully, I had nothing to do with that marriage-fetus wish, but you handled him right,” and goes to the men’s room, get my coat and sit on a bench by the elevator to wait for him. The rooms to the other parties are at the other side of the elevator bank and lots of laughing, music and chatter are coming from them. Arthur comes over. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I say, “I forgot to say goodnight.”

“That’s what I thought I forgot. And, I’m not sure how close you are with this curator fellow, but if it isn’t too close — even if it is…”

“We can always have lunch. I’m in the book. Only Helene with a Winiker at the end of it. W-i—”

“I know. I asked Dot about you already and she gave me your number. Six-six-three, two-five, three-six. An easy one, but I’ve a way with numbers. I can still remember my selective service card number and army rifle registration number and all the combination lock numbers from high school and college. Phone numbers? You only have to tell me them once. I’ve got a regular rolloflex — but what do you call those rolling things that have a thousand phone numbers and addresses on index cards and you spin? — well that’s my head. I also want you to know I’ll gladly do your tax returns this year if you want. As a favor, and I bet I get you back seven hundred more than if you do them yourself and four hundred more than with a professional accountant, but maybe not a competent CPA, and all legitimately: I do nothing to jeopardize the reputation of my firm or my own personal name.”

“Sounds good. I do them myself, so I might take you up on it.”

“Great. So, it was words-can’t-say tonight, Helene.”

Peter comes over, has on his coat, says “Nice to meet you, Arthur; see you around,” rings for the elevator. Elevator comes. “Hold onto me if you’re still not feeling well,” and he presses the lobby button.

I hold his arm as the car descends. He kisses the top of my head. He’s about six inches taller than I and has put aftershave or men’s cologne on his face though I don’t know where he’d keep it. Not in his pocket. Maybe for men there’s such a thing as overnight cologne packages I’ll call them. More likely the management provided some for the men’s room, but why wouldn’t there also have been some in ours? Maybe there was and someone stole it. Could be he devised his own traveling package. He was always very inventive and liked to smell good. “You all right?” I nod. “Elevator not going too fast? I can slow it down.” I shake my head. “This might seem dopey, but why—” The car stops at the fourteenth but nobody gets on. “Why did you object so strenuously to Sven when he came on with that marriage talk?”

“Because he knows that that’s what mainly broke it up for us: your not wanting to. Even if he was drunk or stoned, and who knows what those two are into these—” The door opens, a guard in the lobby nods to us and Peter salutes him and we head for the door. “I also don’t go for that shoot-from-the-heart crap in a crowd he’s also been into these days.”

“Hold it. About that particular time we’re talking of, it wasn’t so much marriage I didn’t want but that you wanted to have a baby then and at the time I didn’t think I wanted one.”

“I wanted to get married and have a child eventually. Why else get married or at least if you can have kids? But what does your ‘at the time’ talk mean? That now you think, to the woman you eventually do get married to, that you would have a child? That’d be interesting.”

“Did I say that? I suppose I sort of did. Yes, I very definitely think it’s a strong possibility that one day pretty soon I’d like to be a father.”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Be. Because with the right hypothetical woman — someone I love very much and so forth and who I think would make a wonderful mother as well as a wife — it’s very possible.”

“Nah, you have too many important interests and aims, which I’m not knocking, but they and you come first. You’ll get married again — eventually — but you won’t let a kid come into it.”

“Don’t be so dogmatic about me. People change. I’ve my rigidness and routines, but I surprise myself sometimes too.”

“All right. I believe that marriage-mit-kit is a very definite strong possibility for you pretty soon.”

“Pretty soon. Reasonably soon. Because—” I step inside the revolving door, but before I can push it he squeezes in behind me and we move in short jerky steps. “One more spin around?” when we’re outside. “I was just getting started.”

His car is parked near the entrance. A man’s standing next to it and says “Pardon me for a moment, folks—” Peter takes my hand and backs us up a few feet and looks into the lobby. “Now don’t be alarmed. I mean no harm. Besides, look at you, sir. You’re practically a giant, so who’d mess with you, not that I’m that type in any shape or form. All I’m politely asking for is enough change to put me on a public conveyance home.”

“I think I have a quarter.”

“That’ll put me almost halfway. Thank you. And the lady? — You couldn’t contribute something too?”

“A quarter’s plenty from us. There are other people to ask. I’ve a lot more change but that’s all I feel like giving. You don’t like the quarter — give it here.”

“Peter.”

“No, he doesn’t think it’s enough, let him give it back as I said. Fuck this shit. I’m not letting us get harassed on the street every other day.”

“Pardon, no offense, I don’t want to get myself killed by this guy,” and he walks away. “Didn’t mean to cause any trouble,” to himself or for us to hear.

Peter unlocks my door, I get in, unlock his while he’s putting the key in, he says “Thanks,” gets in and shuts the door.

“God,” I say, “—quiet. I can’t believe it. I’ve had so much chitchat and bullshit tonight starting from the minute I got to Diana’s party that I think—”

“How is she?”

“Please, give me a minute. There must be something else we can talk about, if we have to talk for the next minute. Or music. Maybe you can put on public radio or NCN if they’re not the same. One of them should have something nice.” He starts the car and turns on the radio. Station he was turned to has country music, one he turns to has a busy Brahms serenade with too much wind and brass. “Not that.” He turns it off. “No, you can leave it on.” He turns it on, low. “I’m acting so spoiled, but what I wouldn’t do for a solo flute. Bach, just Bach. I don’t even know if he has one for solo, but someone like him. Maybe I should just pray.” I close my eyes, clasp my hands and pretend to pray. All I really want is quiet or sleep. To wake up, as I used to, in my father’s arms, with the car parked and the family home and my shoes off and my body being lowered into my bed. He leans across me — I jump back because I think he’s going to grab my leg — opens the glove compartment by my knees, pulls out a number of tape cassettes, slips one into a hole by the radio and turns the dial up and Brahms has become flute and harpsichord music and I think Bach’s.

“Close enough?” He buckles up, helps me to and drives off. “And low enough? Loud enough? Sorry for the harpsichord obligato, but it is obligato. But whatever’s your pleasure, ma’am, this nifty sports job will supply.”

“Everything’s fine, thanks. And before? To clear up a possible wrong impression? I didn’t mean that chitchat’s so bad. Just I’ve my saturation point. It’s like knickknacks, chitchats. Though I have those too I also have my saturation point with them. No more than five knickknacks to a radiator cover I say. What am I saying? Believe me, I was fine at the start of the evening, but now I’ve become ridiculously chitchatty myself.”

“No you haven’t.”

“Have to. So goddamn condescending. I crit others what I myself do. Because chitchat and bullshit have their days too. Just right now, for me, they’re — This music’s also too chatty. If only we could speed it up to a slow part. Mind if I shut it off?”

“Slow part’s coming, but I can speed up the tape to it.”

“No, no music. I don’t know what I want. But same way? The radio dial? Never saw anything like this,” shutting it off. “What else can it do? Record, take in, give change? Oh, shut up, Helene, till you get home, and then, if you have to chitchat like this, do it in your sleep.”

“You can’t. You have to keep the driver talking so he doesn’t fall asleep at the wheel.”

“Then let’s talk about something interesting. But you start, I can’t. But let’s see if we can talk about only one thing till I get home that keeps us unwinkingly stimulated and our minds unmoronically — oh my God, that man!”

“Where, what? Don’t startle me like that. You’ll run us off the road.”

“But that man we just passed. On crutches — I think being robbed.” I look back. “It still seems the younger one’s going through the pockets of the older man. Turn around, go back.”

“Come on, you couldn’t have seen all that so fast.”

“But I’m still watching it — now no more — too far back. Slow down and make a U at the next left.” He slows down but passes that left. “Peter, we can’t drive by knowing someone’s—”

“And I’m saying, if you did see something, you don’t want to get involved in a possible dangerous robbery. Because suppose we go back — then what?”

“We can get near enough to see if he is being robbed, and if he is, we can drive past slowly and honk and wave our fists. If the man’s already been robbed and the robber’s gone, we can drive him to a police station or stay with him till a police car comes. If he hasn’t been robbed, I want to find that out by asking him so I know I didn’t drive past anyone being robbed. And if it’s only what I think is the robber who’s there, then we’ll quietly drive past.”

“All right. Okay.” He makes a U-turn at the next left and slows down at the first red light.

“Don’t stop. No car’s coming, go through.”

“And if a cop—”

“All the better. That’s who I’m looking for now.”

He goes through the light. “I hate going through red lights.” The older man’s leaning against a lamppost, two canes, not two crutches, at his feet. We stop, I roll down my window, “Excuse me, but were you just robbed?”

“You undercover? If you are—”

“We’re not. We thought—”

“Still, he ran up that sidestreet and you can still catch him but you’ll have to go against a one-way.”

“We don’t want to try to — either thing — and get hurt. We saw you from the uptown side and thought we could help with a honk and shout if he was still here, or help you in any way. You’re not hurt? Did he get anything?”

“My wallet. Fifteen dollars. That’s what you have to carry on you today in case you get robbed. My watch two other punks took last year, so I don’t wear the new one when I’m out.”

“What are you doing out alone so late?” Peter says. “This neighborhood’s deserted.”

“I like to walk. If I get that itch, I take it. There are just so many directions to go. Last night I went the other. But I don’t go far. My place is two blocks down.”

“Can we do anything?” I say. “Take you to a police station or wait with you till a patrol car passes?”

“It’s not worth it. Fill out a report, nothing happens. If I made a bundle it might be worth having that report as proof for a big loss on my taxes. I’ll go home.”

“We’ll drive you.”

“I don’t want to drive him,” Peter says.

“We have to. We came this far, let’s see it through.”

“No thanks,” the man says. “I can’t get hit twice in one night ten minutes apart. It doesn’t happen.”

“It’s disgraceful, someone stealing from anyone — but from you? I wish we’d stopped sooner.”

“Good thing you didn’t. He came out of nowhere, didn’t look playful, might have panicked and done something to me worse. Thanks,” and he picks up his canes and starts downtown.

“Some night,” Peter says, passing the man and signaling a left.

“Wait, back up to him.”

“What now?”

“Just back up — Mister, stop!” I open my bag. “I only have ten dollars,” I say to Peter. “Loan me a five.”

“Ten’s enough.”

“Please, I’m only borrowing it. You’ve nothing smaller than a ten, I’ll give you one of my fives.”

He gives me a five. “On me, no loan.”

“Here,” I say to the man. “Don’t ask questions. You went through too much tonight, you don’t want to be stopped by anyone without your fifteen, and we’ve plenty.” He takes the money. “Now can we drive you home?”

“I’ll make it.”

Peter drives off, makes the U. “That was very nice. I think a little excessive, but okay — nice.”

“As if it isn’t bad enough for him, and then to get robbed? But maybe I shouldn’t have said it to him like that.”

“How?”

‘“Disgraceful for someone to steal from you.’ But to be so deformed? Did you see the way he walked?”

