370
PARTISAN REVIEW
Demby and Miss Manfred. I tried not to see him, for I did not feel
equal to
his
contempt, my head blurry as always when I emerged
from the false paradise of the air-conditioning into the stifling night;
and so I drew back into the group of young graduate students, assist–
ants in English, philosophy and political science, with whom I had
picked up the habit of sitting every night in the Campus Grille. We
would argue literature or politics (most of them were incredibly
Young Progressives!), the way
it
is possible to argue such matters
when you are young, as
if
they finally mattered; and afterwards we
would break up into smaller groups, still talking and talking in the
heat that would not break.
It
was Judith who had asked me the
first time; and her husband would stop by to call for me every
evening-a tall, broad, silent boy, a little older than some of the
others, with the sort of face one might expect to find in a tough
working-class bar, but in
his
case, subtilized and ruined by an un–
looked-for pallor. He would scarcely talk to me, whether in shyness
or resentment I could not tell; merely knock at the door, and stand
there.when I opened it, with his air of having come on someone else's
errand, wait wordlessly until I joined him for the long walk to join
the others.
But Fenton refused to let me slip by unchallenged; and after
the obligatory exchange of hellos between the two groups, the students
had dropped back into the darkness, leaving me with the three
neon-lighted others, who began talking at me all at once. I had the
sense of one who moves back and forth over enemy lines.
"Is that oversize one Hank Somers?" Fenton asked in a thick
conspiratorial voice, leaning forward so that his face almost touched
mine, and his full weight was on the shoulders of his companions.
"Our Judy's husband?"
"Please, darling, you're creasing my lapel," Demby protested.
"For Christ sake, don't call me darling, it reminds me of my
wife."
"Yes, darling, whatever you say." Demby lisped a little, in gen–
teel spite.
"I think you're a darling, too," Miss Manfred cut in, making
certain intendedly kittenish motions with her eyes and her hands,
"an
,old
darling." She laid considerable weight on the "old," though
(Continued on page
435)
