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Screams, thrashes, pulls his hair, feet bang against the bed, does all that, digs her nails into his back till he says “Hey, lay off, your fingers, it’s excessive, and it’s not just my shoulder.” A little later he says “Listen, I’m tired, my shoulder really aches — I have to get some aspirins or, if you have, something stronger. Besides, I don’t have to prove anything to myself or you that I can do it three times in an hour. I can’t; too bushed and maybe I put almost everything into the first and what’s left into the second and a third’s virtually impossible for me so soon. Anyway, twice is fine, even for the first time, and should be more than enough,” and she says “There’s always the chance you’ll change your mind after you snooze awhile; men have,” and he says “It isn’t a question of my mind. And snooze a lot. Really, I’m out till daylight unless we’re much further north than I was in my room last night and daylight comes an hour earlier here,” and she says “You’re getting too abstruse for me which I don‘t like because it sounds so phony. But I do tend to ask for too much in almost everything and I’m sorry,” and kisses him and holds him as she dozes off. He listens to her as she sleeps; she breathes so quietly through that small nose. He’d like to take her arms from around him so he can put his sling back on and get the aspirins and go to sleep, but doesn’t want to disturb her yet. Is this what he wants? Her body; so scrawny. And nice and smart as she is most times so far, he bets she can be a bitch and anti-intellectual, snapping at him in the bitch mood, if he comes and she doesn’t, and demanding he go on till she does. Well, just for two weeks, and for that time, even if it turns out he doesn’t like it here much, he’s sort of stuck.

A year later they all went to New York. Acting was what she’d decided to do. She’d study it, he’d work as a per-diem sub in junior high schools, Brons would go to a cheap preschool, they’d live simply and frugally. She sublet her house for two hundred a month more than it cost to keep up, so barring any sudden expenses for it, that would be her contribution to their living in New York. It had come to her in a dream. She was acting on stage, a period piece she said — she was in a long dress and twirling a parasol — the performance ended a minute into the dream and there were lots of whistles and applause, people in the audience tossed flowers at her and shouted her name and yelled Brava, Bravísima—“I know this is mostly what’s done at the end of every act of an opera, no matter how corny the opera is and dumbly performed and poorly sung, but this was my dream”—and when she awoke she said “I’ve never wanted to be anything in my life — not even a nurse or schoolteacher when I was very young — no professional till now. I want to be a stage actress; not movies or TV, just stage. I love great plays — Shakespeare, Lillian Hellman, the one that Carousel was based on — and have a clear strong voice for speaking and singing, a decent-enough face — a couple of photographer acquaintances have even called it an exceptionally photogenic one — and lots of ambition and spunk. I want to give myself two to three years to make good, but only one in New York studying it. If I flop, back to the same old shit till the next inspiration; I won’t continue something that’s obviously coming to nothing and paying off with zero funds. But this is how things get done: you get a wild idea, make a quick decision and do it; all that holding-your-head deliberative stuff and plugging away for decades to get a toehold in your field is for losers. Will you come with us?” and he said yes because he wanted to return to New York, spend time with his parents and friends there, and the West Coast, or areas he’s lived in or seen, was too relaxed and unexciting for him. He wanted to walk along jammed city streets — he got some of his best ideas when he did — and to be stimulated the way only a place like New York or Paris can — let’s face it, he was a city kid — and for the first time to live in one with a woman, and he loved her son and wanted to show his friends what a good surrogate father he was, and living there would make her grateful for what he’d call his urban expertise in that city and also more dependent on him. Now whether she could be an actress? He didn’t think she had the looks, voice, projection, personality and literary intellect for the roles she wanted to play and he never thought she was that good at mimicry or in even recounting incidents that happened to her or someone else or telling jokes. But you never know.