Nobody Knew They Were There

Saturday, October 26

I cannot visit the bridge again because my follower is constantly behind me, a black shadow stalking me across the university streets. I ask the desk clerk where the good skiing is, and he tells me it’s twenty-five miles north of the town, on Route 17. The area is called Snowclad, and it is mostly intermediate skiing, he says, though there are a few good expert trails.

“Are you a good skier?” he wants to know.

“I used to ski a lot,” I tell him.

“Gave it up, or what?”

“Gave it up,” I say.

The clerk at the car rental place knows me by name now. He inquires after my health and the state of my business, and then signs out a snow-tired Mustang to me. He also gives me a local map, and marks the route to Snowclad on it. He tells me that I can rent equipment there, and then asks if this is my first time skiing. I tell him essentially what I had told the desk clerk. Through the plate glass window, I can see my follower waiting outside, clearly perplexed. Is it possible he does not own a car? For a moment, I consider driving out to the bridge again. There is much work to be done, and time is short. But I realize I cannot take that chance. I head north out of town, constantly checking the rearview mirror. I honestly do not know whether I am still being followed or not. My son Adam used to dress very casually for skiing. Unlike David, who at that time fancied racing pants and hard helmets, Adam wore dungarees and sweater, a shaggy old raccoon coat he bought on Third Avenue, no hat. I am dressed somewhat the way Adam used to dress. I am wearing a pair of old gray flannels and a woolen sports shirt and a bulky crew-neck sweater. Over that, because I did not think to bring a ski parka with me (one rarely brings a ski parka with him when he is going West to commit murder), I wear my sports jacket It is colder at Snowclad than it was in town, a good ten degrees colder. I am not wearing thermal underwear, and my gloves are the thin leather ones I usually wear with my brown overcoat It occurs to me that I am about to freeze my ass off.

The man in the rental shop fits me out with Head skis and buckle boots. I nag him about the bindings. He keeps telling me if he makes them any looser, I will fall out of the skis executing the simplest turn. But I am not here to break a leg, and I do not intend to do any hard skiing today. I insist on a setting that will guarantee release under the slightest pressure, and he reluctantly makes the adjustments. In the ski shop, I buy a pair of leather mittens with woolen liners. I am still very cold, but now at least my hands will be warm. (If your hands are warm, Sammy,” my mother used to say, “you’ll be warm all over.”)

He was, my son Adam, a tall handsome boy with flashing blue eyes and the blackest hair. I took him skiing for the first time when he was six years old, up to Stowe in Vermont. By the time he was eight, he was skiing the top of Mansfield and coming down trails like the International, and the Nose Dive with its famous Seven Turns, the names of which alone struck terror into my heart

I think of him a great deal that afternoon at Snowclad. Alone on the double chair, I think of Adam. Coming down the gentlest trails, giant spruces sliding past, I ski effortlessly and think of Adam. The last time I really talked to my oldest son was two years ago come Christmas, shortly after the election. We had gone to Sugarbush for the holidays and he told me in the frost-rimed gondola as we approached the fairy-tale summit of the mountain that he had dropped out of school. And we talked. And our breaths pluming from our mouths added to the accumulated rime on the gondola’s plastic dome, layer after layer of words crusting on the plastic. It was the last time we talked together. In January, he went back to Washington, D.C., where he shared an apartment with two other boys and a girl named Felice. I shall always love that girl’s name, Felice, though I never met her and never will.

He is dead, my son Adam.

I am here because he is dead.

The ticket seller at the railroad depot seems not at all suspicious of me. I have come here because I am fairly certain now that my follower is not with me. I tell the ticket seller that I am thinking of catching the train east, but that I’m worried about all that snow on the tracks.

“What snow on the tracks?” he asks. “We get them tracks cleared the minute there’s any snow. You didn’t see no snow on the tracks.”

“I thought I saw some.”

“Where? You saw snow? Where’d you see snow?”

“Out by the railroad bridge.”

“Over Henderson Gap?”

“That’s right.”

“No snow on that bridge, nossir. Clear those tracks first thing. Clear all the tracks first thing. Got this special locomotive comes through to clear the tracks. You didn’t see no snow on that bridge, mister. Nossir.”

“I thought if there was snow, it might delay the train. Be better off taking a plane, in that case.”

“Well, you want to take an airplane, that’s your business. But I can tell you right now we don’t get no trains delayed by snow.”

“But there could be a delay if there was snow on the tracks, isn’t that right?”

“Sure, but there ain’t never no snow on the tracks.”

“How long does it take a train to get from that bridge, anyway?”

“Which bridge? The one over the Gap?”

“That’s right”

“Thirty-two minutes from the eastern signal light to the station here.”

“But that’s only when there’s no snow on the tracks.”

“I'm telling you there’s no need to worry about snow on the goddamn tracks. Thirty-two minutes, rain or shine, that’s it You want a ticket, or don’t you?”

“No, I think I'll take an airplane.”

“Suit yourself,” he says.

I return the automobile, and then walk slowly back toward the hotel. I am bone weary from my day on the slopes, and cold besides. But I now know that the California train will be crossing the bridge at precisely 10:48 on November second, thirty-two minutes before it reaches the depot. The knowledge is reassuring. It gives me an exact time, it pinpoints the event, defines it, gives it reality and dimension. I cannot yet visualize myself depressing a plunger or lighting a fuse, those acts are yet beyond my ken. But I can visualize the eastbound express rattling across that bridge, and I can conjure a sudden explosion that sends cars hurtling to the ravine below, toppling in slow motion, car after car in endless succession. I walk slowly through the town. I am growing fond of this place. With my own death a distinct possibility, it is as though I have lived here all my life and am now idly passing my waning days in a familiar place. I think fleetingly of Sara. The streets are covered with yesterday’s snow. The bell tower begins tolling again. It is only five o’clock, but the tolling seems incessant. I quicken my pace. It is very cold, and I have begun to shiver.

In my room, I am reading the newspaper without enthusiasm when the telephone rings. I pick up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Sachs?”

“Yes?”

“This is Seth Wilson.”

“Hello, Seth.”

“Do you remember me? Sara’s friend?”

“I remember you.”

“The spade writer,” he says.

I make no comment.

“How are you, Mr. Sachs?”

“Fine, thank you. What’s on your mind, Seth?” My manner is brusque and abrupt. I am still halfway convinced that he is in league with my follower — or is that only because they are both black? The question raises some interesting possibilities for internal dialogues, but I am too busy wondering why Seth is calling me now. Is it to check on whether or not I’m in? So that his partner can come over to shake the place down again? But if he’d wanted to search the room, he’d had ample opportunity to do so this afternoon while I was at Snowclad. I wait for Seth’s explanation. My attention is momentarily caught by a news item on page seven of the paper. It is the first good news I have read all day.