“Saw.”

“It’s got to be so painful. Going every step like that. I’m not talking of only the threat of being robbed, but just getting up and down curbs and I’m sure falling every so often because of the canes in the street cracks and so on. And if you’re out of bread and want a loaf — what a chore.”

“He goes out nightly, so maybe he’s more mobile and not in as much pain as we think. But look at it this way. If you have an affliction like his you have to make adjustments and other arrangements. That’s what you have to do in life; that’s what everyone has to do.”

“You might be right. But so many people in the city and everywhere like that man. In my neighborhood especially, and which I can never quite get used to. Even someone who walks a three-legged dog. The dog does well — compensates — but he has three. But there’s a one-legged baby in a baby carriage and always on Broadway that destroys me every time I see her.”

“A three-legged dog, sad; a one-legged baby — that’s tragedy.”

“Sometimes when I’m feeling very sad about people and animals like that — which can last for minutes to hours after — I think, and usually soon after I felt that way, that I only felt this for myself somehow — but it’s not true or not most times.”

“Of course it isn’t. Probably never, or only rarely. Your response is authentically sympathetic rather than self-pitying.”

“And I’m not saying this to have anyone think better of me. But why can’t we feel these things for these people — forget the three-legged animals; what can I do for them? — and help them when we can? Not just what we did before, but sort of.”

“Now you’ve lost me.”

“If they need assistance across the street. Reaching for things for them in supermarkets they can’t reach. And I guess for dogs if they’re lost or starved no matter how many legs — feeding them or helping them find their way home.”

“No, those are good things to do. And if you mean sorry, pity—feeling those — sure, that’s what we have to do — fellow human beings, all that. Public spirits — because those words are still good words if accurately employed. And giving to charities — good charities if we can — ones that don’t squander all the given money to keep the administrators administrating them. Just as any public institution — museums as well as any — shouldn’t squander its money that way. Because it’s all given, that money, by individuals or some larger public or private institution. And the truth of it is that no institution or government or private company should squander its money, and museums should probably be the first ones to exclude themselves from that type of administrative abuse. I believe in that.”

“There, we discussed something interesting and stayed with it for once. We needed the robbery of an old crippled man to catalyze the discussion, and let’s face it, nothing that profound was said and maybe only a baby-step past knickknacks. But we could always bullshit well.”

“That wasn’t bullshit.”

“I know; just trying out something new for no reason: depreciating what I said if it made the littlest bit of sense.”

“That was real talk, real feelings. Maybe not the deepest, but this is only a car conversation to get us safely home. But I’ll tell you, a lot of what some people say sounds false to them isn’t. So it doesn’t mean you should hold your sentiments in check because of what they don’t feel. And we could do plenty else — plenty — besides bull and serious talk.”

“What besides what I think you’re thinking we used to be able to do well, which, all right, we did, but so what?”

“Oh that? We could still do it well — believe me — no sweat.”

“Let’s change the subject?”

“Or with lots of sweat. But let’s change it. Getting too grownup for me. Wait, that’s not the remark I wanted to make.”

“We used to cook compatibly together.”

“You’re referring to what else we used to do well together besides bullshit and serious talk and that other subject before we changed it?”

“Yup, cook. We complemented each other in the kitchen.”

“We did, and we were also great summer tourists in Europe together, with lots of European sweat. Real sweat, from the sun and lots of jaunting, not that changed subject. And when I had a motorcycle you were a great passenger behind me and then rider when I taught you how to ride it and I was the passenger, so we rode well together in various ways too. And what else well? Well, not do but attend and-or enjoy: opera, dance, occasionally the same book. And we once painted your living room together.”

“Not compatibly.”

“I bellyached, true. So we didn’t do that so well together, nor your foyer. Like to stop for a bite together? Empire Cafe on your right.”

“No, just want to go home and go to bed.”

“Mind if I ask how your work’s going, just to keep us compatibly on the road together?”

“Enough already with together. And fine. Curating fine?” We’ve stopped for a light. He didn’t answer. I look over at him. He’s looking pretty seriously at me. “Yipes, what’s coming next?”

“What do you expect? You’re so fucking great looking.”

“Now now.”

“Now now nothing. Fucking exciting great. I have got to kiss you. This is a long light. I know it from other nights. This one and another on Riverside and Eighty-third. I have got to, Helene.”

“Not to distract you, but did you put aftershave on in the men’s room?”

“Okay, why?”

“Just curious. You carry it in or was some left there?”

“On the sink shelf. The manufacturer of it put a few atomizers there as a test of a new scent, a note said on the mirror. I was supposed to take a prestamped card and send it in as to what I thought of it. You like it? I don’t mind it but I won’t ask for it at the store, which is what their real intention was.”

“It’s all right. Not alluring, not repelling. But I don’t especially like fake scents on men as you might have remembered, nor any strong work scent either, though I can appreciate the latter more.”

“I don’t remember. I should have, shouldn’t I? What I actually thought was that you liked men’s cologne. I couldn’t have been thinking of anyone else. But what about it?” and he makes little kissing noises. “I want to, mucho.”

“Then don’t make a big thing of it or hit me with the dirties or chipmunk sound effects. But do it before the light changes.”

“You’re not doing this just to keep the journey safe?”

“Oh sure, some safe journey. But I’m not. I’d like to kiss you.” A car honks behind us. Light’s changed. “Too late. I knew you were stalling. Next red light and no blab about how you have got to and my exciting nothingness. Just lean over. I’ll be here, maybe a few inches closer, and ready.”

“We should also go to bed.”

“Now stop. One thing at a time and now’s not that time.”

“If it leads to it?”

“What’s got into you? You were never so unwilling to just kiss nor exacting for future promises from it. So let’s at the next red and if it leads to that other thing, it does. I could do it. I’m pretty ready for that too. Truthfully, it wouldn’t be because I was in any but maybe an old memory way touched with unfulfilled feelings for you. You’re still attractive to me. And I know what we could usually do once we got around to it even in some of our worst moments, and that you wouldn’t make a big deal of it. And you wouldn’t, would you? That is, if we did ultimately do it — because that wouldn’t be like you. It’s not smart to sleep with ex-boyfriends if they’re going to put you through things after you’ve slept with them again for one night.”

“We were almost engaged.”

“The light coming up is about to turn red. Are you still game for just starters?”

“There won’t be a problem.” We’re driving along the alternative road for the highway. River’s on our left and not too far ahead an enormous liner is docked, with all its lights on it seems and one of its smokestacks going. We’re a few blocks from the elevated part of the highway if that part hasn’t been torn down too. Didn’t a moving truck sink through what became its razed part somewhere around here which started this whole multibillion dollar removal? Light’s red. We’ve stopped, he moves closer to me, I stay still, we kiss. Feels good. “Nice, huh?” he says. “You always had the softest lips existent, except when you got a sore or two on them. Mind?”

“Another kiss? No.”

He kisses me harder, tries to pry my lips open with his tongue and I fight him. Oh let him, so I let him. We go at it like that, his hand on my thigh, mine on his, both stroking, lips not parting, my skin jingling and head back to boozy. Honks, like a boop-boop-be-doop, behind us. He releases me and the handbrake and we drive on. “Come to my place,” he says when we’re passing the liner and going up the highway ramp too fast for me to catch its name. I always wanted to see the QE2 up close, and maybe I just did, but only with a bit of rummaging through today’s or tomorrow’s newspaper about ship arrivals and departures will I know. “You don’t have to stay the night, but stay if you want to. In fact if you do come you should stay. But come — that’s the important thing. Helene?”

“I’m here; I was just thinking. Was that the QE2 we passed?”

“I didn’t see it.”

“It was several blocks long and had three smokestacks and a dark hull.”

“I once sailed on the Queen and in the six or seven days it took to Bremer-haven — seven, since Le Havre was six — I don’t ever remember observing how many stacks it had. But sounds right. Most liners have two. Huge ships like the Queen, probably three.”

“I’d love to sail on it, but only to Europe. I’ve never gone by ship.”

“We could this summer. Fly one way, return by ship, or the reverse. The Queen still does.”

“Please, we will not. And your place? Also not a good idea. I don’t care what I said about old boyfriends or even near-fiancés, it’s different with ones I loved, and I loved you, you jerk.”

“And this jerk loved you. So it stopped for us both. But we could still fuck tonight, because look at that kiss.”

“You have to say it that way? I’ve nothing against curse words, but that’s all acting on your part. Turning-me-on talk that’s turning me off.”

“Pigshit. Scumbags. Fistfuckers. Cocksucking. It’s a great idea, not a good one, and you have a great body, not a good one, and I want to fuck it. I want to fuck you. I want to screw you and lay you and perform the act of love with you and grab your ass with me on top of your ass and big tits with me on the bottom and I want to suck, fuck and pluck and really plow you. I want to very badly. So, that’s so bad? Fuck it and too fucking bad, for that’s what the fuck I feel and want to do.”

“Thank goodness there are no red lights on this.”

He pulls over to the right, puts the hazard lights on and starts coming to a stop.

“Don’t! That’s insane! You’ll kill us!”

“Sorry,” and he pulls into the driving lane. “And I’m a dummy and also sorry for my talk if it repulsed you.”

“It didn’t repulse. It—”

“Whatever, I’m sorry, and you know what I still want to do. We’d do it for the pure kicks of it and because we once loved and now very much like and respect one another, at least you can be assured I still do with you and even if that respect part sounds contradictory after my fuck talk. Or for no other reason but — no, no reason at all or not one we—”

“Oh—”

“Please, Helene.”

“Oh, I’ll come up. I can’t seem to — oh, I can but I don’t want to argue, because why not? — sure. But only if you promise to give me a good back massage and a glass of seltzer.”

“I’ll massage you anywhere and all night if you want and I only have club soda.”

“I thought I could always get seltzer at your place.”

“Maybe I have some. I probably do, put away for special occasions.”

“And just my back. Don’t get so enterprising. I doubt my body could take more than that tonight. Now I’m going to doze off but not so deeply where you can’t wake me when we arrive.”

“You want to have a baby badly, don’t you.”

“Whuh?” My eyes had been shut five seconds.

“Not by me, but you really still do. Just answer me, then doze.”

“Why that out of nowhere?”

“Like that. Had a feeling, had to say it. If I didn’t I would have lost it. Infantile attitude á la friend Sven, but you want to get married to someone very unlike me — someone who wants to get married but really and have a baby soon. That’s why you were so, well, sad at the balcony announcement, and later pissed off at Sven, besides what that Arthur fellow would make anyone feel.”

“My, you have quite the head on your hat, old buddy. You sure do.”

“Don’t have to get cynical.”

“Then why try to get me to say what you already know and what is probably still a sore point between us? That’s even worse turn-off behavior and talk than that turn-off talk from before. Maybe you had a change of mind about my coming up.”

“Most certainly not. I thought I was getting into something deep; I obviously wasn’t.”

“If you were saying has my attitude changed on the matter in the last year—”

“Maybe that’s what I was saying.”

