“I like Maggie and the Vaudevilles,” she said. “I like all their stuff. I like the Impressions a lot too.”

“That’s all you like?”

“Yeah,” she said defensively. “What about it?”

“Nothing. I like them too.”

We were both silent. “What do you think of Gerald?” I said just to hear myself speak.

“He’s a real son-of-a-bitch,” she said. “He’s a no-good bastard, if you ask me.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I’ll tell you something about Gerald. He uses people. He don’t give a damn about anybody but hisself.”

“Oh,” I said.

I had been sitting all this time in a cushioned chair, allowing her to sit by herself on the sofa, her thick legs open, her long girdle showing far below the hemline of her dress. I had been waiting all this time for her to become attractive; because everyone, even the worst dog or most colorless person, can become attractive almost immediately if they are touched in the right place. Even a round, hard face like hers can, almost magically, become interesting if the mind gives the eyes sufficient reason to come alive. Her magic spot was her utter helplessness and her dull inability to defend herself against it. She had been used, probably, all her life by people like Gerald and I suspected that she did not know or could never accept any other way to live. I pitied her for this. And because I pitied her, I remained in the chair while she shifted her legs on the sofa in a pathetic effort to be seductive, a grotesque display of all she had in the world to make her interesting. I did not want to play dumb in order to impress her because I did not want her. I wanted to brush her short, wiry hair with my hands and hold her hands and tell her that she would always be used and passed from body to body by men like Gerald and myself, and cry with her for all of us.

“What’s wrong with you?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“Why are you looking at me that way?” She was smiling, expecting a momentary movement over to where she sat on the sofa.

“I am looking at you this way, Gloria, because I do not know any other way to look.”

“You’re funny,” she said.

“I might as well be,” I said.

“You want to dance?”

She put on one of the records, a slow one, and I got to touch her hair the way I wanted and then she laid her head on my shoulder and waited for me to execute the thing high-school boys do in the dark to girls at chaperoned dances. I could not bring myself that close to her.

She looked up at me, her small eyes uncertain, cloudy, questioning, her face big and hanging below me on the brink of something. “You’re queer,” she said.