The Marvelous Lover

He was a marvelous lover. You know, the real thing in bed. No gentleman, though; I mean, he stank in a revolving door and in an elevator he was absolutely hopeless. But, Lord, he had all this terrifyingly adequate equipment and nothing, nothing, fazed him ... on the floor, in a chair, on top of a desk, leave it to him to figure something out. At a soda fountain (and don't think sodas were beneath him), he was shy, embarrassed, even grotesque, but making love, he had maddening control and strength and tenderness. Well, he was pretty interested in making love.

When I met him, and I really knew him only briefly (no matter what had ensued I'd only have known him briefly; believe me, I'm as over-civilized as the next girl), he was about 45 and he'd been exercising that marvelous body of his (which in its way was as laconic as his speech) for almost a quarter of a century. He was, you might say, pretty much practised. Though, God knows, you always felt like the first, one, full of delight and every time better than the last (which personally always makes me wonder nervously about the last time). His name was Porter G. Dobey. Hell, his name is Porter G. Dobey. Everybody in the business called him Dobey so I called him Porter – you know, just to be cute. I thought it was cute calling him Porter. He didn't react to that one way or the other. I mean, there was no way of making special private romances with that guy. He just didn't react . . . except naked, all five foot eleven of him, with you in his arms, wrapped round him like a goddamned curling iron.

He was very lean and looked taller even than he was, very American looking, you know, really American looking: lousy posture, sloping shoulders, wonderful flat rich chest like a flank steak. I always remember him as sort of balding but really he was more grizzled than balding, with this grayish fringy stuff absolutely all around and on top of his great head, but you know, it was sort of thin fringy stuff. And then there was this goddamned beard. Yes, he had a goddamned beard. I don't know but what he thought it was a Samson thing with that beard and if he shaved it, there'd be no more fun measuring with the copper pennies . . . but anyway, there was the fact of that beard. Personally, I liked it. It gave a girl something to talk about in those deep, moonlit stretches of desert which were conversation with Porter G. Dobey.

The Lord knows he could've made love for a living. But he didn't. (Not to give the wrong impression: if he could've earned his bread that way, I don't believe he would have. There was no abuse of love anywhere in his very extensive, very loving vocabulary.) Matter of fact, he ran a bookstore. I never knew if he owned it, maybe he owned part of it. There was an ancient, little man around sometimes, with a dirty eyepatch, whom Porter called his partner. But you can be sure if Porter Dobey owned a part of anything, it was the part with the couch.

I'd been in the book business myself but that's not how I met him. I'd just wandered in there a couple of times, poking around at things, looking for magazines with my own stories in them, like Marcel Proust checking through Figaro to see if they'd printed his article yet. The shop was comfortable, not even shabby, just nice. I liked it. And we used to chat amiably. I did a lot of talking (I always did a lot of talking in those days, especially in bed, always a bad thing) and Porter did a lot of listening and maybe a little grunting now and then. I don't think he even knew my name. Listen, I don't think he ever knew my name. What the hell would a name matter to him?

After a while, whenever I was depressed about my beau whose name was Henry Shoemaker and who was consistently depressing, or maybe bored with my job (which was unimaginably sexless in spite of or maybe because of the innumerable passes thrown at me there) or just generally in the mood for an atmosphere of silent electricity, I used to stop in at Porter's shop and have a cigarette with him. My cigarettes mostly. Well, once he bought me a cup of coffee and once he bought me a soda but I believe that was the extent of his expenditure on my behalf – if you wanted Porter Dobey's company, you came with your own food, drink, money, cigarettes and any other supplies you thought you might require for your pleasure or your security. Well, in the book business, any end of it, a girl takes care of herself. Or learns to.

The thing that was so terrific and so damned exciting about him, especially to a sexy girl with spectacles, was that Porter absolutely never made a pass or a pinch at you. He was just majestically charged, fused, unperturbed, unhurrying, ready to go off (though the way he made love, this is maybe a poor description of his prowess). Oh, once he bent down, casual as hell, and kissed me. It was a kind of kiss I can't even describe. Except that it was perfect in itself. It wasn't so damned casual that you'd take it for nothing or for paternalism or general friendliness. On the other hand, it didn't necessarily have to lead to anything else. It was just a complete, delightful, thoroughly physical embrace in itself. And that was it. No clutchings or pantings or pats . . . and no words. Just a kiss. And that's how I took it. Just a kiss.