“It wasn’t, but I’ll answer anyway, bluntly, not deep. It hasn’t. I still do ultimately want to have a baby with someone I care for very much, and I feel confident I will. And because of my age I should be thinking seriously about having one fairly soon, not so much because of the increasing risks of conceiving an unhealthy baby but because I want to be frisky enough to take care of it and play with it and continue to know it over a long period of time. But it’s not a serious problem with me. I’m not, in other words, if Mr. Love doesn’t come along, going to have one as a Miss Mom or jump into marriage with a loving schmuck who also wants to have a baby, just to have one. And it’s not going to stop me, your talk — at least what you’ve said so far, so this is a sincere petition not to say anymore about it — from making love tonight, if you still want to and we’re not too tired to, since right now that’s what I’d like to do. If I’ve broken your balls a little just now, I apologize, since that’s not what I wanted to do at all. Now give me my three-minute doze.”

“Granted.”

He taps my shoulder. “We’re here. Got a spot in front. Everything’s working for us. Not a mugger in sight. Even the moon can be seen and a number of meteorites knocking about in the wrong half of the hemisphere for the night. You’re not too sleepy?”

“Why, do you want me to be?”

“You harp back on that so much I think it’s you who wants me to be immediately asleep.”

“I don’t, so let’s get it over with. No, that isn’t nice or what I mean, so let’s put it this way: we’re kind of using one another tonight, but that also has to be the way it is sometimes if nothing better is around. No, that’s not nice or right either. How can I say what I have in mind to without irritating you and gumming up the goal?”

“I never heard you talk like that before.”

“You have so. Selective forgetting. Let’s go up.”

The doorman has to unlock the door to let us in. “Hey there, Helene.”

“Russell? Hi — It’s been so long I didn’t recognize you. You lost weight but it looks good.”

“Couldn’t feel better. Have a good night? Good.” He holds the elevator door open till we get in, presses the button for Peter’s floor. “Goodnight.”

“You don’t know how lucky you are having such wonderful doormen.”

“He had a bypass in his thigh this year that nearly finished him. Did I set the Chapman lock in the car?”

“You pushed something in under the dashboard.”

“That’s it. He even took last rites.”

“Then what’s he doing working this shift?”

“He sleeps, rests. We might be the last tenants in. If you had no wife, kids, education or skills, you’d be fighting for his job.”

He holds my hand and whistles something from a familiar aria as he watches the floor indicator flash the floors, kisses me when the door opens. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I’m not excited anymore. He’s not attractive to me anymore. His breath stinks from alcohol and some egg dish when it didn’t before. Mine probably does too but from another food. He’s handsome and slim and a good lover and I’m almost sure I’ll be able to lose myself making love with him, but everything I said before except my wanting to have a baby with someone I care for and who’s a permanent live-in was all wrong. False and fairly high and fagged-out champagne talk, if I wasn’t feeling so sharp and sober, so don’t fall for those excuses. But I do want to make love and after it’s over he’s a quiet guy to sleep with and he’ll let me leave with no big scenes at the door, no fake promises for more, just both of us appreciative of having some of our immediate needs met, and maybe after some late-morning love-making if I want and even if he doesn’t, because that’s what he was also good for. For not once would he admit he couldn’t or didn’t want to get an erection, and what a struggle sometimes when I’d have to say “It’s okay, we’ll try in the morning or another day or some other time tonight — I’ll wake you if I get the urge,” and he’d say “No trouble, lady,” and play with himself or me or whatever he’d do till he got one that stayed. But go through with it, since it’s been a few months and lately I’ve been feeling something very important and explicable has been missing from my life which no amount of masturbating or work can make up for.

First thing in he turns on the lights and record player. “Your eighteenth-century German flute, plus or minus a century and nationality, which I was listening to before I left — I wasn’t expecting you here. Sure no wine or beer?” No, so he goes. I look at the primitive sculptures and masks he’s acquired or has on loan since I was last here. All to some extent phallic or oral-anal-vaginal phallic-receptive. Though a few do have procreative or foreplay subjects and one’s of a bearded naked woman standing on a stool — what’s that mean? — and another is of a clothed young man strumming what looks like a lute, plus a five-foot high mask of an insane shaman with his mouth closed but two tongues coming out of his nose. I bet he’s had thirty different women here since my last visit. He used to keep a spermicide in his medicine chest for sudden conquests. Condoms too if he had to, which he ordered through a coupon in Playboy: specially ribbed. He comes back, says “Sit over here,” I sit on the couch, be sits beside me, I drink the club soda, he some wine, he kisses my neck. Good, it’s begun. “Why don’t we take off our clothes and go to bed,” I say.

“Sure, we should, but here. It’d be too unshipshape, undies all over the bed and floor.” He takes off his tie and starts unbuttoning his shirt. “Actually, want me to take off your clothes?”

“That’d be nice. No, let’s take off our own clothes, wash up and go to bed.” I stand.

“I’ve washed. Did you come with anything?”

“I’m like you, or as I remember you. I always keep one in my medicine chest,” holding up my bag.

“Interesting. You must be getting laid a lot these days. What do you know — said the wrong thing again.”

“Truth is, I’m not, and I don’t have anything with me — that was just a tease. I thought you, much as I hate the smell of those things, could use an ordinary condom at the last moment.”

“At the last moment I can’t.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ve been feeling my period coming on for two days.”

“Is it absolutely safe-positive-sure?”

“Always has been. I already got a few blood drops in my underpants. One go at sex and it should begin to flow.”

“Should I put a rubber mat under the sheet?”

“I’ll give you plenty of warning.”

“You have a tampon with you?”

“That I’m prepared for,” shaking the bag.

The phone rings. “Who the hell could that be so late? Maybe I shouldn’t answer it.”

“Don’t look at me.”

“I have to answer it. It could be bad family news and sometimes has been this late. I’ll tell you after about my sister. Excuse me.”

He runs to the bedroom, shuts the door. I go into the bathroom, undress, open his medicine chest to look for a box of Q-Tips to clean my ears. It’s an awful habit, never buying a box for myself but only using Q-Tips I find in other people’s bathrooms. But it’s only two to four Q-Tips a person and I try not to hit the same medicine chest twice. It’s just something I do — some intentionally aberrational part of me I don’t question or want to change and perhaps my last link to a mediumly renegade life. I’ll probably do it even after I’m married, unless my husband already buys Q-Tips for himself, but not after I have a baby, since I suppose it’s necessary for a number of reasons to have them around for a child. And so far every time I’ve wanted to clean out my ears, which is about every second week, I’ve found a box of them or one of its inferior equivalents in other people’s bathrooms.

I take two Q-Tips out of the box and start to clean. Door’s locked, so he can’t walk in. Lots of wax, some of it quite hard and dark, so it could be three to four weeks since I did this. Most times two are enough. Now, after five — maybe a record number for me — the cotton nib comes out clean from both ears without digging too far in, and I flush the used Q-Tips down.

I wash my crotch with his washrag. I bet it’s a woman on the phone, wanting to come over or Peter to come by. So be it if that’s what he wants, but don’t be silly: he can be with me tonight and tomorrow with her. Though I’m still not sure why I’m here. Sex, yes, and the only reason, but by now I don’t even know if I can get into it in any way. Sure I can. Lights out, blinds down and shut to keep out the street light, close my eyes, open my legs, feel around with my hands, and it’ll be easy and easier still if I can work my way to the top. The pressure of my weight usually slowed him down by half and my control up there speeds me up considerably, making us about even. Then sleep, morning, coffee, goodbye. I wash under my arms with the same rag, wash my face, rinse the rag, brush my teeth with his brush, brush my hair, fold up my clothes, run warm water in the sink and one at a time stick my feet under the tap, pushing out any recalcitrant lint between the toes, dry them and put on his bathrobe. Soft and so long on me that I feel like a girl in her father’s coat. I leave the bathroom, set my things on a chair. Forgot to look for the spermicide. I did see a box of condoms. No hiding them under the T-shirts in the dresser for him. Bedroom door’s shut. I knock.

“In a minute.”

I go back to the living room, turn over the record, look at the two walls filled from ceiling to floor with books.

“No, you listen to me once this year,” he yells in the bedroom.

Something new: each bookshelf is labeled. Poetry, Novels A-D, Novels E-J, Short Stories, Antiquities, Literary Criticism, Deutsch und Franzosisch, and half a wall of just art hooks: cocktail-table size, regular size, miniatures, some with spines hundreds of years old. Must be five hundred of them, and half it seems on primitive art. I should ask him why so many Cycladic pieces — my favorite period ever for stone — have women with their arms crossed over their flat stomachs. Good guess would be fertility or breeding, but I want something more than my own spec. I pull out an enormous book called Dubuffet, whom I’ve taken-to lately — what was it he recently said in a newsmagazine comparing art to literature: that art is a hundred years advanced over lit, or was it lit over art? But poetry. Dubuffet goes back. Too bulky a book to put on my lap and turn the pages of so late. But that’s what I’d like right now: a simple pastoral nineteenth-century English poem to go along with my lightmindedness and the guitar and flute. I start on the top poetry shelf, but a book on the short-story shelf above it catches my eye. Krin. Daniel. By. Translated by Daniel Krin. I can’t believe it. I take it out. Modern Japanese Short Stories, translated and with an introduction by Daniel Krin. Reputable small press. Softcover. How’d Peter end up with it? Same Krin? I turn it over. Two-by two-inch photo of him in a crewneck sweater, looking a little balder than he did tonight, hair windblown or just uncut, homecut or messed up, what look like West Side brownstone terraces behind him, so taken from a terrace several stories up, trying to smile but looking as if he’s squirming on the pot. Photo by Rena Moscow. Not one of the well-known literary photogs. Probably a good friend at the time or a cousin or niece. Krin: Moscow. Both could be Russian-Jewish names, Krin for Krinsky I’d think. Nothing much about him under the photo or anything inside. NYC’s public schools and CCNY, but no mention of a postgraduate degree or university teaching, which could mean he has none or never taught or no place he’s especially proud of or this press thought would help sell the book if it listed it, but whom would the NYC public schools appeal to? Among his other works: Songs of Ancient Korea: an anthology of poems in the sijo form, whatever that is, but one of the best university presses published it, and by this same press: Poems and Tales of the Northwest American Indian and Pueblo Ritual Poetry. So he’s an orientalist of sorts, with a side interest, because of the Mongoloid linkage and frozen Bering Strait, in American Indian literature, or maybe the reverse, last one first, and poetry over fiction. How old is he and his book? Copyright page. 1935—Older than I thought by about six years, though the photo makes him look fifty, even if it had to have been snapped more than four years ago when this book was published. Probably has had a book published since and got a teaching job and maybe his doctorate. Dedication page. “To my mother Pauline Saffner Krin, who helped support me through this & other works.” I look through the short-story shelf and the poetry and anthropology shelves, but there’s nothing else by him. I wouldn’t have taken him for a translator or anthologist or even someone much interested in literature. More as what? Because of his wide chest and bull neck and that Diana met him at an artists’ colony: a sculptor; an erector or puttogetherer of monumental steel-crossbeam constructions through the use of pulleys and tackles and an acetylene torch, or perhaps an action painter a little late for that scene. In other words, a moderately intelligent laborer or spontaneous stroker of artworks rather than an artful definer of them. I turn to the introduction. “Modern, in modern Japan, seems to mean—”

Peter comes in. “Good, you’ve kept yourself busy. Sorry about the phone. Find a book you like?”

