The Last Gentleman

laughed in our faces and I can’t say I blame him. Let me put it to you straight out.”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œJust suppose you asked him—you said, Jamie, I got Ulysses parked outside in the street—come on now, let’s me and you hit the road. What would he say?”
    â€œHe wouldn’t like the Ulysses part.”
    â€œDear God, you’re right.” Her fist came down on his knee and stayed there. “You’re right. You see, you know. All right, leave out the word ‘Ulysses.’ What then? What would he do?”
    â€œHe’d go.”
    â€œYou know something: you’re quite a guy.”
    â€œThank you.” He plucked at his sweat suit. It came away from him like old skin. “Then you mean Kitty will go to Europe, after all?”
    â€œMy dear young friend, hear this. I do believe you underestimate yourself. I do not believe you realize what a hurricane you’ve unleashed and how formidable you yourself are. You’ve got our poor Kitty spinning like a top. Not that I blame her. Why is it some men can sit like Achilles sat and some men can’t? But I propose to you, my lordly young sir, that we give our young friend her year abroad, which is the only one she’ll ever have. Seriously, Kitty saved my life. She is the sister of that son of a bitch I married. She bucked me up when I needed it and by God I’m returning the favor. Do you have any idea what it would be like to be raised by Poppy and Dolly, who are in their own way the sweetest people in the world, but I mean—God. You have no idea what it’s like down there these days, the poor bloody old South. I’ll tell you what. Give her her year in Florence and then if you haven’t forgotten all about her, I’ll send her home as fast as her little legs will carry her. Or better still, when you and Jamie get through with Larry, come on over and join us!”
    The next thing he knew, she was thrusting something into his pocket, but he didn’t have a pocket, then inside the drawstring of his sweat suit, tucked it with a fierce little tuck like an aunt at Christmas. “Your first month’s salary in advance,” she said, and was on her way.
    Taking the check from his loin, he read it several times. It seemed to be postdated. He scratched his head. On the other hand, what was today’s date?
    11 .
    It was the first hot night. There were signs of summer. Fires had broken out in Harlem. Twice there were gunshots as close as Seventieth or Eightieth Street. Police cars raced north along Central Park West. But the park was quiet. Its public space, paltry by day, was leafed out in secrecy and darkness. Lamps made gold-green spaces in the rustling leaves.
    He strolled about the alp at the pond, hands in pockets and brow furrowed as if he were lost in thought. It was a dangerous place to visit by night, but he paid no attention. He felt irritable and strong and wouldn’t have minded a fist-fight. A few minutes earlier a damp young man had fallen in step on his deaf side.
    â€œDidn’t we take philosophy together at the Y?” the stranger murmured, skipping nimbly to get in step.
    â€œWhat’s that,” said the engineer absently.
    â€œI thought it unconscionably bad,” murmured the other.
    â€œEh?” The engineer cupped his good ear.
    â€œAre you interested in the Platonic philosophy?” the other asked him.
    â€œIn what? ” said the engineer, stopping and swinging around to hear better but also bending upon the other such an intent, yet unfocused gaze that he melted into the night.
    Strong and healthy as he felt, he was, if the truth be known, somewhat dislocated. The sudden full tide of summer sent him spinning. The park swarmed with old déjà vus of summertime. It put him in mind of something, the close privy darkness and the black tannin smell of the bark and the cool surprising vapors of millions of fleshy new leaves. From time to time there seemed to come to him the smell of Alabama girls (no, Mississippi), who bathe and put on cotton dresses and walk uptown on a summer night. He climbed the alp dreamily and stooped over the bench. The cul-de-sac held the same message it had held for days, a quotation from Montaigne. He read it under a lamp:
    Man is certainly stark mad. He can’t make a worm, but he makes gods by the dozens.
    No one had picked it up. Nor was it very interesting, for that matter: when he