The Last Gentleman

looked at and sniffed with interest because at home the ground was too low for cellars and he’d never seen one before. “He’s a sweet guy,” said Forney.
    â€œYes sir.”
    â€œHave you read his stuff?”
    â€œA couple of novels quite a while ago.”
    â€œYou haven’t read Love? ”
    â€œHis latest? No.”
    â€œI’ll get you a copy tonight.”
    â€œThank you, but I’m very sleepy. I think I’ll go to bed.”
    Forney came closer. “You know what that guy told me with a straight face. I asked him what this book was going to be about and he said quite seriously: it was about —ing. And in a sense it is!” They were by now back at poolside and within earshot of others, including Muzh. It made the engineer nervous. “But it is a beautiful piece of work and about as pornographic as Chaucer. Indeed it is deeply religious. I’ll get you a copy.”
    The engineer groaned. What the devil does he mean telling me it’s about —ing? Is —ing a joking matter? Am I to understand I am free to — his daughter? Or do we speak of —ing man to man, jokingly, literarily, with no thought of —ing anyone in the vicinity? His radar boggled.
    â€œIt is essentially a religious book, in the sense of being a yea-saying rather than a nay-saying,” Forney went on. “Mort has one simple credo: saying Yes to Life wherever it is found.”
    â€œYes sir,” said the engineer, rising unsteadily. “I think I’ll go to bed.”
    But no sooner had he fallen into the four-poster than a knock came at the door. It was Muzh in a shorty nightgown delivering Love. “You talk about randy,” said she and smote her brow. “Sheesh!”
    â€œThank you,” said the engineer, laughing heartily, and when she had left went reeling about the room like Rooney Lee after the battle of Seven Days. What saved him in the end was not only Southern chivalry but Yankee good sense. Muzh he saw all at once and belatedly, as she might have been seen by her classmates, as a horsy, good-natured, sisterly sort. She was, as they say in the North, a good kid. And so it was permitted him to leave her alone and to excuse himself. What a relief. He wiped his brow.
    Worse luck, though, sleep deserted him, left him half dead from lack of it and wide awake. There was nothing to do but read Love. He read it straight through, finishing at three o’clock.
    Love was about orgasms, good and bad, some forty-six. But it ended, as Forney had said, on a religious note. “And so I humbly ask of life,” said the hero to his last partner with whose assistance he had managed to coincide with his best expectations, “that it grant us the only salvation, that of one human being discovering himself through another and through the miracle of love.”
    The poor engineer arose, faint with fatigue, and threw a few final combination punches to clear his head. But when he got back in bed he found himself lying at attention, his feet sticking up, his left leg tending to rise of itself. There was nothing to do but swallow two of Dr. Gamow’s spansules, which induced sleep only indirectly by inhibiting the cortical influence on the midbrain—even though he knew that his sense of time and place would suffer in consequence. Though he might not know where he was tomorrow or what year it was, at least he’d feel better than this.
    At any rate he went fast asleep and woke in midmorning, somewhat disoriented but feeling quite cheerful and well.
    3 .
    Early afternoon found him driving like a cat. The bottle-green Chevrolet went roaring and banking around the many ramps and interchanges of eastern Pennsylvania. The pseudo-Negro sat beside him as alert and jumpy as ever. Presently they left the expressway and went among the sooty little hill towns. Déjà vus stole alongside and beckoned at the corner of his eye. How familiar were these steep streets and old 1937 brick-and-limestone high schools and the sooty monkey Pullman smell. Surely I attended that very one, he told himself, where I recall taking mechanical drawing in the basement. Two girls in summer school sat on the school steps, dumb pretty Pennsylvania girls. He waved. They waved back. Oh girls I love you. Don’t let anybody mess with you till I get back because I’ve been here before. Where is this place? “Where is this?” he asked so abruptly that the