Harry, The Rat with Women

Little Harry was loved; of that he was aware every waking hour of the day. But not even in sleep did love escape him. During the day his big, athletic-smelling father and his thickening, plum-ripe mother lavished him with the sweet fragrance of their affection. Their passion, their whole appetite was for Harry, their little Harry, who had come to them so late, so unexpectedly, so long after all hope for miracles was gone. But, unlike other parents who found their children lovable enough to eat -- and so did -- Harry's approached the object of their appetite with the innate sensitivity of born gourmets. They prepared him for dinner but nibbled only lovingly and slightly, savoring the act, inhaling its aroma and noting it forever in their book of memories, and then ever so delicately pushing away from the table to gently demur another serving -- "Tomorrow, maybe. Not now."

And in his sleep, love, a thing as real to him as his house or his bicycle, rolled with Harry in its arms, over and over, warm and slow; the woman: love. It never left him. He walked with it on the street to school and at his desk it gently proctored him when he needed to remember famous dates or the multiplication table. One day the teacher, who always called on Harry first (the divine right of personal magnetism), asked, "Harry, what does your father do?" Harry stood up at his desk and answered, "Love."

The class roared dirtily. The teacher flushed. "Love whom?" she bravely asked. And Harry answered, "Me."

This time the class did not stir; Harry was more certain of his father than any of them could be of theirs.

Harry could not avoid being loved. Physically he was the perfect child -- expect no description here -- everyone has his own image of perfection; Harry fit them all. He was only to be seen in soft focus with blurred, tear-filled eyes. "Wonderful," said the passing stranger, "like a painting." But he would not dare pinch a cheek or squeeze an arm or inflict the pain which is an adult's way of checking off perfection in a child -- as if the only means to recognize it is to mar it. Harry's was the kind of beauty that set its own terms on admirers. They would not come close unless he allowed them.

He knew and accepted the fact that he was beautiful. Just as any prodigy looks upon his gifts as normal, because for him they are, Harry regarded his aptitude for beauty with equanimity; he saw nothing peculiar about it: since he felt very special why should he not look very special? Again like the prodigy he centered his focus on his aptitude, studying methods to enhance its development; practicing for hours out of the day before his mother's mirror the arts of facial expression and body movement. His taste about himself was impeccable; his drive was strong; to stay only this beautiful was sheer defeatism; to grow more beautiful with the years -- now that was a goal a boy could work for.

It was never noticed nor would it have seemed strange if it had been that Harry thought only of himself. Since all those around him thought only of Harry, the boy was merely following example. His mirror was fine company; his toys were bores in comparison. Strangely, children were no more free of his spell than were their elders or Harry himself. Girls, dumb struck in his presence, wrote his name on sheets of paper and pinned them close to their hearts where in their dreams they could speak to the paper and listen to its rustle beneath their dresses return their love. Boys became his functionaries, his retinue: they ran his errands, did his homework, and crowded as close to him as they dared, watching his wandering eye jealously to see which of them he favored as a best friend. But Harry's eye always wandered back to itself and his servitors knew no satisfaction, but only hunger and self-loathing for being unworthy; for being different. They saw Harry as the norm: the multitude beneath him were unfortunate aberrations shabbily highlighted by the glow of his perfection. Parents lost their pride in their children: seeing Harry made them feel toward their own the mixed emotions one feels toward an invalid. On the day Harry's mother took him on his only trip to the zoo the animals could not take their eyes off him.

At an early age it became clear to his parents that Harry was going to be something special-- a famous man, perhaps President, perhaps even a movie star. To prepare him for his destiny they saw he would require a special kind of training: a tutorship aimed at channeling his beauty in constructive directions. They had little means: his father was a physical-education instructor in the city high school system, his mother was a private nurse. But relatives--aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews--insisted on raising a monthly Harry Fund as an investment; a premium on Harry's future. "Don't worry about it," they philosophized grandly. "Isn't he ours as much as yours? He'll pay us back."

With the first month's installment a full-time tutor and governess was employed. Her name was Fanny Braintree.

At the time his tutorship began Harry was still a quiet child, unresponsive to the demands of an adult world that placed a sliding scale of values on a child's cuteness or cleverness. Cuteness he had no need for, nor cleverness either: both were defensive affectations designed to gain the attention that Harry by being Harry automatically had. His language from the beginning dealt only in basics; his first spoken word was "Harry," his first sentence was "Give me." His baby remarks were hardly quotable but they got for him all that he wanted. As he began to grow into boyhood he saw no urgent need to amplify them: his beauty was in the eye, not the ear of the beholder. When, during an English lesson, he asked his public-school teacher, "What good is all this stuff going to do me?" she could honestly offer no answer. In terms of formal education he had fallen far behind; yet, in some ways, not very far behind Fanny Braintree.

Miss Braintree was in mid-passage when she came to tutor Harry. She was, by nature, a large, voluptuous woman and, by principle, a slender, shapeless one. Feeling heavily the responsibility of a career in education she entered the field by dieting most of her shape away and then tightly corseting whatever she found left. Through such sanctification she placed her own soul in readiness for those tiny little other souls whose future and guidance lay helpless in her hands. Her male friendships had been restricted to several YMCA secretaries with whom she read poetry. For years she had not stared at a man below the first button on his suit.

But now she was on her way elsewhere: quietly and mysteriously her direction had changed; the layers of protection had cracked; her corsets no longer fit; her body was rather tentatively bursting through. Her mind was suddenly awake to hidden possibilities and her attempts to keep them hidden were halfhearted and, so, failed. Secretly, she entertained dreams and engaged in forbidden practices. At age 40 Miss Braintree had discovered adolescence. Shortly thereafter she discovered Harry.

One popular dream of youth is to have had a sultry seductress of a governess who pads into one's bedchamber on nights the grownups are away at the opera, warmly sheds her paltry negligee and slips beneath the covers to teach one those facts she fears might otherwise be picked up in the streets.

If Fanny Braintree was not of that caliber, her dreams were. She came to love Harry madly but, being raised in a tradition where a young woman was only aggressive about those things she didn't want, she demurely and passively waited for the object of her love, just turned 11, to pad silently into her bedchamber, fold her into his arms and stretch open those doors which, at all other times, she had to open for herself. Though during tutoring sessions the Harry of her dreams never once conflicted with the little boy she tutored (a woman never makes the first move), at night the other Harry, her Harry, subverted and confused her senses. He was no age and no shape. He was Man!

And since he never did show up though night after night she left her door across the hall just a bit ajar and posed a bottle of sherry and two empty glasses on her bed table, she came to resent him for his boorishness; she came to hate him. That dirty, teasing, frustrating rat of a Harry!

Eventually Miss Braintree's odd evening habits came to the attention of Harry's family. Each night there were two empty glasses and a full bottle of sherry at her bedside; each morning there was an empty bottle of sherry and two ruby-stained glasses in their place. An odor, other than love, began to fill the household.

Fanny Braintree was a controlled and practiced tutor of the old school; her ability to communicate thickened slightly but never fogged. Her lessons were given in a loud, almost overly clear voice and only during written examinations while Harry's face was buried busily in a test paper did her pink-rimmed eyes and her sagging chalked face gaze at him in fond regret, all love at the sight of him, all womanly forgiveness at her wretched lover's lack of faith. Soon she took to writing poems which she tied with rubber bands around small rocks and left in Harry's path as he strolled in the garden. Harry never read unless he had to, so he ignored the poems. At night as the family sat singing round the piano she'd sneak back among the bushes and nervously recover her scattered rocks.

