Square Christmas

The Young Man Met the Girl in a Longchamps bar; her office was in the same building, on the 17th floor. The bar had been decorated for Christmas since Thanksgiving -- everything in New York had. There was a draft from the revolving door and the girl kept her coat around her shoulders. She had bought the coat in the Village and it looked a little Villagey but not too Villagey. "I had to see my income tax man this afternoon," the young man said. "He's got a place in Florida and he said there wasn't anyone there right now and I could use it. So I got to thinking -- would you like to go down to Florida for Christmas? We could start tonight and drive down, and be on the beach tomorrow. Or if you'd prefer I could see about plane reservations."

"I'm sorry, I can't," the girl said. The waitress put the martinis on the table, on little paper napkins.

"Listen, this is probably the only chance I'll have all winter for a long weekend. We could leave tonight and have at least part of tomorrow there. They won't care if you're not in your office. Nobody cares what you do around Christmas. We can spend Christmas in Florida and get back in time for work."

"No, really, I can't," the girl said. She obviously cared something for the young man, because she was trying hard not to hurt his feelings. "My sister-in-law expects me to spend Christmas with them. I promised to take care of the kids so she can get some rest. I told you, she's pregnant again."

The young man drank his martini. "All right, you promised," he said; anyone could understand that. "But Christmas is only one day. Would you care to fly down before?"

"I'm sorry, I can't," she said.

"Why not?"

She looked uncomfortable. "I'm going skiing with some people. It's been planned for a long time."

He nodded shortly. "OK."

"Listen, I told you," the girl said, lowering her voice, and leaning closer to him. "I'm not going to sleep with you."

He looked as if that had been the last thing he'd had in mind; actually, he had been thinking about little else. "Did I say anything about that? What did I say? I invited you to Florida, didn't I? Isn't that what I said?"

The girl took a deep breath. She looked a little guilty and somewhat embarrassed, but not too guilty or embarrassed. She wasn't that kind of girl. "John, I don't think I'm a very good girl for you. I'm really not going to sleep with you. I think you ought to find another girl."

That made him angry, but it was impossible for him to tell her again how he felt about her, especially in Longchamps. He said, "Want to have dinner somewhere? Patrissy's?"

"I can't. I have things to do tonight, before I leave."

He drank a second martini. Wash her goddamn hair, he was thinking; wash her goddamn underwear and stockings, and then iron, for Christ sake.

"Why don't you ask Rosa?" she said suddenly. "She's not doing anything. She'll be here alone."

The young man did not answer that question. "I'll help you find a cab," he said. He held her coat while she put her arms into the sleeves. They went out the revolving door. A cold wind was blowing down Madison Avenue. He helped the girl into a cab, then handed the driver two one-dollar bills.

"Oh, I didn't mean for you to --"

"No, it's OK, Ag. Goodnight. I'll call you."

He walked back into Longchamps and stood at the bar. The Christmas present he had planned to give her was still in his pocket. He knew he would never give it to her, and that made him feel crummy. He drank four martinis and realized he was getting drunk: he wanted to lean forward, rest his head on the bar and sleep. He paid the check and left. In the cab on the way uptown he fell asleep. The driver shook him awake.

"You OK, fella? You make it?"

"Sure, fine," he said. "Fine." He unlocked the front door of his house and stepped inside, into the smell of wet paint and fresh plaster. The house was in the 80s between Second and First Avenue and he had bought it partly as an investment. The two top floors had been converted to apartments, one rented for $250, the other for $300. Even so, it made him nervous to think how much money he had borrowed. He had to be careful about money; he had responsibilities. His clothes came from the sixth floor at Brooks and he had paid only $1055 for die Jaguar he drove; he had found it through an ad in The New York Times.

He dropped his overcoat on the floor, on the litter the plasterers had left. The parlor floor and basement were being made into a duplex and he was trying to live there while the work was being done. He went carefully downstairs and found a cold bottle of gin in the refrigerator.

At 3:30 in die morning he suddenly awakened. He had gone to sleep sitting in a chair and he was bone-cold. All the lights were on. The glass had slipped from his hand and shattered on die floor. He had been holding a cigarette between his fingers and it had burned down to die filter tip. The bottle of gin was half empty. Shaking with cold and nausea, he fell on the sofa and covered himself with a blanket.

The next day at 10:30 the telephone rang. He could not get up to answer it.

At noon the doorbell rang, then someone began pounding on the front door. The sound echoed through the empty floors until he felt he was trapped inside a bass drum. He managed to get upstairs, to the door. Hy Kaplan was standing on the steps, wearing a Chesterfield and a bowler, carrying gloves.

"Christ sake, look at you," Hy said.

John went back downstairs, to the sofa.

Hy stood over him. "You need a drink." Hy took off the Chesterfield and folded it neatly over the back of a chair. He poured a Scotch and soda for both of them. "Don't try to come in today, the shape you're in."

"Thanks, Hy. I don't know why --"

"Don't thank me, buddy boy. Thank Sigmund Freud." Hy's cheeks were rosy, his eyes bright with vitality. "I had one of the most expensive psychoanalysts you can buy in this town. Doctor Karen Horney, 50 bucks an hour. And one thing I learned, if nothing else -- you'll never find everything you want in one woman. They aren't built that way."

John took a deep breath.

"Sure, I know what you're thinking. How my wife and Mama keep a nice kosher home for me up in Riverdale. How they take care of my kids, see they get to school on time, call the doctor if they're sick. And you're thinking if I got "business' I stay overnight at a hotel and call up some broad that's busting her drawers to get into TV. And in your books that makes me a real genuine mumser, doesn't it?"

"Hy, I have never --"

"No, you listen. It's morally wrong, sure. I know it and you know it and everybody knows it. But, it works. It works, buddy boy. My wife's happy, kids are happy, Mama's happy, and I'm happy." Hy finished the Scotch. "I know a girl named Iris. Gorgeous knockers. Want the number?"

"It wouldn't do any good. I've tried that."

Hy picked up the Chesterfield and bowler, and gestured toward the bottle. "Don't pickle your brains."

"No. I'm through getting drunk."

