"Oh, sure thing," said Bunny, reared back in his chair. "We were roommates. Freshman year."

"And you like him?"

"Certainly, certainly. He's a hard fellow to live with, though. Hates noise, hates company, hates a mess. None of this bringing your date back to the room to listen to a couple Art Pepper records, if you know what I'm trying to get at."

"I think he's sort of rude."

Bunny shrugged. "That's his way. See, his mind doesn't work the same way yours and mine do. He's always up in the clouds with Plato or something. Works too hard, takes himself too seriously, studying Sanskrit and Coptic and those other nutty languages. Henry, I tell him, if you're going to waste your time learning something besides Greek-that and the King's English are all I think a man needs, personally-why don't you buy yourself some Berlitz records and brush up on your French. Find a little can-can girl or something. Voolay-voo coushay avec moi and all that."

"How many languages does he know?"

"I lost count. Seven or eight. He can read hieroglyphics."

"Wow."

Bunny shook his head fondly. "He's a genius, that boy. He could be a translator for the UN if he wanted to be."

"Where's he from?"

"Missouri."

He said this in such a deadpan way I thought he was joking, and I laughed.

Bunny raised an amused eyebrow. "What? You thought he was from Buckingham Palace or something?"

I shrugged, still laughing. Henry was so peculiar, it was hard to imagine him being from anyplace.

"Yep," said Bunny. "The Show-Me State. St. Louis boy like old Tom Eliot. Father's some kind of a construction tycoon-and not quite above board, either, so my cousins in St. Lou tell me. Not that Henry will give you the slightest clue what his dad does. Acts like he doesn't know and certainly doesn't care."

"Have you been to his house?"

"Are you kidding? He's so secretive, you'd think it was the Manhattan Project or something. But I met his mother one time. Kind of by accident. She stopped in Hampden to see him on her way to New York and I bumped into her wandering around downstairs in Monmouth asking people if they knew where his room was."

"What was she like?"

"Pretty lady. Dark hair and blue eyes like Henry, mink coat, too much lipstick and stuff if you ask me. Awfully young. Henry's her only chick and she adores him." He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "Family's got money like you wouldn't believe. Millions and millions. Course it's about as new as it comes, but a buck's a buck, know what I mean?" He winked. "By the way. Meant to ask. How does your pop earn his filthy lucre?"

"Oil," I said. It was partly true.

Bunny's mouth fell open in a little round o. "You have oil wells?"

"Well, we have one," I said modestly.

"But it's a good one?"

"So they tell me."

"Boy," said Bunny, shaking his head. "The Golden West."

"It's been good to us," I said.

"Geez," Bunny said. "My dad's just a lousy old bank president."

I felt it necessary to change the subject, however awkwardly, as we were heading here towards treacherous waters. "If Henry's from St. Louis," I said, "how did he get to be so smart?"

This was an innocuous question but, unexpectedly, Bunny winced. "Henry had a bad accident when he was a little boy," he said. "Got hit by a car or something and nearly died. He was out of school for a couple years, had tutors and stuff, but for a long time he couldn't do much but lie in bed and read. I guess he was one of those kids who can read at college level when they're about two years old."

"Hit by a car?"

"I think that's what it was. Can't think what else it could've been. He doesn't like to talk about it." He lowered his voice. "Know the way he parts his hair, so it falls over the right eye? That's because there's a scar there. Almost lost the eye, can't see out of it too good. And the stiff way he walks, sort of a limp. Not that it matters, he's strong as an ox. I don't know what he did, lift weights or what, but he certainly built himself back up again. A regular Teddy Roosevelt, overcoming obstacles and all. You got to admire him for it." He brushed his hair back again and motioned to the waiter for another drink. "I mean, you take somebody like Francis. You ask me, he's as smart as Henry. Society boy, tons of money. He's had it too easy, though. He's lazy. Likes to play. Won't do a thing after school but drink like a fish and go to parties. Now Henry." He raised an eyebrow. "Couldn't beat him away from Greek with a stick-Ah, thank you, there, sir," he said to the waiter, who was holding out another of the coral-colored drinks at arm's length. "You want another?"

"I'm fine."

"Go ahead, old man. On me."

"Another martini, I guess," I said to the waiter, who had already turned away. He turned to glare at me.

"Thanks," I said weakly, looking away from his lingering, hateful smile until I was sure he had gone.

"You know, there's nothing I hate like I hate an officious fag," said Bunny pleasantly. "You ask me, I think they ought to round them all up and burn them at the stake."

