Harper’s, and was expecting — his agent said it was a sure thing, or maybe by now he already got it; he was never clear about the timing of this — an advance for his next book from the same publisher. Knows he was anxious. Probably about dating a woman he might end up really liking. So it was about getting involved again and all the problems that could possibly bring — the woman suddenly deciding she didn’t want to see him again, etcetera, even after they’d slept together a number of times and said they were in love with each other, etcetera. He just doesn’t know. Something, though, kept him back from calling her. Maybe the same reasons that took him so long — also a week — from calling her for their first date, when they met at the Ansonia drugstore. He forgets what those reasons were. He’s remembered them and would again if he put his head to it, he thinks. Thought about her every day — he’s saying, after their second date. Should he call her today? Should he call her tonight? What’s stopping him from calling? If he does call and they meet, and he’s certain they’ll at least do that, there’s a good chance he’ll sleep with her that night. Sleeping with a beauty. That’s what he wants, right? Or even better: sleeping with a beauty he really likes. What could be wrong with that? And she kissed so well. She’s almost sure to make love well too. A foolish thought, if he thought it, and it’s something at the time he thinks he would have. And it’s been a while, he thought. Let’s face it: he’s been getting horny. But he wouldn’t call her for a third date and the possibility of sleeping with her just because he’s horny. He’d do it because he likes her and wants to be with her, and bed would seem, after what happened at the end of their last date, the natural and maybe inevitable place for them to end up. Oh, that’s enough. By now it seems he’ll never know what took him so long to call, and from the street, when he finally did, and so late. It’s important to know? Now? No. Then give up on it. So what happened that night? In other words, what is it he never told her? He lied. No Manny that night. No party in Chelsea, and so on. He did go to a party at a couple’s single-family brownstone there, but they already had a literary magazine, named after their P.O. box number—Box 523 or something — and that was six to seven years before. A New Year’s Day party. Lit Christmas tree that reached the ceiling. Champagne and a punch bowl and chafing dishes, with Sterno cans underneath, on a long mahogany table. A polished mahogany table. He was invited by a friend, not Manny, and stayed a few hours — there were several attractive women there, married and unmarried, but none of them, when he got to speak to them, interested in him. But that night, the one where he called Gwen from the street and she invited him to her apartment and about a half-hour after he got there they started to make love, he wanted to call her earlier but from home. Same old story. Told himself: tomorrow. Then: that’s what you said last night and the night before. Why don’t you call now? I don’t know, he told himself. That’s also what you said last night and the night before. Just take a walk. Clear your mind, think things out. Try to find out why you’re not calling her when it’s obvious you want to. But dress warmly, because it might be cold. So he took a walk downtown. Put a slim paperback in his back pants pocket first. Walked down Columbus Avenue to Lincoln Center, then down Broadway to Columbus Circle, all on the east side of the street because it was brighter and livelier. Then, for the same reasons, down Broadway on the west side of the street to 43rd or 44th. While he walked, doesn’t think he thought much as to why he wasn’t calling her. Usually doesn’t think about something he specifically goes out for a walk to. Must have been around ten-thirty when he started back uptown, so a lot later than that when he finally did call her that night, since some of the Broadway shows were breaking. Stopped in what used to be called a cheap Irish bar for a Scotch on the rocks, or maybe it was an Irish whiskey. Then another, but he knows he didn’t have a third. Didn’t want to be tipsy so far from home, and he might not be able to get a cab if he thought he couldn’t get home without one. He was feeling a little high when he left the bar. Probably because — two Scotches or whiskeys wouldn’t have done it alone — he’d also had, though he’d walked off some of it, two vodka and grapefruit juice drinks at home to relax him enough to call Gwen from there. He’d walked a block or so north when he suddenly thought, and it did come to him like that — seemingly out of nowhere, though the drinking helped — why not go to a prostitute? Last one he went to was in San Francisco ten years ago. Got her phone number from a man he sat next to at a bar and started up a conversation with, and called her from a pay phone there and went to her the next day. Wanted to go to her that night but she said she was busy modeling for art classes. Tried kissing her while he was on top of her, but she wouldn’t let him. “That you don’t get even if you paid me extra.” She was pretty and young and had a nice body, just like the man had said, but why would he want to kiss her? To make her seem less like a whore to him and more like his girlfriend? Or he thought kissing her while he was inside her would make the sex better. She also seemed fairly bright, by the words she used, and had a sense of humor — when he asked her name — it was probably a line she used a lot — she said “Kitty. That’s not my real one, of course, but my nom de guerre”—that he had a fantasy about coming back weekly, but never did. He bought a copy of Frig magazine at a kiosk on Broadway, didn’t know where to open it — not on the street with so many people passing — so he went into another bar, ordered a beer, went into a bathroom stall, sat on the toilet, pissed, and turned to the section of the magazine that listed and rated whorehouses in New York. He knew it’d be in there because he’d bought the magazine twice the past year, but for the full-page close-up photos of female genitalia, which he masturbated to a few times over a couple of weeks, and then tore up the magazine and threw it away. There was a highly rated house near where he was, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, open till 1 a.m. “Clean, low-keyed, not pushy and, unusual for a house with budget prices, always ten to twelve eye-filling girls,” it said, or something like it. A “shortie” cost fifteen dollars, “plus the expected $5 tip,” which was cheaper than he thought it’d be. The prostitute ten years ago was ten dollars, and he thinks he gave her a two-dollar tip. Go ahead, he thought. If the neighborhood looks rough or the place is a dump and none of the women is anywhere near to being attractive, he’ll leave without going with one, even if he paid his fifteen dollars at the door to get in. When he got about a block from the place, he thought You really going to a whorehouse, risking getting who knows what there? Why even think about it when you could be sleeping with Gwen the next week or so if everything goes all right with her? He doesn’t want to wait. Besides, what’s the guarantee anything will work out with her? Two dates, some big kisses, a good, he thought, rapport?…he’s been wrong on that score plenty of times, and if the place he’s going to does have ten to twelve women, he’d have a wide choice. There’s got to be at least one who’s young and attractive and doesn’t look cheap. And he’ll make this the last time he’ll go to a prostitute, and he’ll wear a bag, which he’s sure she’ll have and even insist he put on. “Stardust”—that’s what the place was called. It occupied an entire brownstone and had banners hanging from its third-floor windowsills that said “Girls! Girls! Girls!” A man was standing in front of the long stoop that led to the entrance, he assumed, handing out flyers to the place. What’s he talking about? That was a whorehouse in the Diamond District he passed a number of times more than thirty years ago — usually when he was on his way to a photocopy shop on Madison — but never thought to go in. He knows exactly where it was: two brownstones up from the southeast corner of 47th Street and Sixth Avenue. He got to the street the Stardust was on and continued walking up Broadway. Going to whores, he thought, was something he did another time in his life. He just couldn’t see himself choosing a woman from whatever number of them were there, no matter how good-looking she was, and if she was really young it might even be more depressing, and following her to her room, making small talk, maybe having to wash his genitals and putting on a bag and getting on top of her, maybe the tenth and last guy of the day, and sticking it in, though with his fat prick a couple of them have said he’d hurt them in that position so they’ll have to get on top. Thinking about it, he gets an erection and starts playing with himself and then thinks No, what are you doing? and stops. He has to pee again but doesn’t want to get out of bed. Oh, do it now, when you’re not so tired, and he gets up, pees, washes his hands and gets back in bed. He dumped the copy of