“She’s got the clap,” said Alfred. He had been watching me all along.

I looked back at him. “How do you know?”

He looked pleased. “Rudy Smith told me when we were here last. She hangs out here all the time.”

“I guess he would know,” I said.

“I thought you didn’t know him?”

“I don’t. But I guess he would know all right.”

“Rudy gets around,” Alfred said. He considered for a moment and then said very carefully: “Let’s have a drink.”

Our coffee was cold by this time. “All the bars are closed now,” I said.

“I’ve got scotch at my place?” he offered.

“Not tonight,” I said. “I have something to do.”

“Please have just one. I don’t live far from here.” He leaned closer and said more intimately: “We could have some grass if you want.”

Bobbing Knees was looking hard at her watch and making sure that I saw her. “I’ve got to go,” I told Alfred.

“You’ll get clap,” he warned me.

“Maybe not.”

“What about him?”

“She knows what to do. Besides, we’re not after the same thing. He wants to impress her with his mind.”

“And you?”

“There’re too many good minds here to bother with exercises,” I said. “I can impress her with my lack of one.” I picked up my check very conspicuously. The girl pushed her watch close to the intellectual’s face. He looked at her watch and then at his own, and then he threw up his hands in what might have been exasperation or an overdramatized apology. She got up quickly, motioned for him to stay and paused while he wrote something in his notebook. Then she left him and walked past us and toward the door.

“Goodbye,” I said to Alfred Bowles. “I really enjoyed the talk.”

“At least take my card,” he said. He handed me a homemade, handwritten quarter of a lined index card. “Everything’s on there,” he said. I glimpsed a wad of similar cards in his wallet before he put it back into his pocket. “Please call,” he said in a voice that made me look at him, really, for what was probably the first time in the whole hour we had spent at the table. The tone was sad and lacking optimism, as if he did not expect me to call but, deep inside himself, pleadingly wished that I would.

“I will,” I told him.

He gave me that last-hope look directly in the eyes and said: “Please don’t fail me, Dennis. Don’t be like all the others.”

“Look,” I said, trying to be sincere and trying not to be hard all in the same voice, “we’ll have a drink or something. That’s all. We’ll talk, that’s all. We’ll be friends, that’s all.”

“Good,” he said, somewhat slowly. “But do call.”

“I will,” I assured him. “I promise to call.”