I've known men who run down homosexuality because they are uncomfortable with it, perhaps harbor inclinations in that area; and I've known men who run down homosexuality and mean it. At first I had placed Bunny in the first category. His glad-handing, varsity chumminess was totally alien and therefore suspect; then, too, he studied the classics, which are certainly harmless enough but which still provoke the raised eyebrow in some circles. ("You want to know what Classics are?" said a drunk Dean of Admissions to me at a faculty party a couple of years ago. "I'll tell you what Classics are. Wars and homos." A sententious and vulgar statement, certainly, but like many such gnomic vulgarities, it also contains a tiny splinter of truth.) The more I listened to Bunny, however, the more apparent it became that there was no affected laughter, no anxiety to please. Instead, there was the blithe unselfconciousness of some crotchety old Veteran of Foreign Wars-married for years, father of multitudes-who finds the topic infinitely repugnant and amusing.

"But your friend Francis?" I said.

I was being snide, I suppose, or maybe I just wanted to see how he would wriggle out of that one. Though Francis might or might not have been homosexual-and could just as easily have been a really dangerous type of ladies' man-he was certainly of that vulpine, well-dressed, unflappable sort who, to someone with Bunny's alleged nose for such things, would rouse a certain suspicion.

Bunny raised an eyebrow. "That's nonsense," he said curtly. "Who told you that?"

"Nobody. Just Judy Poovey," I said, when I saw he wasn't going to take nobody for an answer.

"Well, I can see why she'd say it but nowadays everybody's gay this and gay that. There's still such a thing as an old-fashioned mama's boy. All Francis needs is a girlfriend." He squinted at me through the tiny, crazed glasses. "And what about you?" he said, a trifle belligerently.

"What?"

"You a single man? Got some little cheerleader waiting back home for you at Hollywood High?"

"Well, no," I said. I didn't feel like explaining my own girlfriend problems, not to him. It was only quite recently that I had managed to extricate myself from a long, claustrophobic relationship with a girl in California whom we will call Kathy. I met her my first year of college, and was initially attracted to her because she seemed an intelligent, brooding malcontent like myself; but after about a month, during which time she'd firmly glued herself to me, I began to realize, with some little horror, that she was nothing more than a lowbrow, pop-psychology version of Sylvia Plath. It lasted forever, like some weepy and endless made-for-TV movie-all the clinging, all the complaints, all the parking-lot confessions of "inadequacy" and "poor self-image," all those banal sorrows. She was one of the main reasons I was in such an agony to leave home; she was also one of the reasons I was so wary of the bright, apparently innocuous flock of new girls I had met my first weeks of school.

The thought of her had turned me somber. Bunny leaned across the table.

"Is it true," he said, "that the gals are prettier in California?"

I started laughing, so hard I thought my drink was going to blow out my nose.

"Bathing beauties?" He winked. "Beach Blanket Bingo?"

"You bet."

He was pleased. Like some jolly old dog of an uncle, he leaned across the table even further and began to tell me about his own girlfriend, whose name was Marion. "I know you've seen her," he said. "Just a little thing. Blond, blue-eyed, about so high?"

Actually, this rang a bell. I had seen Bunny in the post office, in the first week of school, talking rather officiously to a girl of this description.

"Yep," said Bunny proudly, running his finger along the edge of his glass. "She's my gal. Keeps me in line, I can tell you."

This time, caught in mid-swallow, I laughed so hard I was close to choking.

"And she's an elementary-education major, too, don't you love it?" he said. "I mean, she's a real girl." He drew his hands apart, as if to indicate a sizable space between them. "Long hair, got a little meat on her bones, isn't afraid to wear a dress. I like that. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't care much for the brainy ones. Take Camilla. She's fun, and a good guy and all-"

"Come on," I said, still laughing. "She's really pretty."

"That she is, that she is," he agreed, holding up a conciliatory palm. "Lovely girl. I've always said so. Looks just like a statue of Diana in my father's club. All she lacks is a mother's firm hand, but still, for my money, she's what you call a bramble rose, as opposed to your hybrid tea. Doesn't take the pains she ought, you know. And runs around half the time in her brother's sloppy old clothes, which maybe some girls could get away with-well, frankly I don't think any girls can really get away with it, but she certainly can't. Looks too much like her brother. I mean to say, Charles is a handsome fellow and a sterling character all around, but I wouldn't want to marry him, would I?"

He was on a roll and was about to say something else; but then, quite suddenly, he stopped, his face souring as if something unpleasant had occurred to him. I was puzzled, yet a little amused; was he afraid he'd said too much, afraid of seeming foolish? I was trying to think of a quick change of subject, to let him off the hook, but then he shifted in his chair and squinted across the room.

"Look there," he said. "Think that's us? It's about time."