"In that case, I'm off to spend the afternoon with a talented but unknown young actress from Death Valley, Nebraska, or somewhere." Hy grinned. "It's the Yuletide season, buddy boy, and old Santa's coming. He really is."

Hy let himself out the front door. John stood in the shower and let hot water beat on the back of his neck.

Before John Andrew met Aggie Mulholland he felt this had been the story of his life: He had married a girl whom he had always known; first they had a small apartment in the Village, then they had a baby. John worked for an ad agency and their friends were not Village types but young marrieds like themselves. By the time their little girl was two years old their friends had started moving to the North Shore, to Westchester and Connecticut. John had started going to an analyst and so had his wife, and whatever they had once had did not come running back. He moved into a small hotel and spent sleepless nights worrying about the staggering doctor bills. One day a friend said, "Why don't you try writing some crap for television? I'll call Hy Kaplan and tell him you're coming around."

Eventually John Andrew became the (continued on page 167) Square (continued from page 82) assistant producer for a 30-minute show, a Western titled The Drifter. Hy was the producer: he had created the main character and established the format. That past September John had lunch with a literary agent and as they were parting the agent had said almost apologetically, "Say, I've got a writer who can really write. I don't know if he can do anything for you. But I do know he needs the dough."

"Send him around," John said. "I'll talk to him."

The next afternoon John's secretary said Mark Sawtelle was outside. Sawtelle was small, Southern and unborn-looking; he had on an ancient green tweed jacket and worn-out sneakers -- his white eyelashes were thick and gummy and he had a sinus condition.

"You've seen the show?" John said.

Sawtelle took a filthy rag from his pocket and said, "No," as he blew his nose.

"Then I'll give you some scripts." John opened a desk drawer and began shoving mimeographed, stapled-together pages across the desk. He leaned back in his chair and stared out the window at lower Manhattan. It was almost five o'clock and a heavy rain was falling. "The format is fairly simple. The Drifter is a cowpoke who is always between jobs. He never has any money. All he has is a horse, a saddle, a blanket and a little grub. And his gun, of course, but he never kills anyone with it. His rope is the weapon, or tool, which he uses to capture the antagonist and turn him over to the marshal. But the most important thing about the Drifter is that he is always headed for a new job, a better job. He believes that the grass on the other side of the hill is greener and the show proves it is, in a very special way." John tapped his pencil on the desk. "Just as he is about to strike it rich we put him in conflict with a person or group -- families are good, especially if the children are sick -- who want exactly what he wants but who could never win in a struggle against him. For instance, in one of our most successful shows the Drifter was dying of thirst when he found a water hole. It was a small water hole, barely enough to save his life. But lying beside it was a mother collie with six babies. She could feed them only if she had water. She had crawled to within a foot of the water hole and collapsed. Both the mother collie and the Drifter had to have that water. So what did the Drifter do?"

"Drank the water, shot the dogs, then ate--"

"No, no. He picked her up in his arms. He carried her to the water hole. She was too weak to drink. He filled his own mouth with water -- but he didn't drink any of it, he spat it into the mouth of the mother collie. And in that way and in only that way did he get his reward. A dog's love and affection, things money can't buy." John smiled. "Think you'd like to try one for us?"

"Well, I'll try." Sawtelle said, but there was no hope in his voice. He took a deep breath. "Why don't we go down to Hurley's and have a beer?"

John never drank with writers, it was no help in getting the kind of scripts he needed. But it was raining and he had nowhere to go except his apartment. He went to Hurley's.

Sawtelle drank three martinis, one-two-three, and said, "Want to go to a party in the Village?"

John knew Sawtelle was getting tight. He thought it might be easier to go to the party and let someone else take care of Sawtelle, if it came to that. They took a cab down to Bleecker Street. The apartment was full of people and the gin and vermouth and the ice were already gone. Then he saw the girl.

She was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, her feet tucked under her. She had the coolest face that John had ever seen. Then she suddenly turned and looked directly at him. He felt something like a shock.

"Sawtelle, who is that girl?"

"That bitch? Don't have anything to do with her. You should see some of the things she sleeps with."

John thought Sawtelle was drunk and simply being nasty. "Oh, come on. Introduce me."

Sawtelle took John across the room, stopped in front of the girl, and leered. "Hear you moved in with a couple of dykes and their great Dane."

"Screw you," the girl said distinctly.

Sawtelle giggled and walked away.

"I'm sorry," John said. "He didn't tell me your name."

"Aggie Mulholland."

John sat on the edge of the coffee table. He thought she might be literary, so he said cheerfully, "I've been trying to get Mark to do a script for the show. You know his work?"

The girl looked at him briefly, then glanced away. "That fag," she said.

"Oh, is he?" John said, surprised. "I didn't think --"

"Oh, God!" the girl said. "How square! He's one of my oldest friends."

John had to smile. She was right: that had been square. "Would you like to have dinner?"

The girl glanced at him; she was amused. "I won't sleep with you," she said.

Other girls, at other times, could have used that gambit and John would have reacted differently -- with irritation or even boredom. But she made him smile.

"Just dinner, then?"

"Sure," she said. "When I'm ready to leave. I'm not ready to leave yet."

It was 11 o'clock when they left the apartment. It was raining. She tied a scarf around her hair and, as he held an umbrella over her, he put his arm around her shoulders. They could not get a cab, so they walked to a restaurant south of the Square and ate clams and lasagne and drank white chianti. She told him she wrote a column for a woman's magazine: cosmetics. She wasn't an authority, but she'd worked on magazines.

"Listen," she said abruptly. "Would you like to come to dinner Saturday night? One of my oldest friends hasn't been married long. Nobody thinks it'll work, but I think it will. They're coming."

It was unexpected and, unexpectedly, he felt flattered. "I'd like that very much."

John Andrew had been invited for dinner and so Saturday night he dressed as he would for dinner in Greenwich or Old Westbury: dark suit, sober tie, black shoes. The young fathers he had once pushed baby carriages with on Saturdays in Washington Square were older, and their wives were older and they had climbed higher toward the rich protein center of the Luce spiderweb. All of them had a place in the country, all of them felt bad about old John. Damn shame, nice guy like that. And on weekends at Westport and at Hastings John Andrew had been introduced to women whose husbands had unfortunately died, whose husbands had for some obviously insane reason left them, to women who were brilliantly successful and at last getting around to marriage. John Andrew had been "thrown together" quite a lot.

