When the elevator came it was the same man who had taken me up earlier.

-Ground floor, he announced once he'd pulled the caging shut, as if he had formerly worked in a department store.

-That's quite an apartment, Wyss remarked to Bucky.

-Like a phoenix from the ashes, he replied.

-How much do you think it cost?

No one answered her. Wallace was either too well raised or too disinterested. Bucky was too busy trying to bump his shoulder into mine unintentionally. I was too busy wondering when I received the invitation to the reprise, what reason I could give for not being able to attend.

And yet . . .

When I was lying in bed later that night alone and alert, with the corridors of my walk-up unusually quiet, the person foremost on my mind was Eve.

For in the years preceding, if I had chanced onto the guest list of a dinner party like this one with all its temperate discord, and stayed out much too late for a school night, my one consolation would have been finding Eve, propped on her pillows, waiting to hear every last detail.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Abandon Every Hope.

One night in mid-May, as I was crossing Seventh Street on my way home, a woman my age came around the corner and knocked me off my heels.

-Watch where you're going, she said.

Then she leaned over me to get a closer look.

-Bust my bosoms. Is that you, Kontent?

It was Fran Pacelli, the plum-chested City College dropout from down the hall at Mrs. Martingale's. I didn't know Fran that well, but she seemed a good enough sort. She liked to unsettle the prim at the boardinghouse by wandering the halls without a shirt on and asking loudly if they had any extra booze. One night I'd caught her climbing through a second-story window wearing nothing but high-heel shoes and a Dodgers uniform. Her father was in trucking, which in those days usually meant that he had run liquor in the twenties. From Fran's vocabulary, you might have suspected that she'd run a little liquor in the twenties too.

-What a lucky break! she said, pulling me to my feet. Bumping into you like this. You look great.

-Thanks, I said brushing off my skirt.

Fran looked around the street as if she was thinking something through.

-Uhm. . . . Where you headed? How about a drink? You look like you could use one.

-I thought you said I looked great.

-Sure.

She pointed back up Seventh Street.

-I know a cute little place right up here. I'll buy you a beer. We'll catch up. It'll be a gas.

The cute little place turned out to be an old Irish bar. Over the front door a sign read: GOOD ALE, RAW ONIONS, NO LADIES.

-I think that means us.

-Cmon, Fran said. Don't be such a Patsy.

Inside, the air was loud and smelled of spilled beer. Along the bar, the front lines of the Easter uprising sat shoulder to shoulder eating hard-boiled eggs and drinking stout. The floor was covered with sawdust and the tin ceiling was stained with the gaslight smoke of decades past. Most of the customers ignored us. The bartender gave us a sour look but didn't throw us out.

Fran took in the crowd with a glance. There were a few tables in the front that were empty but she shoved her way through the drinkers with a couple of excuse-me-mates. In the back, there was a cluttered little room hung with grainy photos of the Tammany crews-the boys who rounded up votes with billy clubs and cash. Without a word, Fran began moving toward the opposite corner. At the table nearest the coal stove three young men sat huddled over their beer. One of them, a tall, thin redhead, was wearing a jumpsuit with the words Pacelli Trucking stitched on the breast in a perversely feminine script. I was beginning to get the picture.

As we approached you could hear the three of them arguing above the din; or rather, you could hear one of them-the belligerent one with his back to us.

-Second of all, he was saying to the redhead, he's a fucking hack.

-A hack?

The redhead smiled, enjoying the tussle.

-That's right. He's got stamina. But he's got no finesse. No discipline.

The small man in between the combatants shifted in his seat uneasily. You could tell he was congenitally unsettled by confrontation. But he looked back and forth as if he couldn't afford to miss a word.

-Third of all, the belligerent one continued, he's more overrated than Joe Louis.

-Right, Hank.

-Fourth of all, fuck you.

-Fuck me? the redhead asked. In what orifice?

As Hank started to clarify, the redhead noticed us and gave a toothy grin.

-Peaches! What are you doin here?

-Grubb?! Fran exclaimed in disbelief. Well, I'll be damned! My friend Katey and I were in the neighborhood and just stopped in for a beer!

-What are the chances! said Grubb.