And it could've gone on like that forever. He didn't bore easily, in bed or out, which is, I always think, a sign of character. I mean, we're all contemporary enough to know there's nothing sexy, at all, about those treacherous little men who go about taking what they can get (and not taking it with much finesse mostly) and getting tired of it once it's been taken. Porter Dobey liked women, really liked them. And when he liked them he liked them and if you'd signed on for a cruise with him or a whaling expedition or just a day sail you'd signed on and he'd be happy to have you aboard and a bit of you every day – if you could arrange it.

And there's one more strange thing, not about him – though maybe it was something about him – but really about your feelings about him. You just didn't feel jealous. You knew if you were sleeping with him, that he must be sleeping with other women; that if you were a kissing, hand-holding companion, he had others. But you didn't feel jealous of those other women and I can vouch for that. I'm ordinarily as jealous a neurotic bitch as any other jealous, neurotic bitch. But I suppose there are explanations for this; maybe very complex ones. Maybe it was the fact that there was never any question of "I love you" involved. If you took it as love, it was love; if you didn't, then it wasn't. I mean, it didn't matter. No verbiage, no messes to entangle or then detach. No tedious "I love you" or "do you love me?" or "maybe I do love you." You just knew it was good. Whatever it was. But really I think the reason you didn't feel jealous was more the fact that you knew you were appreciated. Really appreciated. If Porter wanted you, you were worth wanting and valuable and delicious. He made you know it as well, much better, than all the men in the world who say "I love you" in Ninth Symphony chorales. The truth was that Porter did love you: he desired you, he wanted his pleasure with you, he wanted to give you pleasure (and made sure he did) and when you were quite, quite done and smoking your cigarettes you knew he wanted you to come back. Wasn't it love? Maybe not. But it was heaven just the same.

So, there we were – Porter and me – friends, no beds yet and none in our future. Just grunts and a kiss or so and that voluptuous high crackling tension and me talking. For people in the book business we really didn't talk much about books. Porter did read. But he was not bookish. At all. And didn't like disquisitions on literature. He did teach me a lot of racing terms, though, and sometimes, in a very good, very languorous mood, he liked to talk about his favorite scene in his favorite book. Which was a predictable one, pretty much, if you knew him. It was one of the last things in Tortilla Flat where Danny, "the good guy" Porter called him (and, you know, that should've told me more about Porter than I allowed myself to see otherwise) is dying and asks for a priest. When he's done with his confession, though, the departing priest is shaken, visibly. He's never heard a confession like it. Danny had led quite a life. Oh my God, Porter, what a sentimentalist you were!

Sometimes, when I was in a low humor or tired or vulnerable or had gazed too much at that calm, long, sprawled-out body, I'd get wound up, maybe talk too fast or too much even for me. And then Porter would look at me, right at me, very leisurely, full of sweetness and he'd say, "Relax, honey." Meaning nothing very much. Or maybe meaning just "relax." And I usually did. And, perhaps, going along that way, some year or some day, like a sentimental, drunken Christmas, we would've got to bed anyway; but long before then. like all the unrelaxed of the universe, I'd precipitated myself into his arms. And here's how that happened:

I was, as I said, in love with a man named Henry Shoemaker. It was my first big love. I was absorbed, unhappy, ecstatic, nervous, and very badly treated. It had all the elements of a necessary first great love. Half the time I was depressed when I went to see Porter it was because of that damned "cruel Henry" as I always thought of him. For one thing, Henry's cruelty consisted in the fact that he was married. He was (continued on page 42) Marvelous Lover(continued from page 28) obviously, apparently, and tiresomely, bored with his wife. But they had three children. And more than the responsibility of this was the responsibility of Henry's pompous morality by which he had, when he'd fallen in love with his wife and married her, insisted that this was the great romance of the ages. It was it. Everything. Alpha and Omega. The end, the beginning. A to Z. Oh hell, I could go on about Henry Shoemaker and make you hate him the way I wanted everyone to. But this isn't his story, not really. It's really Porter's story. So, Henry, to be brief, had got himself caught inextricably in the Great Romance and he couldn't get out. Not for me anyway. In the beginning I'd been thrilled at the absolute glamor of being in love with a married man. I was young and I really wasn't crazy to get married myself and it all seemed, the deceit even, very exciting and the real aqua lung vision of adult life.