“Mr. Sachs,” Seth says, “I’m having a little get-together at my place tonight, and I was wondering if you’d like to join us. Just some of the kids, and some faculty people, it should be fun.” He pauses. “I thought you might like to stop by.” He pauses again. “Sara’s coming,” he says.

“I see.”

“In fact, it was she who suggested I give you a call, ask if you’d like to come.”

“I see.”

“So I’m asking,” he says. There is a definite shrug in his voice. “Do you think you can make it?”

“Maybe. What time will it be?”

“Oh, nine o’clock or thereabouts. Or whenever you want to come over. People’ll be dropping in and out all night long.”

“What’s the address?”

“720 North Harrington. It’s about seven blocks from your hotel. Nice brisk little walk.”

“I’ll try to get there.”

“It’s B.Y.O., Mr. Sachs.”

“Okay.”

“Well then, I hope to see you,” he says.

“Right, thank you.”

I hang up, and then look at the newspaper again.

The article appears at first to be only another tired story about the train. It has been labeled “the Peace Train,” the article reiterates, and the avowed purpose of its journey from Los Angeles to New York is “to unite men of good will.” It has occurred to me long before now that the organizers of this hand-shaking, slogan-spouting, cross-country tour have confused their catch phrases somewhat, since the trek is to begin shortly after All Hallows’ Eve rather than Christmas Eve, when the “Silent Night” theme might have been more appropriate. It has also occurred to me that the train itself might have been more accurately, if less cynically, named since the purpose of this jaunt is really to justify the war, rather than to end it

In fact, the contradictions inherent in the journey are manifold. They have claimed to the world that we are unified in our determination, and yet the trip has unification as its goal. They have supposedly convinced the people of the United States that their duly-elected representatives desire only world peace, and yet they now feel it necessary to travel three thousand miles across the nation to sell the idea all over again. There is schizophrenia in the air. They have squashed rebellion but now they fear it festers in the silence where their voices echo. All their tired reassurances cannot disguise the true purpose of this journey: to promote peace, yes, but only peace of mind, to still the doubts as effectively as they have stilled the clamor. Fear is the motivating force here, it can be sensed, it can be sniffed, the fear of embryo tyrants who suspect they may have gone too far, or perhaps not far enough. To disinfect this certain stench emanating from the top and seeping down to where it may once again stir the population into action, they have now made an announcement (and this is the only new and exciting thing about the newspaper article) designed to demonstrate their own sense of security.

The current news item clearly states for the first time that both of them will be on the train, prior commitments notwithstanding. From the beginning, of course, it was apparent that the notion of a whistle-stop train trip was politically archaic, clearly motivated only by a sure sense of showmanship. But they have now added daring to their theatricality. What better vote of self-confidence than to announce that they will both be on the train? No longer will merely one of them face the nation unafraid, oh no. So certain are they of those “men of good will” out there, so positive of unanimous approval that they will risk the trip together. The importance of this tour will take all precedence, they have solemnly announced. In Los Angeles, they will board the train in tandem on the evening of November 1, ride side by side like driver and shotgun on a hundred-percent American stagecoach as it wends its way (amid waving American flags, no doubt) to arrive in New York sometime during — I have forgotten to call Eugene in New York.

I look at my watch. It is almost six o’clock — eight in the East. I place the call to Eugene’s apartment in Manhattan. He tells me that he is on his way out to dinner, in fact has his hat and coat on.

“Is it snowing there?” he asks.

“It snowed yesterday.”

“It’s snowing here now,” he says. “Cold as hell, too.”

“It’s sixteen above here,” I tell him. “Did you reach David?”

“Yes. But not at his apartment.”

“Where then?”

“He’s home. With Abby.” Eugene hesitates. “If you don’t mind my saying so, Sam, that’s where you should be, too.”

“Yes, well, thank you for your advice. What did David say?”

“He’s planning to leave for Denmark with his friend.”

“When?”

“Before the case comes up.”

“Has a date been set for the trial?”

“November fifth.”

“Is his friend definitely jumping bail?”

“Yes.”

“Has he got a passport?”

“He was in Europe last summer with his parents. He’s got a passport”

“Did you try to talk David out of it?”

“I did. But I’m not his father. I think you’d better call him yourself.”

“I don’t want to get into another long conversation with Abby.”

“She’s your wife, you’ve got to talk to her. Do you want your son running all over Europe with a kid who’s wanted by the police?”

“Of course not”

“Then take my advice, Sam…” he begins, and says something else but I cannot hear him clearly because the bells start again at that moment, tolling the hour.

“What did you say?”

“What the hell was that?” Eugene asks.

“The bell tower.”

“Sounds like it’s right in your room.”

“Yeah. What were you saying, Eugene?”

“I was saying take my advice and come home.” He hesitates. “You lost one son, Sam. Don’t lose another.”

I do not answer for a moment “Sam?” he says.

“I’m here.”

“Will you come home?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I lost one son, and I don’t want to lose another.”

“You’re not making sense, Sam.”

“I’m making a lot of sense, Eugene.”

“Will you call Abby?”

“I’m not sure,” I say, and hang up.

It is a much brisker walk than Seth promised, these seven blocks from the hotel to his apartment. The sidewalks have been shoveled clear and spread with ashes in many spots, but the walking is for the most part slippery and treacherous and there is a cruel biting wind that relentlessly attacks the face. I clutch against my chest a brown paper bag containing the fresh bottle of scotch I bought, my other hand in the pocket of my coat, my head ducked, my eyes tearing. I am hoping it will not be this cold on the morning the train arrives. I am beginning to realize that November second is only a week away, and I have not even begun inquiries yet as to how I can get the explosives I will need.

The building is a small two-story clapboard structure with a shoveled path leading to a tiny roofed front porch. A curtainless picture window fills almost the entire front side of the lower story, illuminating the snow-covered front yard and revealing a roomful of people inside. I do not see Sara among them. I am suddenly tempted to go back to the hotel and drink myself into a solitary stupor.

There are leaves on the front porch, huddled in the corners as though protecting themselves from the bitter cold. I search for a bell or a knocker, but there is none. The upper half of the front door consists of a pane of glass set into the wood and curtained from within. I try the knob and the door opens. A narrow flight of steps leads to the second story of the building. The steps are dark and seem as steep as my ravine. To the right of the steps, there is another door. I knock on it, and wait, and then knock again, and then enter.

The first person I see is my follower.

He is wearing blue jeans and boots and a tan shirt with pointed pocket flaps. He is sitting on the piano bench and smiling. A blond girl is sitting beside him, one slender hand on the keyboard of the old upright My follower looks me directly in the eye, but he does not stop smiling. There is music coming from the record player, and the blonde says, “Here, listen, it’s coming up, right here,” her head cocked toward the record player as she strikes a chord, and my follower chuckles and nods, and says, “Yes, indeed, that’s it,” and he does not take his eyes from my face. Seth Wilson appears at my elbow.

