“So beautiful and so cynical,” said Tony sadly. “Doesn’t my honorable proposal restore your faith in my sex?”

“It merely reinforces my impression that you are crazy.”

“Look at it this way.” Tony put his elbows on the table. The table wasn’t very clean, but neither were Tony’s elbows; I deduced that this pose was characteristic. “All my life I’ve been looking for my ideal woman. I’m pushing thirty, you know; I’ve had time to think about it. Beauty, brains, and a sense of humor, that’s what I want. Now I know you’re intelligent or old Bronson wouldn’t have hired you. He’s above the sins of the flesh, or thinks he is. You are obviously beautiful. Your sense of humor—”

“Ha,” I said. “You deduced that from the twinkle in my eye, I suppose.”

Tony cocked his head and considered me seriously. A lock of black hair fell over his left eyebrow.

“Is that a twinkle? It looks more like a cold, steely glint. No, I’m willing to take the sense of humor on trust.”

“You’d be making a mistake. I am not amused. And even if I were amused, I wouldn’t marry you. I’m not going to marry anyone. Ever.”

“If you prefer that arrangement,” said Tony, with a shrug.

So it went, for most of the winter. The demoralizing thing about Tony was that he wasn’t kidding. He really did want to get married. That didn’t surprise me; any man with a grain of sense knows that marriage is the only way, these days, to acquire a full-time maid who works twenty-five hours a day, with no time off and no pay except room and board.

Naturally Tony wouldn’t admit to these motives. He kept babbling about love. He couldn’t help it. His background was hopelessly conventional. He came from a big jolly family out in the Bible Belt, with a fat jolly mother and a tall, thin jolly father—he showed me their pictures, which he kept on his desk. That shows you what he was like. He was crazy about his parents. He even liked his brothers and sisters, of whom there seemed to be an indeterminate number. He had a half-ashamed and inarticulate desire for children of his own. Oh, his ostensible motives were admirable—and his attractions were considerable. To say we were physically compatible is to put it mildly, but that wasn’t all; we had a hundred interests in common, from European history to basketball. (He had been the star of his high school team, and so had I.) He shared my passion for medieval sculpture, and he was crazy about old Marx Brothers movies. I couldn’t imagine finding anyone I liked better. But I didn’t weaken.

“Why not?” Tony demanded one day. It was a day in January or the beginning of February, and he was getting exasperated. “Damn it, why not? Are you down on marriage just because it’s out of fashion? I didn’t think you were so conventional!”

“That has nothing to do with it. I’m not against marriage per se. I’m against it for me. I’m not going to get married. Why the hell do I have to repeat it every other day? I think I’ll make a tape.”