Phlox had not yet spoken. She stood there, her hands poised at her sides, wrists bent upward, fingers slightly splayed: a really classic pose that cried out for a sentimental, string-heavy sound track, that rush of Borodin to mark the Moment Every Girl Dreams About. She looked at me for a long second or two.

"Hello, Art," she said finally. "I can't believe you know each other-I mean, I can't believe that Arthur knows both of us. How are you?"

"Quite well, thanks. How are you?"

"Fine. I'm- Arthur says you're not from Pittsburgh."

"He does?" I looked at Arthur, who was looking at his hands. "No. Washington. No, well, I'm almost from Pittsburgh. My mother's family lives in Newcastle," I said.

"She's dead." Sympathetic smile.

I looked at Arthur again. His fine hands obsessed him.

"Uh, yes. A long time. Are you from here?"

"I," she said, "am a very important part of Pittsburgh," and she fixed me with her twin blues. There was a lull in the action.

"All right," said Arthur, "that's enough." He took my elbow.

"Um, will you, um, will you be visiting the library- visiting Arthur-are you having lunch together?"

Arthur, adopting a sort of medical voice, explained the nature of our rendezvous, my liberty from my job that day, his unfortunate lack of lunchtime, and pulled me away, promising Phlox for me that she would see me again. Then we walked out into the blinding noon.

"Whew," I said, "that is one bizarre girl. What did you say they call her?"

"Mau Mau. Only that was when she was punk. I understand now that she's a Christian."

"I knew it had to be something. What will she be next?"

"Joan Crawford," he said.

No one ever satisfactorily explained to me the enormous hole, bridged in three separate places by long iron spans, that makes the whole southeastern end of the Oakland section of Pittsburgh into a precipice. Between the arrogant stupid prow of Carnegie-Mellon University and the ugly back end of the Carnegie Institute, between the little shrines to Mary in the front yards along Parkview and the park itself, lies the wide, dry ravine that contains, essentially, four things: the Lost Neighborhood, the Cloud Factory, train tracks, and a tremendous amount of garbage.

It was from a semisecret luncheon belvedere, the top step of a high concrete staircase that rose at least ten landings from the floor of the big hole, that I got my first long look at the Lost Neighborhood: the mysterious couple of streets and row or two of houses-a diorama, which one sees only from above, if one ever even notices it. I had probably seen it once or twice during my four years in Pittsburgh, but had never known of the half-dozen ancient staircases scattered throughout south Oakland that led down to it, nor realized that there were people really living in it. There were even a school and a baseball field; you could see the tiny shapes of children running bases down there at the bottom of Pittsburgh.

Arthur had chosen this uppermost step, where the sun warmed our backs and wilted the lettuce of our sandwiches. And sitting very close beside him there, behind the Fine Arts Building, at the grassy bottom of one of Oakland's hundred abrupt endings, I felt uncomfortable, extremely conscious of the seclusion and intimacy of our perch and of the distinct possibility that he had brought me here to broach again, as he might say, a delicate subject. I decided to reiterate my position at some point during lunch; unfortunately, my position was that I was crazy about him. I wanted to be like Arthur Lecomte, to drink, take, deny, dominate; and, with the wild friendship of Cleveland, to hold aloft the enchanted flag of summertime.

"What a weird place to live," I said, gesturing with my ham-and-cheese to the Lost Neighborhood.

"Have you ever been down there?"

"Nuh uh. You?"

"Yes, sure. Cleveland and I used to go down there all the time. We used to cut school"-here he gestured back over his shoulder toward, presumably, Central Catholic High School -"and come down that way"-tracing the route with his blue-and-white-striped arm-"behind the museum, past the Cloud Factory, and down along the junkyard. There used to be marijuana growing up through the trash and old tires and stuff."

"The Cloud Factory?"

He laughed, looked down at his hands, then looked back up again, avoiding my eyes, as usual, and blushing slightly. I'd never met a man who blushed so frequently, although he was to begin with a rather pink person.

"Yes, the Cloud Factory. Haven't you ever noticed it? When you walk across the Schenley Park bridge, there, from the park into Oakland, you pass above the Cloud Factory. What does it do? we used to wonder. Why do these great clouds, perfectly white and clean, white as new baseballs, come out of that building by the tracks? Cleveland and I would be all stoned and out of school and we'd loosen our neckties, and there would be the Cloud Factory, turning out a fresh batch of these virgin clouds."

I'd seen the building a million times, I realized, and it was indeed a cloud factory, nothing else. I said that, and then thought about Catholic school, how typical it was for Arthur to have gone in an altar boy and come out a catamite.

"Is Cleveland Catholic?" I asked.

"No, he's nothing," said Arthur. "He's an alcholic. Do you want some pear?"

I thanked him and took a warm, grainy slice. The reiteration of my straightness began to retreat from its urgent position on the tip of my tongue, and I found myself unwilling to derange the smooth rhythm of our conversation, full of leisurely pauses and the sound of chewing.

"When can I meet Cleveland?"

"Yes, he wants to meet you too; I've told him about you. Well, this weekend I'm having a little party out at the Bellwethers'-and hey, you haven't come out to visit me yet, Bechstein. You should come out and spend the night. "

"Oh," I said.

"Abdullah has. We've broken the rules. We've profaned Nettie and Al's bedclothes."

"Oh!" I said. "That's against the rules?"

"Are you kidding? You should see! There's a twelve-page list of things I'm supposed and not supposed to do. Their bed is off limits."

This casual revelation of his having slept with Abdullah after the incident at the party was so complex, so wondrous, that it left me simultaneously relieved, curious, confused, nauseated, and admiring. I formulated and rejected eight or nine incoherent questions before realizing that they all boiled down to something along the lines of "You slept with Dudu?" Instead I said, "I'll come out for the party, I guess, this weekend. Cleveland 'll be there?"

"Well, he's on the list too."

"Supposed or-"

"Forbidden. Absolutely. But we'll see."

"Why is he forbidden to come over?"

"Because," Arthur said, "he is feared and despised wherever he goes. He is, my mother avers, Evil Incarnate."

"I see," I said, laughing.

He stood up, lit a cigarette, and jerked his head toward the library.

"I have to get back," he said.

I shook his hand and left him at the main doors, thanking him for another fine half hour, and, silently, for not having ruined everything with a furtive caress. When he went back to work, I later learned, he invited Phlox to the party and told her that I planned to attend only to dance with her.

I smoked and looked down at the bottom of Pittsburgh for a little while, watching the kids playing tiny baseball, the distant figures of dogs snatching at a little passing car, a miniature housewife on her back porch shaking out a snippet of red rug, and I made a sudden, frightened vow never to become that small, and to devote myself to getting bigger and bigger and bigger.