“That’s what I want to ask you. Just bought it because you were interested?”

“Let me see — That one. Was going with a very wealthy Japanese journalist — I’ll tell you why I mention her wealth — a short time after we broke up, and she gave it to me. Along with a book”—he pulls one off the Gallimaufry shelf—“on how to teach yourself Japanese in three easy weeks, as she wanted to buy us tickets to Japan together soon as I could fit it into my work plans. Didn’t work out.” He hands me the language book. “Got to know one word, but not from that. Soshi. Small. Or toshi. She said she was a little above average height by Japan’s standards, but here was considered tiny, and compared to me, a pygmy, so she gave herself that name for me to use. Not toshi or soshi. Something else, and I think the feminine version of it. I called her it once — was very embarrassed doing it — and though I told her it was thought an insult to be called that here, bright as she was she didn’t mind and she even laughed. Moshi. Skoshi. I think the last one’s it. She also gave me a book of Japanese poems—”

“By the same translator?”

“Who’s that?” Looks. “Never heard of him. The poems were done by the famous one. Been around for years. A very dear old geezer who once did a catalogue intro on Japanese rock gardens for the museum.”

“But it’s so bizarre you have this man’s book. I met him at Diana’s tonight. I thought he was a sculptor or lumberjack.”

“Take it then. I read one story and got bored. I’m not saying it was your friend’s fault. I simply don’t like Japanese fiction, modern or otherwise. Take the language book too.”

“Why would I want it?”

“Did you talk to him much? Is he married? There was no chance of his calling you — nothing like that? It was just routine cocktail party hooey?”

“No, he said he would call, but—”

“Then he will. Why wouldn’t he? So take the language book — take both books and anything else here that’s Japanese. Not the art books and dolls. Then when he calls, say a few words in Japanese to him. Maybe to perplex him or as a joke. Or say hello in Japanese the first time he calls, then switch to English. And why not some Japanese art books? The ones made there, no matter of whose, are as beautiful as anything the Dutch produce, and I can always get replacements at fifty percent off. First that poetry book.” He goes through the shelves. “Right — she borrowed it because it had the en face originals on some poems she was suddenly dying to read, and then we broke up and she never returned it. No great loss. But the art books—”

“This is silly. I don’t want any.”

“But I want you to have them. This is our Japanese night. I’ll even get out sake and warm it. I have the special cups.”

“It’ll make me sick again.”

“Then beer. Japanese is the best for an upset stomach or to keep one away. Very mild, made from rice. I have some in the fridge.”

“Still from those Japanese journalist days?”

“No, though I did learn the upset stomach remedy and preventive from her and I got to like their beer even more than I had before I met her. Japanese and Dutch beer. Never made the connection between beautiful art books and great beer before, but there it is — though I never dated a Dutchwoman for more than a night nor heard of a Dutch wine made from cheese. Have you?”

“I’ll take the Japanese stories but that’s all,” and I put the language book back on the shelf.

“But I insist. And a painting book.” He pulls out a book that must be two feet long and three inches thick. “This is for you. Astonishing color reproductions. Now you can’t refuse a present. Serendipity call it. You meet this Japanese man—”

“He’s not Japanese.”

He takes the anthology from me. “He doesn’t look Japanese to you, and the name?”

“Not at all. And Krin?”

“I know of several Daniels who are Japanese. The Hawaiian senator for one. Anyway, you meet him and it leads to your owning a hundred-dollar book, and after December 31st, a hundred twenty-five. And the language book.” He gets that book out. “I want you to be a hundred percent Japanese tonight. Language, painting, literature, drinks. I even have a Japanese pleasure book, hand-illustrated about seven hundred years ago. I should keep it under dehumidified glass. I’m getting a beer, you get the pleasure book. Oversize shelf, green binding, so thick, looks old. I also have Japanese champagne.”

“I’ll share your beer.”

“No you won’t. I want my own.” He goes into the kitchen. I follow him. “You’re supposed to be looking for that book. It has a few practicable things in it we can try, for most are for a couple supple as pizza dough and the man hung like a horse.”

“For now, let’s stay occidental and modern, except for the beer. If I can ask, who phoned? Family or more personal?”

“Someone I don’t see anymore, but hear her? — oh boy. Right after the one after the journalist. Too crazy and young. She once wanted to come over when I had someone here, and when I said ‘Not possible, I’m very tired—’” He opens two bottles of Japanese beer. “Pilsner or regular glass?”

“Bottle will do.”

“Bad for your tummy. Something about all that air through the neck.” He gives me a glass, pours, clicks glasses and says “To the land of Japan which has given us many Daniels, one or two indirectly, and you, circuitously, a beautiful book,” and drinks. “I have to get out of this toasting rut. I can’t lift a glass of milk—”

“So the woman?”

“They let her in downstairs, since they knew her from before, and then she knocked and knocked on my door after she rang it to death. I finally said ‘Go home!’ and she sat on the doormat and started crying. A neighbor phoned me. I let her in, but hid the other woman in the kitchen. I thought I could get rid of her in a few minutes: take her downstairs, put her in a cab, after promising to see her for lunch the next day. But she wanted to stay over. Finally I said I’ll have to get the cops to drag her out or do it myself, and I actually grabbed her arm and dragged her along the floor to the door. The other woman — I’d met her that night — came out and said ‘Here I am, peekaboo, that what you wanted to see, Doreen, or maybe you’re still here because you’re hot to make it a threesome? Well get lost, you screwed-up bitch,’ and Doreen fled the apartment. I should have been more honest with her at once, introduced her to the other woman, which was this woman’s advice, but I thought she’d get hysterical. I even thought she might have a gun. She once ran over an old boyfriend but the jury decided it was a legitimate gripe. I’m through with messy relationships. The woman who chased her out turned out to be almost as bad. Manic dieter. Doesn’t work, affairs with unstable women. Just levelheaded from now on — scholars, professional women, and minimum age of twenty-five. I know I was occasionally drawn to the unpredictable erratic type because there was no chance of anything stable and sane developing with them. But you didn’t come here for a barrage of self-analysis from me. Though you’re the kind I need: peaceful, sensible, doesn’t willfully throw up good food. To you I can also say I shouldn’t be a satyr too. I can say it without your thinking I’m too egotistical, which I know I am. Unstable too, but I’m improving in both categories. I’m in analysis these days, but you probably know that.”

“You, the original anti-analysis man?”

“Dot didn’t tell you? Strange. And she says, my analyst, to be as open as I can when I can and the situation legitimizes it, not when it’s pure self-obsessive talk. So I’m going to tell you something which I hope won’t kill it for us tonight. Drink up.”

I sip.

“More, more — take a big gulp. And probably we should sit on the couch for this one — not the bed yet.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t say it. You might be ready but I might not be to hear it.”

“It’s important you do. I might let this go with someone else — a pickup, if there’s ever another one — or maybe I wouldn’t. I might be less egotistical and unstable than I was — my analyst thinks so — but I don’t know if I’m any more self-sacrificing and well-intentioned, except to someone I respect as much as you.”

“You have crabs.”

“Herpes. Good guess. It’s dormant now, but let’s not chance it flaring up overnight. If we use a condom it’s impossible for you to get it. And before, you said—”

“Hold it, hold it, hold it.”

“You don’t like them, or didn’t used to, and how could you? — but unlike some women, you don’t refuse to make love if I put one on.”

“Would you really even think twice about not telling a pickup you have herpes?”

“Yes. No. Wait, let me get your syntax straight. Would I really not? Would I really think twice? Be aboveboard, Peter. Since analysis — it’s actually been since analysis that I got herpes, but not from my analyst. Maybe from Yatsuko.

She swears she doesn’t have it and there’s nothing I can do but believe her, since she’s back in Japan. Doreen perhaps, but I’d never approach her about it because of what it could start. She’d claim she got it from me, if she doesn’t already know she has it. Or even if she doesn’t have it she’d then think she did and say I gave it to her to cripple her. Wasn’t the pickup because she made me wear a condom that night and the few times after. She was afraid that every man she knew, except for her regular boyfriend, had herpes. As for some others — it’s difficult to pinpoint whom and sometimes to locate them again, and what will I gain by it? A lesson’s been learned from my screwing around. And it would be sheer magnanimity on my part to help the woman know she has it, something I don’t feel inclined to being to the person who gave it to me. But if we use a condom—”

“Still too risky. There’s this cesarean business if you get pregnant no matter how many years after—”

“I know about that. I can’t get rid of it. I’ll have to hang around for the rest of my life with it unless some genius comes up with a cure. It’s a pain in the ass.”

“So, since we’re not going to sleep together—”

“We could still fool around. You don’t get herpes through the hand, though I wouldn’t want you to do it with your mouth unless you—”

“I’ll talk to my gynecologist to see what I can do in the future with a carrier. Now I better go,” and I start for the living room.

“Then just sleep over. I’m telling you, you can’t get it unless I stick my dick in you. I’ll wear pajamas. I’ll wear my bathrobe in bed and keep my underpants on or change into a fresh pair.”

“I’m going home. All I’m asking from you now is to help me get a cab.”

“Damn. Fuck it! Piss! Oh hell, I’ll drive you home.”

“You have a good parking spot. Is it good for tomorrow?”

“I think so.”

“Don’t lose it. Just put me in a cab.”

“And if I hadn’t told you I had herpes?”

“And if you hadn’t?”

“I would have felt lousy. Worse. Suicidal to the point of kicking myself. Okay, get dressed. But take all the books I gave you. My one condition, or no cab.”

I change in the bathroom. He has his coat on when I come out and is holding my coat and bag and a shopping bag with the books in it.

“My umbrella!” I say. “I left it at the reception.”

“Want to phone them from here?”

“No, and I’m sure I’ll never get it back.” I look inside the shopping bag. “Looks like more books than before.”

“It was supposed to be a surprise when you got home. I found some other Japanese books — beauties, one only on cats in Japanese art. Nobody loves cats more than you and maybe no people but the Chinese painted them better than the Japanese. You even have two Siamese. Sammy and Sue. How are they? I miss them. Getting off your couch with my pants plastered with their hair. Fish. I remember those long white sausages of slightly digested fish I’d step in early in the morning on my way to your john. And your temperament is practically Japanese. Soft — I’m talking about stereotypically Japanese — and your voice mostly softspoken and your attitude so polite and deferential in company, so it’s perfect these gifts.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying about me, but you win.”

