“You look like a CIA agent or an übermensch cop,” I tell him. “No one will come near us.” “You’re wrong,” he says. “I’d be a big attraction, they’ll be on me like flies on sugar. But right now, I have to see a princess about a frog, excuse me.” He gets up and makes his way to the back of the room and the stairs that lead down to the bathrooms. I think about how I will miss him and suddenly feel like I’m going to cry. I pick up my drink and finish it in a great gulp. I make myself smile; I despise looking forlorn in public.

There are more people in the bar now. The tape is playing “Tumbling Tumbleweeds.” The couple on the other side of me get up and leave as a little crowd of five or six people comes in. They occupy the newly vacated seats next to me and the others stand behind them. It is a group of Virginia’s friends. They are all tattooed and pierced. They have shaved heads or long dreadlocks, blue hair or mohawks, many visible piercings. One of the guys has silver studs shaped into a question mark on his cheek. They look like they are in some future-world punk band. Actually they go to school with Virginia at Columbia University, studying economics. The guy sitting right next to me is slim and rangy. His sleeveless leather vest shows off his lean, muscular arms, which are covered with blue tribal tattoos. He has a clean-cut, handsome face, a young Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath. His dark hair is shaved close to his skull, and there is a Coptic cross tattooed in the center of his forehead. Virginia once introduced us. His name is Hook, and we talked about how he is putting himself through school working for a silk-screen company. I wonder where Steve is, and I look around. I see him at the back of the bar. A tall, elongated Glacometti woman with red hair to her waist is holding him by the arm and talking up at him…. He looks over her head and catches my eye and smiles.

I turn my head and find Hook looking right at me. “Hi, aren’t you the writer?” he says. “Yeah,” I answer. “Guilty.” “Virginia showed me your poetry book,” he said. “It’s great, not gender based, not that usual snobby feminist glob that goes on and on about the glory of pussy. You’re way beyond that.” He is obviously a very smart guy. He wants to know when my next poetry book is coming out. I tell him I’ve been working on a book of erotic stories for a year, that the only poem I have written in the last year was about the bombing.