“What are you looking at?”

“Incredible,” he said, softly. He might have been staring at the discovery of fire. “Watch the spoon.”

“What?”

“Dip, lift, swallow,” he said, amazed. “Repeat. Dip, lift, swallow. Repeat.”

I was compelled to turn again, to look again, to find myself, in irritated disbelief, actually watching the damn spoon go up and down.

“The man’s eating,” I said, exasperated.

“That is what it is, isn’t it: eating?” He sounded awed. He stared. The man was indefinitely aged. And gray. The profile slanted, the dry lips sucked. Michael seemed riven with astonishment. “The pea soup,” he said, leaning conspiratorially toward me, “is the special today, are you aware of that? Ham hocks in the stuff, today.” He looked back at the mute man, at the mechanical spoon. I was becoming uneasy. “Yesterday,” he said, in the same soft voice as though I were being given some vital military secret, “it was the halibut. Baked. But he wasn’t here yesterday. He doesn’t care for halibut. It’s the pea soup. With the ham hocks.”

“Michael, listen—”

He ignored me. The soup-eater engrossed him. “Are there pea-soup men?” he said. “I mean a species. Evolved in furnished rooms. It’s a study worth anybody’s academic year. Dip, lift, swallow. Repeat.” He chanted it softly. It might have been the basic rhythm of the universe.

“Michael, listen. Aurora—”

“She’s knocked up,” Michael said. “She’s got a bun in the oven. Is that the message from Garcia?”

My lips went stiff.

When had she told him?

Oh, she hadn’t exactly told him. It had sort of revealed itself to him, taking, as you might say, its ultimate form. He insisted on smiling. I’d have forgiven him everything except that damn impenetrable smile. The girl was in serious trouble; it wasn’t a joke: not one of the sleazy jokes that went on there at the other table among what he called his friends. She needed help; what was he going to do about it?

He considered.

“Put an ad in the Village Voice?”

“Very funny.”

“As comedians go,” he said, modestly.

Christ: at a party. Drunk. Asleep among the discarded coats. It wasn’t even rape. It didn’t even have the anguish or the terror of rape. It was something that happened among them: their kind of accident. A slight fatality. He looked at me. My indignation was ridiculous.

“She got stoned,” he said, “and somebody scored.”

That was it. The barest synopsis. The distillation. She got stoned and somebody scored.

“She can’t have the kid.”

“It’s been done.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“She’d make a great mother. Terrific pelvis.”

“Why that girl loves you I’ll never understand.”

He smiled.

“Suppose I do know a doctor? Do you know what it’ll cost?”

“I’ve written her a check for two hundred dollars.”

“Dad: the whores get two hundred now. And they don’t stay all night.”

“All right.”

“It’s the cost-of-living spiral.”

“Where is he?”

“Who?”

“The doctor.”

“Over in Jersey.”

“I’ll write another check for five hundred.”