“Wonderful suggestion. Thought I was going to spend my entire time in New York listening to you three talk about family matters.” Will abruptly angled across the street to where a line of oyster barges were moored, and walked up to a stand beneath whose festive umbrella a man was selling the shellfish for two cents each. A sign tacked to a post said the ice water was free. Will bought half a dozen, tipped the half shells over his mouth, and let the slimy gray meat slide into his mouth.

“Gathering strength for tonight’s entertainment,” he remarked, swallowing the last one. “These things increase one’s sexual powers. Half a dozen oysters transforms you into a tireless engine of lust. Care to join me?”

The Braithwaites did not answer because they didn’t know if he meant to join him in eating oysters, or in the entertainment he had planned, or in both. He bought half a dozen more and offered two to each of them.

“I don’t feel any different,” said Eliot as they approached the elevated train station. A boy at the newsstand by the platform’s steps held up a New York World and cried, “Cocaine fiends on the rise in the city! Read it here!”

“Me, neither,” Nathaniel said.

“They don’t work like that, you chumps.” Will shook his head in dismay. “They don’t arouse desire, they give you the strength to carry on after desire has been aroused, say by some good-looking, skillful whore. You can fuck her all night.”

At the forbidden word, Drew clamped his hands over his ears.

The flying train sped them back to the East Side, where in the public bathhouse on Franklin Street they scrubbed off a varnish of dried sweat and saltwater. They changed into clean clothes on the boat, fed Trajan, and then, after singing a few bars of “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” Will offered to treat them to dinner.

They found a place that called itself the German Lager Bier Haus. It was lit up with electric lights in the city dusk, and a sign over the door promised free lunch and schooner of beer to seamen and dockworkers. A great number of both were inside, standing at a long bar under a tent of smoke, hawking into spittoons, some laughing and telling tales, some getting themselves drunk with a methodical seriousness. Bursts of strange languages punctuated the flow of English—American English and English English, English touched by Irish brogue and the lilting accents of the West Indies, for in this waterfront bar, as aboard ship, a rough democracy prevailed and white men stood shoulder to shoulder with black.