“He don’t exist,” he said. His speech patterns kept shifting, from ghetto to university and back again. “The neighbors never see the old doc. They just see his faithful black servant and all they see him do is drive in and drive out. This is my house, Matthew. Can I give you the ten-cent tour?”

It was quite a place. There was a gym on the top floor, fully equipped with weights and exercise machines and furnished with sauna and Jacuzzi. His bedroom was on the same floor, and the bed, covered with a fur spread, was centered beneath a skylight. A library on the second floor contained one whole wall of books and an eight-foot pool table.

There were African masks all over the place, and occasional groups of free-standing African sculpture. Chance pointed out a piece from time to time, naming the tribe that had produced it. I mentioned having seen African masks at Kim’s apartment.

“Poro Society masks,” he said. “From the Dan tribe. I keep one or two African things in all my girls’ apartments. Not the most valuable things, of course, but not junk, either. I don’t own any junk.”

He took a rather crudely fashioned mask from the wall and presented it for my inspection. The eye openings were square, the features all geometrically precise, the overall effect powerful in its primitiveness. “This is Dogon,” he said. “Take hold of it. You can’t appreciate sculpture with your eyes alone. The hands have to participate. Go ahead, handle it.”

I took the mask from him. Its weight was greater than I anticipated. The wood that composed it must have been very dense.

He lifted a telephone from a low teakwood table and dialed a number. He said, “Hey, darlin’. Any messages?” He listened for a moment, then put the phone down. “Peace and quiet,” he said, “Shall I make some coffee?”

“Not if it’s any trouble.”

He assured me it wasn’t. While the coffee brewed he told me about his African sculpture, how the craftsmen who produced it did not think of their work as art. “Everything they make has a specific function,” he explained. “It’s to guard your house or keep off spirits or to use in a particular tribal rite. If a mask doesn’t have the power in it anymore they’ll throw it away and somebody’ll carve a new one. The old one’s trash, you burn it up or toss it away cause it’s no good.”