(Aggie Mulholland speaks here: Oh, God! How square!)

Saturday night Aggie had on blue jeans, a feminine-looking blouse, and she wore no shoes; her feet, as all bare feet in New York apartments become, were black on the bottom. Sylvia, whose pregnancy was beginning to show, wore slacks and a sweater. Ralph had on cords; he'd been chopping wood all day in Pennsylvania. Yeah, they had a place there. Not like the shore. You could go year round, you know? Fortunately, they left early.

John and Aggie sat on the sofa and had a goodnight beer.

"Listen, there's something I want to tell you. I know it's going to sound kind of out, but I wanted to tell you." He paused, he wanted to get the words exactly right. "A long time ago, about the time I stopped being analyzed, shortly before the Civil War, I had a dream. I was standing at the foot of a staircase with a wooden banister and a girl was sliding down it. She was, oh . . . about 18 or 20. She reminded me something of my daughter and a little of Joan Loring. Did you see her in Come Back, Little Sheba? Anyway, she was dressed in a very old-fashioned dress and when she slid down the banister I told her not to, she might fall. She just laughed at me, then slowly flew around the room, like Peter Pan. My analyst said everybody's androgynous. Everybody's got an androgyne, and that's what makes a relationship between a man and a woman possible. A man has an androgyne and he expresses it by having a relationship with a woman who's like that. Well, you're more like her than anyone."

Aggie looked at her hands. "John, you're sentimental."

"Well, I don't know. I do know I have sentiments."

"You don't even know me. You don't know anything about me. I don't think I'm capable of a relationship like that."

He put his hand on her shoulder, on her neck. He thought she was beautiful, that the soft line of her jaw was lovely. He loved the rising, falling inflections of her voice. He thought the way she walked with her knees slightly bent was the sexiest-looking thing he had ever seen. It amused him when she talked dirty; he knew she did not have the emotions that make dirty words dirty. Well, an objective observer might have said her face was a trifle too long, her upper lip a bit thin; that she slumped and did not stand erect (in her own words she'd always had a "skinny little ass"); and that she was both obscene and profane in her speech.

But John loved her; and he told her all about it.

Oh, God! How square!

***

On John's 31st birthday Aggie took him to dinner, to celebrate. That made him feel good -- no one remembered his birthday, except his parents and his daughter who had obviously been reminded by her mother.

They met in the bar at the Brittany, they were late and had to wait for a table. Standing at the bar they had several drinks. When they sat down they had just one more, before the snails. They drank Charmant with frogs' legs Provençal and had stingers with the coffee. When they went outside to get a cab it was cold and John put his arm around her; riding downtown she leaned against him, sleepy with food and drink. The cab stopped and she said, "You might as well come up for a beer."

He followed her up the stairs, waited as she took a key from her handbag and unlocked the door. She dropped her coat on the sofa and suddenly yawned. John put his arms around her. She leaned against him, relaxed. He put his hand under her chin and kissed her, kissed her mouth and her ear and neck.

"That beautiful face," he said.

She smiled, then yawned again. "I'll get you a beer."

"No. I'll get them."

He went to the kitchen and took two cans of beer from the refrigerator. Before he opened the cans he wiped the tops carefully with a paper towel; that was the way she did it. When he went back to the living room she was not there.

He heard the sound of water running in the bathroom. Instantly he was alert. Well, by God, he thought. Of course, it was his birthday, but . . .

She came out of the bathroom wearing a long-sleeved, high-necked flannel gown. He saw her only briefly as she walked from the bathroom, then passed from his line of vision on the other side of the bedroom door. The girl in the dream! She was dressed like the girl in the dream! He remembered. It hadn't been an old-fashioned dress. It had been a nightgown! He heard the bed sigh. "John?"

He walked to the bedroom door, a can of beer in each hand. "Want a beer?"

"Oh, no. I've had too much to drink already."

He sat beside her and put the cans of beer on a bedside table; he took her as carefully in his arms as a beginning golfer gripping a club. He kissed her mouth, the lobe of her beautiful ear, her neck -- her freshly scrubbed neck. He rubbed his face across the soft flannel of her nightgown where her breasts lay.

"Ag, I love you," he said. He was choked.

She did not push him away, nor move. But something changed, very suddenly.

"Lis-ten, I didn't mean -- I was sleepy, that's all. I've got to go to sleep, John."

What he had thought had been very far from the truth. The beautiful soft picture that had been in his brain and heart shattered; fragments lay on the floor bleeding, in agony, calling to him: save us, save us, don't let us perish like this!

"I'm going right to sleep, John."

After a second he said, "Well, I'll just finish this beer."

The blanket was pulled up to her chin and there was no make-up on her face. She looked like a clean little girl telling her father goodnight. Goodnight! Goodnight! See you in the morning!

"Listen, John, I don't think I'm a very good girl for you. I mean, I can't sleep with you. It isn't that I don't like you or anything like that, or that I wouldn't enjoy it. I don't mean that. But, I can't."

Seconds later she was asleep, breathing lightly. He turned out the lights and went home.

The next day Sawtelle walked into John's office. It was the end of the day. the end of the week, and John's head hurt. He got up from his desk and closed the office door.

Sawtelle leered. "Togetherness?"

"I want to ask you something." John was embarrassed. "If you don't want to answer, OK. It won't make any difference as far as money is concerned. You can still write for the show."

"Sure, I'm queer," Sawtelle said. "Thought you knew. What's the matter. FBI been around?"

"Be serious. This is important. It's about Ag."

Sawtelle cocked his head.

"Do you know if she's . . . well, if she's got anybody?"

"You mean sleeping with."

"Well, somebody she's interested enough in, although maybe she hasn't got around to it yet."

"Well, it's not you, obviously." Sawtelle lighted a cigarette, blew smoke out his nose. "I don't know. I never really understood that girl. We grew up together in this little old Southern-fried town, she was just another little old Southern-fried girl. Of course, her mother and father hated each other's guts, but so what? My God, my old man shot himself. She went to college in Connecticut. I didn't even know she was in New York until one night I ran into her in the White Horse with a beat poet and some colored fags who were high. She was with them but she wasn't part of it, you know? She's never part of anything, really, always on the outside, staring. Listen, you ever read The Call Girl?"