Despite the vast amount we ate that afternoon-soups, lobsters, pates, mousses, an array appalling in variety and amount-we drank even more, three bottles of Taittinger on top of the cocktails, and brandy on top of that, so that, gradually, our table became the sole hub of convergence in the room, around which objects spun and blurred at a dizzying velocity. I kept drinking from glasses which kept appearing as if by magic, Bunny proposing toasts to everything from Hampden College to Benjamin Jowett to Periclean Athens, and the toasts becoming purpler and purpler as time wore on until, by the time the coffee arrived, it was getting dark. Bunny was so drunk by then he asked the waiter to bring us two cigars, which he did, along with the check, face down, on a little tray.

The dim room was whirling at what was now an incredible rate of speed, and the cigar, so far from helping that, made me see as well a series of luminous spots that were dark around the edges, and reminded me unpleasantly of those horrible one-celled creatures that I used to have to blink at through a microscope till my head swam. I put it out in the ashtray, or what I thought was the ashtray but was in fact my dessert plate. Bunny took off his gold-rimmed spectacles, unhooking them carefully from behind each ear, and began to polish them with a napkin. Without them, his eyes were small and weak and amiable, watery with smoke, crinkled at the edges with laughter.

"Ah. That was some lunch, wasn't it, old man?" he said around the cigar clamped in his teeth, holding the glasses to the light to inspect them for dust. He looked like a very young Teddy Roosevelt, sans moustache, about to lead the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill or go out and track a wildebeest or something.

"It was wonderful. Thanks."

He blew out a ponderous cloud of blue, foul-smelling smoke. "Great food, good company, lotsa drinks, couldn't ask for much more, could we? What's that song?"

"What song?"

"I want my dinner," sang Bunny, "and conversation, and ... something, dum-te-dum."

"Don't know."

"I don't know, either. Ethel Merman sings it."

The light was growing dimmer and, as I struggled to focus on objects outside our immediate area, I saw the place was empty except for us. In a distant corner hovered a pale shape which I believed to be our waiter, a being obscure, faintly supernatural in aspect, yet without that preoccupied air which shadows are said to possess: we were the sole focus of its attention; I felt it concentrating towards us its rays of spectral hate.

"Uh," I said, shifting in my chair with a movement that almost made me lose my balance, "maybe we should go."

Bunny waved his hand magnanimously and turned over the check, rummaging in a pocket as he studied it. In a moment he looked up and smiled. "I say, old horse."

"Yes?"

"Hate to do this to you, but why don't you stand me lunch this time."

I raised a drunken eyebrow and laughed. "I don't have a cent on me."

"Neither do I," he said. "Funny thing. Seem to have left my wallet at home."

"Oh, come on. You're joking."

"Not at all," he said lightly. "Haven't a dime. I'd turn out my pockets for you, but Twinkletoes'd see."

I became aware of our malevolent waiter, lurking in the shadows, no doubt listening to this exchange with interest. "How much is it?" I said.

He ran an unsteady finger down the column of figures. "Comes to two hundred and eighty-seven dollars and fifty-nine cents," he said. "That's without tip."

I was stunned at this amount, and baffled at his lack of concern. "That's a lot."

"All that booze, you know."

"What are we going to do?"

"Can't you write a check or something?" he said casually.

"I don't have any checks."

"Then put it on your card."

"I don't have a card."

"Oh, come on."

"I don't," I said, growing more irritated by the second.

Bunny pushed back his chair and stood up and looked around the restaurant with a studied carelessness, like a detective cruising a hotel lobby, and for one wild moment I thought he was going to make a dash for it. Then he clapped me on the shoulder. "Sit tight, old man," he whispered. "I'm going to make a phone call." And then he was off, his fists in his pockets, the white of his socks flashing in the dim.

He was gone a long time. I was wondering if he was going to come back at all, if he hadn't just crawled out a window and left me to foot the bill, when finally a door shut somewhere and he sauntered back across the room.

"Worry not, worry not," he said as he slid into his chair. "All's well."

"What'd you do?'

"Called Henry."

"He's coming?"

"In two shakes."

"Is he mad?"

"Naw," said Bunny, brushing off this thought with a slight flick of the hand. "Happy to do it. Between you and me, I think he's damned glad to get out of the house."

After maybe ten extremely uncomfortable minutes, during which we pretended to sip at the dregs of our ice-cold coffee, Henry walked in, a book beneath his arm.

"See?" whispered Bunny. "Knew he'd come. Oh, hello," he said, as Henry approached the table. "Boy am I glad to see-"

"Where's the check," said Henry, in a toneless and deadly voice.