I apologize for my complicity in all of this and helping to bring out the worst in you. I know there’s a better side to you, from what I encountered in your office and what everybody’s said. Just, you’re a little oversexed, which makes you do foolish things,” and she rubbed his knuckles, faked a smile, said to herself “Did I leave anything? No,” and left. What am I doing to myself? he thought, getting into bed pretty well loaded that night. No more very young women, that’s for sure. You got the hots for one, jerk off. And why do I get so damn sad every time a woman says she doesn’t want to see me or sleep with me anymore? This one. What were my feelings for her? She was bright and a terrific writer and outspoken and cute. Frizzy hair, button nose, those glasses and knapsack. And very independent and sharp. But was I in love? How could I be? Attracted to a lot I liked about her, that’s all. And seventeen years younger? But when she’s still in her mid-twenties? You got her in bed, that should have been enough, so why go out of your head after just one time with her? She was right; you were pathetic. Pathetic with Karyn too, that time crying. From now on, an older woman, one much closer in age to you, and don’t jump into bed so fast. Never works. Well, he did with Diana — five or so hours after they met they were making love at his place — and that one went on for years. But give things like this time. And for a change, maybe one who’s Jewish, since — no, he’s not kidding, but not religious Jewish — since that might have been in past relationships — not with Nadine; never came up; doubts she even knew he was Jewish and it was all so quick — a problem too. The different backgrounds, culture, other things. Someone — he’s talking about the future — who knows what he’s referring to and doesn’t have to have him explain it when he makes a Jewish joke or remark and wouldn’t be put off if he exaggerates or overacts in a Jewish manner or accent as Terry and a woman he lived briefly with in California and a couple of others he saw from time to time were. And maybe even a woman who was brought up in New York, which’d mean they’d be coming from, like the Jewishness, and sharing even more things that were the same. Also, no woman who already has a child, even if she’s separated from her husband or divorced, but one still young enough to have kids. And a woman who’s built something like Karyn and Nadine. Sure, the body of this woman probably has changed from when she was their age if she’s five to ten years younger than he, but one with full breasts, a nice-sized rear, thick sturdy thighs, even chubby, but no small or thin body like Diana’s and Eleanor’s and the woman in California he lived with and he thinks Terry’s, except for her chest, although she was so long ago he mostly forgets. He wants a big strong body that can take his. So let’s see, he thought, what’s he have so far? An attractive Jewish woman from New York who’s childless but can still have children and who isn’t more than ten years younger than he and is of course intelligent and cultured and personable and gracious and good and so on, and stacked. Two years later he got a letter from Nadine, forwarded from his old address in New York. It was shortly after he started teaching in Baltimore and when he and Gwen had been together for almost that entire time, other than for when she broke it off and they didn’t see or speak to each other for a month or two. She used to say “two.” He’d say it was even less than one. “Isn’t it in your journal of that year?” he once said, and she said “To my great sorrow, since they had in them how and when we first met and, other than for that episode, our first wonderful year, I can’t find ’78 and ’79.” In her letter Nadine asked for a blurb for her first book, which was coming out in six months. “I hate asking this of you,” she said. “I remember you telling my friend James and me — you practically spit out the words, you thought the blurb practice was such sham and bunk — that you never asked a fellow writer for a blurb in your life and you never will. That’s all well and good if you happen to receive, as you did, quotable prepublication reviews for your first book, but in time to be put on the back of the book’s cover, something my editor doesn’t want to chance. She says that blurbs from other writers and prominent personalities are essential for a first-time published novelist. So I plead with you to consider what I don’t think is an unfair request from me, seeing how you were once so positive to my work. You helped me with that encouragement and praise more than you could ever know — I still walk on air when I recall our office conference — and my novel is short, really just a long novella, and clearly written and shouldn’t take more than a few hours to read, and you may even like it. Thank you in advance.” He wrote back saying he still is against giving and receiving blurbs and he especially doesn’t see how an enthusiastic endorsement from a nobody writer like himself could help a book. It might even hurt it. Readers of the jacket copy, when they look over the book in the bookstore, will think how good could this writer be if she had to go to the bottom of the blurb barrel to get one? If I were you I’d only seek out blurbs from writers and critics with big names and hefty stature. No ‘prominent personalities,’ though, which I assume doesn’t mean famous writers who can’t keep their mouths shut about anything and so whatever they say is suspect, but talk-show hosts and celebrities like that. They could only help sell rubbish to undiscriminating readers, which I’m sure your novel