"You're young."

"Don't say that. I'm not young. Down inside I'm an embittered old man. I'm a hundred years old inside, and it's a tired old age. . ."

"Stop it. Forget it."

Massion got quickly up and went to the bar for two more beers. He tried to appear angry with me, but I knew he was not. He had never been angry with me. Perhaps that's why I felt so near to him.

As Massion was walking back to our booth with the beers in his hands a little blue light overhead showed fleetingly on his face. He looked old and tired. It was hard for him to keep false youth and false gaiety in his face all the time. "I'm sorry," I said as Massion sat down. "We shouldn't quarrel."

"No. There's not enough time to quarrel. I have to get back to Margaret." I filled my glass from the fresh bottle of beer.

"God I wish I had never married. I don't know what I was trying to prove. I didn't realize it could get me into so much trouble. Now the boy's here." "I know. I guess I kind of know what it's like."

Margaret says she's going to leave me when the baby's big enough. She says she doesn't want him growing up like me. I can't blame her, I guess."

"No."

Looking at Massion, I realized that I didn't love him. I knew that I was just acting, like he said. It wasn't love that drew me to Massion, but merely a need for companionship.

I thought of Johnny. Tall, beautiful Johnny with the kind heart and the ready smile. Straight Johnny, on whom I had spent all the emotion of which I was capable. Now it seemed as if I was devoid of any capability-just a shell of a person trying to re-capture something that had been frantic and hopeless from the start.

Massion didn't fill my need for Johnny-but he did fill my desire for someone to talk to.

On the nights when Massion couldn't be with me I had sat in the barsearching for Johnny. Searching for the brilliantly-glowing, ever-elusive firebird that fluttered continually ahead-mocking and taunting. I had waited for the firebird to come, and all that ever came were the witty young men. I had gone with them, hoping they would fill my need. But they never had. They always had turned into sterile, placid pigeons. The pigeons had always been near. And the firebird had always been in a distant tree-looking on and laughing.

"What are you thinking?" Massion asked.

"Nothing much. Just wondering why life's the way it is."

"Don't we all. Life's just a bowl of arsenic."

"Don't be cynical, Massion," I said. "I want to cry right now. I mustn't cry.

I must laugh."

"Laugh, then," Massion said.

“I can't think of anything funny."

"Let's go. There's nothing else to do. Kay Starr is singing 'Night Train' over the juke box; the bartender is asleep; couples are departing . . ."

We got up and walked out and onto the street. It was spring but the air was chill.

"Night train . . . that took my love away from me," Massion sang as we walked down the street.

I could feel the firebird near. The firebird was near very often these days.

13