some mysterious obligation.
These ladies for their part seemed wary of us, or perhaps ofour residence, Fifth Avenue on the outside and something of an aspiring warehouse on the inside. Langley and I sat them down in the music room and excused ourselves for a conference. Fortunately both Siobhan and Mrs. Robileaux were long since retired, so that was not the problem. The problem was that these professionals could not be turned away without offending a man of great and possibly murderous sensitivity. As we discussed this dilemma in the butler’s pantry I heard Langley putting champagne glasses on a tray and so it wasn’t to be that much of a conference after all.
I will say in our defense that at this time we were still young men, relatively speaking, and deprived for some time of the male’s basic means of expression. And if this gesture by a man we hardly knew seemed menacingly excessive, there was such a thing as potlatch among indigenous tribes, a means of self-aggrandizement through the distribution of wealth, and who was this Vincent but a sort of tribal sachem determined to elevate himself in the opinions of others. And so we drank the champagne, which had the effect of erasing all thoughts not of the present moment. For this one night we were to arise from our gloom, recklessly relaxed and taken with the philosophical conviction that licentious life had something to say for it.
And I’ll say this about the girl who came to my bed: she did not find it humiliating to be accompaniment to a three-layer cake and a bottle of champagne. And I knew the name she gave me was fictive. So I had some sense, once the giggling was over and the serious engagement began, that some achieved wisdom governed her life and that she lived apart from what she did fora living. She had grace, she was not vulgar. And the other thing was that she was very kind, and that the professional she was tended to disappear in the simple facts of a small female body. When afterward she kissed my eyes I almost wept with gratitude. After she was gone, when they both had gone and I heard their car driving off, I was fairly sure that Vincent, their employer, could not have known these whores as Langley and I did. It was as if they waxed or waned in their being according to who it was, of what quality of mind, who touched them.
Langley said only about his encounter that it was finally meaningless, two strangers copulating, and one of them for money. He was not prepared to acknowledge our champagne-induced excitements. He was convinced that one way or another we would end up paying for my gangster friend’s generosity, and that we had not heard the last of him. I agreed, though with every passing year and no further word from Vincent the Gangster we would quite forget him. But at this time Langley’s presentiment seemed all too valid. So that by noon of the next day the tender emotions of my drunken self were unseated and my gloomy spirit had returned to its throne.
IN THESE MANY years since the war Langley had still not found a companion in love. I knew he was looking. For a while he was very serious about a woman named Anna. If she had a last name I would not hear it. When I asked him what she looked like he said, A radical. I first knew of her existence when he began bringing home nothing from his nighttime explorationsbut handfuls of pamphlets, which he slapped down on the side table just inside the front door. I measured the seriousness of his passion by the uncharacteristic grooming ritual that he performed before going out in the evening. He would call to Siobhan when he couldn’t find a tie or wanted a washed shirt.
But he never got anywhere with this courtship. He returned home one evening rather early and came into the music room, where I had been practicing, and sat himself down to listen. So of course I stopped, turned on the bench, and asked him how the evening had gone. She has no time for dinner or anything else, he said. She will see me if I
These ladies for their part seemed wary of us, or perhaps ofour residence, Fifth Avenue on the outside and something of an aspiring warehouse on the inside. Langley and I sat them down in the music room and excused ourselves for a conference. Fortunately both Siobhan and Mrs. Robileaux were long since retired, so that was not the problem. The problem was that these professionals could not be turned away without offending a man of great and possibly murderous sensitivity. As we discussed this dilemma in the butler’s pantry I heard Langley putting champagne glasses on a tray and so it wasn’t to be that much of a conference after all.
I will say in our defense that at this time we were still young men, relatively speaking, and deprived for some time of the male’s basic means of expression. And if this gesture by a man we hardly knew seemed menacingly excessive, there was such a thing as potlatch among indigenous tribes, a means of self-aggrandizement through the distribution of wealth, and who was this Vincent but a sort of tribal sachem determined to elevate himself in the opinions of others. And so we drank the champagne, which had the effect of erasing all thoughts not of the present moment. For this one night we were to arise from our gloom, recklessly relaxed and taken with the philosophical conviction that licentious life had something to say for it.
And I’ll say this about the girl who came to my bed: she did not find it humiliating to be accompaniment to a three-layer cake and a bottle of champagne. And I knew the name she gave me was fictive. So I had some sense, once the giggling was over and the serious engagement began, that some achieved wisdom governed her life and that she lived apart from what she did fora living. She had grace, she was not vulgar. And the other thing was that she was very kind, and that the professional she was tended to disappear in the simple facts of a small female body. When afterward she kissed my eyes I almost wept with gratitude. After she was gone, when they both had gone and I heard their car driving off, I was fairly sure that Vincent, their employer, could not have known these whores as Langley and I did. It was as if they waxed or waned in their being according to who it was, of what quality of mind, who touched them.
Langley said only about his encounter that it was finally meaningless, two strangers copulating, and one of them for money. He was not prepared to acknowledge our champagne-induced excitements. He was convinced that one way or another we would end up paying for my gangster friend’s generosity, and that we had not heard the last of him. I agreed, though with every passing year and no further word from Vincent the Gangster we would quite forget him. But at this time Langley’s presentiment seemed all too valid. So that by noon of the next day the tender emotions of my drunken self were unseated and my gloomy spirit had returned to its throne.
IN THESE MANY years since the war Langley had still not found a companion in love. I knew he was looking. For a while he was very serious about a woman named Anna. If she had a last name I would not hear it. When I asked him what she looked like he said, A radical. I first knew of her existence when he began bringing home nothing from his nighttime explorationsbut handfuls of pamphlets, which he slapped down on the side table just inside the front door. I measured the seriousness of his passion by the uncharacteristic grooming ritual that he performed before going out in the evening. He would call to Siobhan when he couldn’t find a tie or wanted a washed shirt.
But he never got anywhere with this courtship. He returned home one evening rather early and came into the music room, where I had been practicing, and sat himself down to listen. So of course I stopped, turned on the bench, and asked him how the evening had gone. She has no time for dinner or anything else, he said. She will see me if I
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