“A shiftless sponger, I think.”

“A shiftless sponger. Shit. I was tense that night, Duv; I had personal problems, and my period was coming on besides. I lost control. I was just shouting the first dumb crap that came into my head, but why did you believe I meant it? You of all people shouldn’t have thought I was serious. Since when do you take what people say with their mouths at face value?”

“You were saying it with your head too, Jude.”

“I was?” Her voice is suddenly small and contrite. “Are you sure?”

“It came through loud and clear.”

“Oh, Jesus, Duv, have a heart! In the heat of the moment I could have been thinking anything. But underneath the anger — underneath, Duv — you must have seen that I didn’t mean it. That I love you, that I don’t want to drive you away from me. You’re all I’ve got, Duv, you and the baby.”

Her love is unpalatable to me, and her sentimentalism is even less to my taste. I say, “I don’t read much of what’s underneath any more, Jude. Not much comes through these days. Anyway, look, it isn’t worth hassling over. I am a shiftless sponger, and I have borrowed more from you than you can afford to give. The black sheep big brother feels enough guilt as it is. I’m damned if I’m ever going to ask for money from you again.”

“Guilt? You talk about guilt, when I—”

“No,” I warn her, “don’t you go on a guilt trip now, Jude. Not now.” Her remorse for her past coldness toward me has a flavor even more stinking than her newfound love. “I don’t feel up to assigning the ratio of blames and guilts tonight.”

“All right. All right. Are you okay now for money, though?”

“I told you, I’m ghosting term papers. I’m getting by.”

“Do you want to come over here for dinner tomorrow night?”

“I think I’d better work instead. I’ve got a lot of papers to write, Jude. It’s the busy season.”

“It would be just the two of us. And the kid, of course, but I’ll put him to sleep early. Just you and me. We could talk. We’ve got so much to talk about. Why don’t you come over, Duv? You don’t need to work all day and all night. I’ll cook up something you like. I’ll do the spaghetti and hot sauce. Anything. You name it.” She is pleading with me, this icy sister who gave me nothing but hatred for twenty-five years. Come over and I’ll be a mama for you, Duv. Come let me be loving, brother.

“Maybe the night after next. I’ll call you.”

“No chance for tomorrow?”

“I don’t think so,” I say. There is silence. She doesn’t want to beg me. Into the sudden screeching silence I say, “What have you been doing with yourself, Judith? Seeing anyone interesting?”

“Not seeing anyone at all.” A flinty edge to her voice. She is two and a half years into her divorce; she sleeps around a good deal; juices are souring in her soul. She is 31 years old. “I’m between men right now. Maybe I’m off men altogether. I don’t care if I never do any screwing again ever.”

I throttle a somber laugh. “What happened to that travel agent you were seeing? Mickey?”

“Marty. That was just a gimmick. He got me all over Europe for 10% of the fare. Otherwise I couldn’t have afforded to go. I was using him.”

“So?”

“I felt shitty about it. Last month I broke off. I wasn’t in love with him. I don’t think I even liked him.”

“But you played around with him long enough to get a trip to Europe, first.”

“It didn’t cost him anything, Duv. I had to go to bed with him; all he had to do was fill out a form. What are you saying, anyway? That I’m a whore?”

“Jude—”

“Okay, I’m a whore. At least I’m trying to go straight for a while. Lots of fresh orange juice and plenty of serious reading. I’m reading Proust now, would you believe that? I just finished Swann’s Way and tomorrow—”

“I’ve still got some work to do tonight, Jude.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude. Will you come for dinner this week?”

“I’ll think about it. I’ll let you know.”

“Why do you hate me so much, Duv?”

“I don’t hate you. And we were about to get off the phone, I think.”

“Don’t forget to call,” she says. Clutching at straws.

EIGHT.

Toni. I should tell you about Toni now.

I lived with Toni for seven weeks, one summer eight years ago. That’s as long as I’ve ever lived with anybody, except my parents and my sister, whom I got away from as soon as I decently could, and myself, whom I can’t get away from at all. Toni was one of the two great loves of my life, the other being Kitty. I’ll tell you about Kitty some other time.

Can I reconstruct Toni? Let’s try it in a few swift strokes. She was 24 that year. A tall coltish girl, five feet six, five feet seven. Slender. Agile and awkward, both at once. Long legs, long arms, thin wrists, thin ankles. Glossy black hair, very straight, cascading to her shoulders. Warm, quick brown eyes, alert and quizzical. A witty, shrewd girl, not really well educated but extraordinarily wise. The face by no means conventionally pretty — too much mouth, too much nose, the cheekbones too high — but yet producing a sexy and highly attractive effect, sufficient to make a lot of heads turn when she enters a room. Full, heavy breasts. I dig busty women: I often need a soft place to rest my tired head. So often so tired. My mother was built 32-A, no cozy pillows there. She couldn’t have nursed me if she’d wanted to, which she didn’t. (Will I ever forgive her for letting me escape from the womb? Ah, now, Selig, show some filial piety, for God’s sake!)

I never looked into Toni’s mind except twice, once on the day I met her and once a couple of weeks after that, plus a third time on the day we broke up. The third time was a sheer disastrous accident. The second was more or less an accident too, not quite. Only the first was a deliberate probe. After I realized I loved her I took care never to spy on her head. He who peeps through a hole may see what will vex him. A lesson I learned very young. Besides, I didn’t want Toni to suspect anything about my power. My curse. I was afraid it might frighten her away.

That summer I was working as an $85-a-week researcher, latest in my infinite series of odd jobs, for a well-known professional writer who was doing an immense book on the political machinations involved in the founding of the State of Israel. Eight hours a day I went through old newspaper files for him in the bowels of the Columbia library. Toni was a junior editor for the publishing house that was bringing out his book. I met her one afternoon in late spring at his posh apartment on East End Avenue. I went over there to deliver a bundle of notes on Harry Truman’s 1948 campaign speeches and she happened to be there, discussing some cuts to be made in the early chapters. Her beauty stung me. I hadn’t been with a woman in months. I automatically assumed she was the writer’s mistress — screwing editors, I’m told, is standard practice on certain high levels of the literary profession — but my old peeping-tom instincts quickly gave me the true scoop. I tossed a fast probe at him and found that his mind was a cesspool of frustrated longings for her. He ached for her and she had no yen for him at all, evidently. Next I poked into her mind. I sank in, deep, finding myself in warm, rich loam. Quickly got oriented. Stray fragments of autobiography bombarded me, incoherent, non-linear: a divorce, some good sex and some bad sex, college days, a trip to the Caribbean, all swimming around in the usual chaotic way. I got past that fast and checked out what I was after. No, she wasn’t sleeping with the writer. Physically he registered absolute zero for her. (Odd. To me he seemed attractive, a romantic and appealing figure, so far as a drearily heterosexual soul like me is able to judge such things.) She didn’t even like his writing, I learned. Then, still rummaging around, I learned something else, much more surprising: I seemed to be turning her on. Forth from her came the explicit line: I wonder if he’s free tonight. She looked upon the aging researcher, a venerable 33 and already going thin on top, and did not find him repellent. I was so shaken by that — her dark-eyed glamour, her leggy sexiness, aimed at me — that I got the hell out of her head, fast. “Here’s the Truman stuff,” I said to my employer. “There’s more coming in from the Truman Library in Missouri.” We talked a few minutes about the next assignment he had for me, and then I made as though to leave. A quick guarded look at her.