The pigeons swooped low over the withered grass. It was two o’clock. In sailor-wide blue pants a girl went by. Her hair was chopped off in a black fringe just over her eyebrows. She stopped to talk to a boy. They were both students. The boy wore a jacket with a fleece collar. They were at the end of the walk near the traffic signal. I couldn’t imagine the conversation. She was laughing. At least the boy wore glasses. The traffic signal changed and they crossed the street together. The crane was hoisting another galvanized cabin to the roof of the University building. Hurrying toward me, in her fur coat, clutching her law books under her arm, was Aurora.

19

“So this man went into the butcher shop.”

“What man?”

“This man.”

“What did he go in for?”

“Will you listen for pete’s sake.”

“I am listening, Asher. I am definitely listening.”

“This man went into the butcher shop.”

“Where?”

“Where what?”

“Is the butcher shop?”

“Oh, boy. Tell you a joke.”

“Is it a joke, Asher?”

“It started out to be a joke. But now I don’t know. It may never make it.”

“Ask Charlie if I can have another one.”

“Of those things? Nobody but a twenty-two-year-old in a goddam mini-skirt would drink anything like that.”

“It isn’t a mini-skirt. It’s a shift. And they’re marvelous.”

“What do you call it?”

“I invented it but I haven’t named it.”

“Charlie?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Will you make the young lady another one of those things she invented?”

“Yes, sir.”

I watched, fascinated. We were in a bar called Silvio’s. Aurora knew it. It was an actors’ bar. In the rear, under a desk lamp, Silvio was doing the payroll. A big ledger was in front of him. There were photographs on the walls, photographs of celebrities, some of whom I had met, and there was a jukebox, and at four o’clock in the afternoon the place was empty except for Aurora, myself, the bartender and Silvio in the rear writing in the big ledger with a ballpoint pen. The shift Aurora wore was made of yellow jersey and the thing she was drinking and claimed to have invented Charlie was now going to make another one of. He had already made two of them. The first thing Charlie did was take a container of milk from under the bar and pour as he had been instructed to about four fingers of milk into a mixing glass. Then he took a tall thin-necked bottle of Galiano and he splashed about a finger of Galiano into the milk. He corked the Galiano and put it back on the shelf and then he took a square bottle of white crème de menthe and poured maybe another finger into the milk and the Galiano. The measurements weren’t exact. Aurora said about so much and squinted between her thumb and forefinger. She was very offhand about the crème de menthe. She had invented the drink, she said, because this was the age of invention and here she was, twenty-two, and she hadn’t invented anything yet. The crème de menthe was followed by, and I shuddered, a splash of Kahlúa. Then Charlie put the glass in the blender. With ice.