Please.” “So what happened next?” “You called. I answered. You didn’t hang up before or right after I said hello. If you had, I wouldn’t have known it was you. After all, we’d just met. And there have been previous guys who called, I think just to hear my voice, but never said boo, I’ve no idea why.” “Your voice. And your dazzling smile. Both how lovely they were, people also wrote in their letters and notes.” “The truth is I barely thought of you since we parted in front of Pati’s building. Once, maybe twice. First time, while I was walking, that night, to the subway or bus. Which did I take?” “I think you told me the subway.” “While I was walking to either one on Lex, or whatever it becomes down there—” “Fourth Avenue and Astor Place?” “I thought if I saw a bus coming, I’d take that, even if it’s slower than the subway to get to where I was going.” “Where was that again?” “I believe a piano recital at someone’s apartment, but my memory’s also hazy on that.” “Sounds right to me. But what also sounds right is your meeting somebody at an East Side art movie theater uptown.” “But I wondered while walking, or maybe on the subway — although now I’m almost sure I took the bus: I picture it — if you would call me and what I’d say if you asked to see me.” “You actually had doubts I’d call? It must have been obvious: I’d already fallen for you.” “No you didn’t. You couldn’t have. Too soon. Anyway, you were attractive, but dressed kind of peculiarly for a pretty spiffy party.” “I thought just three or four people from Yaddo, an informal dinner. Maybe take-out. I think I might have — I must have — brought a bottle of wine, and when I saw the kind of party it was, left it in the kitchen. It was a good thing I didn’t wear jeans. I almost did.” “You were also so nervous and acted a bit strangely when we first talked on the street, that I felt somewhat wary of you.” “Right after we parted, as you put it, I thought much of that about myself too. Even the clothes. As to how I acted: I was nervous. We talked about this before. You had that effect on me. You were so beautiful; the smile; your voice. The way you spoke and put things. And your gentleness and kindness and humility and refinement.” “Again, it was too soon, so I don’t see how you could have made such assessments of my character.” “Oh, no, I could tell. Plus something you gave off when I was looking at you at the party. And I was right, in all those things. I was also nervous when I first called. You know; but what did I say?” “You got on and said something like ‘Hi, it’s Martin — Martin Samuels from the other night? Pati’s party?’” “Sounds like me. That ‘Martin — Martin Samuels,’ and so on.” “‘I remember you,’ I said, and you said ‘That’s good. How are you?’ And I probably said ‘Fine, thank you, and you?’ which is what I invariably said in response to that particular question. ‘Fine,’ you probably said, ‘and I’m sorry I didn’t call you sooner. I don’t mean tonight “sooner,” and it’s not too late to call, is it? and now I do mean tonight,’ and I said no. ‘I’d intended to call several days sooner, but I was working on a manuscript I needed to finish and it took longer than I expected to get it in shape.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘a manuscript? Are you an editor?’ and you said ‘Writer; fiction. Didn’t I tell you the other night?’ Or maybe you didn’t say that, but we somehow got into what you were and had been working on. That your literary agent said she’d like you to write one positive relationship-affirming story for the interconnected collection you gave her, before she submitted it to a publisher. Something showing why the couple, Jen and Willie, stayed together so long. For all the other stories — this was for Partings—with minor exceptions, she said, gave more of a reason why they should have split up years before. They were periodically compatible and loving and sexy to each other but also lots of complaints, fights, several tirades, Jen sleeping with other men, and she threw a glass at him twice and three different times literally kicked him off the bed while he was sleeping or falling asleep, resulting in a broken toe once. So you wrote it and hand-delivered it to the agent and were so tired from all that work, you said, that you wanted to rest up a day or two more before you called me. ‘Did she like it?’ I asked, and you said you haven’t heard from her yet but she’s usually very quick.” “You know that excuse for holding off calling you was pure baloney.” “I know. You told me about a month after we started sleeping together.” “I figured that was a good time. You were in my clutches; not on the bed but in life, so to speak. But that little lie sort of showed how nervous I was in calling you. And my fear, because I was so attracted to you and saw you, after a series of bad or wrong relationships, as my one big hope in finding a permanent love mate, that you’d refuse me if I asked you out.” “You’d finished that story weeks before.” “Two weeks before I met you. And the agent…I’m not coming up with her name—” “Danuta Ott. She was very bright and tall and nice. Married to a climatologist, lived in the Village on La Guardia Place. I think he taught at NYU. We went to a party she gave for her clients. Several big names were there — best sellers — and one, with a slab of meat in his mouth, made a pass at you.” “Danuta