me that. I also might be able to get it a stage reading, which I bet would be a first for you.” No reading. When she dropped him the first time after two months, his play still wasn’t finished. When they hooked up again two years later, he was only writing fiction and didn’t show his plays to anyone because he thought they all stunk. But there has to be a half-dozen Martin Samuels in the Manhattan phone book, he thought, and maybe another half-dozen M. Samuels, so he didn’t think this Gwendolyn woman would even try. Does she even know he lives in Manhattan? She could call Pati for his phone number — Pati has it, or would know how to get it, since she called him to invite him to her party — but she wouldn’t do that either. She just didn’t seem the type to ask a friend for the phone number of a man she only met briefly at the friend’s party or to call a man for a first date when he didn’t call her for almost a week after he said he would, even if only for coffee one afternoon, but he could be wrong. No, he’s not wrong. She had the look of someone who’d think if he’s interested in me, and it seemed he was — why else would he want my phone number? — he’ll call; if not, no big loss. But he could really use — oh, brother, could he, he thought — and be very agreeable to a new relationship that showed signs…well, signs of something. That could become steady and promising and deep and so on and lead to all sorts of good things, because the last three were busts. Actually, the first of the three, Diana, went on for a while — almost four years and was pretty good at the beginning — but then, a year and a half ago, she ended it and moved into her own apartment with her daughter. She was fooling around long before that with two or three other guys, even while they lived together for more than a year. She’d just stay out all night or come back to their apartment very late when she said she’d be home much sooner — always when her daughter was with her ex-husband for the weekend — and say she didn’t want to talk about it, “so stop talking about it; it’s my life, my business, maybe my mistake,” so it wasn’t as if he didn’t know by then their relationship was going nowhere. And a few months before their sublet was up and they separated, she didn’t let him have much sex either. He said once, after she said “I’m sorry, I’m too tired,” and pushed his hand away, “I guess you get enough of a workout with your paramours.” She said, “What a stupid dirty crack, but I’m going to answer it anyway. Yes, I suppose I do; yeah. Though I still, from time to time, like doing it with you. You’re here, you haven’t moved out, which I’ve suggested you do in spite of the hardship it’d be for me to pay the full rent, and you’re a skillful lover when you’re not rushing. So if I’m feeling hot to trot on my own stimulus or your hand suddenly feels good on my thigh, which it didn’t just before, why not? You know me: when I feel like it I help myself to what others might push away, even sometimes when I’m filled up. Is that enough of an answer or do you want more?” “No, I’m satisfied. But you don’t want to put out for me a little now? I’d wake up in a better mood,” and she said “Goodnight, or does one of us have to sleep in the spare room?” Why didn’t he move out when she gave him the opportunity to? The apartment was in the Village, a part of the city he always wanted to live in. And it was luxurious and spacious compared to what he was used to — he had his own writing room — and his share of the rent was less than what he paid for his last apartment. And she was pretty and intelligent and she and her daughter were for the most part easy to live with, and when they did make love it was very good. But the woman about a half year after her, Karyn — she was right; they never would have worked out. She was just a kid — around ten years younger than Gwen, whom he met several months later — and different than he in so many ways. She didn’t read fiction, for instance — said she never liked it. Always found the plots and characters shallow and absurd and the language and dialog windy and unreal. “Always?” he said. “Yes, always.” “That’s ridiculous, “ he said, and she said “That’s what you think. But what would really be ridiculous would be for me to read your work”—he’s never encouraged anyone to—“because I know from the outset I won’t like it and because I am the way I am I’d have to tell you.” She loved biographies and other books about visual artists and art history, though she wasn’t an artist or studying to be one or an art historian; she was about to enter her first year of law school. Great big beautiful body and sweet face and always a long ponytail. When she told him — they were having lunch at a restaurant near where she worked — that she’s been seeing another guy — a med student — and it is getting serious, so she’s going to have to stop seeing him — he started to cry. “Martin,” she said, “what’s wrong? You know yourself there was never anything between us. It was more lust than love — a lot more; there was no love — and who cries over that? You liked me in bed and I enjoyed you. So we were just sex partners, till something better and more fulfilling came along — and it has for me; I’m sorry — servicing each other’s physical needs. Look, I gave you crabs this summer, you remember that? Sent you the medication for it at that art colony of yours, something you wouldn’t have