“Hello, Mr. Sachs,” he says. “I’m glad you could make it.”

“I brought scotch,” I say stupidly, and exhibit the brown paper bag.

“Oh, that’s fine,” Seth says. “Why don’t you just put it in the kitchen, Mr. Sachs?”

I nod. There are perhaps a dozen people in the room, but I am aware only of my follower. Seth gently takes my elbow and leads me through the doorway into the kitchen.

“Can I take your coat, Mr. Sachs?” he says.

“Yes. Thank you. Yes.”

I put the bottle on the kitchen table. It is crowded with beer bottles, I notice, and I begin to think I’ve committed a social error by bringing hard whiskey. The truth is, being forty-two years old, I am not invited to very many B.Y.O. parties. I take off my coat and hand it to Seth. He moves perhaps three steps to his left, and throws the coat through an open doorway, hopefully onto a bed. There are six or seven people in the small kitchen, most of them young, one of them a man slightly older than I, with a middle-aged paunch and a Chinaman’s beard. He is in deep conversation with a tall brunette in a short red dress and a floppy pink hat. Sara is not in the kitchen. The clock on the wall reads nine-thirty.

“Fix yourself a drink, why don’t you?” Seth says. “Then I’ll introduce you around.”

“Thank you.” I put two ice cubes into a large water glass, and fill it with scotch. I take a deep swallow. Then I take another one. From where I am standing near the kitchen table, I can see into the other room, but not to where the piano is. Seth is watching me. He is wearing the smile he wore the day Sara introduced us. Stupidly, I look at my watch.

“She’ll be here,” he says, “don’t worry.”

He takes me into the other room. There is a momentary silence as we enter, and I feel awkward and uncomfortable, but only until a new record drops into place, and there is music again, the rock-and-roll stuff Adam used to play day and night, the stuff David still plays constantly. The blonde laughs. In a lumpy easy chair near the front window, I see Epstein sitting, still wearing the hounds-tooth jacket and gray slacks he wore at Professor Raines’s house. Seth has my elbow. He is leading me toward the piano. The blonde stops laughing.

“Lucille,” Seth says, “this is Arthur Sachs.”

“Hello, Arthur,” she says. She is perhaps twenty years old. She is wearing a tan suede skirt, and her long legs are sheathed in dark brown tights.

“And this is Davey,” Seth says, and my follower grins and extends his hand to me.

“That’s my son’s name,” I tell him. I have not yet taken his hand.

“Small world,” he says. His hand is still extended. It is a huge black hand with a pinkish palm.

“Small world,” I repeat, and I take his hand, and our eyes meet, and he is still smiling, and I am beginning to think I have made a mistake; perhaps he is not my follower, after all.

“I want another beer,” Lucille says, and rises abruptly. “Do you want a beer, Davey?”

“No, thank you, honey,” he says. We have terminated the handshake, but our eyes are still searching. The girl goes off into the kitchen where someone greets her in a loud voice. Seth goes across the room to talk to a black girl in a turtleneck shirt and faded jeans. Epstein is watching me from his easy chair, his hands folded across his chest. The window, backed by the blackness of the night outside, has become a large reflecting mirror. The room reverberates with voices.

“Why are you following me, Davey?” I ask.

“What’d you say?”

“I said why are you following me?”

“I don’t think I get you.”

“You get me, all right, Davey.”

“Arthur… it is Arthur, isn’t it?”

“It’s Arthur.”

“Arthur, this’s a nice Saturday night party, chance to rap a little with my friends, relax a little after a long hard week, you dig? Now I don’t want any trouble, do you? I hardly know you, man.”

“I don’t want any trouble, Davey.”

“Then don’t make any.”

“I’m going to make plenty if you don’t quit following me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man,” he says, and gets off the piano bench and walks through the crowd to where a studio couch is against the wall near the record player. A bearded young man with his right leg in a cast is sitting on the couch, his leg extended before him, his head back against the cushions as he listens to the music. There are two posters on the wall behind him, one of W. C. Fields peering over a handful of cards, the other of Lyndon Baines Johnson on a motorcycle. Davey sits down beside the boy with the broken leg, and the two immediately strike up an animated conversation. Lucille comes back from the kitchen with a bottle of beer in her hand. She looks around, smiles at me, and then goes to sit with Davey and the boy.

There are oil paintings on the wall, all of them unframed canvases, all of them very bad. A mobile made of pieces of glass wrapped in copper wire dangles from the ceiling near the window. There is a scattering of leaves on the floor, blown or dragged in from the porch outside. A Feiffer cartoon is tacked over the record player. There are books piled on top of the upright piano. A vase of pussy willows is on an end table near the easy chair in which Epstein still sits wearing the gloomy look of a Polish villager awaiting a pogrom. The voices rise in uneasy cadence. The music pierces the conversation like an electric stiletto, it is time to join the party.

Epstein wants to talk only of Paris. He is a dour man, but his pale blue eyes light up when he tells me of a lunch he had at the Pré Catelan, describing in detail each course of the meal, and then going on to tell me what his young lady had been wearing that day, referring to her as The Mademoiselle — The Mademoiselle had on yellow gloves, and she wore topaz earrings that caught the sunshine and held it trapped at each perfectly sculpted earlobe — The Mademoiselle this, The Mademoiselle that, he is something of a poet, this Epstein. Except for his wartime experience, I find it difficult to associate him with our plot. More and more, I am beginning to believe that all of it, not only Sara, is a fantasy. She is not here, is she? The fantasy ended two days ago, and she has not yet rematerialized, broken clouds cannot be reassembled. Epstein is telling me now of the afternoon he fell asleep with The Mademoiselle in the Bois, bees buzzing in the flower bed behind them, and The Mademoiselle’s hair spread on the grass, sunlight dappling her face, a true poet this Epstein. He makes me sad as hell.

I move from him into the kitchen where the man slightly older than I is still chatting with the young brunette in the floppy pink hat. There are seven or eight brown bags of garbage stacked against the wall near the refrigerator, and the man slightly older than I says to Seth Wilson, who has come into the kitchen and is helping himself to some of my scotch, I notice, calls to him where he pours liberally at the oilcloth-covered kitchen table, “Seth, what is this, a hobby or something? Collecting garbage?”

“Been too busy to take it out,” Seth says, and pours more of my scotch into a second glass, and then carries both glasses back into the living room with him.

The girl in the floppy pink hat, in a stage whisper that can be heard in Pittsburgh, says, “Who’s that over there?”

“I haven’t the foggiest notion,” the man says, and approaches me with his hand outstretched. “I'm Victor Koblenz,” he says.

