JERRY HOWARD FANCIED HIMSELF A man about town, although that was far from what he actually was. He liked to think of himself as one of the very rich, that very special kind of self-possessed rich person who would be welcomed at any door among those of his acquaintances, at any time in the night. This night he was drunk. He had been drinking all week, in fact, because he had very little else to do until his friend returned from her European holiday. Earlier that evening he had decided that he did not want a girl; for he had made the very disconcerting discovery that girls, most girls, were beginning to bore him. He was only twenty-two and sometimes he worried about what would happen to him when he got older and found that girls still bored him. Secretly, he had certain fears of becoming a homosexual in later life, and this is what brought him away from his drinking sometimes late at night when he felt the fleeting need for having a girl. He wanted to exercise the need before it passed because he was very much afraid of what would happen to him after he lost all contact with it. And this is what brought him, once again, to Margot Payne’s door at three in the morning. And this is what caused him to pound on the door and call her name and laugh aloud at what he was doing, and hope that she would not be in. Margot opened the door.

“What do you want?”

“I want to come in.” Jerry smiled his old white smile.

She held the door open for him and he paused for a moment in disbelief, and then passed into the room. Then she closed the door and turned, and looked at Jerry; her face hard, her eyes staring as always, her arms locked behind her back as she leaned against the door.

“What do you want?”

“I thought you’d be glad to see me.”

“I’m not,” Margot said.

“My former roommate Eric sends his love.” He smiled some more.

She made no reply.

Jerry walked about the small living room. He was very nervous under his eyes. He tried always to look away from her. “Why aren’t you in bed?” he asked, brushing his fingers lightly across the tabletop.

“I was walking,” she said.

“You horny?”

“No.”

“Can’t sleep, huh?”

“Yes.”

“I guess you want to go to bed, huh?”

“Yes,” Margot said.

Jerry walked over to the door where she was still leaning.

“With me?”

She looked him in the face and he lowered his eyes to her breasts not because he wanted to look at them at that moment, but because he was afraid that she would see in his face the fear he had of the thing possibly waiting for him on the other side of twenty-two. “Want to go to bed with me?”

“Why not,” Margot said.