right there.” “I don’t remember saying that. I said ‘Don’t let me start’ or something, and about something, but I forget what. What’s good, what’s bad—” “Please, already, shut up. And it’s not that my father’s on my mind constantly, you know, which I’m sure I’ve said. It’s simply that I want to have him on it less.” “All right. Agreed, in toto. So do I, and I’m not being facetious. That’s why I said a half-hour. Maximum. Solely. Fifteen minutes could even do for me. A quick coffee, half of it milk so we can actually drink it in that time. And Monday, what do you say? I can be persistent and unrelenting but I know when a spoon’s thoroughly licked, so I won’t hammer away at it any longer. You say no now, it’s no and no for good. And I was only joking before about marriage and children and loving you and water and empty glasses and phones ringing on my mother’s bed table in heaven and so on. I’m — most people know me not like that but as a reasonable conscientious person, practical, effectual, as I said, plenty of common sense. I have to be in what I do and also conduct myself civilly. My company would lose customers by the droves otherwise. People with piles of money to play and lose have a sixth sense about detecting eccentricity in people who speculate for them. But I do want to have coffee and maybe some cake with you. Sandwich or soup if you like. Wine or beer with the sandwich, or even go to dinner with you. Take you out. Nothing fancy but nice. I’m a stocks analyst, by the way. Was your father a stocks analyst or involved with stocks in any way?” “Hated it. No.” ‘Thank God. What’d he do?” “Never mind.” “You’re right. And I didn’t bring up I’m a stocks analyst to say that I do all right. I don’t do all right, quite truthfully, or not as well as I could with what I know, but that’s not and could never be the point why I do it. I don’t even like what I do that much, so it’s even more a mystery why I do as well as I do, or maybe it’s the answer. But just when you think you have the answer to something you don’t, right? Or that’s been my experience, so I’m not a very over-self-confident creature either. But I’m wholly unsuited for my work and would like to do a dozen other things, including serious pottery for a living and sitting home for the next ten years and reading every book I’ve ever wanted to read but never had the time to and opening my own health food restaurant, but gourmet stuff with me as chef, but you need the principal as well as the interest for that — you’ve heard that one. But OK, enough there too, and can I say it’s all right for dinner, we’ll say, Monday night? Of course ‘night.’ Dinner, or is it supper, is always at night. ‘Dinner’s the one that makes you think twice. But this is ridiculous, for suddenly I think it’s supper that some people if not whole sections of the country use as a word for lunch and others use for dinner. But nothing else but that — dinner, supper or even lunch, if you’d prefer. And then, we see it isn’t right for either of us—” “It won’t be. We can see that now.” “Don’t say that. Put a curse on it, of course it’ll turn out bad. What I’m saying is if we’re both bored flat in seconds, though I know I could never be with you or anyone else, even with someone who didn’t say anything. Because even saying nothing would provide me with interest why the person isn’t saying anything and is it because of me or the restaurant, let’s say, or what? The environs; the weather. What I might remind that person of, for instance, though there I’m only talking about look-alikes or act-alikes, not names. Anyway, that we can’t even be acquaintances — and just listen to this common sense talking — we’ll call it quits without any farther dramatics, OK?” “Oh shoot. I feel you broke me down where I can’t say no. For that’s what I want to say. Maybe for the quick coffee you spoke of, just so I’ll say to you ‘Howard, Howie, How’ till I get it out of my system for now. That’s not it. What is? And why’d I even give an equivocal yes? Crazy of me. I’m afraid I’ll have to radically change my mind now, Howard.” “Too late. You said it. Don’t take it away. It’s bad to forswear. And what time? And don’t worry. I’ll be one-tenth the talker I was today, so you’ll have to do most of the conversing while I’m doing the eating and staring. Sorry for that, I know you don’t want to hear it, and where should we meet? It’s yours to designate. Hey, good word again, right? Oh, sorry again for pretending to sound like a dud. Because I can use the long words with the best of them — I got a liberal arts education, as they say — or almost the best. Like my being such a long-winded prolix lexifanatic bombastic fustian pedantic euphuistic loquacious — and I swear I’m not looking at a thesaurus while I say this — garrulous nonsensical ludicrous ill-devised — I love that one, ‘ill-devised’—unreflective egregious simpleminded — I’m looking for a good one now to end it — prodigiously tropological — I can’t find it and don’t even know what that last word means; it just came to me, snap, in my head-ignoramus onomatomaniacal-obsessed windbag buffoon fool.”