“How do you do?” I answer. “I’m Arthur Sachs.”

“He’s Arthur Sachs,” Koblenz says over his shoulder to the girl, and then strokes his straggly Chinaman’s beard “This is Jean Trench,” he informs me.

“Hello, Jean,” I say.

“Hello, Arthur,” she says, and lifts her glass in greeting.

“Are you with the university?” Koblenz asks.

“No. I sell tractors. And bulldozers. Heavy machinery.”

“How fascinating,” Jean says.

“We move the earth,” I say, and smile.

“I lecture,” Koblenz says.

“On what?”

“On a platform behind a lectern,” Jean says, and smiles.

“That is very comical,” Koblenz says drily, and then goes on to tell me that he lectures on the two most import ant influences of the century, and when I ask him what those two influences might be, he says seriously, “The Beatles and Playboy magazine.”

“Victor is a trifle nuts,” Jean says.

“Victor is totally sane,” Koblenz says, and strokes his beard again. “I am sure if we had been asked to name the most important influences — oh, let us say twenty years ago, as short a time ago as that — we would unhesitatingly have named the three Jews. However…”

“Victor is also a trifle anti-Semitic,” Jean says.

“That’s a pity,” I say, “because it happens I’m Jewish.”

“I am not in the slightest anti-Semitic,” Koblenz says. “Jean is what is known in the trade as a dumb twat. I’m trying to be serious here, Jean.”

“You’re a serious old drag,” Jean says.

“I’m serious and a drag, yes, but I’m not old,” Koblenz answers. “I’m forty-seven. That’s not old”

“That’s ancient,” Jean says.

“Ignore her for the moment,” Koblenz says, and pats her on the behind. “The three Jews — Einstein, Marx, and Freud — would most certainly have been considered the most important influences on our century had it not…”

“I had three other Jews in mind,” Jean says.

“Who?”

“Roth, Bellow, and Malamud.”

“Besides being a dumb twat,” Koblenz says, “Jean is also illiterate.”

“I happen to be an English Literature graduate student,” Jean says.

“Which proves my point,” Koblenz says.

“Are you Jewish?” I ask her.

“I’m Scottish,” she says. “Which reminds me,” she adds, and lifts my scotch bottle to replenish her drink.

“At any rate,” Koblenz says, and goes on to deliver an abbreviated version of his lecture, expounding the theory that Playboy is responsible for the look of the seventies by having openly pioneered nudity in its pages, thereby paving the way for exposure of the female form in films, on the stage, in fashions, and so on. But more than that, it is equally responsible for the morals of the seventies, having convinced its male and female readers alike that fornication is quite all right and in fact sometimes desirable. Forget for the moment that it has also relegated women to the position of mere chattels….

“I am not a mere chattel,” Jean says.

“Not only are you a mere chattel, but you enjoy being one,” Koblenz says.

“Victor is a sadist,” Jean explains.

“If you say that one more time,” Koblenz warns without a trace of a smile, “I’ll beat you senseless.”

Jean shrugs somewhat apologetically. I notice for the first time that there is a faint bruise on her cheek. I look at Koblenz with sudden loathing and barely listen as he goes on about the Beatles who, he maintains, while partially responsible for today’s look—the long hair, the costume-like apparrel — are solely responsible for today’s sound, the very sound emanating from the record player in the other room, which sound has in turn contributed to the entire psychedelic experience and hastened the widespread use of drugs.

“After all,” he tells me seriously while I envision him beating a naked Jean Trench in a student apartment somewhere off campus, “after all, if public figures publicly announce in their music and in their life styles that they are experimenting with mind-blowing drugs, will not their idolatrous fans seek to emulate their postures, hunh?”

“What this party could use,” a voice at my elbow says, “is a little pot,” and I turn to find the black girl in the turtleneck shirt and faded jeans standing at my side and reaching for my bottle of scotch.

“Take this young lady,” Koblenz says, his eyes coveting her. “You’ll notice, for example, that she’s not wearing a brassiere.”

“Can you notice?” the girl says, pouring scotch. “I’m Adele.”

“Hello, Adele,” I say. “I’m Arthur.”

“Of course you can,” Koblenz says. “But ten years ago, this same young lady. how old are you, Adele?”

“Twenty-four,” Adele says. “Cheers,” she says and lifts the glass and drinks.

“A twenty-four-year-old girl would never have dreamt of walking around in such an exposed manner.”

“Sure, we would have.”

“In 1964? Never.”

“Anyway, who’s exposed?” Adele asks. “I’m free, is all.”

“Nobody’s free,” Jean says, and immediately adds, “I still wear a bra.”

“Really, honey?” Adele asks. “How come?”

“I like secrets,” Jean says.

“There are no more secrets in America,” Adele says. “You think there are any secrets, Arthur?”

“A few,” I say.

“Name one.”

“If I name it, it won’t be a secret any more,” I say, and smile.

“You’re too smart for me, Whitey,” Adele says, and goes off to join a group on the other side of the room.

(In the room, the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo. I look up at the clock. Where is Sara?)

In the other room, Seth Wilson tells me there are only six important writers in America, and he goes on to name them. He also tells me he is going to be more important than any of them because, aside from his obvious talent (he was chosen for the writer-in-residence fellowship over six hundred other applicants from all over the country), he had the added advantage of being black and theretofore able to deal with America’s problems as revealed through its polarization into two separate and distinct nations….

“White and black?” I ask.

“No, Immigrant and Wasp,” he says. “Now those are broad generalizations, I know,” he says, “but I think we can safely conclude that there are two Americas side by side today and that one of them is Immigrant America, in which category we can locate black people and young people, and the other is Wasp America, where we can locate the Establishment and all previous immigrant groups that have been assimilated into the culture.” He goes on to tell me that of course these categories can be divided and subdivided, as for example, the long-haired youths and the straights, the militant blacks and the integrationists, the long-arrived immigrant-now-Wasp groups like Italians and Irishmen and Jews and the newly arrived Wasp contenders like Puerto Ricans (“Have you noticed,” he asks in an aside, “that the only men to set foot on the moon so far have been Wasps?”), but that essentially the categories are valid and true, and he is possibly the one talented writer around who can straddle both Americas, being black and young and therefore Immigrant both emotionally and of course by heritage, but being Wasp intellectually and creatively.

“You are also quite modest,” I mention.

He does not laugh. He does not even smile.

The blonde named Lucille tells me she has been playing piano since she was six years old, that she had a strict piano teacher who beat out the cadence on the piano top with a cane she carried because she had suffered polio as a child. She would clutch the piano top with one gnarled hand (she also had arthritis, poor soul) and rap out the tempo with the cane while Lucille, in terror, kept wishing she would fall over and break her neck, thereby adding to her miseries. Lucille confides that her entire life has been a series of severe training episodes. She was, for example, toilet-trained at the age of eight months, which she supposes sets some kind of record, though when anyone makes her laugh hard enough, she still wets her pants.

