He says, "I'm going to buy a car. Sometimes you need a car. I like to drive. Do you like movies?"

"Sure."

"I like musicals, you know? In color, with lots of dancing . . . and stereo." “I like the theatre," you say. "Do you like plays? Or Philharmonic concerts?" "Sometimes," he says. "Not all the time. It all depends.'

"I know. Do you like martinis? I've got some vermouth if you like martinis. We can buy some gin."

"I like martinis made with vodka. I like them dry. I like vodka martinis better than gin martinis."

When you come up from the subway, the sky, above the buildings, is like a mirror by a shower. Way high there is the dusky orange circle of a moon, and electric oval echoes of it all along the street. There are iron grilleworks and thick steps and dirty windows, and yellowed curtains that hang unmoving in the open windows, and you hear a man say "Honey . . . " and then a woman saying "Not now for Christ's sake, Charlie!" And there are radios, and gunshots and music, and loud voices. And you can smell the onions and the cabbage and the ground beef that old man Jergens had on special-three pounds for eighty-five. There are girls sitting on the steps, and men in undershirts, and children almost naked, and big fat women fanning themselves with confession magazines, and four black men standing by a car and laughing with that dark laughter. There are heavy steps that go up five times to a penciled sign that says No Peddlers! And beneath those steps, four shadowed ones go down and under.

"I can never find the key," you say because your hands are shaking. He says "Am I in your light?"

And you say, "No," because he is. "No . . . there!"

You leave the windows open and you pull the shades and turn the dim lamp in the corner on. And then you look to see if he is watching you; he is. You feel you want to say "Hello" because it wasn't said before. Instead you say "Well, how about that drink!" As though either of you wanted it but that's the way the game is played. The rules. And he says "Yes" on cue.

You drink and wait and feel the warm sadness of it.

You want to say "Please-what's your name? Who are you really? I wish Oh God! I wish I'd met you twenty years ago! I wish we'd grown up together, you and I, and gone to school, and learned each other then with long, long evenings talking." And you want to say "Do you suppose that child with the boat was a real child with a real boat-or was he some guiding angel, some Fate directing traffic?" But instead you say "It sure is hot!"

He looks at you above his martini glass and you know he's thinking more than what he says. He says "Yes, it sure is."

You want to say "Please! Let's talk awhile!" But there is no time for talking now. Not now. Now there are no words. Inside your brain are only feelings now, warm, tight, rushing, pleading, crying feelings. Somewhere are warm rains and warm rainclouds and a river starting with a single raindrop slipping down from leaf to leaf, and more, until a little brook is flowing through high trees and soft grass and across smooth stones and warm, and then there is a roaring sound, a throbbing sound, until the river fills the world, the universe, the endless void of time, warm rushing into blackness. Please, God! Stop now! Please. And there's a falling. Life drains and now you know what dying is.

Night by night we die.

The empty glasses sit there in dried rings on the cigarette-scarred table, and

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