I have my coat on and he hands me the two bags. “My apologies, Helene. It’s been a bad night for us and my library but not Japan. You might even think of changing fields after several close thumb-throughs of these books, so maybe also a bad night for American literature but Japan’s gain.”

“You never know. But there are plenty of things Japanese I’ve always liked. Music, food — movies, other than for the ones where dogs walk around with human hands in their mouths.”

“With Yatsuko — talking about food — I never walked out of those restaurants the way most people say they have — hungry. She ate sparingly. I used to have my plateful and then half of hers. But one last time.” Before I can stop him he has his arms around me and is kissing my neck, working his way up diagonally to the jaw. I try to squirm free, bag of books drops to the floor. “What are you doing? You can’t get herpes from kissing or hugging either, unless I’ve sores on my lips or open wounds on my fingertips which I’ve kissed with my herpes-infested lips. But I don’t. Just on my dick.”

“God, was coming up here ever the mistake. What’s next on your list, rape? Get off me?”

“After I leave you downstairs,” letting me go, “I’m going to whack off. Put vaseline on it, which I do only in extreme cases when I need a walloping release,” and he grabs his penis through the pants, “and jerk the thing till it hurts,” and demonstrates.

“Why do you have to elaborate so much? Don’t answer.”

“I don’t have to elaborate. I do have to answer. I’m disappointed, so I’m trying to be nasty as shit to you, which includes being graphic. But in the end, to myself, well—”

“Let’s go.” I unlock the door and leave.

“Don’t forget the bag of Japanese.” He gives it to me, “No, it’s too heavy,” takes it back, and we wait for the elevator, standing several feet apart, and take it down, two of us against opposite walls watching the floor numbers light up. I say goodnight to Russell, who says “Don’t be a stranger.” Peter whistles for a cab and says “You have enough money?”

“You don’t think it’s a little late to whistle so loudly for a cab?”

“Don’t worry, they’re my neighbors. And listen, Helene. Maybe in a few weeks—”

“Got ya.”

“Lunch I’m talking about. Only lunch. It’s clear to me now that anything but that would never work.”

“We’ll see.” He opens the door, leans forward to kiss my cheek and I pull back my head. “As I said, let me check with my doctor first to see if it’s safe,” and I get in the cab.

He puts the bag of books on my lap. “You cunt.”

“Bull. You brought it on and have always brought it on and will continue to bring it on yourself,” and I slam the door.

“What?” he says through the window, and raps on it. “I didn’t quite hear that. What, you cunt?”

The cabby’s laughing.

“Don’t you laugh, you moron,” Peter yells, and slams the cab roof with his hand.

“Hey,” the cabby says. “Hey! Hey!”

“Hundred-tenth off Riverside,” I say, “and don’t get out, don’t fight — please.”

“Okay,” and he drives away.

“I’m sorry about what happened back there. Any damage done to your cab, not that much could have been—”

“Is nothing. Not my cab. Forget, forget,” still angry.

He has an accent, kind of a high Russian voice, I look at his hack license: Jascha Papinsky. “Vy—excuse me—vy Russki, da?”

“Da,” smiling, “you speak?”

“Just those few words I learned at a party tonight, which I think are the same few words I learned at this same person’s party last year. There were a number of novy Amerikanets there. You the same? New?”

“No understand.”

“The Soviet Union. Have you recently come from there?”

“Novy. Here. Yes. One year. Engineer. Too bad you not speak. I want to speak Russian for hours, but all Russian émigrés in New York is drivers of taxi, no riders. And old Russians many years here no more take taxi or look my name and to me not speak. Ah, my English very bad. A big problem. Adres. Take.”

He drives me to my building. For the whole ride from a tape deck beside him is some slow old jazz which I sit back and listen to and get to like. “Please wait till I’m in my building,” I say, paying him. “And if you could also be so nice. Since this neighborhood sometimes isn’t safe. Wait till I wave to you from inside my building before you go? Understand?”

“Sure thing. Glad to.”

I have my keys out and leave the cab, unlock the lobby door, go in, look around, let the door close, ring for the elevator, and when it comes, look at the convex mirror on its wall to make sure no one’s hiding inside. I wave to the driver, who beeps once, and take the elevator to my floor.

Sammy is speaking to me from behind the door second I step off the elevator. Sue had to be put to sleep because the pain from her terminal cancer was getting too great. I didn’t tell Peter because he knew how close I was to my cats and how close they were to each other and by that time I didn’t want his sympathy, genuine or false. “Okay, Sams, I’m coming — don’t fly out the door.” Elevator closes, so even if he does run past me he can’t get into the elevator, which he did once and it took me a while to find what floor he ended up on. I open the door, he’s scratching the floor that he wants to jump up. I put down the bags, wiggle my fingers for him to come and he stares at my stomach while he hums and then jumps at the spot he stared at and making squealing sounds runs up my chest till he’s lying across my shoulder, purring, head against my cheek. I walk into the kitchen with him, set him down, he’s finished his food and is pushing the plate with his forehead for more. I open a jar of strained-veal baby food and spoon two globs of it onto his plate, leave the spoon on the plate because he likes to lick it, drink a glass of seltzer, undress, shower, take two aspirins, brush my teeth and floss them and massage the gums with the brush’s rubber tip and get into bed. That’s it with parties for me, at least for a month, even if it is the season. Write that down. I jump out of bed — Sammy, sleeping next to me, gets startled and jumps off the bed and runs out of the room — get my appointment calendar and write on December’s four pages a letter a day with “onth” on the 31st: “No more parties for me at least for a month.” And at the bottom of the last page: “Meet people instead for breakfast or lunch, read for and outline spring term, finish 30pp of the book, just finish the book! try not to even see a man after 5 except maybe new year’s eve, and even there, but who’ll that be? — Oh, no woes if you stay home alone that night and on great wine and black forest ham and poached salmon fillets get high.”

I’m reading a student’s paper on “Postconstructionism and Morphology in the Postmodern American Novel”—I’m sure he has the first term wrong, if he’s not sending up that critical school, and even if he is, the entire department by now, students and teachers both, has to know how I hate those words and themes, even parodies of them, since there’s rarely anything in them for me except material and writing to help put me to sleep when I can’t sleep — when the phone rings. Answering service closed more than two hours ago. I don’t like answering it, as at this hour there’s a good chance it’s a crank. “Yes?”

“Then you got home okay. Good. I was worrying.”

“Who is this?”

“Excuse me, because why should I have thought you’d recognize my voice? Arthur Rosenthal. And excuse me too for calling so late.”

“Thanks for your concern, Arthur, but it’s too late to even talk about it being too late.”

“Now I’m very sorry I called. I didn’t think it’d be that late — late italicized I mean. Because I called only fifteen minutes ago—”

“You couldn’t have. I’ve been home more than half an hour.”

“I did. And a half-hour before that, and a half-hour before that too. Maybe I just missed you the second half-hour ago and you were someplace else the last half-hour — in another room, am I wrong?”

“It’s possible I was in the shower then and didn’t hear it, so all right. Still—”

“Anyway, I certainly called, but that’s not to say I couldn’t have dialed the wrong number and that number didn’t answer. But I don’t often dial the wrong number no matter how late at night. Maybe five hundred to one. I can’t even recall the last time. A year ago — two.”

“But you do often call late at night.”

“No. I only called you to see if you got home okay, and when you didn’t answer, half-hour after that and then this call. When you didn’t answer the first two times I called, I assumed you weren’t home yet and that it’d be safe to call now.”

“Did you ever assume I might not have answered deliberately and that each time you rang you were disturbing me more and more, waking me up each time?”

“I should have assumed that. But it wasn’t what happened, was it? Because you said that a half-hour ago—”

“No, it wasn’t, but still. To me any call after eleven at night and before seven A.M., and maybe even eight, except between very close people — forget the early morning calls, let’s concentrate on the late. But people very close to one another — lovers if you may. And even there the caller should think ‘Do I know, if I know this person is up, if he or she would be disturbed by my rings or is too tired to answer the phone?’—should be for emergencies only — for physical or emotional help or something like that. And after midnight even lovers should hold off their calls unless it’s an extreme personal emergency, between them or very deeply affecting them and where the caller is sure the called lover would at least tolerate the call. I didn’t put that well — and I didn’t mean to exclude calls from immediate family, since my thoughts about those calls are about the same for nonfamily — but it’s one of my rules.”

“You put it well. And I’m sorry I didn’t know your rules, even if I suppose every intelligent person should have the same rule. And no question it was wrong of me to call. Even if I was only concerned about you, and more concerned each time you didn’t answer, which was presumptuous of me. But also because — what the heck; I’ve come this far I might as well say the rest — I didn’t especially like this fellow Peter — may I speak openly?”

“I don’t want to hear about him now. And Peter is or was a friend of mine, so it’s not right, at any time of the day or night, for you to—”

“I disliked him thoroughly. I’ve never seen anyone so caught-up with himself — so, so…who gave the impression of — he’s a born bastard and good-for-naught, that’s what. I was almost afraid for you with him, and that if he were there with you when I called, which would be your own affair, but if someone called he’d know that someone else knew he was there and that if he was planning any harm—”

“You don’t know how wrong you are. You’re going on like this only because of some resentment you must have towards him because of me. But you’re blowing this thing way—”

“I know, but that was my fear. Not out of jealousy. He looked capable of doing anything heinous. I don’t care what kind of sophisticated work he does and how brilliant and dynamic everyone says he is, he’s a goddamn snob and peacock and I bet even a chiseler and heel of the highest order — not a chiseler, I’ve no basis for that — but that’s what I believe. I’ve never believed anything so much and so fast as that without utterly knowing that person or the facts, but you just tell me he’s not. Of course you’ll say he’s not, and why shouldn’t you? That would be the loyal and right thing to do.”

“Please stop about him.”

“Of course. But if you can believe it, except for that I wanted to make sure you got home safe, all that’s not even why I called. I won’t keep you another minute. I only wanted to say that tomorrow’s Saturday, neither of us has to go to work, so how about lunch, say one o’clock at The Library, which is on Broadway and Ninety-second, halfway between your apartment and mine. It’s even less than halfway for you, and no splitting the check. After opening my trap the way I did, I should stand you to two straight lunches and at a place a lot better than The Library, which for what it is is very good of its kind.”

“Thanks, Arthur, but I just made a vow—”

“Is it because of what I said about him? Even if I shouldn’t have said anything, I wasn’t too far off in my assessment of him, was I? Excuse me, but what about your vow? It can be broken for an hour or two, can’t it?”

“You’re not taking me seriously. What I vowed was not to see anyone for an outing for the next month, since what I have to do first is crank away at finishing something and also prepare for the spring term. I’m carrying two lit courses and a composition, which can’t sound arduous to anyone not in university teaching—”

“It does, I know what it is. But the next month you said, which is December. It’s still November. Five whole days left. So you’ve five more days to have lunch with someone, so how about it? Lunch — an hour or less — no more.”

“Tomorrow at one? No, I can’t.”