“I had better not make you laugh,” I say.

“I doubt if you could,” she tells me. “I have no sense of humor.”

“I saw you laughing earlier,” I say. “With Davey.”

“No. Davey was laughing. I was showing him a chord that group uses over and over again.”

“I saw you laughing, too.”

“That wasn’t when I was showing the chord to Davey.”

“I thought it was.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Lucille says. “I have total recall.”

“So have I.”

“One of us is wrong.”

“It must be me,” I say, and go to sit at the piano alone.

I have had this American party scene, I have had it in a hundred different homes on a thousand different occasions (total recall), and there is nothing different about this one. The settings change, the faces change, the costumes change, the ages change, the music changes, but they are all one and the same, and I am bored to tears with each and all. I am amazed only that it is possible for the party to continue with such unabated energy. I can forgive myself — I have always been magnanimous that way — because I am here to do something. But what of the others? Will the party go on and on (with the same stale smoke and canned music and forced laughter and pointless conversations) until one bloody dawn a year from now, two years from now, ten years from now, when all the revelers will stagger out into the streets and ask themselves where they were while it all was happening? We were talking, they will say. We were laughing. We were singing. It was too painful to do otherwise. Anyway, we were only following the historic precedent set by countless nations. We did not know what was going on out here during the night. We were inside where it was warm and protected, and friends gave tolerant respect to opinions earnestly expressed. We laughed a lot. We sang sometimes. We danced and joked and listened and forgot. We did not know what was happening outside here, we did not expect so shattering a dawn, we only wanted to spend a pleasant hour or so together. Sitting before an upright piano whose strings vibrate with the tumultuous sound coming from the record player, I listen, and I watch, a drink in my hand (always a drink in my hand, always and ever the same), the smoke rising, the chatter floating, the music throbbing. I am essentially alone, an outsider, but I wonder — for all my magnanimity — if I can really forgive myself.

I suddenly know why I am here.

To kill a man.

Yes, but I have known that all along.

I ask myself the question again: Why are you here? Drowning in sound, trying in this ocean of sound to find a meaningful straw of dialogue to which I can cling, I hear instead the same endless chatter about Updike and all that crowd, Bernstein and all that crowd, our beloved loyal leader and all that crowd, God help us, and I am here with all my crowd (but not my crowd) and very close to panic, very close to losing complete control and exposing either the plot or myself (Freud and all that crowd) because I can only think I am here to kill a man and the answer does not satisfy me, the answer is as repetitive and as dull as the party that engulfs me.

She throws open the front door as though expecting a surprise.

She is wearing her long black coat and a black woolen hat. She takes off the coat immediately, draping it over the extended leg of the boy in the cast, revealing at once that she is draped in beads, yards and yards of beads that twinkle and gleam over black slacks and black sweater, short strands of beads that bounce between her breasts, longer strands that fall to her waist, still longer ropes that dangle to her knees, beads in every conceivable color and size, some as large as golf balls, some as tiny as tears, she is aglow in a swirl of color and motion, an open glittering treasure chest, a fantasy reborn.

“Thought I’d never make it, eh, Bob?” she says to the boy in the cast.

“Get that damn thing off my leg,” he answers.

“Hello, Arthur,” she says, waggling her fingers at me. She scoops up the coat by its collar, twirling it about her legs like a bullfighter’s cape, the strands of beads flying out and away from her body simultaneously as she executes a neat swing toward the kitchen.

“Where’ve you been, Sara?” Seth calls to her.

“Oh, banking around,” she answers over her shoulder, “just banking around.”

Sara is here.

The party has begun.

I am saved.

She ignores me for the rest of the night.

She dances with every man in the room, and even tries to coax Bob to get up and hobble around with her on his encased leg, but he flatly refuses, shaking his shaggy head, though he is grinning in his beard from ear to ear. She dances smoothly and gracefully, executing steps she undoubtedly learned in her cradle, steps I have never had the courage to try on a dance floor, steps that seem the exclusive property of the young. I am sharply aware all at once of the vast difference in our ages and terrified that she will approach me next and urge me onto the floor. But she does not. She ignores me thoroughly and completely, and I wonder why she asked Seth to invite me, and then wonder whether she really did. She drinks steadily and heavily, but as she once warned me, she does not get drunk. At one point, she asks if we have all seen Seth’s bedroom (I feel a twinge of jealousy, recalling her tale of the night they necked and talked) and then asks us to wait a minute, and then goes out through the kitchen and into the bedroom, and then comes back and says, “All right, everybody, it’s ready now,” and leads two or three of the guests away with her, coming back to stare at me and say, “Don’t you want to come, Arthur?” and holding out her hand to me and pulling me off the piano bench and then taking us all into Seth’s bedroom, where she flicks off the lights. I am the only one who knows where he is supposed to look, but obstinately I will not.

“Don’t you see it?” she says to the others. “The ceiling. Look up at the ceiling. There are luminous little stars on the ceiling.”

Everyone looks up at the ceiling. Everyone is wondering how Sara knows there are luminous little stars on Seth’s bedroom ceiling.

“Aren’t they lovely?” She says. “I love shining little stars.” She looks up with a phony beatific smile on her face. “I had to come in first to turn on the lights for a few minutes. So the stars would shine when I turned them off again. Aren’t they gorgeous?”

“Gorgeous,” I say, and she turns on the lights.

There is a picture of Martin Luther King on Seth’s dresser. The walls are hung with bric-a-brac and souvenirs, picture postcards, scraps cut from magazines and newspapers, caricatures of Seth and of the bearded boy Bob, a poster announcing a play written by Seth and performed by the University of Wisconsin in the spring of last year, the ancient Esquire photograph of a glowering Sonny Liston with the words black power lettered beneath it directly onto the wall, a dungaree jacket on a hook, a crutch on another hook, several train schedules, a calendar, a glossy photograph of a white girl laughing and obviously high and wearing no blouse, a list of things to do next week (blank) and another list of things already done (marked with Chapter Ten, Chapter Eleven, Chapter Twelve, all crossed out), a Catholic scapula tacked to the wall and dangling from its brown strings, alongside of which, also tacked to the wall, are a set of rosary beads and a Jewish mezuzah. The walls, in my estimation, are far more interesting than the goddamn ceiling with its gorgeous luminous stars.

She is gone again.