But after a while, it got to be exhausting. And then after it got exhausting, it got depressing and boring. And then, when I discovered Henry Shoemaker's morality didn't prevent him from carrying on with several other women, it got to be very saddening. And when I found out that he'd really fallen in love with someone else and was buying her presents and jewelry and all sorts of whorey goings-on like that, I was suicidal. And, suicidal, I thought of Porter.

Now there was someone to comfort and solace me. There was someone to complain to who wouldn't give a damn, who would just listen and sympathize. But in the back of my mind, and not terribly submerged either, was the thought that the only known way to get over one man was to fall in love with another. And who better than Porter? It never occurred to me that he might say no. And it would be wonderful and exciting and a bit scary too. I had been rather little girl and withdrawing and really virginal with Henry but that had been serious. This would be different. It would be a real adventure. I'd try it.

And I had a terrific sneaking desire to know how I'd come out. Would I be any good? Could I, with no experience, and not much imagination, take on such a venture? Or would I be laughed at? Rejected after brief trial? In the heart-pounding, stomach lightening (in sorrow one's stomach positively leadens) excitement of my plan, I almost forgot Henry altogether. I called Porter on the phone. Which was unusual. He must've realized this but he didn't point it out. He took it the way I believed he took everything . . . nice and easy. That's the way to live, I told myself.

"I'm inviting you to lunch, Porter."

"Good. Where are you taking me?"

"Wherever you say. Porter . . ."

"Uh-huh."

"I'm chasing you, Porter."

"Fine. Where shall I plan to be caught?"

So we met and we had lunch and I prepared myself with three martinis. A dose way over my head. But I didn't get sick. Though I think I could have without putting a crick in my plans. Porter was good about things like that. And I took off my glasses. Which was really arch. But he was sweet. He didn't even smile. And, hell, baby though I was, and drunk, and so on, I have my charms. I flirted with him, very nice. I talked about sex. Negatively. I don't know why this struck me as the way to begin. It just did. I pointed out all the reasons why I didn't think it would be a good plan for me to fall for him. He looked surprised. And then I told him why I'd be absolutely fatal for him to fall for, lousy and neurotic and a demanding, impossible lover. He still looked surprised. But less so. And after a while, we were both talking like this. And finally Porter said: "How about today, honey?"

I didn't even point out how we'd been saying why we weren't going to. I just nodded. It seemed the logical end to this conversation.

Porter ran his finger down my nose, a gentle, humorous gesture; otherwise, he hardly touched me as he said: "I think we should. And I think we should soon. And I think I'll love you good."

Well, now I'd got where I wanted to but I was pretty much scared. I looked at him. Attractive, attracting, as hell, but much more than that: terrifically virile and adult. And I was even more scared of welching. I had a vague idea of being whelped for it. So I didn't welch. And, he didn't. And we did. And, anyway, it was marvelous. Like I said. He was a marvelous lover.

And after that, it wasn't so different, except when I came to see him, we made love first and afterward we talked about Steinbeck and "out West" and his arrow-head collection. And he made it all very easy. I mean he made it easy for a girl to be wonderful and self-respectful. You didn't make scenes or get difficult. Not because he disciplined you. Just because you didn't need to or want to. He was rarely rude. Or abrupt. Always winningly welcoming. He'd see me and take my hand in his, very big and warm and holding. He never talked sex. He just lived it. Very big and big boned and flat stomached. The closest he ever came to saying anything to me at all about us was one morning. I was sitting on the floor at the back of the store which was curtained off from the front where the customers browsed and bought. He had some real old, silly old, books back there and I was sitting on the floor and sort of leafing through an absurd novel of 40 years ago. He came out from behind his desk and crouched down, real low and almost on top of me. But he didn't touch me. He just looked at me. And then he took one hand, so big it covered my whole face and he touched my face and my hair. And then he said, with only the very slightest touch of self-consciousness:

"I do want you very much. But I don't know why. You're not even so very pretty."

I'd guessed it was a compliment, and it was, rather an intimate one, almost unintentional, so I decided not to be insulted or rather to think about the insulting part later. And always, afterward, and even now, it's seemed to me that what he'd really said was: you're very pretty. And maybe he had.