Harry's parents became disturbed. "The wine glasses, the open door, the moping around the garden. What does it all mean?" the mother asked. "Let's be patient a little longer," replied the father in self-interest. That night, on their way to bed as they passed Fanny Braintree's open door, Harry's father knew he must quickly arrive at a decision. He had known for weeks what the poor bedeviled tutor must be going through: her romantic dream of love, the waiting wine glasses, the inviting door, the lost walks in the garden lamenting a frustration she could barely control. No woman had ever wanted him this way and, though Fanny Braintree did not have the spare, gymnast's type of build he found attractive, he felt himself thinking of her with a growing excitement. How long could he resist the adventure? Was it fair to Fanny Braintree to let her wither? Was it fair to Harry-- wouldn't it adversely affect his lessons? He could scarcely believe his wife would mind if she but understood the purity of his motives, the rehabilitation aspects of his projected program.

The night-after-night passing of that open door slowly maddened him. He stirred in his sleep, drank warm milk, fought desperately against the growing image of that tantalizing enchantress with the golden body whose arms waited to welcome him the moment he chose to cross her portal. But this was not the way to go to her; it was unclean. It was guilty. He had to establish control over his emotions, see her again as a poor bereft woman and himself as a minister to her needs.

One night, after long and thoughtful(continued on page 183)Harry, the Rat(continued from page 82) drinking, he at last felt the keen blue blaze in his heart flamboyantly signaling the purity he had sought. He took off his scuffs, tiptoed up the stairs and, with passion mixed with a sense of social work (he was a phys ed instructor), he slipped into Miss Braintree's room.

Could it be happening at last? These strong arms holding her? This fine body smelling of the gymnasium and the Turkish bath crushing her beneath its insistent weight? This dark room with his dark shape--How could it be? Could it be? "Harry," she groaned ecstatically. "Oh my dearest Harry."

"Who's this Harry?" came back a voice. "Don't talk so loud or you'll wake up my wife."

Her screams did.

It became clear that Miss Braintree had to go. She left early on a cold, rainy morning without saying goodbye to Harry or to anybody. In her baggage was a purloined cameo of her love--a childhood cameo to be sure--but nevertheless a memento of those glorious nights spent waiting for the moment that the door opened wide, the sherry was poured and the sweet wine taste decanted into her own true love's lips. Nothing else was real to her. Everything else was forgotten.

Years later, her juices dry and living sadly, she would hear of Harry's exploits and smile to herself--"That beautiful rat. I taught him everything he knows. I hope he remembers me kindly."

At an emergency meeting of the Harry Fund it was decided that it did not serve the purposes of that organization for its money to be diverted into a procuring fee for inconstant husbands. It was further decided best for Harry's future that the Fund's trustees take over the management of his education. Though his mother and father had patched up their differences they were in too much of a state of shock to argue with the decision. Harry was sent off to Europe in the ripening hands of his 19-year-old cousin, Gloria. It was hoped that he would receive a classical education.

Gloria was not beautiful actually, but she was terribly sexy. Everybody thought so. She was sexy in the way only girls in their teens, physically innocent and mentally dirty, can be. No woman with real knowledge would have dared move with that semipracticed invitational sway. It was strictly a way of walking for the young and once the sexline was crossed the young walked differently, too. Once carnal, twice shy.

Gloria was uneasy about her feelings for her cousin Harry. She was, of course, feverishly in love with him: an emotion she found convenient to interpret as big-sisterly affection. Pigeonholed thusly, she could allow herself to sit by the side of his bed each night and stroke his hand, brush back his hair and whisper to him as he dozed, "I feel just like a sister to you. Just like a sister."

But although she could control her feelings for Harry she was far less able to control her feelings against him. Aboard ship he was the one getting all the attention! He stole her sense of burgeoning beauty and there was nothing to do but hate him for it. And the tiring reverberations of her hate bouncing against her love brought forth a groan of futile anger. Why wasn't Harry as wound up with her as she was with him?

To have admitted any of this would have meant adding a real sin to her extensive list of imagined ones. So she traded insight for bitchiness; and gained immeasurably by the exchange. She collared all the young men on board and proceeded to drive them mad with accidental intimacies. Some she brought back to their cabin so that Harry, asleep, could be wakened by the laughter, the squeals, the outraged slaps and the revoked promises in the next stateroom. Gloria had few natural charms but her instincts were excellent. Her victims complained but submitted, using their wider range of experience to assure themselves that during their remaining five days at sea they would surely bring her around. She was, they thought, a young goofy kid and tomorrow would be another day. They accepted her provocation and waited patiently for their revenge. By the fourth day out no attractive man under 30 was able to walk upright.

It was an education for Harry. At first he tried to blot out the teasing in the next room and get back to sleep but soon he began to listen to it as a form of theatrical entertainment. It became a favorite play for him. Each night there was a minor change of cast (the male's role), but the lines were about the same and the situations were identical.

"Stop! That tickles," Gloria would begin.

"It didn't tickle on deck."

"I mean it."

"Sure you do." (Pause.)

"Boy, you are fresh."

"Bet your life I am." (Longer pause and sound of scuffling.)

"Jeepers, you're clumsy."

"Yeah?" (Continued scuffling.)

"Do you want me to do it for you?"

"I'll do it."

"Jeepers, you really take a night and a day. It's only a simple hook."

"Yeah?" (Pause -- heavy breathing.)

"I don't want to anymore."

"What do you mean?"

"It's not romantic now."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. You make it seem like manual labor or something."

"What's the matter?"

"Do you have to lean on me that way?"

"C'mon."

"You're too persistent. I'm not in the mood anymore."

"Well for Christsakes get back in the mood."

"Quiet! My little cousin's asleep in the next room."

"Listen, don't try to give me what you give, other guys!"

"Are you so different from other 'guys'?"

"I'm me!"

"You're cute."

"Yeah?" (Pause.)

"Not now, I told you."

"When?"

"I'm tired now."

"When?"

"I'll see."

"That's a promise now."

"I'll see."

"See you in the morning?"

"I'll see."

Harry was less interested in Gloria, who bored him (he could not understand what all the fuss was about), than he was in the obviously victimized men. He had never heard voices so uniformly strained, so defenseless, so pleading; even during their moments of outburst and accusation he could hear their intimidated whine. It seemed so silly. It wasn't a matter of what they wanted, it was that anyone could so much want anything outside himself that puzzled him. Ridiculous!

During the early evening hours when Gloria left him alone to go vamping, Harry took to playing sexual conquest with himself in front of the mirror. He whined at himself with the men's lines and rejected himself with Gloria's. Then he laughed like anything. He felt beyond the game and so quickly grew bored with it. He understood that the men wanted some kind of love and that Gloria teased them about getting it. But he couldn't see why anyone had to run after love that way. What good was it if you had to chase it or be made to feel silly by it? He felt he knew so much more than these grown men. "Don't be so dopey," he wanted to say to them. "Don't go to them. Let them come to you!"

Harry smiled with this superior knowledge all the rest of the way to Le Havre. Gloria was sure that it was she the smiles were aimed at. He was laughing at her! Bitterly she decided that there was no doubt about it; Her week of hard work was wasted. She was being patronized! Bitterly she reflected that there could be no further doubt about it: her cousin Harry was a little rat. Well, let him go to hell. She was going to Paris.

"Paris," she said to herself, "Paris." And suddenly she realized that it meant no more to her than if she had said "Bronx." The scent of Paris had become overripe; the scent of sex took on the smell of cheese. Gone were her intricately detailed fantasies: her invented seduction, her invented violence, her invented pain. Gone, also, was her invented guilt. She saw the senselessness of her chaste triumphs: what point was there in evading that final experience, knowing, as she now did, that there could be no pleasure in it? Since it couldn't be fun, why not try it? She stared at Harry's smile and smiled ambitiously back. They would be landing soon and she would have to make plans. There could be no further doubt about it: let cousin Harry go to Paris; she was going to hell.

