So what’d he do once he got home? And he did walk all the way, right? As he said: why it took him so long to get home. And it was late enough that he was able to get the early edition of the next day’s Times at one of the kiosks on 72nd Street and Broadway, the only places in his neighborhood he could buy it at that hour, and read the headlines, which he always did unless his hands were full, as he walked up the three flights to his apartment. Once in, and maybe even before he took his coat off, he probably went straight to the bathroom to pee. He and his brother always had a notoriously weak bladder, they called it, inherited from their mother, they thought, if such a thing can be passed down to your kids — maybe it was just a smaller-than-normal bladder she passed down — who frequently raced through the apartment from the front door when she came in, dribbling piss along the way to the bathroom in back on the first floor. “Oh, I did it again,” she sometimes said, coming out of the bathroom and pretending to be ashamed. “Awful, awful of me.” Then, if someone hadn’t already taken care of it — one of them or the housekeeper — wiping the urine off the breakfast room and kitchen floors with a rag. The dining room and foyer were carpeted, so little she could do about the urine there till she got them professionally cleaned, which she seemed to do every other year or so, along with the carpeted bedrooms and living room upstairs. Actually, he’s sure he would have peed right before he left the bar as a precaution to having to pee before he got home. But even if he had because he drank the entire beer there and the drinking he did at the party, he might also have had to pee badly as he went up the stairs to his apartment, or even on the street as he approached his building, the urge getting worse the closer he got to his front door. And then struggling to hold it in — this happened a number of times and happens even more today — as he fumbled with his door keys in one hand, his other hand squeezing the head of his penis through the pants to keep from peeing. Not always succeeding, either, and a few times, partway up the stairs or standing in front of his door, but never on the street, giving up and peeing in his pants till he completely relieved himself, later — as quickly as he could do it — cleaning up the mess he made on the stairs or landing. Now — the last two years or so — he pees a lot in his pants. Just short spurts till he reaches the toilet. He just can’t hold it in as well as he used to, even normal pees. After he peed in the bathroom, he probably took off his clothes, which had to be smelly from all the cigarette smoke at the party. It seemed half the people there smoked, so her hair and clothes would have smelled of it too, something he never thought before. If they had somehow hit it off big that night — at the party, not at the elevator: that wouldn’t have been possible unless they continued to talk outside, which they did, and then went someplace for coffee or a snack or drink instead of separating on the street. And ended up at her apartment and necked or slept together — that never would have happened with her the first night, the sleeping together, no matter how much she might have been attracted to him, though it has happened with two or three other women — he would have smelled the cigarette smoke on her, just as she would have smelled it on him, unless they showered before they started necking or got into bed and also washed or thoroughly wet their hair. So? Nothing. Just saying. And it’s ridiculous what he’s thinking. They never would have showered before they started necking. And they would have necked before they got into bed. And the shower, if they thought they should take one because they didn’t like the smell of cigarette smoke on their bodies and in their hair, would have had to be taken separately. She said, the one time he suggested they shower together, that it was dangerous and unnecessary and unappealing for other reasons and not at all erotic. When she was much younger, she said, and against her better judgment, she once let a boyfriend convince her to do it, and it practically ruined what was up till then a very nice relationship. “The lucky bastard,” he said, “just that he was able to shower with you and wash your front and scrub your back and whatever else went with it,” and she said “You don’t know what happened. We both slipped and it nearly killed us. He broke his nose, gashes in our heads, my front tooth went through my lip; everything.” He then probably — this was what he always did when he was living alone and came home from a party or bar with his clothes reeking of cigarette smoke and he wasn’t too sleepy or a little drunk — half-filled the bathroom sink with water and soaked his shirt and pants in it and wrung them out with his hands as much as he could and hung them up on hangers or off the shower curtain rod over the bathtub. That was how he washed all his clothes then. He never had his own washer or dryer till he and Gwen married and moved into a fully equipped apartment in Baltimore. Sometimes he rubbed soap on the clothes in the sink or put laundry detergent in with them and washed them by hand. That took a long time, though, rinsing and dunking the clothes in several sinkfuls of water to get the soap or detergent off, and it always seemed to make a mess on the floor. If he also washed his socks — and for them he always used soap and put a sock on each hand and rubbed them into each other — he hung them over the tub faucets after he soaked them and wrung them out. If he came home a little high or sleepy from a party or bar in smelly clothes or just didn’t have the energy to soak or wring them out, he left them on a bedroom chair, maybe brushed his teeth, took two aspirins or an Alka- or Bromo-Seltzer or that Italian antacid drink an old girlfriend had introduced him to — Briosci; something; he liked the taste better than the others but it was a lot more expensive — and went to bed and soaked the clothes in the morning. The only things he washed in the Laundromat were linens and towels and sometimes clothing that was too dirty to wash by hand. He had two sets of sheets and pillowcases and changed them every other week unless he knew some woman was going to spend the night at his place. Sex was always better on fresh linens, he thought, and when she laid her head down he didn’t want the pillow smelling of his hair. He’d originally bought the second set of linens so he wouldn’t have to go to the Laundromat more than once a month. When he moved in with Gwen he pooled his linens with hers — they both had double beds and only slept on cotton sheets — and used her building’s laundry room for washing everything. Before he soaked his clothes that night — and he’s almost sure he did; the cigarette smoke smell took weeks to go away unless washed or soaked, and he came home sober and alert and full of energy — he took out of his pants pocket the piece of paper with her name and phone number on it and put it by the phone on his night table. Now that he thinks of it, if he did smell from cigarette smoke when he got home, he would have showered soon after he took off his clothes and taken them into the shower with him and dropped them in the tub and sprayed or soaked them there while he was showering and then, standing in the tub with the shower off, wrung them out and hung them from the shower curtain rod, maybe later on hangers. Then he probably put on the terrycloth bathrobe he had then. It had been his father’s for god knows how many years and now his for six: wide blue and white vertical stripes and quite frayed. When he was alone in the apartment late at night he liked to lounge in it with nothing on underneath, the belt, what there was left of it, untied and his genitals exposed, which he’d play with from time to time, usually without looking at them. He probably read awhile in the Morris chair he bought used before he met Gwen — she’d had new cushions made for it while she was recovering from her first stroke — and finished that day’s