She has left something on the porch outside, and she goes to get it now, tracking in a flurry of leaves in her wake. She holds a huge pumpkin in her extended hands, bright orange against the black of her sweater and slacks. She puts it into the center of the living-room floor and then goes into the kitchen for newspapers and carving knives, spreading the papers carefully, setting the pumpkin down on them, and then passing out the knives and inviting people to carve the pumpkin because All Hallows’ Eve is only five days away. She glances at me. There is something strange in her eyes. She is wearing her contacts, and her eyes are dark, I cannot read what is in them, I do not know what she is trying to say to me. Her attention is caught by the music on the turntable, a song unfamiliar to me but one she obviously knows well. She leaves the pumpkin carvers, who are scattering seeds and pulp onto the newspapers, and stretches out on the couch and dreamily listens to the song, and then sits upright suddenly, and knowing that I am the only person watching her, slowly and deliberately reaches down to pick up a solitary leaf from the floor. She examines it for a moment, and then puts it into the back pocket of her slacks. She looks at me, and turns away.

Slowly and deliberately, I reach down to pick up another leaf. Slowly and deliberately, I put it into my back pocket. She seems about to cry. Our eyes hold. I am reminded of the meeting in Hester’s office, when neither Hester nor I would turn away. Sara and I seem incapable of performing this simple task now, but I know it is she who will turn away first, and I wait, but still she does not turn, and finally she says, “You carve the mouth, Arthur. Make a smiling mouth, Arthur. You never smile.”

“I smile.”

“No,” she says. “Never.”

The party is breaking up.

In couples or alone, the guests are beginning to depart. The smiling pumpkin (it is Seth who finally carves the mouth), illuminated now with a single glowing votive candle, sits in the uncurtained window facing the black street outside. My follower has left with Lucille. Epstein, sitting in the same easy chair, is apparently telling Adele about yet another woman he knew abroad, rambling on drunkenly about Connie and the cellar near Rouen, “feared day and night,” he is saying, “feared it might have to come off,” making about as much sense as Koblenz who is explaining his Beztlos-Playboy theory to yet another stranger in the kitchen, while Jean Trench snipes at him and courts another beating. The music drones on, but someone has had the good grace to lower the volume. Sara sits on the couch under the picture of W. C. Fields. (Someone is explaining that the still photo was taken from a film called My Little Chickadee, and that Fields's line in answer to the question “Is this a game of chance, sir?” was “No, not the way I play it.” I remember the line. I saw the film when I was eight years old. To Sara, that is during the time of the American Renaissance.) Epstein, finally stirring himself from reveries of La Belle France, says it’s time he was going, and offers me a lift back to the hotel. Sara sits up.

“Can you drop me, too?” she asks.

We look at each other.

In the automobile, we are silent. Epstein drives slowly and carefully over the snow-covered streets. The town is deserted. The windshield is coated with rime. (I can recall the gondola moving to the top of Sugarbush, the rime on the plastic, and my son Adam revealing his plans to me. “Total recall is a curse,” Sara once told me.) She says nothing now.

When we reach the hotel, I get out, and Sara asks Epstein to let her out here, too. She feels like walking home, she says, she feels like a little fresh air. He is concerned for her safety. It is two o’clock in the morning. She assures him that she will be all right, and steps onto the sidewalk beside me. Together, we watch the car go off into the night, a blue exhaust puffing from its tailpipe.

We stand awkwardly silent

“Would you like to come up for a nightcap?” I ask.

“You know it wouldn’t be a nightcap,” she answers.“Would you like to come to bed with me then?”

“No.”

“Okay. Good-bye, Sara.”

“Arthur… if I came upstairs, it’d only be because I feel sorry for you.”

“I certainly wouldn’t want you to feel sorry for me, Sara.”

“Then please don’t ask me.”

“I’ve already asked you, and you’ve already said no. And I’ve already said good-bye.”

“You mean good night”

“I mean good-bye. Good-bye, Sara,” I say, and go into the lobby, and walk to the elevator, and take it up to the fifth floor, and go into my room.

I am undressed and in bed when the telephone rings.

“Arthur?”

“Yes, Sara.”

“Why do I worry about you?”

“I don’t know. Why do you, Sara?”

“You’re making me feel sorry for you. That isn’t fair, Arthur.”

“Sara, do you want to come here?”

“No. I have studying to do.”

“Then why did you call me?”

“I don’t know.”

“All right then, why don’t you do your studying, and I’ll go to sleep.”

“All right, Arthur,” she says, and hangs up.

I turn out the light and pull the covers to my throat I lie there silently with my eyes open. Then I put on the light again, and dial Sara’s number.

“Yes?” she says.

“Sara, what the hell do you want from me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to come here, or don’t you?”

“No, I don’t”

“Why did you ask Seth to invite me to his party?”

“I don't know.”

“Look,” I say, “why don’t you come over here and stop this nonsense?”

“It isn’t nonsense. I love Roger.”

“The hell with Roger.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Sara, you are an exasperating person.”

“So are you.”

“I'd like you to come here.”

“No. You come here.”

“I'm undressed and in bed.”

“So get out of bed and get dressed.”

“I don't know where you live.”

“I’ll tell you where I live.”

“I have a very bad sense of direction.”

“If you want to see me so much,” Sara says, “you’ll come here.”

“I thought you had studying to do.”

“I do. If you want to come here and watch me study, you can.”

“That sounds exciting as hell.”

“If you don’t want to come, then don’t”

“What about Gwen?”

“She won’t be home tonight.”

“When will she be home?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“It's tomorrow morning already.”

“It’s later than you think,” she says, and I cannot tell whether or not she is smiling.

I hesitate a moment longer. Then I sigh and say, “Where do you live, Sara?”

She has given me explicit directions, but I am still uneasy. It is close to three o’clock and the streets are deserted. I am not fearful of being mugged or rolled; this is not New York City. But it is a university town, with a great many young girls living alone in apartments, and a middle-aged man abroad in the empty hours of the night might reasonably attract the attention of a cruising police car. I am to walk through the small park west of Chatham Hall, and I will then come face to face with Jaeger, the engineering building. I am then to make a right turn and walk the short block to Delaney, making a left there. Sara’s building is the third house on the right-hand side of the street

It is a two-story structure, white clapboard, architecturally reminiscent of Seth’s place, but without a picture window facing the street. Instead, there are symmetrically spaced sash-hung windows on both stories and running around the side of the house. Sara’s apartment is in the rear. I walk past the first door at the back of the house (which leads, Sara has told me, to an apartment inhabited by five medical students) and then to the second door, wooden bottom panel, four panes of glass forming the upper portion. I try the knob, but the door is locked. I put my face close to one of the panes and look inside. There is a steep flight of steps leading upstairs. The staircase is dark. I rap on the door.

Silence.

I rap again. I fully expect a police torch to illuminate me at any moment. The night is still, even the wind has died. I debate knocking again. Surely she has heard me. Surely even the five medical students have heard me. A light goes on at the top of the steps. She comes down swiftly and unlocks the door for me. She is still wearing her black sweater and slacks, but she has divested herself of her beads.