It wasn't until four years later that Harry surrendered his virginity -- just three years and 11 months past the day that Gloria abandoned hers. He was still touring the Continent with his cousin and quite content at being celibate even though 15, a thought unbearable to most of his contemporaries. "That stuff is stupid," Harry instructed them.

"Still and all," said a friend, "I'd sure like to tear off a piece of that," and he pointed to a particularly striking young lady striding handsomely down the Via Veneto.

"It shouldn't be too difficult," said Harry. "Just ask her. How do you know she won't say yes?"

His two friends laughed nervously.

"I mean it," insisted Harry.

Their nervousness increased. "Let's go to a cinema," said one.

"Signorina," called Harry.

The woman turned with a half-smile to stare at the amusing children she knew were following her. If she found them charming she would buy them each a piece of candy.

Harry smiled warmly. "My friends and I wondered if we could make love to you. All right?"

"Of course," the woman answered dazedly. Harry's friends ran.

Harry returned to America at 17 and sat around the house. He was in the least interesting phase for a person whose single concern was self-indulgence; that phase where the child may or may not be father to the man and all one can do is stick around to find out.

When he looked at the world he saw nothing that he wanted; when he looked at himself he saw that though everything was there, he still wanted more. He wanted a direction.

"Harry, what would you like to do?" the Harry Fund asked him.

"Who knows?" said Harry, annoyed at being asked to consider the question.

• • •

Hard times had come upon the trustees of the Harry Fund. Emergency expenses had depleted its coffers dangerously. The villain, it seemed, was his cousin Gloria, who had been subject to a recurring medical problem every six months or so for the last three years. The expense of transportation to Sweden and hospital costs had laid the family financially low. Harry was told that the best that now could be done for him was a few hundred every month. He would have to fend for himself.

He began to feel as if a ruthless, nasty game were being forced upon him. He had no intention of accepting the sort of world he was being squeezed into. Rarely did he show temper but now, for weeks on end, he was furious; and there was reason to be. He'd been cheated! The Harry Fund had promised him a career. Where was it? A direction -- where was it? He had accepted them on good faith, let them serve and be loyal to him and now what was his thanks? Desertion. He didn't question that they loved him but there was efficient love and inept love. There was no doubt into which category theirs fell. He took the Fund's payment with an impatient gesture and went off to find a demoralizing, rat-infested room in a dirty, cheap rooming house. Two could play at their game.

The rooming house of his dreams was in a factory district where plant mechanization had been so perfected that no skilled labor was needed at all. The unskilled labor was largely recruited from the South, from sections rich with a lack of skills. The migrants lived drearily in tenements and rooming houses which spawned grubbily around the several factories. Everybody had dreams of doing something else. It would have been a neighborhood ripe for crime if, after a day's work, somebody had enough energy to commit one.

Harry was the only tenant in his rooming house who didn't work in a factory. Regardless of how bad his affairs went he would not reduce himself to taking a job. Work he understood as a convenient time-killing device in which people indulged themselves to avoid concentrating on the important thing: himself. It riled Harry to know how much activity took place in the course of a day that did not center on him. However, this would be an easy matter to set right. All he need do was acquaint himself with his neighbors and allow them to create a supplemental Harry Fund. The idea brightened his day and that night he stepped across the hall and knocked on the nearest door to begin making friends.

He made only one friend. Her name was Rosalie Murchison from Macon -- or, as she said it (not as a name, but as a lyric) "RosalieMurchisonFrom Macon?" It was RosalieMurchisonFrom Macon? who breathlessly opened the nearest door across the hall the instant Harry knocked, for who could tell -- he might have been a Hollywood agent.

She was a temporary factory worker hopefully bound for glory in the film colony -- if only she could get there. Beneath a splendid milky display of hair there spread in a variety of directions a baby-beautiful movie star's face and a superwomanly movie star's figure; as if she were not born of a piece but put together in a composite of bests by the underweaned editors of a girlie magazine. She looked too much larger than life for men to run after. Instead they told dirty jokes about her and claimed to have taken her to bed; the more nervous the man, the more graphic the claim. But no one had touched her. She wouldn't allow it. She was afraid of what uncontrolled handling would do to her skin tone.

RosalieMurchisonFromMacon? was determinately headed out to Hollywood to make the grand try. By careful saving and hard work she had put away $2500. In another six months she'd have 500 more; enough for a one-way bus ticket and a year's expenses. It was this thought that kept her going. Each new day of indignity heightened her removal by putting her that much closer to her dream -- and made her seem cold and aloof for not hearing the remarks called after her by the wistful men on the line. Why should she when she wasn't even there? She was in the movies -- protected in the arms of Robert Mitchum, who was saying, "To hell with 'em all, honey. You've got Burt Lancaster, Rock Hudson and me."

Her real life was in her room. It was tatooed with glossy grinning photos of movie faces: great women stars, great men stars and a wall full of anonymous almost-stars who had appeared in but one picture, where they were invariably listed after the rest of the cast following the words "And Introducing--" and were never after seen again.

But which of the winking, grinning faces on her wall could compare with Harry? He stood in the hall, smiling down at her, his words beating against her like bird's wings.

"I know it's short notice but I am strapped, so whatever you can give me I'd appreciate. Every little bit helps."

And then, through the use of what power she knew not, he was with her in her room, talking pleasantly, accepting her as an equal -- "Well, I don't see any need to apologize. I'd say that $25 is a swell beginning. Really, don't worry about it."

"It's enough? You sure now? You're not just being nice?"

"Who lives upstairs? Maybe they have more," he said, rising.

She blocked the door. There was no telling who lived upstairs.

"I have more! In the bank. Ever so much more. Honest to sweet Saturday night, you have got to believe me!"

"I hate to be caught short," said Harry.

"Tomorrow. I'll go to the bank tomorrow."

How could he be unaware of the ground swells, unaware of the imbalance in the room, unaware that RosalieMurchisonFromMacon?, who never doubted the splendor of her own appearance, now saw herself as fat and clubby and asked only to die for him? He needed money? He would have money!

She took him to dinner, she bought him gifts and clothes and tickets to the movies. They went to the movies endlessly and where the romance on the screen ended and the romance with Harry began blurred into meaninglessness. There was no difference, really. They were two heads 40 feet high, meeting in the center of a giant screen, kissing stere-ophonically and fading out to the next scene, which was the same as the one just passed, repeated over and over. But it was a movie that never got anywhere. So RosalieMurchisonFromMacon?, with the dwindling bank balance, began stirring restlessly in her seat wondering when the plot would start moving. She felt caves opening within her and they remained unfilled. Her skin began to dry and crack. Her juices were being drained -- Harry was doing this to her.

"I can't believe it's real. Can you? I can't. I really, really can't! Honest I can't," she said, feeling Harry with her eyes closed because most times she dared not look at him.

"What's real?" Harry asked, moving out of reach. There were times when he did not appreciate being touched.

"You know what I mean," she said vaguely.

"I need shoes," said Harry, fingering his toes.

"Funny, I was just thinking that very thing today," she put in quickly.

"I need shirts," said Harry, rubbing a hand across his chest.

"Surprise! Surprise!" She reached under the bed and handed Harry a package. He stared dully through it.

"Hey, how far is it in miles to New York?" he finally asked, his voice trailing off as if he were already there.

"New York? You wondering about New York? Oh, it's far! Very far! Almost impossible to get to from here! You don't want to bother with New York."

She ran out and bought him six pairs of shoes.

She could not sleep for feasting and, after feasting, she was hungrier still and the more she dieted on Harry the more the hollow bloomed inside. What was he doing to her? What wasn't he doing? She didn't know; she couldn't figure it out.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked him in bed late at night, as she could feel the tension curling like a spasm through his body. But he rarely answered. It was none of her business. He was thinking of himself.

"We've seen all the movies," he said to her one night as if she had been caught cheating.

"Oh, sweet Jesus, no!" she cried in a panic, rummaging through the newspaper listings. But he was right.