"The call girl?"

"Now, that's not what I mean. But you notice the way Ag dresses sometimes? She wears blue jeans -- and they are men's work pants -- and a girl's blouse. Well, in this book one of the whores did that and the good doctor said it was due to her indecision about her role in life, whether she wanted to be masculine or feminine, aggressive or passive."

John shook his head. "Ag's a very positive person, very positive in her opinions."

"Hell, I don't know. I'm pretty sure she had a fairly miserable affair once, though. I'm pretty sure I know the guy. I think all she got out of it was an abortion. I wouldn't be surprised."

John pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger; he was very tired.

"Oh, I fell in love once," Sawtelle said. "Indeedy-do, I did." His voice was quiet. "I was in the Army of the United States of America, friends, and I fell. So they shipped me out of that celestial city -- Open Thighs, Indiana -- and sent me far away to Moo-koo Chow Cow-yoke, Cantonese style. And I cracked. You've heard about rotten fruit, haven't you? My brain case split open in the heat of the tropical sun. That's how I got out. Psycho." He smiled. "I went back once, back to Open Thighs. She'd married a Catholic truck driver and was about two ax handles broad in the keister. But she'd kept my letters. She'll probably sell them for a mint someday -- after I'm dead."

John was staring at him.

"It is the most miserable, the most useless feeling in the world. The greatest waster of human energy and emotion I know. To fall in love is to destroy love. And, remember, you heard it here first, Papa-san. Someday a bronze plaque will be embedded in the very chair where my bony arse now rests. Consequently, I can only recommend to you the peace of Hurley's, the solace of the dry martini."

Instead John went home. He sat with a pile of scripts in his lap and a pencil in his hand, but her image floated before him, telling him he was square. And, Jesus, he felt square.

For a while John did not see Aggie and he found a certain amount -- and kind -- of peace. He began accepting dinner invitations from old friends again, in Pleasantville, over in Rock-land County. They asked him what the hell he'd been doing. They introduced him to unattached females they had dredged up from the bottom of the yo-ho-ho. On Saturdays John walked with his daughter in Central Park: they fed squirrels and they fed elephants, too. He sat with her in the Palm Court and watched her point to the pastries she preferred. She was five years old and went importantly into the powder room alone, a secret mission, hers alone. She ate éclairs and pressed a napkin to her lips to remove chocolate. John drank martinis and watched and thought: I love you, I love you.

"Come on, doll. Let's go over to Schwarz' and case the joint. Let's go down to Rosemarie de Paris and lay in a fresh supply."

"OK," she said. "But let's skip."

John skipped with his daughter down the steps of the Plaza, across Fifth Avenue and into Schwarz'. It was really the only way to travel.

Thanksgiving day John was in bed with the flu, a pitcher of water, aspirin and Kleenex. Most of the clay he watched the flickering image on the picture tube. At five o'clock he went downstairs and put a kettle on the stove and made a hot toddy. It cleared his head. Then the telephone rang.

"Christ sake, why didn't you tell me you were in town?" Sawtelle said. "I thought you and Hy'd taken those whores down to Miami."

"I couldn't go. I came down with the flu."

"Well, Christ sake, can I do anything? Come over and give you an enema? Hold your head while you puke?"

"Thanks, Mark. I'm better now."

"Well, let's get drunk, then. Come on over."

Sawtelle had become successful and had moved from the cold-water flat on the lower East side. He lived in a new building in the Village with Danish crystal, $5000 worth of hi-fi, and a huge bar.

John rang and Sawtelle opened the door. "Man, you're in time. The creeps just came down from Harlem with the pot."

John stepped inside and saw Aggie. She was sitting on the floor with a glass beside her, leaning against the wall, listening to a Presley record. She had on a big bulky sweater and she had taken off her shoes.

John made himself speak to everyone else in the room before he finally sat down on the floor beside her.

"How are you?" she said.

"I've got the flu."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

He took her hand and held it: she made him tremble, but he didn't care if she noticed. She's my androgyne, he was thinking, and it's only right that we sleep together -- she's just being a goddamn recalcitrant female bitch about it, but somehow, some way, by God, I am going to seduce her.

When Aggie was ready to leave, John took her home.

"I'm sorry I can't ask you in, John. I've got a friend staying with me. Rosa. She's just back from Europe and she's sleeping on die sofa. I told you about her."

He frowned; he did not remember.

"Oh, she writes those dirty books. Olympus Editions. You remember the one I gave you? She's lived in Europe."

"Oh, yes." The book he had looked at had been about two girls who had bred cats; a third girl had been involved.

"John . . . some of us are going to Sylvia and Ralph's. In Pennsylvania? Would you like to drive out Sunday?"

"I'd like that very much," he said, repeated his goodnight, and walked firmly to Sixth Avenue, to a cab, home, a firm man with a firm purpose: Sunday he would take her to bed.

Sunday was an unseasonable day, a warm day. The sun shone on the bare tree limbs and dry fields of New Jersey as the assistant producer of The Drifter headed west, shifting gears in accordance with the laws of his tachometer and blowing his nose on Kleenex. He was prepared to spend a day in the country, as a guest. In his picnic hamper was a cooked ham, two fifths of Beefeater gin, a bottle of Noilly Prat, a carton of cigarettes. Sylvia and Ralph's house was old and it could have been handsome, but Sylvia and Ralph were casual to the point of sloth. The paint had peeled and the exposed siding had weathered silver gray. The great front door sagged open, weak in the hinges.

John stopped the Jaguar. "Hello? Anybody home?"

No.

He carried the picnic hamper into the house. Several damp-looking logs hissed at him from the fieldstone fireplace. The house not only smelled of wood smoke, but of kerosene and wet. He walked outside and surveyed the barn -- in ruins, of course -- and the weed-grown fields. There was no one in sight, not even a cow. In the far distance a red kite was pasted against a thin blue sky.

