"What's it like? Hard work, I bet."

"It's not hard so much as menial. But at least it's got some intrinsics to it. It gives you clues to human nature. Garbage tells you more than living with a person."

"You don't mind it too much then."

"Oh, I love it," he said.

"Is the garbage different in different buildings?"

"Sure it's different. There's clues that tell you that. You don't even have to see the garbage. Anytime you see a cracked mirror in the hallway you know the garbage isn't going to be any good."

"I guess it's satisfying to help keep the city clean."

"It overjoys me," Buford said.

"They say pound for pound Sugar Ray Robinson is the best fighter ever."

My mother was in the doorway telling me that Amy was all alone. I went out there and stood next to her. John Retley Tucker came by. I asked him if he had ever met my other sister and he said Jane had never mentioned any sister. He stood there talking to us and the index finger of his right hand was stuck between his shirt collar and the back of his neck. This meant his elbow was up around ear level. I saw Amy staring at the patch of sweat under his arm. John Retley was about six-four and two-twenty and he looked like a cop directing traffic on a Sunday afternoon and not minding it at all. The Collier woman approached again and I disengaged myself to talk to her. She was wearing beige.

"I want to tell you something," she said. "You're a young man now and there's no reason why you shouldn't know this. You've grown to almost your full stature. You have a man's body and a man's appetites. This is what I want to say. Women love to be loved."

"Yes."

"Who is that man behind you?"

"John Retley Tucker. My sister Jane's boyfriend."

"There's something indecent about a man with thumbs that large."

I needed some air. I told Amy I was going out for a while. She said she'd come with me. I left her there on the porch for a moment and went back inside for two drinks and brought them out. I didn't turn on the porch light.

"Do you drink a lot?" she said.

"I drink quite a bit. I drink quite a bit, yes."

"Do you know a boy named David Bell? He drinks incredible amounts of liquor. He does it on a dare. He can really hold it."

"I'm David Bell," I said.

"I got confused. I meant Dick Davis."

"Freudian slip," I said. "They say if you use somebody's name like that by mistake it means you like that person very much."

"Don't get ideas, mister."

"I was only kidding."

"Your parents are very nice."

"So are yours. Do you think I'm handsome, Amy?"

"What a question."

"I know it's an ambivalent thing to ask but I heard you discussing colors with old Andy Alexander and you seem to have good taste and I was just wondering what you thought. I'm sure you wonder if people think you're pretty. Do you think I'm handsome?"

"Yes," she said.

"Do you want to know if I think you're pretty?"

"Okay."

"I think you just miss," I said. "What's your opinion of Burt Lancaster? I think he's the all-time greatest."

Henry Gossage came out on the porch. He took a deep breath and clubbed himself on the chest with both his baby fists. Then he saw us standing by the rail and pretended to be startled, drawing his body back and raising his arms in self-defense. "Two purple shadows in the snow," he sang. I hoped he wouldn't tell another joke.

"Our kids are away at camp," he said. "Oldest is a counselor. Middle waits on tables but he'll be a counselor next year. Youngest is only twelve so he's got a ways to go yet before he gets out of the camper category."

"How's Hank?" I said.

"He's the oldest. Henry Jr. He's fine. Appreciate your asking."

"Give him my best."

"Will do. Damn good of you, lad. Damn nice of you, Dave boy. Damn sweet thing to say. Where can I throw up?"

"In the hedge," I said.

"It's all right. I don't think I have to anymore."

Amy said she thought it would be a good idea to get back inside. Everybody stood talking and eating. At the far end of the room Tod Morgan and Peter Fisher's wife were talking.

I was watching his face when he laughed. His features stretched and quivered. He looked extraordinarily ugly. I imagined a small explosion in his head. He was laughing in an exaggerated manner, overdoing it, creating the laugh as if with ceramics, and I watched his head come apart in slow motion, different sections tumbling through the air, nose-part, ear-part, jaw with lower teeth. I went through the kitchen and out the back door.

The small porch out there was full of empty bottles. I walked along the edge of the woods past Harris, Torgeson and Weber. The Harris and Weber houses were lit. I cut across a lawn and walked the five blocks to Ridge Street. The drugstore was closed. There were four or five people in the ice cream parlor. I had a soda and waited for Kathy Lovell to turn up but she didn't. I almost went to the movie theater to look for her. Then I started walking toward her house. Finally I went back to the ice cream parlor and called her from there. Her father answered and I hung up. Ten minutes later I was on Green Street. It was dark and quiet. There was the beginning of a breeze. I stood beneath an elm and watched a woman in a shingled house ironing clothes. No one passed on the street. It was a Sunday night in early September and my body beat with sorrow at the beauty and mockery of all bodies.

There were only about fifteen people left when I returned to the house. They seemed to have too much room to move around in. Unfinished drinks were everywhere and the chairs and sofas were occupied now. On the floor was a white slice of turkey with a shoeprint on it. Most of the women were sitting together at one end of the room. The men were drifting in and out of the kitchen. They all seemed to be drinking beer now. I walked across the room smiling. I went upstairs and took off my jacket and tie. I could hear voices from Jane's room. I stood very still. Jane was apparently showing her boyfriend a family photo album.

"This is mother as a little girl," she said. "That's her father and that's her uncle Jess who wrote poems and killed himself.

This is me as a little girl. This was taken on West End Avenue, where we used to live. This was taken in Central Park. This is Old Holly and that's daddy. This is Aunt Grace in Alexandria. This is mother again. So's this. So's this. This is David when he was two years old. This is daddy in his office."

"Jane," he said. "Jane."

I went downstairs to the kitchen and got a beer out of the refrigerator. Harold Torgeson was standing in the corner. He was drinking a glass of milk. We were alone.

"I've always wanted to be a writer," he said. "Right out there in that room tonight there were forty or fifty good stories. I tried to write when I was a young man but I had no staying power. I'd get started in a burst of energy and goodwill and then I'd just fade out and die. Let's face it, I was born to be an insurance agent. But the thing gnaws at me even now, lad. Sometimes I have trouble sleeping and I get out of bed and light a cigarette and sit by the open window. And I get this bittersweet feeling about my life and what I've done and what I haven't done. You're too young to understand that. But there's something poetic about sitting by an open window at midnight smoking a cigarette. The cigarette is part of it. There are memories in the smoking of a cigarette. I just sit there thinking about my life. I killed three Japanese in the war that I know of. I'm telling you these things because they'll be useful to you someday."

Ray Smith had come in halfway through Torgeson's monologue. He went over and shook Torgeson's hand. Then he got a beer from the refrigerator.

"My own story begins in wartime London," he said. "There was a nurse named Celia Archer."