is anything but.” She wrote back that she doesn’t know any other writers but the teachers she had in her grad program and they’re even less known than he. “Please reconsider. What will my publisher think if I can’t get even one blurb? And in some ways I feel I deserve one from you. And if the book’s a hit — stranger things have happened — you get your name and two of your book titles under your blurb. (P.S.: I didn’t think of that; it’s what my editor told me to tell you.)” He didn’t answer her; didn’t know what to say. Now he thinks it was lousy not to blurb her. He could have praised the book even if he didn’t read or like it. She was generous to him — let him screw her when she probably didn’t want to but knew he wanted to a lot — and she was really a terrific young person, while he acted like a pig, so what would have been the harm? His principles messed with? Come off it. He’s given plenty of blurbs, starting from around two years after she asked him for one. So many in fact, for former students of his and writers or their editors or publicists who sent him requests out of the blue — maybe they thought he’d be an easy mark when they noticed how many he gave — that he stopped giving them because he couldn’t come up with anything new to say and was repeating himself to the point where a blurb from him wasn’t worth anything anymore. She sent him an inscribed copy of her book soon after it was published: “Just thanks.” There were three blurbs on it from writers he’d never heard of, nor was he familiar with their book titles and literary awards. From the jacket copy and the forty or so pages he read and the rest he skipped through, her novel was about a fifteen-year-old Midwestern girl and her family and friends and wealthy suburb during a very hot and boring summer in the fifties. Then she’s deflowered by a much older motorcyclist passing through, who’s almost pistol-whipped to death by her father and the girl ends up being transferred out of her local public high school to an all-girls’ boarding school on the East Coast. The novel seemed written more for sophisticated younger readers than adults. The plot, despite the closing fireworks, was uninteresting and a bit dreary, and the writing was only so-so — certainly nowhere near as exciting and adventurous and even original as it was in her short stories from two years before. He wrote back saying how much he liked the book and how well written it was—“You were right; I breezed right through it”—and wished her lots of success with it, which he said he’s sure she’ll have, and a few weeks later sent her an inscribed copy of his new story collection: “Best always and with continued admiration for your work.” She didn’t write back thanking him for it. Her book got a short review in the New York Times Sunday book section: “An auspicious debut.” He never saw another review or mention of a book of hers or anything else she may have written or about her in the next twenty-five years or heard from her again. With her, too, he could have asked Gwen or one of his daughters to search her name online. He was curious but he supposes not that curious to find out anything new about her. Sometimes when he was in a bookstore he looked at the front fiction tables and then the shelves for a book of hers. The only one he saw, a few years ago, was her first novel without its cover in a used bookshop in Ellsworth, Maine. So those were the last four or five women he was in love or infatuated with or just slept with or wanted to before he met Gwen. Call her, he told himself the night he finally did call. What’s to be afraid of: If it’s not that, then what is holding you back? Went over that. So go over it again. That she won’t want to meet you the first time you ask her to on the phone? That could be part of it, though he knows that’s the way it can go. What are the other parts? Too many busts with women lately? Said it already: yes. Afraid of getting serious? A little. Deeply and mutually involved? That, too, but it’s also what he wants most. Because the short time he was with her — he doesn’t see how he could know all this, but feels very strongly he does — she seemed to have everything going for her that he liked and he’s probably putting too much hope on something happening between them. So, longer he doesn’t call, longer he keeps his hopes up, ridiculous as he knows that notion, or whatever you want to call it, is. But something could happen. Not setting you up for a letdown, but you’ve got to give it a chance. If nothing happens, or not the way you want it, don’t fall to pieces again. You’re through doing that. I’m not going to say it, but you’re going to act like a man. So call, goddamnit, call. Pick up the phone. Get your finger set to dial. Don’t waste your time looking for her number, it’s in your head. If her phone’s busy, try again. She doesn’t answer, call back later. If she has an answering machine and it comes on, tell her who you are and you’ll call again soon. And you will. But now call or you know, or it could quite possibly be so, you’ll never do it and, boy, will you forever regret it or for a long time to come. Because you’ll always think something could have happened with this woman of your dreams if you had only called. And what’s the only way to find out? That’s right, so call. He picked up the receiver. “I feel nervous,” he said. Well, what’s so wrong with that? “It’s not too late?” Looks at his watch on the night table. No, time’s just right: not too early, not too late. Now dial. You’ve come to the end of your stalling. And if you hang up while the phone’s ringing or right after she picks up, I’ll kill ya.