disapprovingly when my hands were deep in the bowels of an airplane engine, and again when I crawled on my belly beneath barbed wire in Europe. She sought only to save me for herself, but I selfishly re- solved to lose her for all time. I rode motorcycles to mountain tops, swam through black oil at a tankers waterline, dug trenches, caulked boats, passed waterbuckets while homes burned, carried moan- ing bundles for refugees and flow rejected bombers. I crossed the Atlantic to return to my studies and to lose myself among the teem- ing masses of New York, As I watched Europe slip below the horizon

I felt safe and looked forward to a new future free from Buff.

What foolishness. She found me of course. When I first ven- tured on foot along Fifth Avenue she took my arm and conducted me to each store window in turn, there to stand and gaze at the lavish displays and the thousands of glittering frivolities which I could not afford to give her.

She had become more persistent and demanding and I was really afraid. Quaking fear began to visit my belly, my arms ached and, in the quiet of night, my ears heard the thunder of rushing surf. I watched and counted the sweeping reflections of car headlights during a thousand sleepless hours. The cold sweat that shrinks the scalp and the myriad needles which pierce the neck during times of uncontrollable fear often drove me from my apartment in the early hours. Alone and with tears falling freely I would drive about the city, seeking, searching for something, an elusive whipoorwill, per- haps a decision, fantasia or the backdoor to Heaven, some sort of escape--anything. I have no idea what I sought...

Trumpets are mellow at four a.m. in the West fifties, and the morning wind wails high above the Plaza. Central Park makes special noises which ones ears can carry all the way to Washington Square where boys walk arm in arm--where my stomach retched and my heart became a stone so often. After a while it would soften and I would drive blindly on, through stop lights to a street where I watched faceless people with red hands working feverishly in the cold glare of naked bulbs. The wet pavement, strewn with ice chips, reflected the glare sending rays of light through the steam which crept under the arch of each doorway. Fish's heads plunked into waiting trash pails and glittering necklaces of silver and ruby entrails followed with a sickening flop. In this private world of night things I oocasionally managed to lose Buff for a few peaceful moments. Then on to the Battery where the indigo sky is sometimes touched with