The New Yorker the past year, his a novel excerpt made to read like a short story,” and he said “I don’t get the magazine. But good for them. That should get them on their way. I’ve been rejected by that magazine so many times, I don’t send to it anymore.” “Never give up. That’s what Aiden, the novelist, told me,” and he said “Nah, I’ve got ten years on them, so I know when I’m licked.” An artist who does covers and other work for The New Yorker. “His stuff, of course, everybody knows from posters and other reproductions made of it,” he said. “He can be a bit slick and self-imitative, but I really have no opinion. Pati, I saw, has an original drawing of his in her bedroom, expensively framed and affectionately inscribed with what I guess is his nickname, Izzie,” and she said “That’s what he’s called by his friends — from Isador, his middle name,” and he said “Makes sense, then. I didn’t know his first two names, just their initials.” A Hungarian novelist and freedom rights activist in his own country, who probably will get a Nobel, she said, “for literature or peace.” “Now him I’ve read,” he said, “—all two translations. He’s almost the rarity of rarities today, a great fiction writer, though there’s every now and then something not quite right in his writing or missing. But more times than not he’s powerful and original and hits all the buttons.” “So, other than for your qualifications about him, we finally agree on someone,” and he said “It could be because he’s the only writer mentioned from the party so far whom we’ve both read, other than for our Russian poet and American literary critic, and those guys I’ve only read a little of — I also don’t get The New York Review of Books. Should I be ashamed?” “Far be it from me,” she said, “although it could never hurt to read more of them.” “All in all, it was quite a group,” he said. “I’ve never been to a party with so many well-known people in the arts and related professions in one room. Well, if I’m counting right, four rooms.” He brought up again the rugby shirt he wore to the party. “At least it had long sleeves. My pants were all right: corduroys, not jeans. But just so you know: I would’ve worn a different shirt. Not a dress shirt. I don’t have one, or the one I own is threadbare and I don’t know why I keep it. But a more dressy kind of shirt, one with buttons all the way down the front and one solid color — navy blue — and not stripes. Would have clashed a little with the beige pants, but it still would have been a better choice. I don’t know what I was saving it for. As I think I told you, I thought it was going to be a small informal gathering.” “You did tell me,” she said. “People from Yaddo this summer,” and he said “I don’t know how I got that impression.” He thinks she said “Your shirt was fine, or let’s say I only thought about it once at the party. Or did I? And out of all the men there — all of them in jackets and most in ties — you’re the one I’m walking with now and just had coffee and tea and an English muffin with” or “dinner with and before that a beer”—she actually had a Guinness Stout that came in a bottle and which she drank from a special glass that either collected or dissipated the foam on top. He forgets what the glass, which had the Guinness logo on it, was supposed to do. He pictures her smiling at him as they walked and talked. He liked what she last said, if what she said about the English muffin was the last thing she said, and other things she said about them before. Made him think things were going pretty well between them. That she might be agreeable to seeing him again. For sure he’s going to ask her if she’d like to meet again, he thought, or else say, when they were about to part, “I’ll call.” And maybe she’ll eventually invite him up to her apartment for coffee or tea, or just to see it, or even for dinner. Or say something like “We should go out for dinner sometime,” if this wasn’t their first date and they weren’t walking to her apartment building after having dinner in a restaurant. Did they split the check? He thinks they did. Or he paid and she took care of the tip. He now thinks that’s how it went. And the dinners out after that? — not that they ate out that much early on. They were both short of money for a while and she liked cooking at home and trying out certain French and Italian dishes on him. Their next dinner out he thinks she paid and he took care of the tip. Then he paid and she took care of the tip, and so on. Or maybe he took care of both around two out of every three times. He seems to remember it that way and it sounds more realistic. Till he got the teaching job in Baltimore and from then on he paid the dinner check and tip. Even if it was a very expensive restaurant? He doesn’t think they went to one till they were engaged. In fact, the first time they went to one together was to celebrate their engagement, and he took care of the check and tip. No, the first was when he sold his fourth book. Lunches, he remembers taking care of from the beginning, check and tip, even if he was only having coffee and she was having a complete meal. So what else could they have talked about during their walk from the drugstore? Her family a little, his. The Bronx, where she lived till she was around fourteen. Manhattan, now back on the same block he lived on till he was twenty-two, other than for the first nine months of his life in Brooklyn before his family moved. He once told her “I even know the name and number of the apartment building on Ocean Avenue across from — I have no memory of it, of course — Prospect Park. Two thirty-nine, and it was called Patricia Court, or maybe it was ‘Patrician.’ I thought I knew it. I’ll have to ask my mother and hope she remembers. I know she told me our apartment was on the first floor in back and that there was a long awning in front above the entire entryway, with the building’s name and number on it.” Before her family moved to 78th Street, they lived on Knox Place near Mosholu Parkway, second to last subway stop on the D line, she said. “So many X’s in my life,” she once said and wrote something almost identical to it, but without the part about sex, that he found on a piece of paper sticking out of a book on her night table. What actually happened is that a short time after she told him about the X’s, he got curious about the book because of its title—