The length of time we were lovers doesn't matter much. It could have been short or long or neither. Comes to the same thing really because Porter, vital himself, vitalized his relationships renewingly. You know, one's love with him just didn't suck its nourishment out of that absurd, cliche-ridden, botanical simulacrum which wilthing wooers think all love should bear: a tender beginning, a lush middle, and a withering death. No, if a relationship with Porter ended, it had to do with an event, a matter, quite outside the tongue-burning ecstatic circle of passion with him. And, come to think of it, that was love with Porter: a circle. Not a lone line, stretching from A to Z like my poor Henry Shoemaker thought or from A to B if you weren't lucky! No, with Porter, it was a hoop, a continuum, a perfect form (what, irreverently, comes to mind is one of those pornographic finger rings where a man and a woman or a daisy chain wickedly romp in engraved idleness, forever linked, around the wearer's finger). Oh, Porter, loving you was a ring of good feeling, a circle of touch-me, a ball of flames, a sphincter of delight. And then, to be vulgar, as in moments of displeasure, pleasure, the human spirit is so often vulgar: Porter G. Dobey squared the circle. But not in any way or for any reason that I could ever have predicted. Actually, in loving him, I had, unknowingly, always been one small corner of a square; but, as I say, that was unknowingly. No, Porter would not have tired easily nor broken off our relationship, with words or without, for any ordinary or conjurable combinations of guilt, reason, practicality, boredom or distaste.

Which is why his manner on that strange, last, everlasting day, though only subtly different, as though the temperature of a natural body had fallen (continued on page 88) Marvelous Lover (continued from page 42) a degree or two, so stunned me then, so shocked me later, so surprises me even now.

It was a Monday, that I remember, though not what I wore or what Porter wore nor anything else about the morning before I reached his shop at all. I'd like to say, I'd love to feel, that I'd some premonition, an inkling, a warning itch of disaster. But that would be a lie. I do remember that once in the back of the shop, we made love that morning. That I've never forgotten. Made love shamelessly, soundlessly, wordlessly, beyond even our own ordinary frontiers. It was marvelous past anything. For both of us, I know. But I didn't know this was in the nature of a gift, not from Porter but from my own muse (Clio, the Muse of History, the only one with a real job and a real sense of crime and punishment). I know that if I lived through another century (intact) I'd never have it like that again and, in a way... I'm glad. It was enough. Too much. Henry Shoemaker may have something with his love from A to Z for even that is only, after all, a finite line, but infinity... too much for poor frail civilized man with his juices sucked away in culture and commerce.

And after we loved that Monday, we rested, and after we rested, we smoked, But very soon, somehow, I sensed something, that temperature drop, that faint, only barely intuited restlessness of Porter's. Whether he had planned to talk about the square and the circle with me at all, I don't even know. Perhaps he hadn't planned to tell me anything. Or, knowing Porter, it was likely that he'd just not decided what he'd do about telling me, one way or the other. I only know that for the first time I found him abrupt, even rude, certainly uncomfortable. And uncomfortable himself, Porter immediately made me uncomfortable.I wanted to know what was wrong.

"Busy..." he mumbled, untruthfully.

"Oh Porter," I moaned, at least I planned it as a moan. I think it was more likely a whine, the way it came out.

And Porter did something so unlike him that it almost embarrassed me.

Porter shuffled!

"Well," he muttered finally, "if you come diddle a working man amidst his works . . ."

"What can you expect?" I finished for him. My voice was adequate to bear its burden of words. I was a veritable Duse but my spirit trembled, trembled and fell. Not only was this unkind and unlike Porter, what's more, I didn't even know what diddle meant!

"Also, I ought to catch a train . . ." He remained sitting, though, sitting away from me, and away from the shadows of love, sitting at his desk, fiddling with his absurd display of those damned arrowheads and some abandoned, unsharpened pencils.

"What're you saying, Porter?" I asked. He didn't answer.

He didn't answer.

"Because I don't know and I suggest you don't know either." Really, I didn't know what he knew or didn't but it seemed a good didactic stand to take.

Porter sat there, massaging his goddamned beard. Then he tested the points on his arrowheads and then rubbed his beard again.

"What I'm saying is that I'm getting married."