forgotten because it must have burnt the skin off you as it did to me. But my point is that if we were really serious, would I have been screwing the guy who gave it to me, who’s not the one I’m seeing now, same time I was screwing you? Please, stop crying. They know me here; I come in a lot.” He said, “You’re wrong; I loved you,” and she said “You’re lying, just so you can get me in bed again. But you can’t, and I don’t believe your crying anymore. You never loved me and I never loved you. Once more, and if I have to, again after that, till it sinks in: we were pals with mutual interests, culturally and sexually, but that’s all. And the age gap — two days shy of it being exactly twenty years — is enormous and insurmountable and would still be enormous twenty years from now.” He said, “I know it. What the hell could I have been thinking?” “You wanted young meat; what else? Come on, let’s go; I have to get back to my books.” She signaled for the check, looked at it and said “Fifty-fifty again?” and put some money on the table. “I’ve included my share of the tip. Be as generous as I was, because you made quite a little scene here.” He pushed the money back to her and said “No, I’ll pay and you go.” She got behind him, kissed the top of his head and left. He stayed seated. Didn’t want to leave right away and possibly see her on the street as he walked back to his apartment. The waiter came over and said “Everything all right, sir?” and he said “Yes, thanks; I’ll be going,” and sat for another minute. Then he put the money for their lunch on the table, plus two dollars more of a tip than he’d normally give, and left. Never spoke to her again after that. Three years later — he was teaching in Baltimore and coming, during the teaching weeks, to New York for long weekends with Gwen — he bumped into Karyn’s best friend on the uptown Broadway bus. He had visited his mother and was on his way back to Gwen’s. He asked how the friend was and then she asked how he was and he said “Couldn’t be better. I’m getting married in two months.” “That’s right,” she said. “I heard about it from Karyn.” “How’d she know? I’m not in touch with her and I haven’t spoken to anybody who is.” “I don’t know, but she knew and she told me she couldn’t be happier for you…that you no doubt met the woman of your dreams.” Then she said “Karyn also got married, to an Italian count she sat next to on a plane going to Italy. She left law school after two years and is now living in Milan and New York and trying to have a baby. The man’s much older than her and wants to have a baby now before people think he’s the kid’s grandfather. But there seems to be an obstruction in both fallopian tubes that will need corrective surgery, and she says even that might not work.” “I’m very sorry, really,” he said. “We also want to have a kid right away, and because of my age I can empathize with her husband. Next time you speak to her, please give her my best.” Why did he get so upset at the restaurant? He must have seemed like such an immature jerk to her. There was some affection between them — he liked her and doesn’t know why she denied even that; maybe to make the break easier for them both — but never any love. He knew, as she said, it was only a relationship for the time being, so why the tears? It might have had something to do with being rejected repeatedly in so short a time and that this was happening when he was past forty. First Diana, though he knew that was coming. Then at Yaddo in August he fell for a married woman about five years younger than he. A beautiful intellectual and respected poet and very lovely person and she must have, he remembers telling another writer, the best body of any woman poet around. “It’s good, it’s very good,” this older poet said, “and she’s tall — must be five-ten in flats — and she carries her height well. But her body, splendid as it is, isn’t the supreme. I know we’re talking like two old lecherous idiots, although you started it so I’m not going to take any of the blame, but you’ll have to find out for yourself whose body that is.” They played Ping-Pong a lot in the colony’s pool house, she usually barefoot and in a two-piece swimsuit and beating him with a terrific serve. She also, in the outdoor pool, tried teaching him how to swim more efficiently and with less splashing by cupping his hands and not raising his arms so high out of the water and taking a deep breath and dunking his head every other stroke. And she let him quickly kiss her a few times at a bar she drove them to and later in her car and then one long one that same night at her bedroom door, and he thought he was in, but she wouldn’t sleep with him or even let him rub her rear end or touch her breast. “What’s the point?” she said. “You’re nice, interesting, etcetera, but nothing special to me. If I’m going to risk my marriage and earn the enmity and disrespect of my two boys by getting involved in an adulterous affair, I’d want it to be profound and inescapable and hair-raising and foredoomed. As for a single night? I don’t do those things. So no more smooching; not even hand-holding. Let’s just be friends. Deal?” They stayed friends after they left Yaddo, exchanged letters and their books for a while, had lunch twice when she came to New York to give or attend a poetry reading and take in some theater, all while he was seeing and then going to be married to Gwen. “An