Finally, when I was full, I asked him what was going on.

“Well,” he replied, “it’s a little hard for me to say.”

“Is it concerning that special friend that you mentioned earlier?”

“Yes, in fact.” He smiled a bit. “I’m trying to give you an idea of what to expect.”

I could easily imagine her, a fair-skinned cutie who had probably graduated from an Ivy League and developed a shapely resume. “I’ve been in love, Helmsley. I know, you want to tell me that she’s different from any other girl you’ve ever met…”

“Yes, but there’s more…”

“There’s always more. You’re nervous, that’s all, just calm yourself.”

Helmsley, as far as love went, was just entering puberty. In this area I felt a bit like an older brother and was about to mention how beguiling love is and the disappointment that inevitably follows, but I caught myself. I wiped the oil and sauces off my face, he paid the bill, and we left.

We went to the nearby bar where the fateful rendezvous was set to occur. A sign outside said it was an American Legion Post. Once inside, I noticed a cool tension that I learned was due to the two types of patrons: the recently arrived yuppies, who’d found that quaint Cobble Hill was only minutes away from their beloved Wall Street, and the third generation Italians who resented the young professionals, probably for jacking up the neighborhood’s cost of living. Helmsley quickly brought two bottles and mugs over to a booth by the door. Once seated, I could feel poor Helmsley’s anxiety multiply.

“Calm down.”

“It’s just that, well, you know, I don’t have many women friends and I feel very different about this one …” He then launched into a poetic preamble about man’s profound and incurable loneliness and how the soul itself is a piston-shaped apparatus that creates a series of vast obliterating implosions which are the true motivations of all man’s actions. Nothing was simple. After the earlier session with Miguel, I couldn’t stomach any more.

I grabbed the beer mug, shoved it to his lips, and turned it bottoms up. He started guzzling as he struggled for the handle. When he finished it, he put the mug down and apologized.

The door suddenly whipped open with such a bang that Helmsley’s empty bottle fell over. A gang of young locals stormed in. The last of them broke from the rest and shoved into our booth. Pushing up against Helmsley was an older lady. She took Helmsley’s hair in her hands and gave him a hard unexpurgated kiss on the mouth. I couldn’t believe it.

Angela was a small, butchy mama who couldn’t have been any younger than forty-five. Her dark wrinkled skin sagged loosely away from all bones, and as she banded her arms around Helmsley, I battled a grin.

“So whatchu boys talkin’ ’bout?” All I could do was hold back that grin and look at him—so this was his salvation from ruin, the melter of his stalagmite.

“We were just waiting for you, dear,” Helmsley replied tenderly.

“Ain’t talkin’ dutty, eh?” The she-wolf grinned.

“No, hon, I was just mentioning you, in fact.”

“You tease,” she replied while yanking Helmsley downward so that his head was resting across her lap the same way Sarahs head had laid across that chunky punk’s lap in the teen-bar a couple of weeks before. As he struggled to rise, she splat her lips on his and the two of them tumbled underneath the table.

In time a hand reached up from under the table, and feeling around the table top it snatched my half-finished bottle of beer and disappeared with it back under the table. In a gulp’s time, an empty bottle was replaced on the table top. I looked around the bar uncomfortably. The table started rumbling and up popped her head. Extending her hand over the table, she hollered, “Heimslock told me a lot aboucha.”

“Dat’s swell,” I replied. When we shook hands, she squeezed my knuckles into a painful bundle. She laughed when I retrieved my injured hand and asked, “What’s a matter, not man enough?”

Helmsley slowly reappeared from under the table. His hair was tousled and he blushed as he straightened it with his fingers. Silently he rebuttoned his shirt.

“So yer friend ’ere ain’t man enough for a little handshake.”

“No,” I retorted. “I gots ta idmit it, Helmslock, the little lady’s gots da man’s grip.”

Helmsley replied with a swift kick from under the table. Out of respect for my friend, I took the back seat and watched as Angela ruled the evening with filthy remarks and vulgar jokes. He was almost as attractive as she was ugly. When Helmsley’s glasses were off, if his old pants and hair-style were updated, he could resemble a manly Mel Gibson. He was muscular and had dark, deep-set eyes. His appearance was as remarkable and singular as his character. Unfortunately one fork in this road to gorgeous was that while his intellect was unremitting, he usually froze when dealing with people whom he hadn’t known for a while. Subsequently he had no luck with small talk and usually came off as a nerd.

While stuck there soaring to new heights of boredom, I speculated on possible motives for Helmsley’s interest in her. Lately he had been involved in the study of early man. Perhaps he was immersing himself in a Neanderthal woman. Or perhaps this was the first girl he had ever met who just reached down into his pants and plucked out what she wanted; fuck the small talk. I could see how this normally crass feature would appear charming to a guy who had always been too shy to present himself.

But still, she seemed hideous at the time. Could love bridge the intellectual and cultural abyss between them? Could love amputate the fifteen or so years that tossed her ahead of him? Could love repair so much? If so, then for the first time in my life, sitting there, I realized how love was truly great. It had always been easy for me to fall head over heels for some bouncing blonde from Texarkana, Texas, to sip her like a dry martini and smash the crystal in the fireplace of fate. But it was only Budweiser that my dear pal Helmsley was guzzling, as he nestled his head into the folds of her belly and looked into her cavernous nostrils.

For different reasons, we had all downed what would have measured out to at least a half-keg of beer. Angela, who had drunk twice as much as Helmsley, was no drunker. Suddenly Angela jumped to her feet and, yanking Helmsley up, decided it was time to go. Before departing, though, she cut a profound fart. I was too drunk to mind, though; I knew I wouldn’t make it even as far as the door. I sat there and ordered another beer.

Alcohol corrodes one’s dexterity and sense of proportion, but it also heightens one’s emotions. Smelling that fart, I thought of Helmsley in love. Had I spent my whole life confusing love with a series of erections? Love to Helmsley must have been an utter necessity, whereas for me it was always just a luxurious distraction. I wished that I had the need to lust after some goiter-necked, tooth-decayed, leg-blistered old bag. If I could love like that it would be a pyramid of emotions, an Arc de Triomphe of affection.

When the time arrived for the bar to close, I had to be helped out. No sooner did I plop myself down on a neighboring stoop than my stomach reared up. Staring down at the pool of vomit that had fountained out of me, I made out the expensive Italian meal I had eaten earlier that evening. The regurgitated pasta and cheese were little islands in a vast sea of beer. I recall feeling through that drunken stupor a deep loss; it had been a magnificent meal.

If I could love it enough, I would be able to eat it up all over again. It probably would taste just as good, once I got over the disgusting appearance. I knelt in the slop and gazed into it with as much devotion as I could muster. Dogs eat their regurgitation, I prompted myself. Slowly stretching my fingers out, I stroked along the meaty lumps and cheesy threads, and then brought my fingertips to my lips. I tried, but for some reason I just couldn’t get beyond the bilious stench.