Silence. There was almost absolute silence in the back room, in this arbor of Porter's amours. From the front of the shop, I could hear the voices of customers and Porter's partner or whatever he was. But those voices were just a jumble. I thought I'd give it a try, though.

"Your friend's diddling some customers." Use it three times and it's yours. But Porter only smiled. Which was also unlike him.

"I'm getting married," he repeated.

"Yes, I heard you," I answered, not defiant which I hadn't the strength for, only puzzled and saddened and troubled. Whom would Porter marry? Why would Porter marry? I had never considered, however wildly, such a possibility, not for myself nor for any other woman of his. My idea, at this moment, of his bride was vague but whatever her lineaments I remember that my own seemed rapidly to defeat me. She must be a goddess, a heroine, a queen, Aspasia, Madame de Sevigne, a poetess, a wit, a Valkyrie, a sexual athlete. I felt myself not only diminished, not even unattractive, but simply, wholly, unlovely.

"She must be quite a woman."

Porter was obviously unmoved by any supposition of mine.

"Beautiful," I hazarded, "smart." Well, that I was sure of. Smart she must be. Look what she had accomplished; what I had not even the imagination to fantasy.

He shook his head. "She's one of the damned."

I sat down. Heavily. How unlike Porter to be tragic. . . or comic. What had such hues to do with the silent primary colorama of his caresses, or his swoons or mine?

"She's damned," he said again, pulling at his beard with, was it possible? – shaky fingers.

"What the damned hell do you mean by that?" And I blushed for myself. "Oh Porter, dear Porter, I am sorry. I'm just. . . jealous, I suppose, and surprised."

"You, you don't have anything to be jealous of." He neither looked at me nor, I believe, thought of me. He was part of a drama of his own. And drama was not Porter's medium.

"She's not brilliant," he said, "nor beautiful, nor rich, nor clever, nor joyful, nor young, nor. . . lucky."

"Does she love you?" I asked as though I were clutching a fleeting hope that she must have something of value.

"She's a tormented soul."

"Oh, my God, Dobey. This doesn't sound like you. What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about a woman," he said, "not a girl. Not a girl with brains and education and cute titties like you." He smiled then. And I've always been grateful that I didn't say: well, thanks!

"I'm talking about a woman, deserted, wronged, divorced, a woman with three children, with thick ankles. With no money."

"And your love." This was all either very funny or very profound. But for me it seemed neither. For me it seemed like nothing. I didn't know what it was. I just didn't know what it was.

Porter stood up. He so rarely talked this much. And his voice was somewhat cracked, I thought, and nasal. From so much speech or so much thought? Unaccustomed both. Or had I just never heard so much of Porter's voice before that I didn't really even know it? Had I never heard it, never heard more than a stiff and bristly rumble close to my ear saying I was wonderful, saying I was terrific, saying I was his, saying not so fast, saying now honey? Well, this, I thought, won't help me now. This way hell. So I shut that off, like the oven light is shut that off, but still there, waiting for a match.

"She's had a rotten life," he said.

"And you're going to make it up to her?"

"Yes. Like that."

"But," I was feeling desperate. "Is she... do you know her? I mean..."

He looked at me then, very wise, very unamorous.

"Have I slept with her, you mean? You mean, is she good in bed? Like you, you goddamned little bitch? Like you?" He laughed, taking the curse off it.

"Yes," he said, "yes to the first and no to the second. She's just a woman. That's all. Not you. Just a woman. Not special, not warm, not frigid. Not cold. Just a woman. You fondle her, you take her, and then maybe you read a book or light a furnace or some other goddamned thing. Whatever it is husbands do. Put the cat out. I don't know."

Among my desperately chaotic feelings, thoughts and griefs was the amazement of never before having heard Porter talk about sex.

"You want to be domestic with her, you mean?"

"I mean I want to give her a break.

That's all I want to do." He sat down, and stopped fiddling. He looked like a piece of sculpture then. He should've been sitting on a horse. I could see him as an Indian chief. Where are your lands, brave one? My lands are where my dead are.

"For Chrissake, Porter. You don't marry for that. How can you give a woman a break if you don't even desire her? What the hell kind of break would that be? You don't even want this woman," I said in amazement.

"You don't understand."

"That's for sure."