infatuation at first,” he explained to Gwen, “but an untroubled harmless one. I’ve had a number of those, but never again. To think I could have been instrumental in busting up her marriage. What a selfish scumbag I was. To me, now, doing that is sacrilegious. Boy, have I changed since I met you. I love it.” Then she got very sick — Robin; no, Roberta. She didn’t say with what but did tell him in a brief letter that she was almost too weak to write any poetry now but very short poems and haikus. “From now on I’ll have to keep my correspondence down to only my closest dearest friends.” He called her a few weeks later to ask how she was doing and she said “Awful, dreadful, frightened, so no more phone calls either. Takes too much out of me and it’s a struggle just to hold the receiver. If I come out of this, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, my friend, this is the end.” For a couple of years he wondered what became of her: if she survived, if she died. He didn’t think it right just to call someone who might know her and ask. Then he had an idea and wrote the new director of Yaddo if she knew what had happened to Roberta. An assistant wrote back saying “The director told me to tell you that as far as she knew Ms. Snow was happy and healthy and busy writing poetry. She was when she was a colonist here last year.” He just realized he could ask one of the kids to go online to see if they can find something about her, but some other time. The third, or fourth relationship, and it couldn’t even be called that it went by so fast, was with a woman about four years older than Karyn. Nadine, sometime in October, last woman he slept with or even went out with before he met Gwen. Doesn’t remember much about it and has no memory of her body other than that when she slipped off her shirt or he took it off for her she had no bra on and had big breasts, which surprised him because when she had her shirt on it seemed she had almost no breasts at all. Next morning he even wondered if he had come. She said he did, but she might have said that so he wouldn’t try to make love again to come at least once in her—“Not spectacularly, and mine hardly reached seismic levels either, but I’m not complaining since you were so inebriated I was grateful you didn’t throw up on me.” “Oh, I couldn’t have been that bad,” and she said “Worse. Feel your side of the bed. Maybe it’s dry now, but after we were done you lost control of your bladder for a few seconds and wet the sheet. You don’t remember grabbing yourself and slipping on the floor? Also from the pee; I had to clean it up. Because this is only a single bed I didn’t feel too comfortable all night sleeping so close to you.” He was a writer in residence for a week at an Ohio university’s creative writing department. He read the fiction of graduate students and upper-level undergraduate writing majors and in a private office had twenty-minute individual conferences with them about their work. There was a huge coffee urn and a hot water dispenser in the office and enough paper cups and tea bags and accessories to serve all the students each day, plus a large tray of doughnuts and sweet rolls. She was a first-year graduate student and by far the best writer he read. Cute, too, a word Gwen hated when he used it to describe an older person’s looks. Frizzy red hair, wire-rimmed granny glasses, bright blue eyes she kept squinting and straining to see with, little pointy ears, freckles and snub nose. So her face he remembers a lot, and though her torso was long, he now thinks she had short thick muscular legs, but he could be imagining that. He was immediately taken with her when he escorted one student out of the room and said “Nadine Hanscom?”—he had a list of conferees for each afternoon and the times they were supposed to see him — and she got off the floor, where she’d been sitting, put her book into her knapsack, adjusted her glasses, which had fallen down her nose when she stood up, and came into the room. “Mind if I shut the door?” he said. “I’ve something to tell you I don’t want the others to hear.” She said “Shut it but don’t lock it, please,” and he said “Never thought to.” She sat across the desk from him. He offered her the beverages and pastries. She said she only drinks uncaffeinated herbal tea and eats nothing with sugar, but she will take a cup of hot water with a lemon wedge in it, and helped herself. When she was settled he said “You say in your cover letter that these three stories are new and haven’t been workshopped or seen by a teacher,” and she said “You’re the first to read them.” “Then tell me, and I’m going to be very hard on you now, how in God’s name did you come to write so well? You’re a budding literary genius, the next who-knows-what. I hope they gave you a full tuition waiver, sizable stipend and a teaching assistantship if not your own undergraduate fiction-writing class, because you could have got in at the top of any graduate writing program in the country. That’s my opinion, at least, not that I ever taught in any; I’m here strictly because of my three books and lots of published stories. But you, if you have a book-length work of fiction or are deep into one, could very likely have a book contract by the time you graduate. Wouldn’t that make your department happy. You’d be a walking ad for it. Anyway, if I were your teacher I’d take a hands-off policy to your work.