"What has this to do with the prize I just got?"

"Patience, son. Not a thing. It's just, Jake and I, well, we've read up. There's this Kinsey report a few years back. Read it?"

"My wife sold copies in the bookstore where I met her."

"Do tell! Well, what about all that h.o.m.os.e.xual stuff in there, kid? I find that rather interesting, don't you?"

"Well," I said.

"I mean," said John, gesturing for more coffee and waiting for Ricki to refill the cups, "there's not a man or boy or old man on earth that hasn't at one time hankered for another man. Right, Jake?"

"That's common knowledge," said Jake.

Ricki was staring at us all and twitching her mouth and sliding her eyes at me to run, get away.

"I mean isn't it just plain human nature, with all the love in us," said Huston, "that we fall in love with the football coach or the track star or the best debater in the cla.s.s? Girls fall in love with their badminton lady instructors or some dance teacher. Right, Ricki?"

Ricki refused to reply and looked ready to bound up and leap out of the room.

"Sometimes confession is good for the soul. I don't mind telling you," said John, stirring his coffee and looking deep into the cup, "when I was sixteen, there was this runner in my high school- my G.o.d, he could do anything, high jump, pole vault, hundred yards, four forty, cross-country, you name it. Beautiful boy. How could I not just think he was the greatest set of cat's pajamas in the world? And, Jake, fess up, now. Same thing happen to youT'

"Not to me," said Jake. "But to friends. A ski instructor took a pal of mine down the slopes, and if he had said, 'Marry me,' my friend would have. Maybe not stayed, but . . . sure."

"There, you seeT' John nodded from Jake to Ricki to me. "All perfectly normal. Now it's your turn, kid."

"My turn?"

"Why-" he seemed a trifle astonished, "to fess up. I mean, if Jake here is a gut wonder of strength to share with us his pal's ski instructor-"

"Yeah," said Jake.

"And I am big enough to tell you about that all-American, cross-country, beefsteak-eating son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h, well, then," he sucked his cigarillo, "it's time," he sucked his coffee, "for . . . you."

I took a deep breath and let it out.

"I got nothing to confess."

"Now hold on!" said John.

"Nope," I said. "I wish I could, but nothing ever happened to me, age fifteen or sixteen or seventeen. From eighteen on, nothing. Nineteen? Twenty?-zero. Twenty-one to twenty-six, only my writing. A few girls, but like my friend, Ray Harryhausen, who put all his libido in dinosaurs, I put all my libido in rockets, Mars, alien creatures, and one or two unlucky girls who, when I brought my stories over to the house, ran off whining with boredom after the first hour-"

"You don't mean to say?" said Jake.

"Nothing at all?" accused John.

"Wish there had been a gym coach, wish there had been a ski instructor," I admitted. "Wish I had been as lucky as both of you with a little off-trail smittance. But, no strange ones, no oddb.a.l.l.s, no k.u.mquats, no queens. Pretty boring, eh?"

I looked over at Ricki. She was dying with admiration for me, but said nothing.

"But surely?' said John.

"Come off it," said Jake. "We all have these foibles, these little dirty yearnings."

"Not me," I blinked. "No boy David. Only Aphrodite and the Venus de Milo. Girls' b.u.ms, not boys' behinds. I realize that makes me unusual. I tried. I really tried. But I just couldn't fall in love with Hugo Dinwiddy, my hygiene coach at L.A. High."

"I don't believe it!" said Huston.

"Neither do I," said Vickers.

"Now, you, John," I said. "I'm in love with you. But that's different, yes?"

He backed off. "Sure. I mean, yeah, of course."

"And, Jake," I said. "I'll be knocking at your door tonight. Leave it unlocked."

I saw the air going out of his Montgolfier balloon. "Sure," he said.

"Hooray!" Ricki rushed around the table, kissed me on the cheek, and fled the room. "Bravo."

b.l.o.o.d.y Marys were served in silence.

During the silence I thought, Watch it. I served myself more eggs and sat down, waiting for John to try again.

"About that money of yours," said John, at last.

"I don't have any money."

"The money you're going to get, kid, in May from those sweet people in New York City?"

"Oh, that money." I scarfed my toast, ignored their stares.

"Well, you listening? Jake, don't you agree? We go to Phoenix Park tomorrow and pick the best horse in eight races and you lay it, the whole amount, on one horse, win or lose! How does that sound?"

"Nope," I said, at last.

"What kind of answer is that? That's not even accepted grammatical English."

"Nope? Sounds good to me. Nope."

"Holy s.h.i.t," cried John, "what have I got on my hands here? A yellow belly? A coward? A gutless wonder?"

"That about describes it, and proud to be," I admitted.

"Moby d.i.c.k would spit on you."

"Most likely."

"Melville throw up on you."

"Don't doubt it."

"Hemingway wouldn't sit a two-hole outhouse c.r.a.pper with you for shared male experience."

"No. I wouldn't share any outhouse with him."

"Look at him, Jake."

"I'm looking," said Jake.

"He's refusing"

"Pretty yellow," said Jake.

"That's it," I said, and arose.

By then I was sick to my stomach. I took the cable out of my pocket. It was empty. There were no words on it. They had managed to burn, ravage, erase, and destroy the words, the message, the joy, during one long terrible hour.

I would have to go to a quiet room in Dublin with the empty paper and touch it with lit matches to scorch forth the gift: You have been awarded. You count. You are okay, or whatever in h.e.l.l it had said at nine this morning. Whatever it was, I could not read it now.

I might have thrown the cable down, but I saw John was waiting for that pleasure. I wadded the cable and shoved it in my pocket.

"For your information," I said. "I have thought it over. Carefully. And at the last race in Primrose Park, I'm betting my found money, everything I've got-on-Oscar Wilde!!"

Then I picked up my b.l.o.o.d.y Mary and very slowly strolled, did not stride angrily but strolled at leisure, waving my drink at John and Jake.

I went out the door.

Ricki found me on the back stone porch of Courtown House ten minutes later. Tears were dripping off the end of my nose.

"G.o.d," she said, "you're a wonderful son of a b.i.t.c.h."

"I wish I felt wonderful," I murmured.

I handed her the wadded cablegram. "Has it come back yet?"

"What?"

"The words. The prize. The announcement."

She held it up to the dim light.

"Yes." And then, quietly, seeing my face, "Yes!"

And the words were back because she read them to me.

And I believed.

I telegraphed New York and I said I would be there, May 24, to get the award from John Hersey and Robert Sherwood and Norman Cousins and Lillian h.e.l.lman and all the rest.

I never mentioned the cable again.

Nor did John or Jake.

25.

In a dream, I heard a wild knocking on my hotel door. I blundered up and staggered over to throw the door wide and find John himself standing astride my sill, grinning, dressed in a black wetsuit-and-snorkel outfit, holding a mask, a bright yellow bottle of oxygen, and an airgun harpoon.

"C'mon, kid!" he cried. "I'll teach you to snorkel!"

"At three in the momingT' I yelled.

"C'mon, kid, don't be chicken, don't be yellow!" he cried.

And like a d.a.m.ned fool, I went with him.

To be drowned.

And wake up from the nightmare in a blizzard of sweat.

26.

Finn shook my elbow.

"Lad," he said gently, "you'd best be off."

"What?" I said.

"It's the philosopher's cubby you been in all the while. That last drink did it. I had no heart to disturb, so I let you grind your teeth and fret in your sleep."

"Fret? Teeth?" I shrugged back from the enclosure ot the private cubby.

"How do you feel?" asked Finn anxiously.

"Mad."

"Because you woke or because the dream wasn't true after all?"