"Honey, I've had a marvelous time of it. I mean it, all my life. I've really had it. I've really made it. So now I want this. I don't know... I've thought about it. I just want to do something for someone else now. Not something I want, just for someone else. I want to do something big and sacrificial. I want to save someone else. Only this is all I can do."

"Oh, my God, Porter! You'll burn in hell, you really will, for that sacrilege. I mean, who do you think you are, for God's sake? Albert Schweitzer or something?" I meant to be sarcastic.

"Yes," he said, his whole face brimming with pleasure at my comprehension. "Only, I can't do it like him. I can't say, here I've lived half my life for myself and the rest I dedicate to the world. He lived 30 marvelous years doing what he wanted, so then he thought he'd do what he didn't want at all... and help the world. I don't think people realize how much he probably dislikes all that Africa business. But he made it his mission. Well, I'm no doctor. I'm nothing that could help the world. But I've lived some marvelous years myself and now I want to stop and do something for someone... absolutely entirely for someone else."

I could see here that Porter was obviously, in a sort of underwater kind of way, reliving his own years. You could tell from the still, quiet, taut face and body, he wasn't thinking of Bach or eschatology. He was thinking ... well, hell, I was thinking of it, too. And to keep my stomach from lurching and my groin from crying, I flicked my fingernails at him:

"Go on, go on, Porter Dobey. Go the hell on."

He sighed and then he did go on, "Schweitzer thought maybe he'd live to be 60 and he offered up, Lord, he just offered it up like a damned bit of incense, like an Isaac, like a lamb, offered up the second half of his life to humanity. To what he didn't like and didn't want."

"In thanks," I reminded him.

He nodded. "In thanks for his first 30 years doin' what he liked."

"Porter, your voice is getting thick. And what's more, I want to tell you that what you're suggesting is disgusting. It's a sin against man and nature and God. It's a sacrilege!"

"Maybe."

"Porter, I never heard of anything so obscene."

"I'm not drunk."

"You're nauseating!"

"Honey girl. I've really had a good time, fooling around. Fooling around with these damn fool dusty books. Just like I liked. Didn't have to read them. Just sit and look at 'em. And women. My God, like the Gamekeeper in Lady Chatterly's Lover."

Oh, this is the utter end, I thought. This is lunacy.

"Lady Chatterly's lover would just puke at your idea, Porter. What do you intend to do? Repay the Fates or Gods?"

"'... to the Rulers of Men and their Des-tin-ies,' " he sang.

"Oh, shut up. Of all the confounded, anti-life reverent attitudes. I mean it, Schweitzer would throw up, I'm not kidding. You're going to pay for your sexual gluttony by going out and marrying an absolute nothing you don't even love in the first place and be faithful to her to boot and you think you're doing something for humanity! You must be absolutely insane!"

"Don't shriek, pussy kid. I didn't say I didn't want to sleep with her."

"Oh nuts. I know you. I see right through you. You're a combination of absolute hysteria, insanity and middle classiness. You'd never dream of marrying anyone you really wanted."

"I never dream," he said, "especially of marriage."

"But, Porter, if you want to make up for your fun which is an idiotic and probably psychopathic idea incidentally, why don't you become a monk? Or join the Foreign Legion or the Ford Foundation or something? Or better still, why don't you just go on spreading yourself around? Let all the women taste it, yummy, Dobey darling, let them all have some of you. You could advertise. Wouldn't that be better for humanity? Make love to all the ugly women in the world maybe, give your great joy to the bereaved, to all the bereaved, the halt, the accursed, the febrile, the smelly..." I ran out of words and breath and strength.

He sort of patted the desk in front of him as though he were patting my head. "I couldn't do that, girl," he said, maybe seriously. God, I don't know if he was serious.

"That wouldn't work," he said. "Besides, I don't want to spread it around... anymore. I don't want to do anything I want to do anymore. Don't you understand?"

"Porter," I said weakly, finally, unable to stand this any longer. "Why did you pick this girl? Why her? I mean, if you want to get married, why don't you marry me or someone you could... care for?" I didn't know exactly whom he could care for nor what that would mean in Dobey's terms but I knew what I meant.