"We could stay home," she suggested.

"Sure," Harry mumbled.

"We could play cards. I used to be very good at cards. Hearts. I bet I could trounce you at hearts!"

Harry did not respond.

"Ha. Ha. I was only fooling. I bet you'd trounce me at hearts. You'd trounce me!" She bit her lip and frowned. Harry turned toward her and she quickly turned her frown into a smile, painfully cutting her lower lip by forgetting to remove her teeth from it.

"Sugar!" she cursed.

Harry did not hear her. He was working out decisions. Maybe it was good that they had run out of movies. Now there was no excuse to delay any further what he had so long delayed. Somewhere there had to be some answer to move him down some path to lead him to some future. RosalieMurchisonFromMacon? was nice but she was beside the point. He treated her in the present as if she were already part of the past, as if she were a forgotten boiling kettle he'd come back to take off the stove while on his way to where he really wanted to go.

She felt the way she did as a child trying desperately to get the attention of a grownup, crying "Watch this! Watch this!" and throwing her skirt up over her head. Her skirt was over her head all the time now and it was clear that Harry was no longer watching. It was driving RosalieMurchisonFromMacon? crazy. She loved him depressingly but her face was getting blowzy and she was looking overripe. Her posture had gone to hell along with her skin tone and soon her savings would be gone too and she knew Harry would be gone the next moment, gone to somebody else. There was a chorus line of factory women just waiting for him. And while she loved him to the point of losing herself she retained that last remnant of shrunken ego that allowed the dream of stardom to go wasted but pulled up short when it came to her final survival.

One day she came home with a check for $700 and an airline ticket to New York. It was the last of her savings. "Here," she said, handing him both check and ticket. "Hey, New York! That's a swell idea," said Harry, and he immediately began packing.

Harry flew away from RosalieMurchisonFromMacon? on the first plane out of town. He had time to think during his drive to the airport, or rather, not so much to think as to open his mind to the whistling, stomping, dancing truths that the gesture of RosalieMurchisonFromMacon? had inspired. How foolish his search, how needless the worries of the Harry Fund, of his parents, of his teachers. His direction was clear and had been clear from his earliest childhood, but the foggy sameness of his growing years had dimmed it. Insights ricocheted with heady celebration in the cabin of the plane.

Sweet RosalieMurchisonFromMacon? had pointed his direction as if she were a laboratory experiment designed for that purpose. She had loved Harry. She had given him things. All of his life people had loved Harry, people had given him things. He reflected sadly on the formative years he was leaving behind and of the girl who, in a single act, had brought them into focus. He was sorry that, in all his excitement, he had forgotten to step in to say goodbye.

But he had no time to waste on sad thoughts. He let his mind settle pleasantly on what he would do from now on; what he would do for the rest of his life. He would do what he had always done. He would be loved.

Harry, the rat with women, entered his maturity looking more beautiful than ever; not beautiful in the normal way of men or women, nor even beautiful in the way he had previously been in his youth, but rather, beautiful as nature is beautiful. Looking at Harry was like looking at a sunset or a mountain range or the New York City skyline. He made people want to stand there reverently and watch; he made them want to salute. Sight-seeing buses could have made a fortune driving around him.

He had filled his beauty as an animal fills its skin; all loose folds were taken up now, all details completed. Where in his growing days he had vibrated an excitement of change he now emitted calm: pure, uninvestigated, unrippled, uncaring calm. His beauty had settled in him like a well-poured foundation. It was not skin-deep but shone from beneath layers and layers suggesting that were the outer shell removed the glow at the core would be blinding.

He walked through the city and it purred and rolled over before him: the lights from windows only caught his face and left others in darkness; the sound of traffic softened to a bird's call and the air smelled of Indian summer. If Harry walked on one side of the street, as a sign of respect everyone else crossed over to the other.

He was loved with the sense of off-balance urgency that is unique with the unrequited. The city ran up to him pleading, "Take me!" and, once taken, resented the taker for his lack of commitment. It shuffled miserably around him caught in a love trap, having to give and not being given in return; reflecting bitterly that Harry didn't really care, he was just taking advantage.

And Harry moved within it, never noticing. His touch left no fingerprints; almost anything could be proved by it. Those outside him belonged to a world apart, a universe he cared nothing for: dull, without shape, without definition. Their only possible excuse for being was as instruments for his comfort: their arms to carry presents, their mouths to offer praises, their bodies to satisfy his own body. Their eyes he used as mirrors.

"I can't decide what to do with my hair," he would say while staring into a lady's eyes. "I hate to trust it to anyone but myself."

"Oh no, Harry, you mustn't."

"I'm the only one my hair really trusts."

"Your hair would trust me, Harry."

"Stop that, I just combed it! But if I cut it myself I can't do a really good job on the back--"

"Let me try, Harry. Your hair, your beautiful hair--"--

"I told you to quit that. Do you know anyone who really knows how to press shirts? I mean people say they can press shirts but they come out either too soft or too stiff."

"Let me try, Harry. Please let me. I'm very good at pressing shirts."

"Sure, that's what you said about washing socks. Say, can't you get blighter lights in this room? I hate to see shadows all over my body."

He liked to present himself against various backgrounds: see how he looked against a blonde, how a brunette complemented the color of his eyelashes, how a redhead set off the tone of his skin. He covered the spectrum and back, resting easily wherever he desired and accepting only those parts of the worlds offered him that he might suddenly have a yen for. He had only to point; then he would taste and move on. His smiles shot and killed. He hunted with them carelessly and was well taken care of.

On his arrival in the city he took, a suite at the Waldorf. The management didn't charge; they thought he gave the building class.

"All I ask is to be taken care of," said Harry.

"All we ask is to die for you," answered the Waldorf. It was the answer he received everywhere.

He did not know how people knew about him. He accepted it as one of the interesting sidelights of New York; the way a big city makes welcome its strangers. His mail slot bulged with business: telephone messages beseeching private interviews; party invitations; letters from exclusive charities requesting his sponsorship; dinner invitations; theater tickets compliments of Miss Blank I who bumped him in the elevator; ballet tickets compliments of Miss Blank II who gave him her seat in the bar; a yachting invitation from Miss Blank III who followed him down Lexington Avenue in a taxi; love letters offering everything, asking nothing.

• • •

He was a narcotic and women had to have him; and like a narcotic, once the effect wore off there followed a slicing emptiness and a nervous need for more. Women staggered punch-drunk through the city, meeting and drinking excessively at luncheons, murmuring from table to table, "Harry's a rat, Harry's a rat, Harry's a rat."

In the usual course of events Harry's casualness would probably not have earned him the reputation of being a rat with women: loving and leaving, while officially frowned on, seldom evokes a final, definitive judgment; many women enjoy being left only second best to being loved. Harry was not a rat for what he did but for what he didn't do. He left whomever he touched feeling untouched, whomever he dishonored feeling, regrettably, still honored. He left no aftertaste; no mark on the pillow. He was like summer thirst. He was like Chinese food. Once he was gone, nothing had been there.

He was never the flirt. A flirt is conscious of the game, and Harry's game involved only himself. For that reason there was no defense against him. As in myths or fairy tales, knights-errant (in this case, women) marched on horseback toward him bellowing the challenge: "Joust if you dare, Sir Harry!" Titillated with rumors of his invincibility hosts of heavily armored ladies rose tall from behind their breasts, cornered him in his love nest and threw down their gauntlets -- followed shortly by their armor, their defiance and their souls. And the more stories spread about his irresistibility, the more challenges received.

One example was Georgette Wallender.

• • •

She was small but looked large; she was pretty but looked formidable; she was softly built but looked indestructible. She had cool eyes; the eyes of an appraiser, steady as two black buttons and operating like reverse mirrors: they could see out; no one could see in. Her interior was a well-stocked dungeon of reserve against a hostile world; her exterior was a symbol of the hardness in that very world she saw as hostile.

