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“Did he forge your signature?”

“I had given him a blank check, and he put it through for more than six thousand dollars.”

“No! But you, of course, you didn’t expect a poet to act that way about money, did you? Excuse me for laughing. But you always did provoke people into doing the dirty human thing to you by insisting that they should do the Goody Two-Shoes bit. I’m awfully sorry you lost that girl in the jungle. She sounds to me like your type. She was like you, wasn’t she? You could both have been out of it together, and perfectly happy.”

“I see what you mean, Naomi. I failed to understand the deeper side of human nature. Until recently I couldn’t bear to think of it.”

“Only you could get mixed up with this goofy fellow that threatened Stronson. This Italian Maggie described to me.”

“You may be right,” I said. “And I must try to analyze my motives for going along with people of the Cantabile type. But think how I felt to have a child of yours, that beautiful girl, come and get me out of jail—the daughter of the woman I loved.”

“Don’t get sentimental, Charlie. Please!” she said.

“I have to tell you, Naomi, that I loved you cell by cell. To me you were a completely nonalien person. Your molecules were my molecules. Your smell was my smell. And your daughter reminded me of you—same teeth, same smile, same everything, for all I know.”

“Don’t get carried away. You’d marry her, wouldn’t you, you old sex pot. Are you testing to see if I’d say go ahead? It’s a real compliment that you’re ready to marry her because she reminds you of me. Well, she’s a wonderful kid, but what you need is a woman with a heart as big as a washing machine, and that’s not my daughter. Anyway, you’re still with that chick I saw in the bar—the gorgeous kind of Oriental one, built like a belly dancer, and big dark eyes. Aren’t you?”

“Yes, she is gorgeous, and I’m still the boyfriend.”

“A boyfriend! I wonder what it is with you—a big important clever man going around so eager from woman to woman. Haven’t you got anything more important to do? Boy, have women ever sold you a bill of goods! Do you think they’re really going to give you the kind of help and comfort you’re looking for? As advertised?”

“Well, it is advertised, isn’t it?”

“It’s like an instinct with women,” she said. “You communicate to them what you have to have and right away they tell you they’ve got exactly what you need, although they never even heard of it until just now. They’re not even necessarily lying. They just have an instinct that they can supply everything that a man can ask for, and they’re ready to take on any size or shape or type of man. That’s what they’re like. So you go around looking for a woman like yourself. There ain’t no such animal. Not even this Demmie could have been. But the girls tell you, ‘Your search is ended. Stop here. I’m it.’ Then you award the contract. Of course nobody can deliver and everybody gets sore as hell. Well, Maggie isn’t your type. Why don’t you tell me about your wife?”

“Don’t put temptation before me. Just pour me another cup.”

“What’s the temptation?”

“Oh, the temptation? The temptation is to complain. I could tell you how bad Denise is with the kids, how she dumps them when she can, has the court tie me in knots and the lawyers rip me off, and so on. Now that’s a Case, Naomi. A Case can be a work of art, the beautiful version of one’s sad life. Humboldt the poet used to perform his Case all over New York. But these Cases are bad art, as a rule. How will all this complaining seem when the soul has flowed out into the universe and looks back on the complete scene of earthly suffering?”

“You’ve only changed physically,” said Naomi. “This is how you used to talk. What do you mean, ‘the soul flows out into the universe’? . . . When I was an ignorant girl and loved you, you tried out your ideas on me.”

“I found when I made my living by writing people’s personal memoirs that no successful American had ever made a real mistake, no one had sinned or ever had a single thing to hide, there have been no