“I’m glad to see you don’t waste your time on hippies,” the uncle had said. “All our young men are selling out these days.”

The uncle was the kind of fellow who had played his cards right. He was much older than his wife, and I had the impression, that night, that he must have given her time to experience enough and to become bored enough before he overwhelmed her with his success. He wore glasses and combed his hair back and had that oily kind of composure that made me think of a waiter waiting to be tipped. He was very proud of his English, I observed, and how he always ended his words with just the right sound. He must have felt superior to people who didn’t. He must have felt superior to Claude because he was still with the Brotherhood and Claude had tried to get out.

Claude did not like him and always seemed to feel guilty whenever we visited his uncle’s house. “Don’t mention any of my girls to him,” he told me after our first visit.

“Why would I do that?” I said.

“He’ll try to psych you into telling him.”

“Why should he suspect you? He never comes over to the apartment.”

“He just likes to know what I’m doing. I don’t want him to know about my girls.”

“I won’t say anything,” I promised.

He was almost twenty-three and had no steady girls, except for Marie. He was well built, so that he had no trouble in the Village area. It was like going to the market for him. During my first days in the apartment the process had seemed like a game. And once, when he was going out, I said: “Bring back two.”

Half an hour later he came back with two girls. He got their drinks and then he called me into his room to meet them.

“This is Doris,” he said, pointing to the smaller one, “and I forgot your name,” he said to the big blonde.

“Jane,” she said.

“This is Howard,” he told her.

“Hi,” I said. Neither one of them smiled. The big blonde in white pants sat on the big bed and the little one sat on a chair near the window. He had given them his worst bourbon.

“Excuse me a minute,” Claude said to the girls. “I want to talk to Howard for a minute.” He put on a record before we went outside into the hall between our rooms. He was always extremely polite and gentle, and very soft-spoken in spite of his size.

“Listen,” he said to me outside, “you can have the blonde.”

“What can I do with that amazon?”

“I don’t care. Just get her out of the room.”

“She’s dirty,” I said.

“So you can give her a bath.”

“It wouldn’t help much.”

“Well, just take her out and talk to her,” he told me. “Remember, you asked for her.”

We went back in. “Where you from?” I said to the amazon.