“She’ll worry, won’t she?”

“Let her worry.”

“Give me four quarters, Asher,” she said.

I gave her four quarters.

She got off the high stool and went to the jukebox. I watched her. The fur coat was bundled on another stool. It was astonishing what one of those simple-looking shifts did for them from the rear. They came at you from the front and they didn’t look like anything at all, a bit flattened and almost demure, and then they turned around and walked away from you and that was the reason they hung in all the shops. I drank my Scotch. She was standing at the jukebox with the cocktail glass in her hand considering the selections. She smiled a little and I watched her slide all the quarters into the slot and punch the white keys. She came back to the bar. The machine glowed, the record moved out and laid itself on the turntable, the arm traveled to its groove. Music. She sat back and looked at me over the rim of her glass and I wondered why she was smiling and why the smile seemed the smallest bit mocking. Then I heard the music. Sinatra was singing. Then I realized what the selection was she had chosen on the squat multi-colored machine.

“You skunk,” I said.

“I did something?”

Wide-eyed.

Sinatra was singing “In the Warm September of My Years.”

“Not so warm, and a month or two later,” I said. I turned to the bar. “Can I have another Scotch, Charlie?”

“Are you hurt?”

I was. I shouldn’t have been. A damn song. But she had done it so deliberately.

“I told a joke. So you told one.”

She looked contrite.

“Please. Was it mean?”

“Forget it.”

“Sinatra’s your age.”

“I wish I were yours.”

“Why?”

“So I could wear white boots and a shift like that.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s a tricky piece of fabric.”

“Tricky?”

“From the stern.”

“There. See? You’re not so old.”

“What do you think of me?”

“Why?”

“Asking.”

“You’re a fink. A lecherous fink.”

“Why?”

“Watching young girls from the stern.”

“It’s a beautiful stern.”

“You say that to all the boats, don’t you?”

“What does Michael think of me?”

“Michael?”

“Our poet.”

“Did you read his poetry?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“Well, what does he think of me?”

“Michael thinks you’re a creep.”

“That’s nice.”

“Don’t feel badly. Michael thinks the world is divided into creeps.”

“Creeps and what else?”

“Nothing. Creeps. That’s all. He doesn’t exclude himself.”

“He ought to go to work.”

“He is working. He walks up and down New York with you. Doesn’t he?”

“Yes. Charlie, can I have the tab?”

I never did hear what the other selections were she had chosen on the jukebox.

20

I took a bath. She came into the bathroom, chewing an apple, and sat down on the edge of the tub.

“What are you thinking of?”

“Michael’s poems. Some of them are about you, aren’t they?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Funny.”