— You wanted her to think so.
— Of course I did. But also I didn’t. Now just how do we dissect that out. But I’d prefer to have a drink. I’ll have a drink. This is to Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and Melville, bisexual wonders of the transient world, magicians of the epicene, bastards of heaven and hell. Here’s to you, Mike, old boy. May your shadow never grow less, nor your fifth leg shorter. And so they went to hell all three to learn the fraud of Calvary. Good old Mike — I know all about him. His best friend was a homosexual, a minor artist who is now forgotten, and none of whose works survive, one of the lesser Florentines, a small man with a beard, a courageous coward, an exquisite, with a taste for scarlet in dress and a passion for perfumes and silks. A gentle fellow, he carried himself well, square-shouldered and erect, and his sword he managed with a grace, though he never put it to use. He had red lips and green eyes and a thick Florentine cad’s curl swept away from the fine feminine forehead, and his nose was proud and and of good breeding, and his accent in the reading aloud of poetry was of the very subtlest and finest. He was older than Michelangelo and richer, and his purse was open to his friend, for he could be, though a miser by nature, generous with those he loved. But this fellow betrayed him. Yes, he betrayed him. He left his hat in the hall, and his sword too, and his scarlet-lined cloak. So Michelangelo studied Plato, and modeled the titubant Bacchus, which is commonly considered his most ignoble work. And why was all this? Ah, Bill, you may well ask. Unable to draw Michelangelo to himself as he wanted to do, he took the next best course — viz., to wit, i.e., he took Michelangelo’s mistress. Surely you understand that? And so we have a rare kind of incest, we have — and a sort most painful to the heart. Now if you had a brother, Bill, and you had also a sweetheart, and this brother, behind your back, slept with your sweetheart — would you be unhappy? But I’m tired.
— I’m not surprised. Why don’t you lie down again.
— What about you, Bill? I feel damned guilty about you. Have you got lots to do tomorrow.
— Nothing that counts. This is much better. I’ve got a patient at twelve and nothing before that. So don’t worry.
— Why do I talk such tripe.
— I think there’s method in your madness.
— Madness in my method. It’s all the same. You must forgive me. I’d do the same for you, Bill. I’ve got to talk, and talk frantically. This is what I’ve been unconsciously looking for for a week. Something is broken. What is it. I don’t know. Suddenly I’m becoming, or trying to become, a child again. Now why is that — do I see it? I half see it. But, my God, Bill, how sick it makes me to mix so much that’s fraudulent with all this — at one moment what I say to you is genuine, at the next it’s almost deliberately a fake. I daresay you see through the fake with your fierce analytic eye, and so it’s all the same. A calculated fantasy or lie is as good as a dream, for your purpose.
— Just about. Your fantasies are pretty transparent. Which I perceive you’re quite aware of.
— Oh, am I, b’gosh.
— Anyway, you fit them in pretty well.
— In the pattern, you mean, the preconceived pattern.
— The preconceived role.
— Oh, Christ, yes. Isn’t it disgusting.
— Not at all. I sympathize with you. You’re all right, Andy. Why not get really drunk, and let yourself go. It won’t do you any harm.
— I’ve been drunk too much, and it does me no good.
— It’s all the path to regression. Healthy enough, too. There’s nothing wrong with regression, so long as you don’t stick in it. It’s really, in such a case as yours, a sign of creative growth. You’ll eventually come out of it with something new.
— To be sure. You mean I’ll get rid of that damned little winged pig, that revolting little symbol of disguised sensuality, that little pretence of idealism, that sweet little romance as to the facts of life.
— I didn’t say that. You said it.
— You might just as well have said it. Don’t be so niggardly. What the hell is it, Bill, that gives you such a sedentary kind of composure? I believe at bottom you’re afraid of life, and your calm is the calm of the abnegationist.
— Perhaps.
— Now you choose to be Buddhistic.
— You choose to think me so.
— I believe you’re a coward.
— Thou sayest.
— Now you’re playing at Christ.
— Well, spit on me, and become the wandering Jew.
— I hate you extraordinarily, Bill. You’re simply revolting, when you put on this superior manner, this know-it-all air, as if you were God. You think you can look right through me, don’t you. Oh, yes, you see every little shred of dirt and rot in my festering soul. And you have an unfair advantage in having known me for fifteen years or so. And in having known Bertha, too.
— Why didn’t you call up Bertha today.
— Very simple — I didn’t want to.
— Why not.
— Why the hell should I.
— But why not.
— Oh, for God’s sake, Bill — what do you think I am.
— I don’t know what you are — I merely want to know why you didn’t call up Bertha.