Some vague clues were always there, though. “Violence, it’s a real erotic factor! Something we sucked-out Americans have to get back to. All our troubles started with being considerate to women. Look at the Italians, they have no problems of authority or impotence. They treat women as they do and not only save themselves, they’re respected and adored by their women.”

“That’s something, coming from a minister and southern gentleman like you.”

“Gentleman, crap! That’s our trouble, honey, being sucked out by our women.”

They drank the wine and smoked through the night.

“How can you smoke so much, Richard?”

“Perfectly Freudian, my dear—it’s my death wish.”

“But why, why—”

“I’ve never thought I’d want to reach my fifth decade.”

“For God’s sake, what are you doing here, Richard? You had a cathedral back there and important work to be done with racial problems. What are you doing here preaching to old lady tourists?”

And though it was her own position she was throwing up to him (”What am I doing here? I had a husband and a home”), it was also his. The two of them, agonizing wittily over wine and small talk, pursued what Richard in his church jargon called the ontological predicament and what she, to herself, called attaining visibility.

Why, she wondered. Why don’t you reach out to me, why don’t we touch? Why, when we’re both suffering, don’t we at least have each other?

And then he said it: “Yes, Marguerite, I believe we could arrive at an arrangement. We are two sensitive people—we understand each other’s limitations and we’re civil enough not to clobber each other with them, but to accept things as they are.”

But later, in bed, dizzy with too much drinking and sick to her stomach, thinking over his words, she knew it wasn’t enough. And she thought of another of his stories, the story of the dying girl who wanted, before it was all over, the shaggiest dog in the world. And since the girl’s father was the richest man in the world, he could and did send expeditions to every corner of the globe to bring back shaggy dogs. Finally the shaggiest of them all was found and brought to the girl. She looked at it for a moment, then said “It isn’t shaggy enough,” and turned over and died.