“Yes you can. I’m sorry, I know how valuable your time is — but an hour, sixty minutes to the dot. And The Balcony, not The Library, which is a five-minute walk for you — you must know where it is. Next door to the Olympia, which is a lot less than less than halfway down and sometimes live chamber music there and always a decent lunch. I’ll even pick you up by cab — you can be waiting downstairs at twelve fifty-five.”

“Don’t pick me up, and can we make it at two? That way I might be able to get some work done, since I know I’ll sleep late tomorrow and maybe even wake up with a slight hangover.”

“What’s sleeping-late for you?”

“Just answer; I have to go.”

“Two it is, you kidding? Anything, even two-fifteen. And I’m glad you got home safe — you did, didn’t you? You’re not going to tell me tomorrow about any of tonight’s hand-to-hand skirmishes and battle wounds?”

“I’m safe. Don’t pry. Goodnight.”

Didn’t want to but how else? Not true, because — Damn, just should have said “Listen to me, it’s not only audacious of you to”—Not “audacious,” but — Oh, no big deal, and he’s looking out for me, isn’t that a laugh? No, it was stupid of me. Should have said “Call me another time, I’m bushed, goodnight,” and hung up. But it’s just lunch, falls in with my new directives, and though nosy and a bit nutty he’s a sweet enough guy and was he ever on-target about Peter. But I’ll establish right off with him — Already have a dozen more friends than I can hardly see even now and then — But come December — Clever — five days left in November — he caught me on that one — guy’s fast. Wait, do I have a luncheon date tomorrow? I look at my appointment book. No, and it’s only tomorrow, so I should be able to remember without writing it down. But I don’t know how groggy I’ll be in the morning or how much drink makes you forget overnight, so I write “Arthur Rosenthal, 2, The Balcony,” in tomorrow’s box. But come December I’m putting the kibosh to any frivolous social-going. Get a special phone-gadget installed so when I press a button it’ll keep the phone from ringing when I’m busy or sleeping and the service is closed. Heard of those.

I pick up the student’s paper. Why not put it off? Because I want to get all of them corrected so I can get to things I really want to do. “Morphology” again means what? It means morphine. It means latrine. I write on the paper with an arrow aimed at the word “Leonard, no more big words for me like this — I’m too lazy to look em up. And what’s with this postdeconunstru—? What about supercacographicexhibitionism? (Did I spel it rite?)” Phone rings. Now he’s blown it. Much too late to call twice the same night even if the last call was ten seconds ago and he was my husband-to-be and most loved lover. Whatever he has to say can hold till the morning and late into it. Stop on your own accord. Doesn’t. Shameless schmuck. I pick up the receiver. “Arthur, this better be good.”

“It isn’t Arthur, and I know it’s extremely late, but it’s Dan from tonight — Daniel Krin — is this Miss Winiker?”

“Who? Oh, I’m not going to pretend — I know who. Are you out of your mind? What could you want when it’s after two?”

“I’m sorry, but the clock, and this is no excuse, I’m looking at says it’s one — few minutes past — but it’s a bank clock, on a seedy street corner, and since I haven’t a watch or another clock to compare it with, it could well be wrong.”

“Whether it’s two or one—”

“You’re right — by all means — please believe I’m not disputing it. And you can’t know how sorry I am to call. Nor how I tried everything under the sun — sun’s hardly the word to use at this hour. Everything under the street light, perhaps, to resolve — and I shouldn’t make light of it — neither of those lights — beforehand the reason why I did call. But I couldn’t and it was an emergency which—”

“What kind of emergency, Mr. Krin? And let’s make this quick. So tell me, what kind? Because at this hour I don’t take emergency calls from people I’ve just met.”

“Please hear me out. You’re just about my last chance on this. The timing of my call’s all wrong but I don’t think the reason I called is. And by ‘last chance’ I meant, to help me out of a bad situation. And for the last fifteen minutes — you’re still there?”

“Make it quick.”

“For the last fifteen, because it was so late — and at the time I thought it was ten to one, so for a Friday not the latest of lates to call but still much too late — I debated with myself and thought ‘No, don’t call, too late, much too, I don’t know her, just met, etcet, spoke fifty words to her, hundred, tops, and maybe a hundred-fifty between us.’ But then, when I didn’t see any alternative, which I’ll get into, and I decided to call, but even then undecidedly, your phone was busy — a few minutes ago. So I thought ‘At least she’s up and at home, so if I call a minute from now and the line’s free, I won’t be waking her.’ Of course you’d be home if you were up.”

“Not necessarily. If someone dials a number the same time that phone’s ringing because someone else dialed it first—”

“That’d produce a busy signal for the person dialing a little behind? Didn’t think of that in relation to this. And ‘dialing a little behind.’ That could be misinterpreted, but please don’t. Should’ve kept it to myself. It was unintentional, but repeating it wasn’t. Though the repeat was just my surprise at my unintentional line, not said to be suggestive. And now I guess whenever I dial someone late — which I don’t normally do; I don’t like getting calls myself after eleven.”

“Same here.”

“Even after ten. I occasionally go to bed early just to get an early start the next day.”

“Between ten and eleven’s all right, even from someone I just met, but never a call around two. Or if your clock’s right and it wasn’t that it stopped—”

“It hasn’t.”

“—then five to ten minutes past one. Never. But where’s my watch? I’m looking at the alarm clock right now — hold on.” I go into the bathroom, get my watch off the shelf under the medicine chest, put one of the pearl ear-studs back into the cockleshell on the shelf from which it must have rolled out of but got stopped by my toothbrush, put the toothbrush back into the wall holder, go back. “Your bank clock runs slow or is still suffering from an outage of an hour and a quarter some time ago, because both my watch and clock says it’s twenty after two. And earlier tonight I set my watch by my clock and then checked my watch against the wall clock at that reception I told you I was going to.”

“If I’d known it was past two I probably still would’ve called you. It’s that important.”

“I can imagine. You want to come up.”

“Not for the reason your tone says. Please, give me a little credit. You see, I’m locked out of my apartment. If I started to tell you the scenes that led up to it — and I’m sorry, by the way, for my calls to your service, which happened way before I got locked out. I was a little drunk then. Now I’m not. I’m stoned sober — stark sober — very stark but what’s—”

“What calls to my service?”

“They didn’t tell you?”

“I didn’t call it.”

“You’re the first person I know of with one who doesn’t call it every three hours. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong in calling it that—”

“I got home after it closed. Even if I got home before that I wouldn’t have called it till tomorrow. I really only need it on school days. I’m a teacher—”

“I know. I spoke to a couple of people about you at the party. Casual. I didn’t probe. Oh, so I probed. I was interested in you after you left — you must have known before you left how interested I was in you. In fact we both spoke about it — our mutual interest — so of course I’d be just as or more interested in you after I left, which caused that brainless yelling to you from the window, for instance, or helped cause it. All the drink I drank at Diana’s didn’t hinder it, not that I’m not responsible for how much and then how I act under it. Nor do I want all this drink talk to downplay the interest I felt without drink before or after the window incident.”

“Less said about that window—”

“Thank you. The very least would be the best, but it’s good it’s out and that you know it’s also not something I normally do. But I was interested so I asked a couple of people, Diana, mostly, ‘Who is she? What does she do?’ Nothing detailed, not personal life—but that has nothing to do with why I called now and my emergency.”

“Excuse me, but since you knew I had a service — and I hope you didn’t insult anyone there. It’s a good service, nice hardworking people work there—”

“I didn’t. I forget what I said but I know, because I was still a little drunk — and I also hardly ever drink that much or get the way I’ll describe — that I must’ve sounded drunk and perhaps unrefined to them the two or three times I called — I hope not. So next time you speak to them I wonder if you could apologize for me. But you were saying?”

“The service is called Lip Sinc, with an I-n-c. Why don’t you look up the number tomorrow and call it to apologize?”

“I will. Lip Sinc. I’ll remember it since I don’t have a pen. Now can I tell you about the spot I’m in and why your reasons for thinking why I want to come up aren’t the ones why I do, or should I just forget it and quietly hang up? And I would very quietly hang up. For I know I’m disturbing you — I just hope I didn’t get you going to sleep.”

“You didn’t. But let’s say your reason is you’ve been locked out. So what’s that got to do with me?”

“Maybe I should say the rest quickly before you hang up or we get cut off, and you won’t, will you? You’ve every reason to, but this was my last dime. I even had to borrow it — or beg for it, really — but I suppose I could always borrow or beg another one. It’s probably not that mortifying to do after the first time, though later it gets, fewer people to borrow or beg from and less inclined they are to stop. So before we do get cut off, and my tried-and-true mental timeclock says we’re long overdue, maybe I could give you my number here and you could call back. It’s kind of a long story why I’m asking to come by and, just for a few hours till daybreak when my landlady gets up and I can get my duplicate keys, sleep on your floor.”

“The answer’s no, naturally, to any coming by tonight. If you just want to tell the story why you think you have to come by, you can’t make it short?”

“I could but not effectively. But I probably couldn’t because — oh shit…excuse me, but my head just then.”

“What, hangover or something like that already?”

“Hurts, from being hit in the head before. On the head. I was. With a phone receiver but one cut off. I don’t mean to be confusing. I wasn’t cut off, on the phone, but the receiver was, from the phone.”

“If it’s that bad, go to a hospital.”

“It’s not. A scratch on top and a bump, and now a little dizziness and pain, which probably accounts for my sporadic disoriented tongue, though I got that out all right with the words I wanted. And I couldn’t begin to tell it — from before — because our five minutes are more than up. And the phone operators who cut in these days to ask for another coin — well, you can’t speak to them as people, you know, since their voices aren’t even recorded anymore, much less real or alive. They’re — they come from some new kind of computerized phonetic machine that creates operator voices or what we’ve been used to, and with the right regional inflections for whatever region, to respond to the multivarious situations they’ve traditionally had to deal with on the phone, though I’m sure the machine’s tinkered with periodically to let new situations in. You want a real live operator’s voice you have to dial Operator, and I heard that soon — ooh, wait. I’m a little lost there — my head again, which might be worse off than I thought. I wish I could sit. And lost you a little there also, I think.”

“Not if I got you right. I’m sure — but you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Anyway, my experience has been that if they don’t get you once your five minutes are up it’s because of some telephonic malfunction and not generosity on the company’s or any operator’s part, and you can talk on that dime long as you like. But do me a favor — get to a hospital immediately for that head?”

“Why? They’ll tell me I’ve a hairline fracture at the most and to go home and rest and that’s what I can’t do now. And let’s not chance the operator coming in. Once one does I won’t have time to give you my number, so please take it now.”

“Why didn’t you call Diana?”

“I did but nobody’s in or answering. And the five other friends in the city I could, who either didn’t answer or his answering machine did. With that one I gave the number of the booth phone I was calling from, but have since moved on. My mother I couldn’t — though I actually could. She’d forgive me for anything, as good mothers do. But I didn’t want to, as she lives alone, would get scared, doesn’t sleep well — only a few hours a day and usually at this hour, and I didn’t want to wake her.”

