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“My lord, I did carry on, didn’t I. Completely unbuttoned. What got into me!”

“You wanted to mix with riffraff and the criminal element. You went slumming, Charlie, and you had a great time playing cards with us dumbheads and social rejects.”

“I see. I was insulting.”

“Kind of. But you were interesting, here and there, about the social order and how obsessed the middle class was with the Lumpenproletariat. The other fellows didn’t know what in hell you were talking about.” For the first time, Cantabile spoke more mildly to me. I sat up and saw the river flashing night-lights on the right, and the Merchandise Mart decorated for Christmas. We were going to Gene and Georgetti’s old steak house, just off the spur of the Elevated train. Parking among other sinister luxury cars we went into the drab old building where—hurrah for opulent intimacy!—a crash of jukebox music fell on us like Pacific surf. The high-executive bar was crowded with executive drinkers and lovely companions. The gorgeous mirror was peopled with bottles and resembled a group photograph of celestial graduates.

“Giulio,” Rinaldo told the waiter. “A quiet table, and we don’t want to sit by the rest rooms.”

“Upstairs, Mr. Cantabile?”

“Why not?” I said. I was shaky and didn’t want to wait at the bar for seating. It would lengthen the evening, besides.

Cantabile stared as if to say, Who asked you! But he then consented. “Okay, upstairs. And two bottles of Piper Heidsieck.”

“Right away, Mr. Cantabile.”

In the Capone days hoodlums fought mock battles with champagne at banquets. They jigged the bottles up and down and shot each other with corks and foaming wine, all in black tie, and like a fun-massacre.

“Now I want to tell you something,” said Rinaldo Cantabile, “and it’s a different subject altogether. I’m married, you know.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“To a marvelous beautiful intelligent woman.”

“You mentioned your wife in South Chicago. That night . . . Do you have children? What does she do?”

“She’s no housewife, buddy, and you’d better know it. You think I’d marry some fat-ass broad who sits around the house in curlers and watches TV? This is a real woman, with a mind, with knowledge. She teaches at Mundelein College and she’s working on a doctoral thesis. You know where?”

“No.”

“At Radcliffe, Harvard.”

“That’s very good,” I said. I emptied the champagne glass and refilled it.

“Don’t brush it off. Ask me what her subject is. Of the thesis.”

“All right, what is it?”

“She’s writing a study of that poet who was your friend.”

“You’re kidding. Von Humboldt Fleisher? How do you know he was my friend? ... I see. I was talking about him at George’s. Someone should have locked me in a closet that night.”

“You didn’t have to be cheated, Charlie. You didn’t know what you were doing. You were talking away like a nine-year-old kid about lawsuits, lawyers, accountants, bad investments, and the magazine you were going to publish—a real loser, it sounded like. You said you were going to spend your own money on your own ideas.”

“I never discuss these things with strangers. Chicago must be giving me arctic madness.”

“Now, listen, I’m very proud of my wife. Her people are rich, upper class. . . .” Boasting gives people a wonderful color, I’ve noticed, and Cantabile’s cheeks glowed. He said, “You’re asking yourself what is she doing with a husband like me.”

I muttered, “No, no,” though that certainly was a natural question. However, it was not exactly news that highly educated women were excited by scoundrels criminals and lunatics, and that these scoundrels etcetera were drawn to culture, to thought. Diderot and Dostoevski had made us familiar with this.

“I want her to get her PhD,” said Cantabile. “You understand? I want it bad. And you were a pal of this Fleisher guy. You’re going to give Lucy the information.”

“Now wait a minute—”

“Look this over.” He handed me an envelope and I put on my glasses and glanced over the document enclosed. It was signed Lucy Wilkins Cantabile and it was the letter of a model graduate student,