“Hi,” she says. “You found it”

“I was scared stiff.”

“Some assassin.”

I follow her up the steps. We turn left and walk through a small kitchen. A note scotch-taped to the refrigerator reads:

The kitchen leads to the bedroom, and the bedroom in turn leads to the living room. There is a sofa against two windows, a low table before it, a scatter rug on the floor. Rosenberg and Weinstein’s Civil Procedure is open on the table, a lined yellow pad beside it. A Japanese lantern covers the light bulb hanging from the ceiling. There are charcoal drawings on the walls. An open closet door reveals Sara’s beads hanging on a hook, her long black coat, her tan corduroy coat, skirts, dresses and slacks on wire hangers jammed onto a sagging wooden pole. The shelf above the pole is cluttered with boxes. The entire closet seems ready to implode into the room. I take off my coat and hang it on the door hook, over her beads. She has gone into the kitchen, and when she returns she is carrying a candle in a translucent red holder. She lights the candle and places it on the coffee table. “I don't have anything to drink,” she says, “but I can make some coffee, if you like.”

“No, thank you, I’m fine.”

“You look cold.”

“I am cold.”

“Sit down,” she says. “Please sit down.”

I sit on the couch. There is a draft coming from the windows. I shift my position. I am terribly ill at ease. I suddenly wonder how Sara felt in my hotel room. It is the first time such a thought has occurred to me, the possibility that despite her seeming poise she was as uncomfortable there as I am here. I look at her curiously. I remember that she is only twenty-one.

“Do you mind if I put on some music?” she asks. “I like music when I’m studying.”

“Go ahead.”

“I really do have to study, Arthur.”

“That’s all right.”

She moves to the record player, selects a record, and places it on the turntable. “I love this,” she says, but when the music starts, I do not recognize the tune. “I have another test on Tuesday,” she says.

“Maybe I can help you.”

“Well,” she says, and smiles. She is too polite to say that a tractor salesman would be of little if any use in cramming for an exam on procedure.

“I have a question,” I tell her.

“Ask it.”

“Why is a law student involving herself in a plot that is essentially anarchic?”

“Because I don’t believe in the law any more, Arthur.”

“Then why are you studying it?”

“Habit,” she says, and shrugs.

“That isn’t true.”

“It’s partially true. I like studying. I’m a good student.”

“But why the law?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugs again. “Maybe there’ll be law again someday.”

“There’s law now, Sara.”

“If there’s law,” she says, “why is it necessary to kill him? Why shouldn’t there be another way?”

She does not know I am a lawyer, of course. She does not know I have spent half my life with the law, and therefore she cannot begin to realize my deep feelings for it. Nor can she know, from what I have told her about myself, how truly distasteful I find the act I must commit next week. But she has asked the single question that could even at this late date cause me to change my mind, pack my bag, and head home. I consider it now with all the gravity of a jury solemnly charged: Why shouldn't there be another way?

I am a lawyer, I am a good lawyer. Read the law then, find the law, use the law, change it by law. By law. I have protested to Raines that I am dedicated, and he has countered by suggesting I am obsessed instead, and I wonder now whether my grief has not robbed me of the power to think rationally. I ask myself if I would have contemplated this same action two years ago, a year ago, even six months ago, before Adam’s death. I admit to myself that I would never have considered it Adam’s death then is the motivating force, and if avenging his death means that I must become an assassin, then fine, that’s exactly what I will become. I desire neither revolution nor civil war. Sara has asked Why shouldn't there be another way? and perhaps there is, perhaps there still exists a slender chance that the nation’s lockstep may be broken, the air cleaned at last — but doing that by law will not avenge the senseless murder of my son Adam. I cannot allow his assassin to escape. I am dedicated, yes, I did not lie to Raines. But I am not dedicated to his cause, only to my own. If that makes me obsessed, then that is what I am, and there is no help for it

No, Sara, there is no other way. Not for me.

I am shaking my head. I have been silent with my thoughts, and Sara watches me, puzzled, and says, “Yes?”

“Nothing.” I suddenly yawn. “Forgive me,” I say. “I’m not used to such hours.”

“Why don’t you go to bed?” she suggests.

“May I? Would you mind?”

“No. But I do have to study. At least for an hour. I really do, Arthur.”

“All right.”

I get off the sofa and move toward the bedroom. It is an eight by ten rectangle, with a window on the wall facing the living-room door, and another window on the wall opposite the kitchen door. A bed is on my left, its head directly below the window there. Another bed is on my right, bisected by the second window. There are two small dressers in the room. An open suitcase brimming with clothes is on the bed to my right.

“Which bed?” I ask her.

“The one on the left is mine,” she says.

“Where do I sleep?”

She is silent for a moment. She comes into the room then, walks immediately to her bed, and draws back the spread. She opens the window a trifle, and then goes to the bed with the suitcase on it “You can use Gwen’s pillow,” she says. “I’ll get you a fresh pillowcase.”

In the room alone, I study the dresser top near her bed. It is cluttered with girl things — bobby pins and lipsticks, hair ribbons, an open jar of cold cream, a plastic container of hand lotion, an eyebrow pencil. A crumpled package of cigarettes is in the ash tray. Two first-year law texts are stacked near the lamp — Fuller and Braucher’s Basic Contract Law, and Gregory and Kalven’s Cases and Materials on Torts. The lamp has a tiny shade printed with daisies. A small oval mirror in a white frame is behind the lamp, tilted against the wall. Sara comes back and changes the pillowcase, and then puts it alongside hers on the narrow bed.

“I usually pull the shade down all the way,” she says. “Otherwise the air coming in is too much.” She lowers the shade. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll come to you,” she says, and leaves the room, closing the door behind her. A moment later, she lowers the volume on the record player. I undress silently, folding my clothes and putting them on the bed with the suitcase, Gwen’s bed.

I am asleep when Sara comes into the room. Her footfalls on the creaking floor of the old building awaken me. I sit up, startled, disoriented for a moment She is standing in the doorway. She is wearing a short cotton nightgown and carrying the candle in its red holder. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost four o’clock.”

“Come to bed.”

“Yes,” she says. She carries the candle to the dresser and blows it out The room is black. “Move over,” she says, and gets into bed beside me, immediately moving into my arms.

“Do you want something to wear?” she asks.

“No. Take this off.”

“I’m cold.”

“I’ll make you warm.”

“I know you will.”

“So take it off.”

“Okay,” she says, and sits up. She pulls the nightgown over her head. “Brrrr,” she says, and tosses the nightgown onto the floor and immediately burrows in under the covers. I hold her close. Her hands are resting lightly on my chest, as though in prayer. Her head is cradled on my shoulder. She feels weightless. “Is the window too much?” she asks.

“No, it’s fine.”

“Arthur?”

“Mmmm?”

“I’m very tired”

“So am I.”