“No one else? No old women friends, a brother, sister, aunt who sleeps well?”

“Out of town or living out of town or impossible for the women friends.”

“Even so, there’d have to be twenty, fifty people to call before me, and a locksmith.”

“Locksmith I already tried, but I lost my wallet tonight, have no cash at home and I don’t have a check account.”

“Who doesn’t have a check account?”

“I pay three bills a month: rent, utilities and phone, and the last two every other month, so really two a month, average — all with money orders made out from money in my savings account. That way — though here, for the first time, it’s hurt me — I get my interest and also don’t impulsively spend money I don’t have. As for the other tenants in my building — nobody to go to. Either much too frail or old, one’s a dealer, another’s a man who illusorily accuses me of dumping garbage on his car and door, and one woman’s a drunk and, as my junior-high kids used to say, mental. I just don’t know that many people, many people as I know, and some I know I wouldn’t go into their apartments for any reason. And, impulsive as I am on money matters, or at least sticking to a system so as not to be, I was impulsive in calling you, in spite of the time I took to think about calling — what can I say? I, maybe because of the big lump and minor gash, but again, I don’t want to depreciate the main reason by giving neurological excuses, saw myself sleeping, with my head in an old clean rag, bleeding, on your floor. I shouldn’t have but I did, and with my last dime, not that it wouldn’t take another hour or two, which’d get me closer to daybreak and my keys, to borrow or beg another one. But I thought, it being my last dime would help persuade you to let me use your floor. But look, spilt head or not — split — if I’m anything — and that was an interesting slip — I’m—”

“All right, give me your number. Then tell me quickly this time how you hurt your head. A fight?”

“Stopping a robbery. And the number on the phone’s not clear. It’s — shit, who’d want to scratch out the number on a pay phone? Sorry, but it’s demented. Plug up the coin return with gum if you’re desperate to make some pocket money, because then at least the caller’s made his call, if he didn’t get a busy signal or Information. Though if he got Information and Information, after she gives him the number, sees his coin didn’t reach the coin tray, she can hook him into a live operator who can dial the number for him. But don’t, I’m saying, destroy the phone so it can’t be used for emergencies or scratch out the number so no one can call the caller back.”

“Are you telling me there’s no phone number there? Please, Mr. Krin.”

“It’s also my eyes, which is just part of the story, and Daniel or Dan. First my glasses got scratched. That was nobody’s fault but mine. But then, along with my head before and my wallet and keys going with my coat in addition to my valuable notebook, though only to me, is the only copy I own and perhaps in the whole country of one of the books of poems I’m to select from and translate to put into one big book of this particular poet’s selected collected — collected selected poems.”

“Who?”

“Jun Hasenai. Around my age. But you probably haven’t heard of him.”

“I suppose I should have, but I hate when people say that about writers I’ve mentioned and they haven’t heard of. I can’t read or hear about everyone.”

“No reason you should. He’s unknown here — few poems I’ve managed to place in little mags over the years — but pretty well known in several Eastern European countries. He’s major, style to get excited by, sensibility and themes to move and brood over and possibly transmogrify. I talk like a jacket blurb sometimes, but I really admire the guy’s work. I also like it that he’s lived fully but not maneuveringly and to keep his modest family life surviving he writes essays that are, well, eloquent and inciting and I eventually want to translate too, and translates Spanish and Portuguese novels and poetry and teaches Western literature in a high school for the physically handicapped and deformed. He’s a mensch and can be translated — he doesn’t only come across in Japanese. I just hope when I call him for another copy of the book, if one isn’t in a library I don’t know about here, he doesn’t think I’m a terrific bungler and assign his work to someone else.”

“I’m sure he won’t — not after the work you’ve no doubt put in and the feeling you have for it. But why not call his publisher for a copy rather than him?”

“Of course — thanks — I just hope it doesn’t get back to him.”

“Then have someone else call and give his or her address. But you shouldn’t be so worried. You have a book contract for it?”

“No, they all want to see the whole work first, intro also.”

“I’ll still look for your book when it comes out.”

“His book, but I shouldn’t minimize my own part that much. Sounds fake and is, since it’s not what I feel at all. But the glasses — what’s that?”

“Sammy my cat. Just jumped into my lap. He likes to speak on the phone.”

“Sounds like a baby crying. Siamese?”

“Yes. I’ll get him away. No, say something else, Sammy — show him you’re no kid; he’s twelve.” Sammy says nothing. “Never talks when I ask him to. Gurgles, sometimes moans or hums. Okay, Sammy,” and I put him on the bed, where he rolls over on his back, stretches, wants to be petted. “What about the glasses?” rubbing Sammy’s stomach.

“My eyeglasses. Got scratched, so I couldn’t use them anymore along with everything else going — wallet, keys, etcetera. Good thing I wasn’t also schlepping my one and only typewriter tonight or—”

“If they got your keys and wallet—”

“Only one man did and he wasn’t connected to the two who clubbed me, or receivered me, since that’s what it should be called. While one man held my arms back the other hit me with a receiver that had been cut from a pay phone. But the man who stole my coat with most of those things in it was just standing there — I thought another innocent observer who was going to watch me get receivered to death — after I’d stepped in to help this newsguy in his stand who was being roughed up and robbed.”

“Still, aren’t you afraid he’s not right this moment unlocking your door? He has your address and keys.”

“That’s what I told the policemen. They said to get a locksmith, but the phone numbers of all-night locksmiths they gave me and some others in the phonebook either didn’t answer or were answering machines or the two who did answer said they’d only open my door if I paid them cash on the line.”

“Then you shouldn’t have told the second one you had no cash till he opened it.”

“He might’ve got mad. You can’t get away with something like that in this city at one or two in the morning, and you ever see the tools locksmiths have? I’ve nothing to steal anyway except an old manual typewriter, twenty-dollar radio, lots of classical records with no player, and those other books of Hasenai’s and what I’ve already translated of them, which he’d never take or any of his pals would if he gave them my keys.”

“They won’t know you’ve nothing to steal till they get there. Then they’ll turn over your apartment looking for what you don’t have or they think you’re hiding and all the translations you’ve done could be destroyed.”

“I doubt anyone will come. Why wouldn’t they also think I got in with a spare key someplace and then bolted the door or had the money to have the lock changed tonight? And the guy who grabbed my coat off the sidewalk, where I threw it to defend myself more easily, was an elderly derelict and saw how furiously I defended myself once I got receivered on the head, so I’m sure he’ll be happy with just the coat and the wallet he didn’t expect to be in it.”

“After all you’ve gone through tonight, or say you did—”

“I did. If you saw me you’d know.”

“You’re a mess?”

“Worse. But nothing spilling out or that hasn’t dried by now, so I’ll live if I can find a place to bunk down.”

“I’m sure you will. But the police. They can’t take the door off for you or the lock?”

“The lock cylinder and they couldn’t because all the proof I had on me that I lived there was in the wallet. And to get the proof I have inside that I lived there, I needed proof on me that I lived inside.”

“Then this. You can’t expect me to do more. I’ll loan you enough cash to pay a locksmith to open the door.”

“Too late for that now, but thanks. Because ‘all-night’ doesn’t mean all night for them or to the two who answered.”

“I’ll make other calls for you. Meanwhile, you should start getting up here. I’ll find one, but you can’t just stay on the street.”

“Excuse me,” the operator says, “please deposit ten cents—”

“Miss, Miss,” I say, but she keeps talking and then begins repeating the message. “Give me your number there, Dan, quick.”

“Three-two-six, or eight — got that?” he says over the recorded voice. “One-zero, eight or nine I think it is — yes, eight or nine, and then eight. Thirty-two, six or eight, ten eight or nine. And then eight.”

“Give it again. I think I have it but—”

We’re cut off.

“326(8) 108(9)8,” I wrote on Leonard’s title page. I pick up the receiver, put it down. It’s too crazy. And he’s got to be lying. Head, phone, locksmiths, newsguy, coat snatcher, numbers scratched out, one and only book and so on, and I drop the manuscript and pen on the floor and shut the light, hoping he won’t call back. He does, I’ll say “No, goodnight,” hang up, pull the plug out of the jack and go to sleep.

But I can’t leave him waiting. It’s raw out, or sort of, or was, and if it wasn’t all a story he gave just to come up here…I turn on the light, go into the living room, see out the window it’s not raining but is very windy, tree branches and some trees — not just the leaves — swaying, thermometer reads 45, but could be ten degrees warmer where he is since I’m sure he’s not on the river, and get his book out of the shopping bag. All this fast. Looking for some sign he’s real and no fake. He’s the one who said he could be but didn’t want to and that’s the time I really start believing someone’s one, but doesn’t always have to be so. Jacket photo’s real enough. No pose, eyes caught in the act of wanting to avoid the camera. Fine, but if he was faking it, then again trying to present himself as he wasn’t. But photo was at least four years ago. His actions at the party. Seemed real and honest enough. He was attracted to me, came over — all right, at the last moment, but could mean he was shy but could overcome that shyness if he thought the person he was attracted to was about to leave, or that he’s not so shy but wanted to give the impression he was because a shy person was what he thought I’d be attracted to. Could also mean other things, but don’t forget my actions to him. I was attracted too. He knew that. Only man I was like that to at this and maybe my last five parties. I was looking at him on and off for half an hour before he stopped me at the door, caught him looking at me several times, hoped he’d come over and then gave up he would. Right before I left I thought I’d ask Diana about him in a few days and if she said he was available and all right, maybe try to get her to encourage him to call me. I also thought of going over to him and saying “Odd as this familiar approach must sound coming to you from a woman, or maybe I’m a bit out of date and don’t know what approaches women have raised themselves to make to men today, but you look familiar — do we know one another from some place?” But I find that hard to do to a man even when I do know him from some place. But fast, he’s out there, waiting, it’s got to be cold, might start to rain, so what’s it to be, call or not? Maybe he intuited I wouldn’t call back and has left. Thinking right now, block or two from where he called: “Knew it would never work; clever girl, can’t be conned.” But if his story’s real? “Stinking bitch, knows my head’s aching, maybe bleeding, I’ve no money, and in this freaking weather? Least she could have done was call to say she didn’t want to keep me waiting out here and she’s turning in.” Fool, go to a hospital if your head’s really bashed, but if your story was bunk, then bad try and goddamn gall, calling so late.