A girl walked slowly around the barn. Her lipstick was pale, her eyes dark and luminous, and her hair looked as if it had been arranged by the wind. She was wearing a brilliant red sweater, the top four buttons were unfastened. When she saw John she smiled immediately, and came toward him bouncing energetically and holding out her hand.

"You are John Andrew, are you not? Of course, you must be. I am Rosa Santulli." She spoke with a slight accent: she gave him the no-nonsense handshake of the European woman.

My God, what breasts, John thought. "You're Rosa?"

"Of course. It says it on my baptismal certificate. Do you demand to see it?" She was smiling.

And she had written that book -- that dirty, dirty book. "You didn't write that book," John said.

She chuckled. "Did I not? Listen, I will tell you. I went to the office of the publisher and he said to me, "Rosa, we need a book about two girls who are in love with the same girl, and so forth.' And so I went home and wrote it exactly as he said, putting in much so forth, and he paid me well."

That was exactly the way it was done in television; a format was established, a writer followed it, and was rewarded with adequate amounts of bread. But not the dirty-book business! John had always thought that was inspired.

"Where is everybody?" he asked.

"They are flying a kite. Do you wish me to take you?"

"I'd rather have a drink," John said.

They went inside and he made martinis.

"It is the only thing I like about America, the martini."

"Oh? What's wrong with America?"

"Oh, there is nothing wrong with it. It is me, myself. I cannot express it accurately. Your Cadillacs, for instance, are wonderful, but . . ." She suddenly grinned. "Let us say I like it better on the back of a Lambretta."

John realized he was looking down the front of her sweater; he knew he shouldn't. After all, she was one of Aggie's oldest friends. "How long have you lived there?" he asked. "I mean, Ag said she went to school with you --"

"Oh, I will explain. My father came from Italy and married my mother. Her father had come from Italy, too, but she had been born here. And what do you think happened? They had six babies and got into a great big fight to end all their fights, which it did. She took the children and went back to Italy, he stayed here and became . . . well, not wealthy, but quite well off. He would only send me to a university if I went to an American one. He believed in American education."

"Then you went back to Europe to live?"

"Yes. I return only because of the death of my father."

"Oh, I'm sorry," John said; he felt stung.

"Please," she said, shaking her head. "There were few mourners beside his grave, my friend. He had lived all his life like some animal, with much hatred. And what is the purpose of a man's life, eh? To love a woman, is it not? So he left everything to one of his universities. One dollar each to his wife and children. No, it was not right. And my mother is so poor. I will not tell you, but to see the way she lives would make you sick, I think." After a moment she added, "And I am quite poor, of course, but I do not mind."

"Listen, you come in and see me," John said. "Will you do that? We can work out something."

She looked at him, and laughed. Then she suddenly reached out and took his face between her hands. "You are kind, did you know that? All men are not kind. You would not believe some things I could tell you. But you are kind, you are nice and well-mannered."

She leaned forward and kissed him; immediately she got to her feet and walked to the window.

John walked across the room, and glanced down the front of her sweater; it made him feel like a real sonofabitch -- after all, she had just told him about her father's dying. "Rosa, really, is there anything I can do, to help you?"

She smiled. There was affection in her eyes. "You have done it already. But since you are so generous, so thoughtful of others, then, yes. Make me another martini."

When Sylvia and Ralph, Aggie, a blond young man named Jimmie and a tall New England girl, Dorothy, came in, everything changed. The peacefulness of the late afternoon was gone. Ag picked up a bottle of Beefeater gin and said, "Oh, God!" but she did not add How square!: she had a drink. Ralph said it was damn thoughtful, by Christ, and scratched.

"How was the kite-flying?" John asked.

"Not enough tail," Ralph said, then winked. "Not enough tail, boy. There never is."

Everyone laughed.

"The hell there isn't," Sylvia said, and put a hand on her placid, swollen belly.

Everyone laughed again.

Peace was gone, and as darkness fell the social unpleasantly of five argumentative half-drunks all trying to cook at once began. The potatoes Ralph had placed among the coals -- only way. by God -- were burned on the outside, raw in the center. The steak was cool, the salad limp.

"Well, it's quite a drive back," John said as soon as lie felt he decently could. "Sunday-night traffic."

No one spoke. Except for Rosa who was properly in a chair, they all lay in indolent attitudes before the fire.

"What do you think?" John asked anyone who would answer.

"Go ahead, John, if you have to," Aggie said; she was obviously prepared to spend the rest of her life on the stone hearth.

"Well, I'd better," John said, trying to sound pleasant. "Lots of work tomorrow." Then he added, "Certainly been nice." Still he did not stand up and leave; he was waiting.

"May I ride back with you, John?" Rosa said.

That had not been what he had been waiting for; he had been waiting for Aggie to ask that. (How the hell could he seduce her unless he was alone with her? That was basic.) And even though he knew Rosa was asking him out of kindness, so that he would not have to drive back alone, he was angry with her -- perhaps if she had not spoken Aggie might have.

Driving into the city John and Rosa did not talk. Once he asked her if she wanted to stop for coffee; she shook her head no. There was no place to park on 12th Street. He had to stop to let her out, blocking traffic.

"Would you come in?" Rosa asked.

"No thanks, I'm still trying to kick this cold."

It became much, much worse than he could have imagined. Aggie flatly refused to go to his house, and if he picked her up at her apartment it was impossible not to ask Rosa to dinner, too. If he met Aggie uptown, then Rosa was at the apartment when he took Aggie home. It is an established fact that a girl cannot be separated from her girlfriend, if she does not wish to be, except by the use of violence and physical force. Society frowns upon violence and physical force, and society can strip you of honor and privilege.

John liked Rosa very much. He would have liked to count her among his friends. But all the time? Goddamn, man. He got to the point where he didn't care how big her breasts were, or if he ever looked down the front of her sweater again.

John got out of the shower. He put on a sweater and gray flannels and had another Scotch. Then he opened a can of chicken soup and drank some milk and had an aspirin. It was Christmas Eve. He picked up the telephone and called his mother and father long distance to say Merry Christmas. It was six o'clock. John made a pot of coffee and picked up a copy of TV Guide. Then the telephone rang.

"John? This is Rosa. Would you care to have dinner with me this evening?"

