that he’s an unreliable or moody person, for example, or occasionally acts half his age but not in an endearing way, or he’s temperamental, weak, cheap, petty, insincere and so on. No backbone — haven’t heard that one for a while, nor “cold as ice.” Solemn, introverted, old-maidish — flip-flops from this project to that. Finishes most of what he starts but has to know beforehand what almost everyone else seems to know afterwards that although all his works or the ones I’ve read or scanned, since I have only known him for a few months, are worthwhile to a degree and done competently, none are that dislodging or completing or advancing to make them important or exciting in even a tiny way. What am I saying? you could say. That he never shoots for anything monumental in the themes and authors he selects so he can at least wind up with something relatively original and big. Has brains and good intentions to spare, I’m not saying no, but also considerable self-defeatism. But, to finish up with him, since you did ask, didn’t you? he sometimes lives like an indigent too, which, if you’re a person like me who likes to split a check down the middle rather than feel called upon to pick it up, can put a hitch in your friendship. Not that he isn’t always clean and well fed and neatly dressed, though I suspect most of his clothes, even if I’ve nothing to base this on except their ampleness and style, come from his late father’s closets and drawers and much of his nourishment and even some of his income come from his mother, little as he’s said she has to live on herself. But maybe in this day and age, and excuse me for the cliché but this is only a phone conversation, of haywire mass-consumerism, if that is the right phrase, and imagine not being able to quote a simple cliché correctly or even quasily, and don’t tell me because I know I just did something not unconscionably but nonsensically wrong there neogeologically or what have you — and I honestly forgot that noun ending in ism with a hyphenless neo as its prefix for neo-words — he’s to be, and I hope you’re still able to follow me, congratulated and perhaps even emulated for living such a thrifty, stripped-down unupwardly mobile existence, if that last one, turned around a tad, is what they say. He does though have this awfully polished way of ticking people off who could do useful things for him if he’d only pay them the modicum of respect they think they deserve because of their professional status, pull and accomplished work, which leads me to believe he’s a mite jealous of other people’s success and their adeptness at living rather well off their teaching, reviewing, readings and books. But he says he’s plugging along on the project of his life now, but to me it sounds like another losing calling, so maybe things will improve appreciably for him the next few years. I hope so, because despite everything I might have said about him, I like the guy, so of course wish for him the best. As for your seeing him, and I care much less than you what gets back to him if you two do ever get close enough to confide and confess, he seems the type who has one affair after the next because, and I’ve a good idea what the reasons are but don’t think either of us has the time, he can’t sustain one for very long, and I’m referring to his affairs. Or else, or perhaps in addition to, he’s able to charm the pants off women at first if they don’t happen to be wearing skirts, and everyone should be permitted one poor joke per long phone call, though for all I know I might have succeeded there when while I was making it I thought it was bad, but can’t hold them because after a while they see straight through his delusions and the inadequacies I mentioned and know he doesn’t want a stable or permanent relationship. Having one would mean he’d have to change the kind of life he’s been used to for going on thirty adult years, which would put a damper or hamstring or even a diaper, and I’m sure that joke was bad, on all his excuses for the brevity of his affairs and his lack of professional success and other unhappy things. Now if you only want to go out with him once or twice because you’ve nothing better to do, I can’t see the harm. He can be very pleasant, appealing and entertaining, but don’t drag the evenings out too long. If Diana says some of that and at the end suggests I don’t see him but says nothing about him being mentally ill or socially or emotionally repulsive in any unmistakable way or a devastating combination of those defects, I’ll see him for a coffee or a drink. So far he seems reasonably interesting and okay. Not my ideal man in looks but not that hard to take. Besides, it’d only be for an hour or so one afternoon or night, and I also liked his smile. Maybe that more than anything, open and something else, and also his height, build and once he got over the jitters, his straightforwardness. But it’s way too early to be considering all this and I should do just what? Forget it for now or forever if he doesn’t call and definitely not call Diana unless he calls me and if he doesn’t, well, think about calling him. What would there be to lose? He could say no, I’m busy, engaged, about to be, lied and am actually married with child, have children, we do, two, three, she does but I’m her faithful live-in, I’m afraid I can’t see you because I’m this, I’m that, I’m the other thing, some new element recently arose in my life or just today or yes, I’m sorry I didn’t call, I was going to, this very moment in fact, you won’t believe this but I had my hand on the receiver just now and your number on my lips, receiver to my ear and had dialed the first five digits but forgot the sixth, phonebook open to Winburn, Windbreaker, Winermiss, was just running my finger down your phonebook page, so you could say that in a minute or so, but really now since that’s about how long we’ve been on the phone since you called, you would have heard my rings, now what do you say to that concatenation of events? I dialed you just before you rang but your line was busy, possibly because you were dialing me, now how about that for some kind of simultaneity of minds? I dialed you but hung up just before my call got through, if it would have which is to say if your line or even your exchange wasn’t tied up or momentarily on the fritz, because I thought you’d be out — I don’t know why, just something that popped to mind and seemed right at the time — and I can’t stand talking to anyone’s answering service, something I seem to have in common with half my acquaintances and friends including half the ones with that kind of service. Look, I couldn’t get myself to even fetch the phonebook to look up your name, though let me say straight off before you say anything more, if I haven’t already said it a dozen times, and of course I haven’t since this is the first time we’ve spoken since we met, first time unless you’ve kept since then a rigorous speechlessness, how much I wanted to open my phonebook and look up your number, wanted to dial you and have you answer, speak to you and ask if you’d like to go out with me and soon, and I’m not putting or trying to one over on you, but just thought that well, after my yelling out Diana’s window at you I felt, well, after my messages to your answering service that night I felt, well, even after we finished speaking on Diana’s landing and you went down the stairs I felt, well, but I had to be wrong, right? in what I thought you thought about me because here you are calling me unless it’s to tell me, and I don’t see how this can be so but you never know for if anything hasn’t happened to me once it doesn’t mean it won’t the next moment, not to call you, so what would you say — what I mean is you certainly didn’t call me to tell me not to call you, right? — so what would you say — and what am I now saying? — so what do you say I’m saying to seeing me for coffee or dinner or a drink, and how soon, since I’d love for it to be an hour or two from now or at the most tomorrow around noon. That’s what he could be thinking, she could be thinking. That’s what I at least hope she’s thinking or will. But I’m sure — not sure, but almost sure she hasn’t thought of me once, and if once then I’m sure or almost sure or just sort of sure she just thought of me briefly, and if briefly, then very briefly, almost subliminally if what I think is subliminal thinking is right: she saw the D in the Don’t Walk sign for instance and for a subliminal instance the D in the Don’t stood for Dan — since about a minute or so after she turned away from my waving at the window and went up the street to that wedding reception she said she was going or wherever she was going to — possibly to a friend’s apartment, perhaps to a lover’s, maybe directly home to be with a friend or lover or sick pet or just alone, not that anything I’ve done or find out about her is going to stop me from calling her at least once and probably in the next few days, not that I’m going to do anything more such as trying to find out anything more about her from now on till that call, simply because I’ve done more than enough already to snuff out what I suppose could be called a potential relationship, though she didn’t at all seem like the kind of person who feels she has to lie in any way to get out of an uncomfortable situation, if my stopping her on the stairs and talking to her was one, of that I’m, well, almost sure.