"That's just it," he said almost beaming, for him, at having hit upon just the way of explaining that would make me, he thought, understand at last. "That's just it. You don't need me. I mean, you'll marry someone just right for you one of these days. You're a doll. You'll have no trouble. You'll fall in love and get married. So will ... lots of people. But she won't. You see? If anyone is going to help her, it has to be me and now and this way. You get me?"

I nodded, feeling partially I think that it would be dangerous in a way not to humor him. I felt like a character in Dr. Caligari's cabinet. I didn't know who was in and who outside the lunatic asylum.

"Well, Porter. Who is she? I mean, where did you have to go to find the perfect pathetic case for your attention? Did you advertise?"

"Don't be cruel. It's not becoming to you," he said. "She's a friend of a friend. I met her through friends. She's a good person. Really. I mean you'd like her. You really would."

"Well, thanks. Thanks. I'm sure I would. Charming. What's her name?"

"Her name is Sonia Shoemaker."

My first thought was a sort of mental registration that in addition to having no looks, no brains, and no money, she had a funny name. My second thought was hardly a thought, it was a tiny corrosion in the heart, a melting in the stomach, a lightning bolt in the brain.

"Sonia Shoemaker!" So here it was. Sonia Shoemaker. Henry and his great romance had got parted. But not for me. And Porter Dobey would sacrifice himself. But not for me. The strangest quadrangle I could possibly imagine outside of a fairy tale. Henry and Sonia and Porter and me. And Sonia got all the men! I mean, I guess I'm so shallow and selfish that that was, honestly, my third thought: Sonia got all the men and I'd got nothing!

Oh, I suppose I had some philosophical observations too, but they came much later. Afterward, it sort of seemed to me that someone here, very subtly, was getting the short end of a stick, someone was being punished but I didn't know exactly who it was. Not Henry Shoemaker who was, I thought, neatly escaping nor Henry's poor wife who was obviously being just as neatly salvaged. Maybe it was me, or so it seemed then, faced with all I was apparently losing. But now, so much later, I think it was Porter himself who, through his sentimental, guilt-ridden notion of sacrifice, was paying by painful duty for what he had pleasured himself with in his grasshopper days. It was Porter's story, all the way.

Still, at that moment, on that morning, in that dusty back of the store, which had always in the past seemed to me the epitome of comfort and release, I really felt only that I was the one who was losing out all the way and what was worse, to my own literary sense of my character, I was probably not going to be able to exit with any dignity either.

Porter, dear Porter who had never had to worry about such things, did make one, feeble, gesture in my direction and for that, though it hurt, I was grateful.

"Look," he said, "I know this is queer, that it sounds crazy to you. To me it's good and I have to do it. And I'm going to do it. I'd do it now no matter how I felt or what anyone said. But, if it gives you any satisfaction, I ... look, I feel bad only about you. Really. And you, baby, I'll miss."

"Porter," I observed cautiously, "you're going to miss some other things."

He spread his hands out on the desk in front of him, separating each finger. I waited. Unwilling to tell him about Henry and Sonia and my own double forsakenness, I had, in revenge, set him a verbal trap, a test. Only I terribly didn't want him to fail! I'd set it up like a straw man and most anybody would've said it but I didn't want him to, I didn't want him to say, deflating all my image of what he is, that love after all wasn't everything, that sex wasn't the most important thing in the world. And, he didn't say it, either. To his eternal glory, he didn't, out of explanation, expiation and farewell, say that one awful lie.

No, he stared at his spread-out fingers and he said only, "I'll miss everything, the best in life. The best thing in life, love."

Sentimental? God, it stank of it. But it was truly vintage Porter.

So then I left. I never saw Porter again. I suppose he married Henry's poor wife but even that I don't know for sure. I never did meet her and I never, what's more, heard about or from Henry Shoemaker again. So, though it's all years ago and maybe time enough in which to have garnered such nuggets of wisdom as inhere in my memory of that queer quadrangle, I'd be unwilling to offer any maxims for life out of my experience. There's almost nothing I'm willing to offer up by way of observation, nothing I can truly say, that I simply know and believe, except that of all the people who may in this life have been challenged toward sacrifice, Porter Dobey was the truest altruist of all. He really sacrificed something, the very fluid of life's embrace, that rare thing, pleasure without pain. And the only other thing I still know is that he was a marvelous lover. All the years since have only confirmed what I thought as a girl. He was a marvelous lover; maybe he was even a saint.