“Do we have to make love?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“It’s just that I'm so tired.”

“Would you say you were tired if I asked you to go to the movies?”

Sara giggles, and kisses me on the neck. “Why are you so different tonight?” she asks.

“Why is this night different from all other nights?” I say.

“What’s that?”

“It’s Jewish.”

“What does it mean?”

“It’s part of the Passover ceremony.”

“Are you very Jewish?” she asks.

“Not very.”

“Good.”

“What are you, Sara?”

“Nothing. Catholic, I guess. A long time ago. Not any more. I don’t believe in all that religious crap, do you?”

“Not at all.”

“Good.”

“Why do you think I’m different tonight?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says. “You were so phony the first time. Jesus, you were really phony, Arthur, do you know that? I mean really really phony. It was like the big seduction scene. I thought, God, he must do this every night of the week. You were so glib. I kept thinking you were as glib as the man you came here to kill. How could you be so glib, Arthur?”

“I wanted you, Sara.”

“I’m not sure you did. I think you wanted some body, yes, but not necessarily me. I’m a very special person, Arthur.”

“I know you are.”

“You didn’t behave that way. To you, I was just the big seduction scene. Do you do this all the time?”

“Hardly ever.”

“Wow, it sure seemed as if you did it all the time. You know, unbuttoning the blouse, and slipping off the bra, and kissing the breasts and all that. And all that dirty talk when we were making love.” She sits up suddenly and looks into my face. My eyes have adjusted to the darkness and I can see her clearly now. “Why did you do that, Arthur? Say all those dirty things?”

“To excite you.”

“They didn’t. Or maybe they did.” She shrugs and settles down beside me again, wrapping her arms around my waist. “Anyway, I figured you were just a phony. When I left in the morning, I’d already decided never to see you again. I almost didn’t come to pick you up for the bridge.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“About the bridge? I knew you needed…”

“No. About seeing me again.”

“I haven’t yet,” she says. “I still don’t know what this is all about, do you? Do you really know what this is all about?”

“No, Sara. I’m not entirely sure.”

“Arthur?”

“Yes?”

“Do you love your wife?”

“Yes.”

“Then what are you doing in bed with me?”

“Holding you.”

“Arthur, don’t get glib again. Please. If you get glib again, I’ll go sleep in the bathroom. You’re either being glib, or lecturing me, or yelling at me. I don’t know which I like least.”

“I never lecture you.”

“You always lecture me. You’re like the old man of the mountain, wisdom, wisdom. And you never smile.”

“I’m smiling now.”

“Are you?” she says, and reaches up to touch my mouth in the darkness. “Yes, you are. That deserves a kiss.” She kisses me immediately and passionately. I am surprised by her ardor. But she holds the kiss for only an instant, and then breaks it, and falls back against the pillow. She is silent for a very long time. I do not touch her. We lie side by side without touching. I can hear her breathing. I can also hear a clock ticking on Gwen’s dresser. At last, in a very small voice, Sara says, “This isn’t easy for me.” She sounds on the edge of tears. I sit up and study her face. Her eyes are closed. I touch her jaw with my fingertips. She does not open her eyes.

“You really are just a very young girl, aren’t you?” I whisper.

“What did you think I was?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’re twice my age,” she says. “I wasn’t even born when you were my age.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not even born!” she says.

“Are you going to cry, Sara?”

“I never cry, I told you that.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“No.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Go back to wherever you came from.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I know you can’t Why’d you have to come here?”

“Sara…”

“Oh, Sara, Sara, Sara, Sara, stop saying my name. I’m sick of you saying my name. I’m sick of you.”

“I’ll leave. I’ll get dressed and leave.”

“I don’t want you to leave.”

“What do you want, Sara?”

“Oh, shit,” she says, and gets out of bed.

“Where are you going?”

“To take out my contacts,” she says. “I forgot to take out my fucking contacts.”

Sometime just before dawn, I tell Sara that I love her. She does not answer. We have made love and dozed, sleeping in each other’s arms. I cannot keep from kissing her. I kiss her asleep or awake, and her lips respond, asleep or awake. But when I tell her I love her, she does not answer.

“Sara,” I whisper. “Did you hear me? I love you.”

“I’m very sleepy, Arthur,” she says. “Can’t we sleep? Can’t we please sleep? I have an exam Tuesday.”

“This is only Saturday.”

“Tuesday,” she says.

“What?”

“Tuesday,” she repeats.

“No. Saturday.”

“Go to sleep, Arthur. You have to leave soon. Gwen’ll be back.”

“What time is she coming back?”

“I don’t know. Soon. Go to sleep.”

“The hell with her.”

“You have to leave.”

“Why?”

“She’s a virgin.”

“So?”

“Go to sleep, Arthur.”

I do not go to sleep. Instead, I begin kissing her again.

“Arthur, don’t excite me,” she says.

“Why not?”

“I’m very sleepy. Don’t you ever sleep, Arthur?”

“I'm the “We-Never-Sleep Collection Agency,” I tell her.

“What’s that?”

“That’s Room Service.”

“What are you talking about, Arthur?”

“A play.”

“What?”

“A play. Room Service.”

“I never heard of it,” she says. “Arthur, please don’t do that”

“Please don’t do what?”

“Whatever you're doing there. Just quit it”

“No.”

“If you don't, Arthur, I’ll never forgive you.”

“Don’t forgive me.”

“I won’t,” she says.

“Then don’t,” I say.

“I’ll never forgive you,” she whispers and rolls in tight against me. She makes love with neither artifice nor skill. Like an idiot savant, she reels off the algebraic formulas of sex with innocent passion, accepting my own fierce ardor with abandon, responding to it with such violence that we seem to climb each other, mountains both, scaling as we cling and hold, as though afraid we will tumble into an abyss, surprised at last by an unexpected summit, gasping for breath in the thin high air.

“Did you come?” I whisper to her.

“What do you mean when you say that?” she asks. She is covered with sweat, limp, her arms akimbo, her legs spread.

“When I say what?”

“That. What you just said. Do you mean did I get there?”

“I’ve never heard it said that way before.”

“It’s what Roger says.”

“Getting there?”

“Is half the fun, Roger says.”

“You know something?”

“What?”

“If you mention Roger one more time…”

“Roger, Roger, Roger,” she says, and giggles, and rolls over and goes to sleep.

At ten-thirty, we hear a car in the driveway and think it is Gwen returning. As it turns out, it is only one of the medical students. But I am dressed in a wink, and am already putting on my coat. Sara comes into the kitchen in her nightgown and asks if I want some coffee.

“No, thank you,” I say. “Will I see you tonight?”

“Maybe,” she says.

“Sara…”

“Maybe,” she repeats, and comes down the flight of steps with me and lets me out into the cold morning, and locks the door behind me.