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He thinks the second date went something like the following. Anyway, he’s gone over it plenty of times in his head and also written about it and they talked about it, each confirming what the other had to say or in some parts giving a slightly different version of it, so it’ll be close. He called the next night and said “Hi, it’s Martin, how are you doing?” and she said “Fine, thanks, and you?” and he said “Great, couldn’t be better,” and she said “That’s good. Anything special happen to make you feel that way?” and he said “No, I just feel good; head, body, the works. I usually feel good. No, that’s not true, but also the writing went well today, so that helped. I wrote the first draft of a new story, and one I like, which means I have something to work on that I want to tomorrow and don’t have to worry I’ve nothing to write. Listen, I had a nice time with you yesterday; I hope you did too,” and he gave her time to speak and she said “It was very pleasant.” “Good. So I think we spoke about this. Would you like to meet again, maybe for a drink and, if you’re up to it, dinner after, but at a different place?” and she said “Why at a different place?” and he said “Well, you know; first we can meet at a bar near you, if that’s convenient; and then think about a restaurant, because a bar, I don’t think, is where you’d like to eat,” and she said, “I see. Sure,” and they arranged to meet at six this Sunday at the West End, a short walk from her building, and then, if she doesn’t still have a lot of preparing to do for her class the following day, have dinner somewhere else. Once they settled on when to meet, he got off the phone quickly. He’d run out of things to say and ask her and she wasn’t asking him anything either or volunteering to talk about herself and what she did that day and so on and he didn’t want there to be just silence on the phone. She might think “What, we’ve nothing to talk about already?” he thought. So he said “Terrific; the West End. Six, day after tomorrow; I know where it is. And at a table, not the oblong bar, if they still have it, which isn’t conducive for talk,” and she said “Okay, see you then, Martin,” and they said goodbye. He got to the bar first, right at six, looked around, she wasn’t there, sat at a two-table and ordered a beer. Domestic? Foreign? Just get the cheapest draft, he thought. Doubts he’ll finish it, mainly because he doesn’t want to have to pee soon after, as he did with the coffee at the drugstore. She might think he has a bladder problem or something and he also doesn’t want her thinking about his peeing so much. When he gets to the restaurant, if they go, that’ll be different, seem more natural. If she can’t go to dinner, then he’ll pee here, just to empty his bladder for the ride home, which could take a half-hour or more. She came a little after six — he was looking at his watch when she suddenly appeared at his table — and said “Hello, Martin; am I late?” and he said “Not at all,” and stood up and put his hand out and they shook hands and sat. “By the way, it wouldn’t matter if you were late. I’ve brought a book and ordered a beer, so I’m good for a long wait. Let me tell the waitress — I see her — what you’ll have,” and she said “A Guinness Stout, please, but in the bottle, not draft, and with a glass. Sometimes they bring it without one.” And he said “How do they expect you to drink it then? Straight from the bottle, which can cause burps, or through a straw?” and she laughed and said “That was funny — the image, drinking Guinness through a straw,” and he said “Thank you.” He got up and went over to the waitress. Then he sat down and said “I hope we can have dinner later,” and she said, “I’m free. I should have tried to call you about it in case you didn’t think we’d have dinner and wanted to make other plans,” and he said “No, I was counting on you. Didn’t work out, I’d just go home and read.” Their drinks came. They talked about lots of things. She asked what book he brought with him “for the long wait that never came,” and he said “Also for the subway ride up here and back — got to have something to read,” and she said “I hope meeting me here wasn’t too much of an inconvenience for you,” and he said “That’s nice of you; but it was easy.” He forgets what book it was. Knows it was small enough to fit into his not-too-large coat side pocket. An old paperback. When they went for 95 cents. He can almost see it: cover torn, pages dog-eared. He didn’t want to take the Solzhenitsyn hardcover he’d been reading at home, because then he’d have to put it on the table they sat at or a nearby chair and carry it when they walked, and displaying such a big serious book in front of her again seemed ostentatious. Chekhov stories, he thinks. If it was, then they spoke about some of them or just Chekhov in general, for she’d read for her thesis several of his stories he wrote in Nice and later a large collection of them to see if there was a Camus connection as there was for Camus in Dostoevsky’s fiction. “There wasn’t,” she said one time, “or none I could find, and after about fifty of his stories, I gave up. I’d thought there might be a groundbreaking article in it for me. They were a delight to read, so I don’t look at the project as a waste of my time.” No doubt something more about her teaching than she told him in the drugstore, or was it on the phone in their first call? What college she went to and what she majored in and more about her master’s thesis, and he the same: college, major, no graduate degree, and both of them born in New York, she at Mother Cabrini in the Bronx—“I’m a Bronx baby,” she said — he at New York Hospital’s Lying-In. Also their public high schools in the city: “Oh, you went to an elite one,” he said. “I did too, but flunked out in a year and had to transfer.” Jobs he’s had, travels. Her marriage and divorce. “You said you were never married,” she said, “right?” after she spoke about her husband and a little about why they broke up. Not her two abortions. That they spoke about weeks or months later. Second one ten years after the first. Her husband said the baby would interfere with their doctoral studies and teaching at Columbia. She didn’t think so but went along with her husband. “Besides, the marriage was already in deep trouble.” The first with another man. Actually, just a boy, she said. Both of them were seventeen. “Got pregnant the same time I lost my virginity. He was quite a skillful lover for someone so young.” “You mean he helped you reach orgasm,” and she said “Several in one afternoon. So it wasn’t, as they say, a total loss. Later, I’d pay. Going to a quack in Philadelphia and hemorrhaging and getting kicked out of his office with blood running down my legs. Lucky my boyfriend’s older brother was with us and drove us to a motel.” Her parents. What parts of Eastern Europe they were from. How they got to America. Her mother’s father was already living in New York, so he sponsored them. It’s a long story. The rest of her mother’s family starved to death in the Lód