What are the chances? How about one hundred percent.

-Why don't you join us, he said. This is Hank. This is Johnny. Grubb pulled a chair up at his side and hapless Johnny pulled up another. Hank didn't budge. He looked more inclined to throw us out than the bartender had.

-Fran, I said. I think I'll mosey along.

-Oh cmon, Katey. Have a beer. Then we'll mosey together.

She didn't wait for an answer. She went over to Grubb leaving me the seat next to Hank. Grubb poured beer from a pitcher into two glasses that looked like they'd already been used.

-Do you live around here? Fran asked Grubb.

-Do you mind? Hank said to Fran. We're in the middle of something.

-Oh, come on, Hank. Let it go.

-Let it go where?

-Hank. I get you think he's a hack. But he's the fucking precursor to cubism.

-Who says?

-Picasso says.

-I'm sorry, I said. Are you guys arguing about Cezanne?

Hank looked at me sourly.

-Who the fuck do you think we're arguing about?

-I thought you were arguing about boxing.

-That was an analogy, Hank said dismissively.

-Hank and Grubb are painters, Johnny said.

Fran squirmed with pleasure and gave me a wink.

-But Hank, Johnny ventured cautiously. Don't you think those landscapes are nice? I mean the green and brown ones?

-No, he said.

-There's no accounting for taste, I said to Johnny.

Hank looked at me again, but more carefully. I couldn't tell if he was getting ready to contradict or hit me. Maybe he wasn't sure either. Before we found out, Grubb called to a man in the doorway.

-Hey Mark.

-Hey Grubb.

-You know these guys, right? Johnny Jerkins. Hank Grey.

The men nodded to each other soberly. No one bothered introducing us girls.

Mark sat down at a nearby table and Grubb joined him. I barely noticed when Fran followed, leaving me to fend for myself. I was too busy looking at Hank Grey. Unwavering Henry Grey. Older, shorter, he looked just like Tinker after two weeks without food, and a lifetime without manners.

-Have you seen his paintings? Johnny said, gesturing surreptitiously toward Mark. Grubb says they're a mess.

-He's wrong about that too, Hank said mournfully.

-What do you paint? I asked.

He considered me for a moment, trying to decide whether I deserved a reply.

-Real things, he said finally. Things of beauty.

-Still lifes?

-I don't paint bowls of oranges, if that's what you mean.

-Can't bowls of oranges be things of beauty?

-Not anymore they can't.

He reached across the table and picked up the box of Lucky Strikes that was sitting in front of Johnny.

-This is a thing of beauty, he said. The boat-hull red and howitzer green. The concentric circles. These are colors with purpose. Shapes with purpose.

He took one of the cigarettes from Johnny's pack without saying please.

-Hank painted that, Johnny said, pointing toward a canvas that was leaning against the coal scuttle.

You could tell from Johnny's voice that he admired Hank and not just as an artist. He seemed impressed with the whole program-as if Hank was carving out an important new persona for the American male.

But it wasn't hard to see where Hank was coming from. There was a new generation of painters trying to take Hemingway's ethos of the bullring and apply it to canvas; or if not to canvas, then at least to innocent bystanders. They were gloomy, arrogant, brutish, and most importantly, they were unafraid of death-whatever that means for a guy who spends his days in front of an easel. I doubt Johnny had any idea how fashionable Hank's attitude was becoming; or what sort of Brahmin bank account was propping up the rough indifference.

The painting, which was obviously by the same person who had painted the assembly of longshoremen in Tinker's apartment, showed the loading dock of a butchery. In the foreground were trucks parked in a row and in the background loomed a large neon sign in the shape of a steer that read VITELLI'S. While figurative, the colors and lines of the painting had been simplified in the style of Stuart Davis.

Very much in the style of Stuart Davis.

-Gansevoort Street? I asked.

-That's right, said Hank, a little impressed.

-Why did you decide to paint Vitelli's?

-Because he lives there, said Johnny.

-Because I couldn't get it out of my mind, corrected Hank. Neon signs are like sirens. You've got to tie yourself to the mast if you're gonna paint em. You know what I mean?

-Not really.

I looked at the picture.

-But I like it, I said.

He winced.