In the company of other women she could act fairly open if not trusting, for despite the private claims of each they were all on record as being in it together; NATO allies to the end. With men her openness clouded; an affair working warmly would suddenly chill. No one knew why. Love would tentatively begin and then, at a point just short of fruition, stop cold; not receding but vanishing quickly, embarrassed for having been where it wasn't wanted. From inside her wall she sent out signals of peace to the world: her womanliness, her composure, her silent promise that the game was more than worth the candle. Men picked up the signals like dropped handkerchiefs. The circle would form again: first hard, then soft, then gone. She would withdraw her hand, and softly say, "It's time, my dear, we had a serious conversation" and immediately afterward add to her bulging portfolio one more new friend: someone to lunch with once a month and be advised by on the condition of the market.

Georgette met Harry at a party to which she had gone in order to break off with her current lover, a gentleman over whom she was becoming fond. She preferred to make her farewells at parties; in private they could become embarrassing. In addition, she deemed it only fair to the man to part with him in a crowd and afford him a chance of finding another girl to take home. She was expert at these occasions and performed less like a participant than a hostess; doing her utmost to make her guest feel as comfortable as possible in his new, unfamiliar surroundings. Soothingly they had oozed from lovers to sweethearts to buddies. Their faces were aglow with mutual affection; Georgette's because she never felt so close to a man as when she broke off with him and the young man's because he was convinced that he had somehow won a great victory by surrendering everything. Their hands slid lingeringly apart as they went their private ways: he to the bar to celebrate his mature handling of a difficult situation and Georgette to another room where her eyes landed and fixed forever on Harry.

"My name is Georgette Wallender," she said.

"I'm Harry," Harry said.

"I want you to know you can never hurt me," she said.

She took his hand and wouldn't let go.

Georgette had known of Harry for some time before they met--not by name but by feeling. He had been the background music to her life, playing counter to her own theme: the rising crescendo heard in all the romantic novels of her childhood, in all the bad films and radio plays. Her shell opened and took him in. Then, still impregnable, it closed around him.

"I love. I know I love," she said to the Harry buried inside her. The Harry outside barely responded.

"Love is a vast prairie--" she frowned. "No, rather it's a flower on that prairie -- a desert flower, fragile and full at the same time. Alone. Exquisitely alone and yet rooted deeply in the nestling soil. No, it isn't." She frowned again and tried to get more deeply into herself. "Love is a straight line going off into infinity; a series of vari-angled planes. No, that's wrong. Love is architecture -- no, it's richer than that. Love is -- is candy. Sweet and deep. And sticky. Like toffee. No, that's shallow. Love is -- wait a minute -- I had it a second ago--"

"I think love is smooth and creamy," said Harry, thinking of himself.

"I had it a second ago -- What the devil did I mean to say?" Georgette asked the Harry inside her.

"I think love is like white bread," said the outside Harry, beginning to feel hungry.

Love became more real when she talked about it; and to go back and talk about it some more made it more real than real: an improvement on the original. She turned it into living theater at the luncheon table. Her now narrowing circle of women friends listened heavily; their pillbox hats rising to each climax like surfboards on a wave, their breathing so deep that in a room full of cigarette smoke their corner stood out with the clarity of an etching.

"Be careful," they warned. Georgette beamed. "You don't know what love is," she said carelessly. It was an accurate appraisal.

• • •

Her friends, like herself, were highly successful businesswomen -- diverse in interests but equal in rank: ambitious, socially conscious and quietly powerful. Their power had begun small but flourished as rumor of its potency was spread, first by themselves and later by others. The rumor was eventually accepted as the truth and so became true; their influence was felt everywhere.

They knew each other (in order of importance) by income, by rank, by name and by appearance -- a closely meshed circle of accomplishment meeting often at lunch, cocktails and dinner, pulling strings, managing lives and exchanging inside stories; the married members escorted by their robust, cologne-smelling husbands, the single ones adorned with the currently vogueish ballad singer, actor, designer, photographer or playwright -- she: bold as brass, he: soft as dawn.

The group leader (and so recognized) was the syndicated gossip columnist and television panelist Belle Mankis, adored by her friends who called her "Our darling Belle," unadored by her enemies who called her, "Preying Mankis."

Whomever Belle saw fit to use as an intimate became part of the group.

Naomi Peel, famed psychoanalyst, physical therapist and television panelist; author of the daily column of frank advice, "God and Your Heart"; a dedicated foe of homosexuality and intermarriage; also known as "the psychiatrist to the stars."

India Anderbull, famed novelist and television panelist; winner of the National Book Award for The Weaklings, a novel of the husband in America; creator of the Emmy Award family television series "The Weaklings," a more humorous treatment of the same subject.

Arlene Moon, famed publicist and television panelist; best known for her unpublicized religious works; a dedicated foe of smut.

Viola Strife, famed lawyer and television panelist; best known for her lucrative settlements in divorce litigation; a passionate advocate of legally strengthening the marital vows. And Georgette, who, aside from her duties as a television panelist, edited Outré, the women's fashion magazine.

To all of them and to Georgette, too, until she met Harry, men were a social convenience: things to date when they went out with the girls at night. Marriage was condoned as either an early mistake, a career necessity or a financial arrangement.

Women, they had long ago discovered, got along best with other women. As a group they lived for themselves as Harry lived for himself; and because of this they were freer of his allure than most women: not free enough to dismiss him but free enough to be able not to love him -- though he did confuse them terribly. Georgette's infatuation had blown a hole in their ranks. In Harry's presence they felt defensive (a new feeling around men) and out of control (a new feeling around anybody).

Power was the central force of their lives. It ushered them into night clubs, theaters, fashionable restaurants. It paid their bills, it bought their tickets, it sent them free books. They were courted by the needy and the publicity seekers and, after years of doling out harsh experience, were given a group name: The Blue Belles.

They were a male-morality-watchdog society: giving speeches, writing papers, arguing on television and, as members of a private underground, doing more -- much more. They acted as spotters of the rich and eligible: men of indiscriminate age with sufficient funds and reputation to benefit themselves or their colleagues. Once the mark was spotted an invisible circle was drawn around him. Only one of their own was permitted inside: to drink, to dine, to make love, to marry. Outsiders were frightened off. The total power of the middle level was directed at them: a call to the phone where an anonymous voice lay down the penalties of trespass -- to be gossip-columned, public-relationed and legal-actioned to death. Outsiders quickly learned the boundary lines of fun, and withdrew.

They operated as the game wardens of society. Those women who would not scare were made examples of. The few men who challenged the circle were laid open to public attack and private harassment; called away from their tables at restaurants to hear the whispered telephone message, "Get rid of the bitch. Get rid of the bitch." Or if subtlety were the evening's plan, no message at all -- only heavy breathing.

It was a sorority game and the Blue Belles brought to it the spirit of the natural game player. Whether this game or any other, they relished the excitement of tit-for-tatmanship. Games were a way of life, a private language, a means of communication. Talk was cheap and unrewarding; games were the true religion. They played them with rising ecstasy and found joy in their celebration.

They played "Botticelli," "Twenty Questions," "Ghosts," "Geography," "Fact or Fiction," "Silent Movies," "Coffee Pot," "Capistrano," "Minestrone," "Arthur's Mother," "Bride and Groom," "Self-Destruction," and many others -- around the clock till the night was gone and early morning was over and no one could think of what to do next except go home.

Belle Mankis hated that moment.

"There must be at least one more game," she insistently said as the guests shuffled into their coats and kissed goodbye.

She called out names. "Did we play 'Augmenting'?"

"Yes, we played 'Augmenting,'" one of her guests said tiredly.

"Did we play 'Arraignment'?"