He hesitated; he did not want to go out. He wanted to lie far back in his cave and listen to the winds howl. "Well, what time?"

"When you wish. Come now, or come later."

He put on a shirt and a tie, a jacket. He put a bottle of wine and a bottle of gin in a paper bag and took them with him. At the florist's on the corner of Lexington he stopped and bought a dozen roses.

"Merry Christmas," he said to Rosa, as he handed her the flowers.

"Oh? So it is. Thank you very much. Have off your coat. I will put these in water."

Aggie's ghost lay about the room, a low fog; he walked knee-deep in it and not without effort. The scent she used was in the air, in tiny wisps; he felt he was drowning.

"Make some martinis, John, eh?"

It was her kitchen with a dead avocado plant in a clay pot on the table -- it had grown leggy and she had murdered it in cold blood by depriving it of water. And her refrigerator with her beat-up ice trays, her bottle of vermouth, her glass pitcher and long-handled spoon.

John and Rosa sat across from each other at a drop-leaf table in the living room, looking down at a Greenwich Village Christmas Eve street.

"I never celebrate holidays," Rosa said. "They are simply days to me, like other days. Actually, I hate them a little. That is because I have no family. I am alone."

"You were married, weren't yon?"

"Twice. I was married twice." She laughed, then looked at the martini glass. "They were both quite sick."

"Who were they?"

"No one you would know, I am sure. The first was a poet, quite well thought of at one time. The second, I am afraid, was merely sick." She smiled. "Whom did you marry?"

"A girl," John said.

Rosa laughed. "I did not expect that in your case it would be a man, my friend. Not you."

John stared at her. "What do you mean?"

She was still chuckling. "Oh, you don't know, do you? I did not think you did, and that is not so odd either. Well, I cannot tell you. Let us have another of these, shall we?"

Back into the kitchen. Looking at the blue enameled saucepan with tiny blue stars on it. Her little saucepan.

"You are very quiet," Rosa said.

"Well, I was thinking," he said, and smiled at her. "It's no longer an accomplishment to get married. Anybody can get married. Perhaps a long time ago -- well, say the turn of the century, it was an accomplishment to get married, in a social sense. But everything's so personal now, everybody's such an individual. It doesn't show, though. I mean, we're individuals but we hide it. Marriage itself doesn't mean anything. People are much more concerned about getting divorced, actually. Did you ever have anyone come to you and say should I get divorced?"

"It is perhaps the age bracket you are in."

He nodded. "Perhaps. But, what I was trying to say is, there's one basic relationship, one important relationship and everything else is secondary." He sipped the drink. "Mothers and fathers and children are fine. But the basic relationship is between a man and a woman. Everything else is secondary."

Rosa was smiling at him. She stood up, suddenly squeezed him and kissed him. "You are very sweet. I will cook."

They ate dinner without talking, watching people in the street below. The wine was pleasant and he was holding the bottle in his hand, reading the label, when Rosa brought him brandy and coffee. "John, would you care to watch an old moving picture on television? I love the old moving pictures."

The television set was in the bedroom, on a chest of drawers. Rosa turned it on.

"Oh, my God, it is William Powell. I adore William Powell."

She lay across the bed on her stomach, staring at the television set; she was entranced. John sat beside her and stared at her buttocks as he finished the brandy and coffee; she not only had lovely breasts, she had nice buttocks, too. He lay back on the bed and looked at the ceiling. He had begun to think, to imagine how it might be.

"Want some whiskey and soda?" he asked politely.

"Perhaps a small one," Rosa said. "It is not good for my complexion if I drink too much."

When he returned from the kitchen he lay across the bed beside Rosa. That way they could put their glasses on the floor, drink from them, and watch television. She put her arm across his shoulders, then her hand on the back of his neck. He felt sleepy and comfortable and ready.

He made himself one more drink and walked back to the bedroom. Rosa had turned off the television set. She was lying face down on the bed. He lay beside her and put his arm around her and kissed the back of her neck. She did not stir. Oh, hell, she's Aggie's best friend, she probably doesn't know what to say to me, he thought.

After a moment he picked up his glass. "Getting late."

"Oh, I did not think. You will be able to get home? Oh -- you could stay here. You could sleep on the sofa."

"I'd better go home."

She took his coat from the closet, helped him into it.

"Thanks, Rosa," he said.

"I am very glad you enjoyed it."

Oh, the hell with it. he thought. He put his arms around her and kissed her, hard. She said, "Oh!" with her eyes closed and dug her fingers into his arms. He kept kissing her, very hard. "Rosa . . . let's sleep together."

She pushed him away, shaking her head. "No, I do not take men from other women. It would not be a good idea."

He took a deep breath and let it out; he nodded several times. "Yes, you're right. It wouldn't be. It'd only make things more confused." He glanced casually down the front of her dress. "But it's a goddamn shame."

"Goodnight, my dear," she said. "Try to sleep."

. . .

Christmas afternoon John visited his daughter. The living room of the apartment was strewn with the evidence of orgy -- gift wrappings, empty Lord & Taylor boxes, toys, clothes and candy, smashed Christmas tree decorations. When John arrived the dog had made a mess beneath the tree and it was being cleaned up.

John's daughter cooked for him on the toy electric stove and they rearranged the doll house so that the maid was upstairs napping. He had his picture taken with the new Polaroid camera, was given his present -- a dachshund painstakingly cut from plywood with a coping saw and the aid of a kindergarten teacher -- and Christmas cookies, candy and a Scotch on the rocks.

She stuck her finger in his empty glass, tasted, and said, "Ugh." Then she asked politely, "Would you care for another drink, Father?"

He laughed. "Where'd you get the "father' bit? No, I have to go now."

"Oh, you're always going. Can't you stay?"

"No. Your mother has people coming."

"Yes," she said resignedly, and looked back at the bones of a fifth Christmas scattered on the floor. She would never have a fifth Christmas again, nor a fifth birthday; she was growing old, old. She sighed. "I might as well watch television, I guess."

She walked with him to the elevator. "Thank you for all the presents, Daddy."

"Thank you for yours. Don't forget I'll see you Sunday instead of Saturday this week. We'll do what you want."

