Bunny raised an eyebrow. 'That's nonsense,' he said curtly.

'Who told you that?'

'Nobody. Just Judy Poovey,' I said, when I saw he wasn't going to take nobody for an answer.

'Well, I can see why she'd say it but nowadays everybody's gay this and gay that. There's still such a thing as an old-fashioned mama's boy. All Francis needs is a girlfriend.' He squinted at me through the tiny, crazed glasses. 'And what about you?' he said, a trifle belligerently.

'What?'

'You a single man? Got some little cheerleader waiting back home for you at Hollywood High?'

'Well, no,' I said. I didn't feel like explaining my own girlfriend problems, not to him. It was only quite recently that I had managed to extricate myself from a long, claustrophobic relationship with a girl in California whom we will call Kathy. I met her my first year of college, and was initially attracted to her because she seemed an intelligent, brooding malcontent like myself; but after about a month, during which time she'd firmly glued herself to me, I began to realize, with some little horror, that she was nothing more than a lowbrow, pop-psychology version of Sylvia Plath. It lasted forever, like some weepy and endless made-for-TV movie – all the clinging, all the complaints, all the parking-lot confessions of 'inadequacy' and 'poor self-image,' all those banal sorrows. She was one of the main reasons I was in such an agony to leave home; she was also one of the reasons I was so wary of the bright, apparently innocuous flock of new girls I had met my first weeks of school.

The thought of her had turned me somber. Bunny leaned across the table.

'Is it true,' he said, 'that the gals are prettier in California?'

I started laughing, so hard I thought my drink was going to blow out my nose.

'Bathing beauties?' He winked. 'Beach Blanket Bingo?'

'You bet.'

He was pleased. Like some jolly old dog of an uncle, he leaned across the table even further and began to tell me about his own girlfriend, whose name was Marion. 'I know you've seen her,' he said. 'Just a little thing. Blond, blue-eyed, about so high?'

Actually, this rang a bell. I had seen Bunny in the post office, in the first week of school, talking rather officiously to a girl of this description.

'Yep,' said Bunny proudly, running his finger along the edge of his glass. 'She's my gal. Keeps me in line, I can tell you,' This time, caught in mid-swallow, I laughed so hard I was close to choking.

'And she's an elementaryeducation major, too, don't you love it?' he said. 'I mean, she's a real girl.' He drew his hands apart, as if to indicate a sizable space between them. 'Long hair, got a little meat on her bones, isn't afraid to wear a dress. I like that. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't care much for the brainy ones.

Take Camilla. She's fun, and a good guy and all '

'Come on,' I said, still laughing. 'She's really pretty.'

'That she is, that she is,' he agreed, holding up a conciliatory palm. 'Lovely girl. I've always said so. Looks just like a statue of Diana in my father's club. All she lacks is a mother's firm hand, but still, for my money, she's what you call a bramble rose, as opposed to your hybrid tea. Doesn't take the pains she ought, you know. And runs around half the time in her brother's sloppy old clothes, which maybe some girls could get away with – well, frankly I don't think any girls can really get away with it, but she certainly can't. Looks too much like her brother. I mean to say, Charles is a handsome fellow and a sterling character all around, but I wouldn't want to marry him, would I?'

He was on a roll and was about to say something else; but then, quite suddenly, he stopped, his face souring as if something unpleasant had occurred to him. I was puzzled, yet a little amused; was he afraid he'd said too much, afraid of seeming foolish? I was trying to think of a quick change of subject, to let him off the hook, but then he shifted in his chair and squinted across the room.

'Look there,' he said. 'Think that's us? It's about time.'

Despite the vast amount we ate that afternoon – soups, lobsters, pates, mousses, an array appalling in variety and amount – we drank even more, three bottles of Taittinger on top of the cocktails, and brandy on top of that, so that, gradually, our table became the sole hub of convergence in the room, around which objects spun and blurred at a dizzying velocity. I kept drinking from glasses which kept appearing as if by magic, Bunny proposing toasts to everything from Hampden College to Benjamin Jowett to Periclean Athens, and the toasts becoming purpler and purpler as time wore on until, by the time the coffee arrived, it was getting dark. Bunny was so drunk by then he asked the waiter to bring us two cigars, which he did, along with the check, face down, on a little tray.

The dim room was whirling at what was now an incredible rate of speed, and the cigar, so far from helping that, made me see as well a series of luminous spots that were dark around the edges, and reminded me unpleasantly of those horrible one-celled creatures that I used to have to blink at through a microscope till my head swam. I put it out in the ashtray, or what I thought was the ashtray but was in fact my dessert plate. Bunny took off his gold-rimmed spectacles, unhooking them carefully from behind each ear, and began to polish them with a napkin. Without them, his eyes were small and weak and amiable, watery with smoke, crinkled at the edges with laughter.

'Ah. That was some lunch, wasn't it, old man?' he said around the cigar clamped in his teeth, holding the glasses to the light to inspect them for dust. He looked like a very young Teddy Roosevelt, sans moustache, about to lead the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill or go out and track a wildebeest or something.

'It was wonderful. Thanks.'

He blew out a ponderous cloud of blue, foul-smelling smoke.

'Great food, good company, lotsa drinks, couldn't ask for much more, could we? What's that song?'

'What song?'

*,' want my dinner,' sang Bunny, 'and conversation, and… something, dum-te-dum.'

'Don't know.'

'I don't know, either. Ethel Merman sings it.'

The light was growing dimmer and, as I struggled to focus on objects outside our immediate area, I saw the place was empty except for us. In a distant corner hovered a pale shape which I believed to be our waiter, a being obscure, faintly supernatural in aspect, yet without that preoccupied air which shadows are said to possess: we were the sole focus of its attention; I felt it concentrating towards us its rays of spectral hate.

'Uh,' I said, shifting in my chair with a movement that almost made me lose my balance, 'maybe we should go.'

Bunny waved his hand magnanimously and turned over the check, rummaging in a pocket as he studied it. In a moment he looked up and smiled. 'I say, old horse.'

'Yes?'

'Hate to do this to you, but why don't you stand me lunch this time.'

I raised a drunken eyebrow and laughed. 'I don't have a cent on me.'

'Neither do I,' he said. 'Funny thing. Seem to have left my wallet at home.'

'Oh, come on. You're joking.'

'Not at all,' he said lightly. 'Haven't a dime. I'd turn out my pockets for you, but Twinkletoes'd see.'

I became aware of our malevolent waiter, lurking in the shadows, no doubt listening to this exchange with interest. 'How much is it?' I said.

He ran an unsteady finger down the column of figures. 'Comes to two hundred and eighty-seven dollars and fifty-nine cents,' he said. 'That's without tip.'

I was stunned at this amount, and baffled at his lack of concern.

'That's a lot.'

'All that booze, you know.'

'What are we going to do?'

'Can't you write a check or something?' he said casually.

'I don't have any checks.'