But they had played that, too; and every other game as well. Her friends started to leave. Belle followed them despondently. "Wait!" she cried with inspiration.

"We didn't play 'Doctor'!"

"'Doctor' is a children's game," growled India Anderbull.

But Belle made them play it. "How do you know it isn't fun if you don't try?"

As it turned out it was fun; more fun than almost anything. They added it to the top of the list.

Harry was as much an irritant in games as he was in everything else. Winning or losing seemed beside the point to him and he let the tension of the contest flag as he thought over his position carefully, often distracted by other thoughts and really not caring in the slightest, till the men disbanded into small drinking circles and the women, if they could, would have screamed. But they couldn't with Harry. He watered their malice and made the act worse by being unaware of it.

One night they played "Super-Truth," a game in which each player had to reveal a single unpleasant characteristic that he found in all the other players. Harry's turn came but he could think of nothing unpleasant to say about anyone.

"Even me?" teased Belle Mankis.

"I suppose I never paid attention," said Harry.

"There must be some unpleasant characteristic in at least one of us," said Viola Strife.

All the Blue Belles laughed.

"I suppose I never bothered to notice," said Harry.

"Georgette!" cried Belle. "You certainly must have noticed Georgette."

Everyone applauded. Georgette smiled and pretended to blush.

More applause and shrieks of fun.

"Oh, sure," said Harry.

"Give us an unpleasant characteristic," said Belle.

And the Blue Belles leaned forward.

Georgette smiled to herself, knowing that poor, bewildered, hopelessly-in-love Harry could have no answer.

"For one thing," began Harry, "she's always around."

The sound of raising eyebrows filled the room. Georgette's expression did not change but over it there suddenly appeared a series of fine lines.

Here was her first hint that Harry was not her slave. She had opened herself to this man, given him love, trusted and become dependent on him, bought him gifts, given him a place to live -- and now: he was slipping away.

If she confronted Harry with the truth she was sure he'd deny it, poor dear. He would have thrown himself at her feet and protested that his comment was merely a joke, a silly, misplaced party remark; but Georgette knew that though neither of them wanted to admit it, the sign was there. So it was senseless to reveal her insight to him. She was the stronger of the two and if a solution were to be found she would have to be the one who found it. One thing was clear from the beginning: she would not let him go.

Having decided all this in a matter of moments, Georgette felt refreshed. Her depression lifted as do all depressions once a decision is arrived at. Their future was in her small, capable hands and with that knowledge she could afford to be patient. She would observe Harry and find a way of banishing his doubts.

The new lines on her face softened but did not disappear.

During the next weeks she watched him unsparingly. Whenever Harry looked up from his private interests he saw her damp, soft eyes, blind with understanding. She was all over him; gentle, sweet, reassuring -- as if they were no longer lovers. She asked Harry questions; she urged him to talk about himself, knowing it was a way of keeping him interested; she tried to draw him out. But somehow the questions she asked were unending, with parts one, two, three; subtopics A, B, C and D; interspersed with pithy observations on life and love that might have told Harry, had he not been winding his watch, more about their own situation than she intended. One part of her heard but could not halt that cool, calm, wisdom-dropping voice taking off on its endless display:

"When I was a child I always stayed in the house. I always believed that if I went outside I would get hit. My parents encouraged me to go outside. My teachers encouraged me to go outside. Aunts and uncles whom I loved encouraged me to go outside. So I did. And I got hit. Experience doesn't teach; it merely confirms.

"So, I withdrew from the outside world and decided never to be vulnerable again. But I learned that if one hides oneself from hurt one hides oneself from love. Harry, dear, we are really very much alike, you and I. We are practically the same person. Will you please stop winding your watch?"

Georgette understood in detail the effect her insights would have upon Harry; they would cause guilt and his guilt would cause him to resent her and his resentment would force him to strike out in boyish rebellion. So she was not surprised to find that he had begun dating other women. When Belle Mankis reported the news Georgette insisted that it was not yet time to discipline him; he would be allowed his fling and yet be made aware that, rebellious or not, his Georgette was always there.

And she was. Whenever Harry took a new love to dine -- there, alone at the table across the room, sat Georgette, a soft light playing on her wide-brimmed hat, her dark glasses and veil never quite concealing the understanding smile charging his way. For the first six weeks he thought it a coincidence.

Late at night with Harry ensconced in his new apartment, Georgette, for whom no phone number was unlisted, would wake him, laugh warmly into the receiver and say, "Harry, you poor dear, you're really having quite a time for yourself. I just want you to know that I think it's all wonderful."

Occasionally, when Harry wasn't home, she'd be almost through with her message before realizing she had gotten the answering service.

Harry's new girl became upset. "That woman won't leave us alone! Not that I want to complain, Harry."

Her name was Faith Maynard, a gentle-faced girl with large hands who worked as an interior decorator. Harry was first attracted to her when she convinced him that she could reproduce him in the form of an apartment. But while her execution was brilliant her conception was shallow. From the beginning Harry felt the apartment a disappointment. He didn't know much about interior design but he knew whether it was him or not. The chairs were him, the rugs were him, but the curtains, the tables, the wall decorations and the German icons were definitely nobody's and the canopied bed with its welter of silk hangings could never be him; it was obviously her. It was just such unobtrusive insincerity that annoyed Harry the most. He moved in with her, expecting to move out immediately.

"What woman won't leave us alone?" Harry said, listening to the sound of his own voice. He kept forgetting that he must have Faith add a tape recorder to the apartment.

"You know who I mean! The woman who keeps calling!"

"Oh, Georgette!" laughed Harry. "You mean Georgette. I didn't know you knew her."

"I don't."

"Then why do you mind her calling me? She's only a friend. She just thinks I need looking after."

"She's trying to get you back," brooded Faith.

"Do you really think so?" mused Harry. His respect for Georgette catapulted.

Now that he took the time to think of it perhaps Faith was right: the meetings in restaurants, the phone calls, the flood of endearing mementos; he had never been besieged like this. No other woman had the nerve. They had always let go of him easily, hoping he'd remember and return, fearing that if they threw the fit they wanted to, they would lose him forever. And so they turned into what Harry had always seen them as: nanimate objects who had somehow learned the trick of animation. They walked, they talked, they offered love; and they accepted rejection with that heart-warming, defenseless little smile guaranteed to break every heart except the heart aimed at.

How thin and characterless Georgette made them seem. While admittedly a few had followed him down the street, pleading, and others had called him late at night, these were obvious acts of hysteria -- not a planned campaign, not a tenacious holding action like Georgette's. A curtain had lifted and Harry now saw that she dogged his every step from the moment he left her; and yet she did not cry -- she did not seem on the defensive. It was as if walking backward were the most natural and agreeable of acts. How magnificent, he thought. In a vague way Harry was becoming interested.

He had never known suspense in his dealings with women; there had never been any question about the outcome. But this strange woman refused to vanish; it shifted the balance. Harry felt a new anticipation, a new fondness for her. He viewed her with growing sympathy as the underdog in a losing contest, hopeful that despite the great odds against her she might surprise him and win. He did not see himself as her opponent but as her claque. The next time she called and woke him he wished her luck, cheered her on and moved back in with her.

Georgette felt like a giantess! Here he was, docilely in her arms again; Georgette's triumph! She knew now that love had been a test not to weaken but to strengthen her. Harry, who was known as a rat with women, had crumbled. She had not begged, she had not demeaned; she had mastered. It would all be much easier now. She had proved to him who was the stable and the strong one; it would no longer be a struggle. He would bend to her will, listen and learn from her.