liked the new story and was waiting to hear what the publisher thought of the entire collection.” “I remember when it was accepted. That was a while after. It took so long. That night we had a celebratory dinner at a very fine restaurant, and you ordered a bottle of my favorite champagne. I think, over dessert, and when we shared a cognac or B and B, was the first time you told me you loved me.” “No, days before. A couple of times in bed. Maybe I was just renewing it in a romantic setting. Was there a candle on the table?” “If you’re being serious, how could I remember?” “But I think that night, in the cab coming home, you told me you loved me the first time. It took the champagne and scrumptious food and half an after-dinner drink to get it out of you.” “Not true; it wouldn’t. And I don’t remember the first time I said I loved you. I do remember that when I did say it, you said ‘You do? That’s great!’ and I think you got teared up.” “You had tuna, I had salmon. I said, when we were deliberating what to order, ‘We could do better than two fish dishes.’ But you insisted on your tuna, and the most promising thing I saw on the menu that wasn’t way overpriced was the salmon. We shared, didn’t we?” “We always did.” “I remember the most delicious potato dish I ever had that came with your tuna and same with the watercress and couscous with my salmon. The appetizer, or appetizers, we had draws a blank. I think you said we don’t need one because you had a late lunch and you don’t eat much anyway, said more because you wanted to keep the bill down, but I ordered a radish, sheep ricotta, walnut and endive salad that came on two long kayak-shaped narrow plates. ‘I assumed you wanted to share it,’ the waiter said, ‘but I’ll bring it back to the kitchen to put on one plate if I was wrong.’” “You couldn’t have remembered all that.” “I did. Even that the radishes were sliced into paper-thin coins, but so thin that I didn’t know what they were and thought they were some other vegetable not listed in the menu’s description of the dish. Listen, it was a great evening; eventful, momentous, hence the extensive memory of it. Cab home? We never did that except if it was very late or raining torrentially or the last two months of your pregnancies.” “Your holding-off excuse gave me plenty to mull over. It was interesting and educating, I thought, what some writers — un-well-known ones — have to go through to get a full-length manuscript published, something I knew I’d have to go through one day with an academic publisher once I got my dissertation into book form. I never did. Lost interest. Old stuff. Wanted to write essays on subjects in and out of my expertise and do a few translations of important neglected works. I was lucky I got as far as I did in teaching.” “Because you were a terrific teacher. And original essays don’t count? And translated novels and literary memoirs with riveting and beautifully written introductions aren’t books?” “I’m sure to some, especially my former fellow grad students in the French department at Columbia, I’m considered a failure, after all the work I did to get a Ph.D. and nabbing a prestigious postdoc fellowship.” “Never. I’m sure to most you were a light in a murky field by not going along with the kind of academic gibberish and theoretical drivel you would have needed to use to turn your dissertation into a publishable book for a university press.” “My dissertation was already that. I thought you read it. I know I gave you a copy.” “ I started to and don’t know what happened. I think I read the first story, after reading what you wrote about it — the one about the woman who ends up having something like multiple orgasms from the stars — and went on to read the rest of the collection, I liked the first so much, and probably forgot to go back to your manuscript. I still intend to.” “Don’t waste your time.” “Maybe I could try to get it published by a commercial press — one of mine, for instance — by making it more plain-speaking and concise and deleting the footnotes and bibliography.” “Don’t you dare. It’s an old dead work I’m not particularly proud of, other than for having completed it and typing out all two hundred and eighty-five pages, so leave it that way. Besides, with all the new biographical and historical material published since then — I really only put the finishing touches on it in ’77, almost exactly a year before we met — it needs to be brought up-to-date, a task you’re untrained for and wouldn’t be able to do.” “I could try. You could guide and teach me. I’d do anything for you.” “Do you remember what you next said in your first phone call?” “Go change the subject on you.” “Do you?” “‘In less than ten minutes in your presence I was bowled over by you. Could you upright me? And I know we should go slow, but will you be mine?’ No, I don’t.” “You said ‘Enough about me and my dismal unpublishable work. I want to know about you.’ I said ‘“Dismal” is for you to judge — I haven’t read you, although I’m sure you’re being overly harsh on yourself — but why “unpublishable”?’ You said, ‘I just know. It’ll be repeatedly rejected, first by the mainstream publisher who brought out my last novel this past June.’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘what’s that one called? I may be talking to someone whose book I’ve heard of.’ You gave the title.