Is still filthy with trash; high-school gangs still daub huge scandalous words

on its beach-wall; and seashells are still less easy to find here than discarded

rubbers.

The glory has faded, too, from The Starboard Side; only a true

devotee like George can still detect even a last faint gleam of it. The place

has been stripped of its dusty marine trophies and yellow group photographs.

Right after the New Year it's to be what they dare to call redecorated: that's

to say, desecrated, in readiness for next summer's mob of blank-faced

strangers. Already there is a new jukebox; and a new television fixed high

up on the wall, so you can turn half right, rest your elbow on the bar and go

Into a cow-daze, watching it. This is what most of the customers are doing,

as George enters.

He makes unsteadily but purposefully for his favorite little table in the

corner, from which the TV screen is invisible. At the table next to him, two

other unhypnotized nonconformists, an elderly couple who belong to the last

handful of surviving colonists, are practicing their way of love: a mild

quarrelsome alcoholism which makes it possible for them to live in a playrelationship,

like children. You old bag, you old prick, you old bitch, you old

bastard: rage without resentment, abuse without venom. This is how it will

be for them till the end. Let's hope they will never be parted, but die in the

same hour of the same night, in their beer-stained bed.

And now George's eyes move along the bar, stop on a figure seated

alone at the end nearest the door. The young man isn't watching the TV;

indeed, he is quite intent upon something he is writing on the back of an

envelope. As he writes, he smiles to himself and rubs the side of his large

nose with his forefinger. It is Kenny Potter.

At first, George doesn't move; seems hardly to react at all. But then a

slow intent smile parts his lips. He leans forward, watching Kenny with the

delight of a naturalist who has identified a rosy finch out of the high sierras

on a tree in a city park. After a minute he rises, crosses almost stealthily to

the bar and slips onto the stool beside Kenny.

78

"Hello, there," he says.

Kenny turns quickly, sees who it is, laughs loudly, crumples the

envelope and tosses it over the bar into a trash container. "Hello, sir."

"What did you do that for?"

"Oh. Nothing."

"I disturbed you. You were writing."

"It was nothing. Only a poem."

"And now it's lost to the world!"

"I'll remember it. Now I've written it down."

"Would you say it for me?"

This sends Kenny into convulsions of laughter. "It's crazy. It's" — he

gulps down his giggles — "it's a — a haiku!"

"Well, what's so crazy about a haiku?"

"I'd have to count the syllables first."

But Kenny obviously isn't going to count them now. So George says,

"I didn't expect to see you in this neck of the woods. Don't you live over on

the other side of town, near campus?"

"That's right. Only sometimes I like to get way away from there."

"But imagine your happening to pick on this particular bar!"

"Oh, that was because one of the kids told me you're in here a lot."

"You mean, you came out here to see me?" Perhaps George says this a

little too eagerly. Anyhow, Kenny shrugs it off with a teasing smile.

"I thought I'd see what kind of a joint it was."

"It's nothing now. It used to be quite something, though. And I've

gotten accustomed to coming here. You see, I live very close."

"Camphor Tree Lane?"

"How in the world did you know that?"

"Is it supposed to be a secret?"

"Why no — of course not! I have students come over to see me now and

then. I mean, about their work — " George is immediately aware that this

sounds defensive and guilty as hell. Has Kenny noticed? He is grinning; but

then he has been grinning all the time. George adds, rather feebly, "You

seem to know an awful lot about me and my habits. A lot more than I know

about any of you — "

"There isn't much to know about us, I guess!" Kenny gives him a

teasing, challenging look. "What would you like to know about us, sir?"

"Oh, I'll think of something. Give me time. Say, what are you

drinking?"

"Nothing!" Kenny giggles. "He hasn't even noticed me yet." And,

indeed, the bartender is absorbed in a TV wrestling match.

79

"Well, what'll you have?"

"What are you having, sir?"

"Scotch."

"Okay," Kenny says, in a tone which suggests that he would have

agreed just as readily to buttermilk. George calls the bartender — very loudly,

so he can't pretend not to have heard — and orders. The bartender, always a bit

of a bitch, demands to see Kenny's I. D. So they go through all of that.

George says stuffily to the bartender, "You ought to know me by this time.

Do you really think I'd be such an idiot as to try to buy drinks for a minor?"

"We have to check," says the bartender, through a skin inches thick.

He turns his back on them and moves away. George feels a brief spurt of

powerless rage. He has been made to look like an ass — and in front of Kenny,

too.

While they are waiting for the drinks, he asks, "How did you get here?