He was a coffee-shop fag, to use a local expression, who was getting older and desperate so that his teeth were not wet when he smiled, as is their custom, because his mouth was so dry from his daily decreasing expectations. He was also losing most of the hair from the top of his head and his eyes were soft and scared, like a trapped animal who does not know how to fight. Doubtless he had been in that place before and had some unpleasant experience, because he kept looking over at the counterman, a rednecked fellow who picked at his chin, as if he expected to be thumbed out at any moment for some past sin against the establishment. He smiled very little, in fact, and leaned too far across the table when talking so that the entire clientele of the café, if they cared enough to look, could easily surmise what we were about. I had come into that place for coffee.

“Do you know Rudy Smith?” he breathed across the table almost passionately.

I recalled Rudy Smith, sometime stud, dope-pusher, and freelance hip black who wore a great head of natural hair and an African costume in order to work part-time as a shill in one of the mod shops. “No,” I said.

“You should. Everybody knows Rudy.”

“It’s a common name.”

“Well, he’s a friend of mine.” He paused to allow me to become sufficiently impressed. “He owes me money, too.”

“You must have lots of money to lend it out so freely.”

“I have a trust fund,” he said quickly. Then he added, somewhat more casually: “I’m really a poet.”

“Published?”

“I’ve a book almost finished. It’s on Melville’s poetry.”

“Did he write poetry?”

“Very little. It’s a small book. I’m trying to put all his poems in chronological order by tracing the deterioration of his handwriting in the original manuscripts. I had to take a course in handwriting analysis just to do that,” he said very proudly. “And I guess I have to do something scholarly to justify my own self as a poet.”

“Why?”

“People have this impression that poets just go around sniffing little girls’ bicycle seats.” He laughed. “It’s my private Holy Crusade.”

“Of course,” I said, looking at the bobbing knees again. The intellectual friend was now explaining some very fine point to her. I heard him mention Nietzsche as he made little progressive motions on the table with his hand, and I knew that he was lost. He did not notice her smiling at me, he was so enraptured with his ideas.

“Are we going to be friends, Dennis?” Alfred Bowles was asking.

“Sure,” I said, not looking at him.

“You do like me?”

“Of course.” The friend had finally noticed her smiling and was now talking faster and making the motions on the table with both his hands.