In a moment the kitchen door opened and Victoria walked in with a tanned young man in his late twenties; both were wearing tennis clothes. I was caught in the act of lighting another cigarette. Victoria introduced me to the young man, Larry, a tennis pro, and exchanged an intimate look with him before she ran upstairs to change. If they thought they were fooling me, and I think they did, they were both dead wrong.

I offered Larry a cigarette and he declined in that particularly annoying Middlebury fashion so I said, “If you weren’t such a goddamn faggot, I’d bet you were screwing that bitch.”

He began to puff up and I said, “Don’t even think about it, motherfucker.”

When Victoria came down five minutes later, showered and in fresh sweats, if she missed Larry or was puzzled by his taking leave, she didn’t show it, didn’t miss a beat, but remained pleasantly aloof and began to whip together a Caesar salad for supper. I was in the mood to tear her head off. Maybe she knew that.

Dinner was consumed with stiff formality, to my thinking, sea trout on a bed of lentils with a coconut crème caramel for dessert, espresso and brandy. Clendon took the edge off things when he spoke of Victoria’s forthcoming show that he had arranged, using his influence with the college art department. Victoria began to talk of her paintings, which were done in the expressionist style. “I like the realists,” I said. “What I really like is that trompe l’oeil style. And I always thought Andy Warhol was totally insane and crazy. Have you ever gotten totally insane and crazy, Jason? When your daddy was little, he used to act that way. Are you ever like that, dude?”

“Yeah,” Jason said shyly.

“Warhol,” Victoria said pompously, “the early Warhol, before he was shot—”

“Where would America be without Andy Warhol?” I said. “He put his stamp on American culture. Think about it, Vickie. He invented superstars and all of that shit. It didn’t quit with the Tomato Soup Can. Andy Warhol was a genius. He—what he had, was this great radio antenna. Picked up on all of the cosmic vibrations. He just did it, I don’t think he knew the half of it. He was one of those idiot savants, I’m thinking. Your paintings are too goddamn vague, Vick. I can’t get a reading on them.”

After dinner, Jason and I went into Victoria’s studio and painted cans of Campbell’s Mushroom Soup. Made a super mess. Pissed her off royally.

In the morning I sat in on a session of Clendon’s creative writing class. It didn’t take any real brainpower to figure out who his protégé was—a bright bohemian type in black leotards and a turtleneck. She read from a novel in progress in a confident low and sexy voice. She couldn’t write and she wasn’t really pretty. What she had going for her was the bloom of youth and a headful of platinum blond hair.