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Instead, she continued the gesture upward and grasped a strand of my hair with it. She continued to play with the lock of my hair throughout the remainder of her discourse.

      “In fact, at the risk of having you throw an apoplectic fit, I will go so far as to say that I think you’re almost naïvely idealistic. Emotionally, I mean. Intellectually you know that the great majority of people will be doing more good when they’re fertilizing the flowers than they ever did in their lifetimes.

      “Now, to the point of all this: In the light of your aforementioned idealism, it is my opinion (don’t blame me, you asked me for it) that for you to continue working for Happy Broadman would be self-destructive. In fact, I would predict that before too long one of two things would happen if you did. Either you’d get the screaming meemies or an ulcer or some other form of hysteria…or you’d blow the whole works one day by denouncing Happy to his face and putting yourself through a highly unpleasant scene. So, wouldn’t you agree that it’s a better idea for you to quit your job now before things get any easier than they are?”

      “I…I guess so,” I said weakly.

      “Good. I’m glad that’s taken care of. Now, Sloane,” Allison’s voice became pathetically beseeching, “could I get drunk again? I had such a lovely buzz on before.”

      Placing me on an equal footing again. Restoring the frayed edges of my ego by asking my permission. Having me mix the drinks for us both like I was the efficient hostess and she only an invited guest dependent on my largesse. What a woman!

      More than ever before I was aware of my luck. Allison was the kind of woman most men looked for all their lives and never found. Warm, loving, intelligent, beautiful, charming and completely feminine. And she was in love with me!

      My moment of humility didn’t last but at the time I was filled with wonder…what did someone like Allison see in me? Could it have something to do with the rotten things that had happened to me before? Maybe there was something to that idea of suffering being rewarded?

      I stayed deeply engrossed in remembering what Allison had said. Not that I was thinking about it or analyzing it. It was more like I kept repeating her words to myself. Like it was religious. Like I had had a mystical experience or something.

      All right, so everything Allison had said was so true of me it hurt. So what? This proves I should pack up and follow her across the country? Maybe I was making too big a deal over it? After all, she hadn’t told me anything new about myself. I knew those things about myself, I just acted as if I didn’t because I fully expected by doing the right things I would someday become more like what I was on the outside.

      That naïve idealist routine, for instance. I knew that underneath my assumed hard exterior (hard like glass…impervious to all but the sharpest assaulters but likely to shatter if hit by the wrong tone of voice) I was like somebody’s overgrown dog, ready at any time to pledge undying devotion to any slob who threw me the right bone. Lucky for me no one did. The gimmick was that I thought that continually assaulting my naïve convictions with the seamy facts of reality would eventually penetrate and teach me to be less trusting. The way I saw it, you had to be tough. Real hard, like steel or the world would walk all over you. I was in great shape. I thought I was like the most mature, well-informed on all the latest trends in morbidity, a regular Hedda Hopper of neurotica. The truth was that I had gotten older but not much smarter. I was still mentally only on the second landing and the window wasn’t open.

      The big deal was that someone else had seen through the façade. It’s possible Allison wasn’t the first one to do so. I was having conniptions because she was the first one who had the conviction to let me know what she saw. Can’t blame most people if they kept their thoughts to themselves. Usually, I had had an aversion to people giving me their analyses of my psyche. Among the literati of New York City that’s the favorite indoor sport. Like charades, every goof who had read a magazine article about psychology felt qualified to play the game, what was the other guy acting out? That jazz gave me the chills. Those lovelies wouldn’t dream of diagnosing a physical illness but they had no qualms about regarding themselves experts in the science of psychology. I didn’t go for it and I wouldn’t put up with hearing half-baked interpretations of my unresolved Oedipal conflict and all that sort of stuff. That stuff’s for the professionals. I must have frustrated a lot of armchair Freuds in my time. Tough, baby dolls, real tough.

      What really counted was that Allison loved me. She saw through me but that didn’t mean she didn’t like what she saw. That meant that she had a right to see the personality I presented to the world and the private one I had gone to such lengths to submerge. After all, she loved both sides of me and that’s what really mattered.

      “Hey, come back. You haven’t said a word for ten minutes.”

      “I was thinking about one of the reasons why I love you,” I said.

      “What’s that?”

      “Let me try and illustrate it this way: if you hadn’t been able to eat for three days, what would you say was wrong with you?”

      Allison looked at me as if she were afraid that I had finally flipped out so far I’d never come back. “I’d say that I was hungry.”

      “That’s what I thought. And that’s one of the reasons I love you.”

      “Because I get hungry? Girl, I’ve heard of being weird, but this beats all.”

      “Really? You should read Stekel. However,” I explained, “that is far from being my hangup. No, the point I’m trying to make is that you can get hungry without calling yourself oral-retentive. That’s one of the reasons for my loving you. I’ve known too many of the other kind. People who can’t enjoy eating an artichoke without thinking they’re oral-regressive.”

      “I know the type. Sounds like some of the friends I made when I first came to the city. They bored me stiff.”

      “Yeah. You know, I’ve gotten revoltingly sober in the last hour. What about you?”

      “Me too. I thought this drink would get me back where I was before but it hasn’t. We’re almost out of Scotch too.”

      “I could go down and buy some more,” I suggested.

      “Hey, I just got a better idea. Ever had a Sidecar?”

      “No.”

      “You’ve been missing something. It’s my favorite cocktail but I seldom drink it because after three of them I’ve been known to start thinking I was Madame Butterfly.”

      “That must be quite a scene,” Allison said.

      “You shouldn’t know from it. Once, at a party, I lost count of how many I drank. All I know is that at one point I came out of the john with the end of a roll of toilet paper in my hands. I unwound it all the way into the living room where I proceeded to announce that I was that Butterfly cat. All the time I was tearing the tissue into little pieces and tossing them about like they were flower petals.”

      “You’re making it up.”

      “So help me Giacomo Puccini, I’m telling the truth. At least that’s what I’m told I did. I don’t remember that night too clearly,” I protested. “Anyway, I have a bottle of brandy in the kitchen and some Cointreau somewhere around the place. A smidgeon of lemon juice and we’ve got a Sidecar. How about it? Should I mix up a batch?”

      “On top of Scotch? Oh, what the hell, let’s try it anyway. But please,” Allison requested, “no Madame Butterfly tonight.”

      “Don’t worry, I passed the Puccini stage long ago. It’ll be Der Rosenkavalier, at least.”

      “H-m-m-m. As I remember, the opening scene holds some interesting possibilities.”

      “Hold it. We better take this topic up again after I’ve made the drinks or we’ll never get around to them.”

      I had never mixed a Sidecar before. I guess it takes practice.

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