John went downstairs in the elevator. The doorman smiled and said, "Merry Christmas, sir."

"Merry Christmas," John said.

At home he took off the suit he had been wearing and put on a pair of khakis and a sweat shirt. He made a pot of coffee and took a handful of pencils and a scratch-pad and sat down in a comfortable chair with a pile of scripts.

Shortly before six o'clock the phone rang.

"John, this is Rosa. Would you care to hear some music? I have tickets, given by a friend who is singing."

"I can't, Rosa. Thanks very much. I've got a pile of scripts to wade through."

"Oh," she said. There was disappointment in her voice. "I am so sorry you must work, John."

At 6:30 he stopped long enough to open a can of chicken and eat a sandwich. At 7:15 the telephone rang again. "John, this is Rosa once more. There simply seems to be no one in town who can go. Cannot you go? I do not want to waste a ticket."

He smiled; European frugality. After all, he did not have to read the scripts. "Well, it's 7:15 now. Where is this place? Perhaps I'd better meet you."

John did not really enjoy Gregorian chants. The audience was small but dedicated, the auditorium large and drafty. Rosa listened, rapt. John tried to keep from shifting in his seat. When it was over he lighted a cigarette while they were still in the auditorium, holding it cupped in his hand.

"Did you enjoy it, John?"

"Very much," he said, politely.

She laughed. "You did not enjoy it at all. I know you did not. What would you like to do now? Oh, I know. I am very hungry. Are you hungry, too, by any chance? We will go downtown and I will cook you scrambled eggs."

It was after they had climbed the stairs to the apartment, taken off their coats, and he was standing in the kitchen with a glass in his hand that he suddenly realized what was going to happen: Rosa had changed her mind. He knew she had: it was in every movement she made, going from refrigerator to stove to sink: in every gesture, the way she looked at him, everything.

John ate the scrambled eggs: Rosa talked, but he had no idea what she said. She went into the kitchen for coffee and when she came back he took her wrist in his hand -- it was a very thin wrist, surprisingly -- and pulled her into his lap: their heads were almost on a level, hers slightly above his. He kissed her. It was like holding a fluttering bird in his hand . . . the soft hurried erratic beating of feathered wings. She said, "Oh, my dear. Oh, John. Oh."

They walked with their arms around each other into the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. Her dress fastened with a row of little cloth-covered buttons at the back of the neck.

"No, I feel too shy for that," she said softly. "You get into bed first. I will go into the bathroom."

John took off his clothes and put them on the back of a chair. He closed the door to the living room. Rosa came out of the bathroom; it was black in the bedroom. "Oh?" she said softly. "A little light?" She opened the door to the living-room a trifle. A wedge of light entered the room. She had on a housecoat. He watched her walk to the bed. She turned her back to him, took off the housecoat, and very quickly slid under the blanket beside him. They found each other. She was saying, "Oh, yes. I have wanted it. too."

When he finally pulled away from her he lay beside her looking at her eyes looking back at him. He thought, my God.

She reached out to hold him. "You will not go very far from me, you will not stay away very long."

"You changed your mind."

"Oh, I am going away. I will never be back. No one will ever know about this. It is an idyl, something perfect. Does not every human being wish for such an idyllic time, which he can at least always remember? Oh, let us not talk. I want only to feel, to feel you."

He pushed back the bedclothes so that he could see her.

The next morning when John awakened, Rosa was sitting in bed beside him, a blanket drawn up to her knees, reading a book. He reached for a cigarette. She smiled and put her hand on his chest. "Did you sleep well, my dear?"

He nodded. "You?"

She laughed. "You are so much better than a sleeping pill."

He laughed and reached for an ashtray.

"Oh, cigarettes before breakfast. You will ruin your stomach. I will fix you a very big breakfast and you will eat and then I plan to love you a great deal more."

Rosa got out of bed without picking up the housecoat lying on the floor and walked across the bedroom. John sat up on the side of the bed and yawned. The bedroom door opened and Aggie started in, carrying a small overnight bag. Then she saw them both and stopped.

"Oh," Aggie said. "Oh, excuse me." She walked backwards two steps and closed the bedroom door.

"Oh, John, my dear, I am so sorry!" Rosa said. "I am so sorry for you now, my dear."

John had been thinking: well, that finishes it. For a second he had honestly expected Aggie to say, "Oh, God! How square!" He took Rosa's hand. "It doesn't matter, really."

She looked very worried. "Oh, I am not so sure, my dear. I am not so sure at all."

They listened.

"Do you think she is still out there somewhere in this apartment?" Rosa asked softly.

In the kitchen something fell to the floor and clattered.

"We'll have to get dressed," John said.

He put on his underwear and then his socks and shoes and lighted another cigarette. Rosa came out of the bathroom, completely dressed and looking rather formal. She stood with her hand on the doorknob, looking at him. Then she took a deep breath, opened the bedroom door, and walked out.

John stared at his face in the bathroom mirror. There was probably a razor somewhere, but he wasn't going to hunt for it. He combed his hair, knotted his tie neatly, slipped into his jacket and picked a bit of lint from one lapel. He lighted another cigarette and opened the door.

Aggie had left the overnight bag on the floor next to the couch; her coat, handbag, hat and gloves were on the couch. He could smell coffee. He walked across the living room, into the kitchen; there was nothing else he could do. Rosa was standing drinking a cup of coffee, looking out the window at an air shaft. Aggie stood facing the stove and the coffeepot. They had their backs to each other.

"Milk and sugar, John?" Aggie asked.

"Please."

She gave him the cup without looking at him. "The Times is on the sofa."

John took the coffee cup into the living room and sat at the table. He opened the Times.

Aggie came in with a glass. "I forgot to offer you juice."

"Perhaps he would care for an egg," Rosa said, from the kitchen.

Aggie swallowed. "Would you care for an egg, John?"

"Oh, no. No, thank you," he said quickly. "This is fine."

Rosa came in, carrying a cup of coffee, and sat on the sofa, Aggie sat down across from John, at the table.

He read the Times. "Quite a storm they had out West. Thirty inches." He finished the coffee. "Well," he said, standing up.

Rosa took his coat from the closet and held it for him.