Their separation allowed her to see him more clearly now: he was so much the boy; a spoiled, bewildered, self-indulgent, beautiful boy. She would take this boy and train him to be a man. Only then would she marry him. Her days of blind love were over; Harry had better rise to her or she might someday leave him. She dreaded the thought. What would Harry do if she left him? He had left her and it had made her strong. She feared it would be just the opposite with Harry. He would collapse -- might even kill himself. She grew angry; she was a busy woman and wasn't at all sure she had time for all this responsibility. She thought of him as he cheerfully unpacked in the next room, noisily pulling out drawers, clumsily banging into things. She smiled thinly at the immensity of the job that lay ahead; then she went inside to teach him how to put away his socks.

"You know the trouble with you, Harry?"

Harry looked up encouragingly. It was their second week back together, and now that Georgette was no longer talking about her own state of mind, but his, he found her much more fun.

"You're withdrawn. You don't communicate."

"What do you know!" said Harry.

"It's one of the big problems in society today -- in the world as a matter of fact: the breakdown in communication."

"I'd rather have a good time," said Harry.

"You poor dear, don't you see that without communicating you can't have a good time?"

"Oh, I enjoy myself," said Harry.

"False enjoyment is not happiness, Harry. God put us on this earth to communicate; else why did he give us language?"

"I use language. Listen, sometimes I never stop talking."

"We don't use language anymore; we misuse it. Language is no longer a means of communication but a means of avoiding communication."

"You can't make the world over," said Harry.

Georgette placed his head between her hands and forced herself to stare into his eyes; they were miles away.

"Communication isn't easy, Harry dear. Believe me, I know that. But all we have left is to try. We communicate a little today. We communicate a little more tomorrow. And who knows, but someday soon -- total communication."

She let her hands leave his face. His eyes had outdistanced her.

"But you -- what do you do, Harry?"

His eyes came back. "Tell me!"

"You go around in your own private world. Never communicating. Never making contact. That's why you can't be happy. You're afraid to leave your shell. Insecure and afraid!"

Harry began to look interested. Georgette ran on, sensing a breakthrough.

"Don't you see, my dearest? Once you're able to make contact, a permanent contact with somebody, some special person, you will be happy. You'll have to be. Because you'll be fulfilled."

She let her fingers run through his hair.

"You poor dear, not a word I said has penetrated, has it?"

"Don't do that; I just combed it," said Harry.

He now had something new to think about. Georgette was sketching in a different world. He vaguely remembered some of her ideas; they had been covered in school, but they hadn't really registered. A fresh hunger awakened in Harry; a new part of himself was lying there -- waiting to be explored. He looked forward to Georgette's lectures.

"Talk to me."

"What am I going to do with you, Harry?"

"Talk to me. Tell me about the breakdown in communication."

"I've told you."

"Tell me about my not making contact."

"I've told you. Dozens of times."

"Tell me again. I forgot."

"Harry, you don't listen."

"Sure, I do. I listen to you. Tell me about the breakdown in communication." He rested at her feet, looked innocently up and waited.

The lines in Georgette's face deepened. Working with Harry was like building with papier-mâché: each time she'd seem to have a construction going it would depart into formlessness. If he were trying to control her she would have known how to handle it; she still had no doubt who was the stronger in a contest of wills. But Harry gave her no chance to demonstrate; he refused to be the opposition. He abdicated amiably, bending to her iron will though she had hardly begun to exercise it. Part of her pride in regaining him lay in the confirmation of the strength she had always supposed was hidden within her: an underground soldier lying in wait for the command. But once that strength was unleashed it needed action; it needed further proof of its invincibility. And instead, what did the enemy give her? A form of surrender so good-natured, so all-embracing that it made her own aggression seem trivial; almost passive. Like any other peacetime militarist her inner soldier grumbled and grew confused. There are those old soldiers who much prefer dying to fading away.

The balance had tipped in his favor again; yet Georgette could not remember the moment of change. Her lectures had lost their inspirational outer layer and had assumed a personal whine. She knew Harry was not seeing other women; there wasn't time. Nevertheless she called Belle Mankis and asked her to check around. She knew he was becoming bored again.

"Harry, please listen to me. Really it's getting serious, this breakdown in communication of yours. Honestly, you've got to learn to make contact. You'll never be happy until you do. I'm saying this because I want to help you. I wish I had somebody to tell me the things I'm telling you. Please listen to me, Harry."

One day India Anderbull reported spotting Harry having cocktails at her sports club with a well-known female tennis star. The Blue Belles called a meeting. Georgette sat through it not hearing a word, just shaking her head.

"Harry's a rat," Belle Mankis began.

There followed a chorus of grumbled ayes.

"We let him off the hook once -- for Georgette's sake," said India Anderbull, circling her small friend with a heavy arm. "I was against it! You all remember how I was against it!"

"There's no point in reworking the past!" counseled Viola Strife.

"You let one of those sons of bitches off the hook and they all get ideas," said Naomi Peel.

"We've been too easy," said Arlene Moon.

"Harry's had it," said Belle Mankis.

Five thumbs pointed down. "We'll make an example of him."

Then they ordered cocktails and talked about other things.

The decision had been made and was irrevocable.

"Let me talk to him once more," Georgette pleaded, "I'll explain everything--"

Georgette was clearly in a state of shock. They sent her to a rest home.

Harry's telephone began to ring late at night.

"Hello."

"You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch!"

"Oh, hi Naomi!"

"Don't 'Hi Naomi' me, Harry! You're a dirty rat! Besides, I'm not Naomi."

"Hey, I'm glad you called. Georgette has gone away somewhere and she forgot to pay this month's rent and I don't know where in the world I'm going to get it."

There was a long sullen pause at the other end.

"How much do you need?" the voice said.

They were no more effective with Harry's women. Of what concern was a career when Harry could be there to comfort them? "Gee, I'm sorry you've been fired," he told one beautiful lady after another; but only when their cash reserves dwindled did they discover that they had suffered two losses, not one.

"You're dead in this town," the four a.m. phone call told him. "Pack up and get out!"

"Hi, Belle. Say, how come we never run into each other anymore?" greeted Harry.

The situation had become impossible for the Blue Belles. Harry was more than just a goad to one of their members; he was a threat to the existence of the organization. If he outlasted their onslaught their reputation would be disastrously weakened. It was revolutionaries such as Harry who made it bad for entrenched systems everywhere. Were he to survive much longer who knew what rabbit-spined millionaire would take courage from his example and defy their authority? The issue had become bigger than Harry. It had turned into a test case.

Extremes were required: they decided to send for Eugenie Vasch. They wired her care of Claridge's, London. The return cable arrived the next morning: Currently engaged full time wrecking member of parliament. Have Thursdays free. Wire if sufficient.

The Blue Belles cabled back that it would have to be.

Except for some hard lines around the jaw Eugenie Vasch was every bit as beautiful as Harry. She was, until a series of unfortunate scandals, regularly on the list of best-dressed women of the world, and this without her own fortune. Eugenie squandered money the moment it came within reach. Having it depressed her, and having men with it depressed her even more. She spent the money, broke the man and went off to adventure elsewhere. Men were as helpless with her as women with Harry. But Harry could also be loved by men; the Blue Belles aside, other women hated Eugenie. Her very presence was an attack on their sexuality, making them feel not like women at all but some interim sex. She was the complete female and yet success at it kept eluding her. She kept winding up in illegalities that damned her reputation and only allowed her to exist in her lovers' private lives. Publicly they were forced to ignore her. She despised men -- not as cowards or weaklings or helpless boys -- but as men. She had purified the Blue Belles' philosophy into an art. It was this art that she practiced in order to make a living: she was a free-lance castrater.

In her past and for no profit she had reduced to impotence movie stars, diplomats, heads of state, heads of magazine chains, industrialists, sportsmen, philanthropists, pacifists, literary lights -- men who afterward bitterly cursed her betrayal while wistfully cherishing the flaccid remains of their lost love.