I open the book to his introduction. “…But no matter what I say about these stories, some readers are still going to think, ‘Of course you’re saying that, praising the work up and down, it’s in your interest to, being the translator/introducer/anthologist, so what else could you say: “The stories stink, the writers are no good, this was the best short fiction, bad as it is, I could find written in Japanese in the last thirty years”? Because not only do you stand to gain financially from it, you’ll in all probability land a good teaching job or be elevated in the one you have, if you’re up for renewed contract or tenure and your department chairman or the school’s ad hoc committee thinks you need one more book.’ But not so. If this book nets me $1000 for the year’s work I put into it, I’ll feel lucky. As for a university position? Sure, I’d love one, as long as I didn’t have to teach bonehead Japanese four times a week, but I don’t expect to get one from this or a half-dozen books like it. No, I translated and put together this anthology because, and please don’t think I’m trying to hoodwink you into buying or reading or thinking more seriously about either of those by first coming on in such a strong nonintroductory way and then compiling a list of negative rhetorical reasons why I might have anthologized this…” No, call. Only decent thing. If only to say I’m sleepy and have nothing more to say and I’m very sorry what happened to him tonight and concerned for his head and because of the wound his future well-being, but I barely know him — I don’t know him — and there have to be several other people he hasn’t thought to call who could help him, even if he has no more dimes, which really, isn’t my responsibility, but if he wants to call me some other day at a much earlier time, fine.

I go into the bedroom and pick up Leonard’s paper and dial the number without the numbers in parentheses. Phone rings seven times and I’m about to hang up, thinking “Great, one down, few more to go and maybe the most likely one down also, though if he did leave, after waiting for my call, he has a right to be ticked off,” when the receiver’s picked up and a man says “For godsake’s what?”

“Daniel Krin?”

“You want to speak to someone, on this floor, now?”

“Is this a public pay phone?”

“Yes. In a public hallway. You didn’t know when you called?”

“Is this three-two-six, ten eighty-eight?”

“It’s a senior citizen home, lady; you almost now made me break a leg answering this. I thought it was an emergency the way you rang.”

“I’m very sorry. Someone gave me this number for a Daniel Krin.”

“Maybe on another floor. Because I know all the first and last names on this one and Daniel and Krin aren’t it. This is the fifth.”

“Really, sir, I’m sorry for waking you up—”

“You didn’t. I was out walking; I couldn’t sleep.”

“I’m still sorry, but please answer me so I won’t have to call back and possibly disturb you again: is this three-two-six, ten eighty-eight?”

“I’ll say this much to you. You call that number again and I’m not in as good a position to answer it then, you’ll wake up everyone but the deaf and almost dead ones on this floor. The walls and doors are that thin, even if they were supposed to be built as, catch this, self-contained soundproof apartment like units. I know because I was one of the original tenants to move in to this papier-mâché house, but you can be sure the owners never thought I’d live this long to tell it.”

“Thank you. Goodnight and sleep well,” and I hang up.

I write on Leonard’s page, under the original phone number: “326-1098, 328-1098, 328-1088.” Only four? Thought there’d be more. I write all four numbers this time, original one first, which I cross out. Only four. Which should I dial next? Start with the second and if no answer or the wrong number, go down one more. I dial. Phone’s picked up on the first ring.

“Helene Winiker?”

“Hi. What took me so long was I dialed two of the other possible numbers—”

“Which one it turn out to be?”

“Twenty-six, ten ninety-eight.”

“That would’ve been the second number I called. But everyone’s got his own system. Yours next time might work on the first shot while mine would hit it on the fourth. Not that I’m complaining, now that you’re here.”

“The first number was always busy.”

“Then I would’ve gone right to the next one — and this is also no complaint — because the busy number never would’ve been mine.”

“I thought you might have found another dime in your pocket or borrowed one and were calling me or someone else. Anyway, I called the second number, but it didn’t answer, so I thought the second one not answering might be because you stepped away from the phone. So I called the busy one again and when it was still busy, called the one I thought you might have stepped away from—”

“Why would I have? I was waiting for your call.”

“I thought for something; I didn’t know for what. Hot coffee because you were cold.”

“I have no money.”

“I forgot. And it shouldn’t be me apologizing. Not you either—maybe—if you’re really in a hole. But still, when someone you don’t know calls you at two o’clock—”

“I know. I apologize. I didn’t mean to have you explain — I thought I was doing my best not to—”

“Anyway, the person who didn’t answer the first time, now answered, so I was right calling that number back. But he kept talking. It was a nursing home and I’d waked him and now he wouldn’t let me go, nor would he tell me if you were at this place — in the lobby, not in one of the living units upstairs — so that’s what also kept me so long. He was such a sad old man that I didn’t have the heart to hang up on him.”

“You were right. And I shouldn’t expect anything and I didn’t, but do appreciate that you called back. And you mentioned something about my being cold? Here comes my next big pitch for sympathy.”

“You are cold.”

“I’m freezing my life off out here, or the last two-fifths of it. It’s an enclosed booth, thank God — a relic of a distant civilization that still works, which won’t stop it from being torn out and made obsolete and maybe with me in it — but it’s still very cold. It’d be very very if the policemen hadn’t given me an old sweater they kept a few of in their car for such occasions. If it were up to me — if there were no disturbed souls out here — but I shouldn’t go on so holier-than-sanctimonious-thou about it. I won’t.”

“No — what about the disturbed souls?”

“If there were none out here, or homeless, myself excluded, I’d heat them — all these booths. Even if there are these people here — hell, let a disturbed homeless man sleep standing up or huddled on the floor of one, and even provided with a night’s food rations and a tissue packet with a space blanket in it and a Wash and Dry for an extra bit of cleanness and warmth.”

“And the vandals? All you need is to make those booths more inviting than they are. Not that I don’t sympathize with what you say, half serious as it was, and that we couldn’t talk seriously about how there should always be free homes for the homeless and food for the foodless and so forth. But let’s not. You’re cold and keyless and I’m exhausted and maybe to you heartless. But why didn’t you go inside to make your calls, if any places are open now?”

“Some are but I didn’t think they’d appreciate my receiving calls there if I had to — especially when I was so unkempt and wasn’t even buying a coffee from them. And the subway station here — Twenty-third and Sixth — you have to pay the fare to get to the coin phone on the platform, the token-booth clerk said. So I chose, over jumping the turnstile or walking back to Fourteenth Street or going to one of the other Twenty-third Street stations to see if there was a nonplatform phone there or to Penn Station where I know there are plenty, this outside phone on a well-lit though I think fairly dangerous corner, but in an enclosed booth. You see, I also lost my heavy sweater—”

“Wait — back up a bit. Also a sweater? What else?”

“My raincoat in the fight. And an umbrella in the wind in Washington Square Park, right after I left Diana’s. The umbrella couldn’t keep out the cold now, but it would have the rain before which, dry on me now, for a couple of hours kept me chilled.”

“I forgot about the raincoat. Shows how tired I am. But go on. You’re cold, so I shouldn’t interrupt further.”

“I left it on Diana’s hallway rack, the sweater, when I left the park drunk. The party, but I also left the park drunk. But maybe all the alcohol I drank at the party is now keeping me warmer than I’d normally be without it, though without it I wouldn’t have forgotten my sweater or gone into the park and lost the umbrella. Or even gone up to you at the party — no, I hadn’t had much to drink at that time nor when I yelled to you from the unmentionable. It was only after, though I certainly wouldn’t have called your answering service without the alcohol, because by then I was loaded. But the alcohol had nothing to do with my losing the raincoat and its contents. By that time I was sober.”

“About the alcohol, by the way, I heard differently.”

“About me?”

“Alcohol and the cold. That when you think it’s warming you, it’s really doing the opposite, but let’s not waste any more time. If you come to my building — the vestibule, which you don’t need a key to get into — I’ll have the money in a special spot above the bellboard, plus some change and the name of a locksmith I’ve managed to find who will be expecting your call. Forty dollars should be enough. If I can’t find a locksmith, use the money for a hotel. I’ll add another ten for a cab ride here, and at this hour a cab’s all you should take. That’s about all the cash I have on me, which you can pay back when—”

“Listen, I’m not making this up and I appreciate to the utter utmost everything you’ve offered, but a locksmith you’re not going to find. And the way I look — they’re just scratches on my face and head, bumps you can’t see under the hair, some dried blood, torn-to-expunged for clothing — no semi-decent hotel would let me in. And anything less than semi-decent I don’t feel I can take going to tonight, nor waiting till morning with a bunch of madmen and bums in the waiting room at Penn Station or Grand Central. The train cops don’t even let you do that anymore from midnight to seven. Incidentally, you mark which number you got me at? I already forgot it.”

“I know which one. And I called you, so we can’t be cut off.”

“You’re right. My head. Suddenly thought before was now. Not that. After? But — and I’m not talking like this or pretending to be confused for the sake—”

“Enough. Just come here. Money will be in a letter envelope in a metal well in the wall behind the bellboard. Reach up and finger around and you’ll find it. Do what you want with the money and I don’t care when you pay it back, but sometime would be nice.”

“Please, all I want’s a floor. I’m safe. I’m good-natured. I’m very clean other than what came out of me or got stuck on me from tonight’s knockdown. I’ll only ask to wash up, maybe have something warm to drink — hot water, even, with a lemon slice in it if you got — and several aspirins and dabs of iodine. Nothing if you don’t want or have and no washup if that’s what you want also, and a blanket or coat over me on the floor and a towel or coat underneath me if it’s just wood there with no carpet or rug, and that’ll be it. Or just the bare floor and no body cover or anything under, and I promise, my word against anything, you’ll never meet anyone more peaceful and quiet when I get there. Sure, maybe by now Diana’s home or someone else from before, though we’ve been talking so long that it’s probably really too late or too early to call anyone now. Even if it weren’t, I don’t have the energy and maybe not the memory nor another dime to make another call.”

“Okay. How would you get here if you came and stayed on the couch or floor?”

“No couch. The floor.”

“How would you? Cab?”

“I can’t walk it. But I don’t want you going downstairs alone or in any way to put you through anything more. I’ll try to borrow the subway fare or jump over the turnstile.”

“Don’t jump over anything. You’ll get caught and then you’ll be calling me to come to the police station to bail you out. Are you sufficiently presentable where a cab would — oh, this is silly.”

“No it’s not. I’ll do what you say. A cab. I’ll spruce myself up enough so one will take me. Could you leave ten dollars in that envelope behind the bells? Or maybe, so you don’t have to come downstairs alone, wait till I ring your bell.”

“I’ll leave it behind the bellboard now. Ten dollars — one five and five singles — I know I have those — so you won’t have to call me from downstairs for change or for more. But remember, I don’t know you, but we’ve mutual friends and you’re cultured and a scholar—”

“Scholar? Not me.”

“I have your Japanese story anthology, or one of them, and it lists—”

“How’d you get that prize? You weren’t one of the approved three hundred something people and libraries who were licensed to buy it? — that would be too much.”

“However I got it, I’m doing you a favor beyond the call of mutual friendship and professional fellowship and at an hour way beyond my deliberative decision-making and common sense time, so you will be on your best behavior?”

“The absolute best, bar none, of that I double-swear.”

“You have the address?”

“From the phonebook.”

“Then at this hour, despite how you might look, cabbies will have to see something of the noncombatant on your face and they go hurting for fares, so I should expect to see you in about thirty minutes — try not to make it later. I’m dead to the world.”

“Thanks. Thanks. Thanks.”

“Please get on with it then. Apartment 9B. Just ring it and I’ll buzz you in,” and I hang up.