"Do you want more coffee, John?" Aggie asked.

"Oh, no. No thanks," he said. "Got to run." If I can just get out the door, he was thinking. He slipped his arms into die sleeves of the overcoat and said, "Thank you," to Rosa politely.

Rosa nodded, and stood with her hands folded.

"I'll see you to the door," Aggie said. It was exactly six feet down the hall to the door, the only door leading to the outside world. She walked ahead of him and opened it.

"Thanks again for the coffee," he said.

"I'm glad you liked it."

John walked downstairs to the street. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He hailed a cab.

"Take me home," he said.

"Be glad to. Where do you live?"

John sat in the living room for a long time with his overcoat on, holding his left wrist with his right hand, and trying to stare into die murky future. Eventually he began to laugh; it was the only thing he could do, laugh. He laughed until tears came into his eyes. Then he blew his nose and mixed a martini. He thought he could call Hy for lunch; he could talk to Hy about it and they could laugh together.

The telephone rang.

"John, this is Aggie."

He suddenly felt very weak in the small of the back, as if someone had hit him in the kidney. "Well, hello."

"Are you doing anything for lunch?"

He did not want to see her, not so soon; he would not know what to say, how to act. "Would you like to meet me at the Bistro?" he said. "One o'clock or so?"

"I'll see you then."

He carried his martini into the bathroom. He showered and put on a suit he had worn only once before, to a funeral. He had another martini to give him strength and then went to the Bistro. She had not arrived, and he was glad.

She came in suddenly and stood behind him. She had not bothered to change her clothes, she had on the same sweater and skirt. There was something odd about her hat, as if she had put it on hurriedly, rushing, then forgotten she was wearing it. She looked upset, angry and nervous and tearful.

"I'll get a table," he said quickly.

The headwaiter took them to a table. John ordered martinis. She did not take off her gloves, and they did not look at each other.

"How about some snails?" he said.

"No, thank you."

"The pate is usually good."

"I'd like another drink, please."

They had another drink.

She took a deep breath. "The snow was so crappy we couldn't ski. Nobody could ski in that crappy snow. So I came back."

"I'm sorry the snow was so crappy," he said, and anyone hearing only the sound of his voice and not his words would have thought that Aggie had just lost a dear friend.

"Why, John?" she said suddenly. "Oh, I know it's none of my business and you don't have to tell me. I'm embarrassed even to ask. And I'm not blaming anyone or anything. I don't mean it was wrong. But could you tell me why?"

He searched his mind for an honest answer. "Well, these things happen," he said at last. "Particularly -- well, particularly when people are alone, who live alone."

"She's very attractive."

"That isn't it." He looked at the table. "It . . . it just happens. It might not be what a person wants, in a lot of respects. But it happens. We can't keep from it sometimes."

She was trying hard to control herself. "Do you -- do you know what it looked like to walk in and see you? She's one of my oldest friends, and you . . . do you know what it looked like, John, or how it made me feel?" She began to weep.

"Hey," he said.

"Well, goddamnit," she said, and her voice broke.

He put some money on the table. "Come on, Ag."

As they walked out of the restaurant to the sidewalk she put her face against his arm; she wasn't being affectionate, she was hiding. A waiter ran after them. "Your coat, sir. Your change, sir."

"Keep it," John said, taking his overcoat and flapping it at a passing cab.

When he sat beside her she collapsed against him, hiding again. He put his arm around her. "Want to go home?"

"Oh, no. She's there."

"Do you want to go to a friend's?"

"Oh, God no."

"Ag, where do you want to go?"

She did not answer.

"Eighty-first, between Second and First," he told the driver. "I'll point out the house."

She collapsed on the sofa. He took her shoes off, her coat and hat and gloves. He covered her with a blanket and sat beside her and chafed her hands; they were cold, cold.

"Would you like some soup?"

"No."

"Anything? Want me to shut up and leave you alone?"

"A martini," she said in a small sick voice. "I want to get drunk and pass out and never come to again, ever."

He made a very dry martini and she sat up to take it from his hand. He watched her drink it in one long series of swallows. She was headed straight for the bottom of the bottle. Oh, no, he thought, uh-uh.

"Aggie, you listen to me," he said. "You said you couldn't. You've got no right to act like this. You told me you couldn't. Why, if you'd wanted, it could've happened on my birthday."

"I couldn't then!" she snapped at him. "I couldn't."

Imagination is aloof from the concrete, it is speculative and flits like a blind bird in barren treetops. The cat sits below, as real, as ready, as solid as the stalk of a hunter. Many things have existence. Sight, seeing. The suddenness of his skinny shanks, the way he sat on the side of the bed, his stupid surprised face. And Rosa nude toward the bathroom. Intimate, intimate! Imagination cannot trace the sounds of passion. A bedspring, a pillow, hair, ointments, cries. Imagination never finds what is not, and thinks is-not means never-will-be. Imagination, speculation, thinking . . . all fall apart in front of is and flee. Leaving her alone, all alone with the unmistakable tracks of love on the bedclothes as if a field mouse had darted over a snowbank at night, unseen, unheard, unknown.

John picked Aggie up in his arms. "Ag, raise your face and kiss me."

Her eyes were closed; she searched for his mouth, a blind woman feeling her way on a dark night.

"I tried to tell you, Ag. But you wouldn't listen. All you ever said to me was no. No. I can't, I can't -- that's all you ever said. But what I said was true, Ag. I love you."

He carried her into the bedroom and closed the door behind him with his foot and sat down on the bed, holding her in his lap. Her eyes were still closed, she lay against him with her mouth fastened to his neck. He unbuttoned her sweater and tossed it aside. "This should have happened a long time ago," he said.

He made her stand up and he unzipped her skirt, pulled her slip over her head; he took off her underwear and stockings and picked her up and put her on the bed. When he came out of the bathroom she was lying exactly as he had left her, waiting.

He took a package from a bureau drawer and put it on the pillow beside her. "Merry Christmas, Ag."

Her eyes were half-closed, their color deeper than usual; as his knee sank into the softness of the bed she murmured, "Oh, I forgot. I'll call her later."

"What?"

"Rosa. I want to wish her Merry Christmas."