But that had been for fun; now she was a businesswoman. Wives on the hunt for revenge against husbands who cheated them sexually or spiritually summoned Eugenie from across the world to cancel permanently their mates' masculinity; to cripple them so that no woman would ever again desire to use them -- except their wives. It was no trick to compel her victims to become infatuated; the trick was to entrap them before they could let go, and even more, to enlist them as willing conspirators to their own debasement.

Her past romancers met for drinks and exchanged the same stories:

"I don't know exactly what it was but it seemed clear from the beginning that she was better than I was."

"Yes, exactly."

"And yet she didn't seem to recognize it. Not only was I treated as an equal; but in many ways as a superior."

"Of course. Of course."

"I became better than myself: brighter, wittier, more lucid. I began to feel released. I began to feel that I knew so much more than I ever dared dream -- She'd look up at me with those enormous, trusting violet eyes--"

"Yellow; they were yellow. Cat's eyes."

"Violet, definitely violet."

"Yellow."

"Violet."

"Yellow."

"Definitely violet!"

"Indeed? Well, she was certainly all things to all men, wouldn't you say?"

"Well put. Extremely well put. At any rate those eyes -- a moment's stare made me swell like a balloon; an encouraging comment made me feel like a king!"

"Yes, but didn't you feel like a hoax all the while?"

"Exactly. As I grew larger in her eyes I felt that she was sure to find me out one of these days; that I would do or say the wrong thing and she'd suddenly see me for what I really was."

"Indeed."

"A very little man."

"Oh, really, not so little as all that."

"I meant in her eyes."

"Oh, of course."

"I had heard about her; I knew what she was supposed to be."

"But that didn't hold you back."

"I accepted the rumors. I could see their grounds for validity; but a dubious validity; a hostile validity; a validity born out of the incapability of others to handle her."

"And you could handle her?"

"Not unless she wanted me to handle her. And that was the wonderful part of it: the sense that elevated me to the class of giants! I saw in her eyes that, ridiculous as it may have seemed, I was the one she had chosen to tame her."

"Indeed."

"She would be different with me. Because I was different."

"Indeed."

"So I fell in love. The problem with middle-aged love is that its seriousness rises in proportion to its lack of reality. If you think a woman has fallen in love with an inflated image of you, you'd much rather break your neck than not live up to it."

"So you did live up to it?"

"One does what one can. After several months I was like an exhausted channel swimmer. And yet she never seemed to notice. Each time I felt that I was about to sink back to my real level, her hand went out and pulled me up beside her. Well, after years of marriage, one is not used to this degree of support from a woman."

"There must have been a reason."

"Yes. And I concluded that the reason was that, whether I' knew it or not, I was better; I was different; I was what I never dared dream I was: a truly romantic figure."

"A truly romantic figure."

"And that is when she began to change."

"Ah, yes."

"The remarks began."

"How well I remember. The remarks."

"Nothing one could put his finger on."

"Oh, no."

"But deflating nonetheless; indicating something definitely wrong. And it wasn't just the remarks. Her eyes, those eyes that always before had stared at me and only me, now began to wander. I couldn't seem to catch them. They'd be on me and suddenly they'd swing away. And stay away."

"You mentioned it to her, of course."

"Ours was an affair of great honesty. We told each other everything. I could no more keep the truth from her than confide in my wife."

"And she denied everything."

"As a matter of fact she became rather ironic. She apologized for the deficiency of her eyes. She requested that I list for her all those remarks of which I did not approve."

"And you couldn't remember any."

"Damnit, it's impossible to document a feeling. I wanted to both prove and disprove my contentions. I felt like an absolute ass!"

"Which she indicated."

"No, she was sympathetic. She looked at me with great patience in her eyes. It seemed to negate everything I was saying. She denied everything. She couldn't understand why I was acting so silly. My behavior was ridiculous and not at all like me. Or perhaps she was mistaken; perhaps it was exactly like me."

"Then, naturally, you denied everything."

"Of course. I said there'd been great strain at the department. Several governments in danger of toppling. I wasn't myself. Forgive me."

"You're mumbling. What was that last?"

"Forgive me."

"Ah, yes, forgive me."

"From then on we never seemed to meet at the same level. I kept insisting that something must be wrong. She kept denying it. And then I noticed she had stopped wearing my presents."

"Somebody else's?"

"Possibly yours."

"Mm. Quite possible."

"And yet I could never get anything out of her. I was out of my mind with jealousy. I said to her if you want to end it let's end it! Just don't leave me hanging like this in mid-air!"

"And her reply?"

"She turned angrily away and said she didn't know what I was talking about but if I insisted on acting so petulantly--"

"Ah, yes -- petulantly."

"-- Then she was not going to see me that evening; in any event she had made other plans. I told her that if she had made other plans she had made them before I acted 'petulant' and therefore I was correct in assuming that there was something wrong between us. She turned on me and I had never seen her stare at me so coldly. And I will never forget the words she spoke to me."

"I believe I can guess them."

"She looked at me as if I had a growth on my nose and said plainly and strongly, as if to a teenage street molester -- 'What's -- bothering -- you?'"

"Ah, yes, 'What's -- bothering -- you?'"

"I needn't tell you how brutal it was from that point on. She was busy; she was out; she couldn't be reached on the telephone; she didn't answer my wires. When I finally saw her she acted as if it were all in my mind, as if nothing had happened."

"She was warm again?"

"It was like old times. How could I have been so mistaken? My hopes were buoyed. I rejoiced. Talked madly. Made plans."

"Then suddenly she had to get home early?"

"You know it. There it all was. Every reborn joy of the evening lying gutted all over the dinner table. I said--"

"'But I have theater tickets.'"

"Yes, that's what I said and she said--"

"'It was a lovely evening, don't spoil it.'"

"Exactly. And I asked, 'When will I see you again?' I no longer dared let her out of my sight without making a new and definite date. Otherwise, I'd never be able to catch her."

"And she said, 'Call me tomorrow. I'll be in all morning.'"

"And she was gone."

"And you called all morning."

"And I never got an answer."

"I weep for both of us."

On the Thursday that Eugenie Vasch flew in from London to take care of some quick business Harry lay around wondering what to do with himself. Georgette had quickened his desire for the exotic. He found his new women dull. When he spoke to them about philosophies of life they looked at him blankly or talked about motherhood. When he suggested that modern society was beset by a breakdown in communication they mumbled something about monopoly and Bell Telephone. Georgette might have been a bore but there was a facet of her to which he'd responded: her concern with issues that did not exist for Harry. All that fuss she made about making contact as if there were a point in doing something just for the sake of it -- like taking English in school when it was clear that one would never use it. Make contact -- with whom? Learn to communicate -- with whom? People had always given him their attention. If he was less interesting than they, why weren't they devoting that time to themselves? Was it "communication" for Harry to pay attention to others while, in exchange, they paid attention to him? It sounded like a bad bargain. He sensed that most people's lives were made up of inventing excuses for not getting what they wanted. Perhaps that was what this whole business of contact and communication was: the thinkers of the world were the losers.

Nevertheless he was dissatisfied. He had no desire to be alone and less desire to be with others -- what's more, he missed Georgette. He wished she'd return with some new lectures. Perhaps that was what she was up to, he thought happily. She was in a school -- taking courses -- learning lectures to bring back to Harry! The idea cheered him considerably. He began to dress, having decided to put in an appearance at a party that in his previous mood he had intended to skip. The Blue Belles would be there, and if he were not seen enjoying himself, they might forget to call. Their nightly messages had become his one constant pleasure.

The moment Harry entered the big room Belle Mankis, Naomi Peel, Viola Strife, Arlene Moon and India Anderbull closed in around him. "Harry, there's someone in the next room we know you'll want to meet!"

Four days later Harry and Eugenie Vasch were married.

This is the first of two parts of Jules Feiffer's first novel, "Harry, the Rat with Women." The conclusion will appear next month,