Beside her the blonde listened, too. Her companion was uninterested; sunk down in a brooding heap, he squeezed and pressed a piece of wax that had dripped from the candle.

"For my last number," Tweany declared when he had finished, "I shall sing a composition that has found special favor in the hearts of Americans, both Caucasian and Negro. It is a song that unites all of us in memories as we near the moment in which we celebrate the birth of One Who died to redeem us all, whatever our race, whatever our color."

Half-closing his eyes, Tweany sang "White Christmas."

At the piano, Paul Nitz plunked chords dutifully. Mary Anne, as she listened to the tune grind along, wished she could tell what was in the minds of the two men. Nitz, hunched over at the keys, seemed merely bored-as if he were pushing a broom, she reflected. She felt indignation at Nitz's betrayal of artistry. Was that all it meant to him? As if he were on an assembly line ... she hated him for betraying Tweany. It was an insult to Tweany; he could show some feeling. And Tweany-what, if anything, was he thinking?

It seemed, almost, as if there was a cynical smile on Tweany's face, an emptiness that could have been the most muted kind of contempt. But contempt for whom? For the song? But he had picked it. For the people listening? As he sang-or rather muttered out the lyrics-Tweany's expression began to undergo a metamorphosis. The detachment began to fade; in its place appeared a fervor. His voice took on a throbbing sublimity, a grandeur that grew until he appeared to be vibrating with pain. There was no doubting his emotions: Tweany loved the song. He was terribly moved. And he was communicating that to the audience.

When he had finished there was once more the interval of silence, and then the applause exploded wildly. Tweany stood, shaken, his face impassioned. Then, gradually, grief sank and the half-cynical listlessness returned. Tweany shrugged, straightened his expensive hand-painted necktie, and stepped to the floor.

"Tweany!" Mary Anne called shrilly, jumping to her feet. "Where were you last night? I came over and you weren't home."

With a faint twitch of his eyebrows-two lines of expressive, cultivated black-Tweany acknowledged her existence. He stepped over to the table and stood for a moment with his hand on the chair Nitz had vacated.

The blonde said: "Why don't you join us?"

"Thank you," Tweany replied. He rotated the chair and seated himself. "I'm tired."

"Don't you feel good?" Mary Anne asked, concerned; he did look wilted.

"Not so good."

Nitz dropped down beside him and said: "I hate that goddamn 'White Christmas' worse than any other tune in the business. The joker that wrote that should be shot."

Sadness overcame Tweany. "Oh?" he murmured. "Do you feel that?"

Sipping his drink, Nitz said: "What do you know about the sufferings of the Negro people? You were born in Oakland, California."

The blonde, to Mary Anne's annoyance, leaned forward and addressed Tweany. "That song about grasshoppers ... that's an old Leadbelly tune, isn't it?"

Tweany nodded. "Yes, Leadbelly used to sing that, before he passed away.

"Did he record it?"

"He did," Tweany said absently. "But it's not available now.

It's more or less a collector's item."

"Maybe Joe has it," the blonde said to her companion.

"Ask him," her companion said, without enthusiasm. "You're in there enough."

The discussion of folk music resumed, and Mary Anne managed to catch Tweany's attention.

"You didn't say where you were last night," she said accusingly.

A cunning smile settled over Tweany's face; the usual film glazed his eyes until they were a dulled, dispassionate gray. "I was busy. I've been rather occupied, the last few weeks."

"Months, you mean."

Half-listening to Nitz and the blonde rambling on about

Blind Lemon Jefferson, Tweany asked: "How's the Pacific Tel and Tel?"

"Lousy."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

In a clear voice Mary Anne informed him, "I'm going to quit."

"Already?"

"No. Not until I have something else. I've learned my lesson."

"You wish you were back at the furniture place? Ask them they'll take you back."

"Don't kid me. I wouldn't go back there on a bet."

"Suit yourself." Tweany shrugged. "It's your life."

"Why did you throw me out when I came to you that day?"

"I didn't throw you out. I don't recall doing that."

"You wouldn't let me move my things over. You made me keep a separate address, and after a week you wouldn't let me stay all night. I had to get up and leave-that's what I call being thrown out."

He regarded her with wonder. "Are you out of your mind? You know the situation. You're under age. It's a felony."

"If it's a felony to do it at three o'clock in the morning, it's a felony to do it in the afternoon."

"I thought you understood."

"If it's a felony-"

"Keep your voice down," Tweany said, with a glance at Nitz and the couple. Now they were involved in a discussion of contemporary atonal experiments. "That was only-now and then. Not a thing they could catch."

"Now and then? Temporary?"

She was furious, really furious. Because she remembered what it was convenient for him to forget: that specific day he had taken her into his apartment, the two of them lost among the clutter that filled the rooms, two living creatures bedded together among the pack rat's hoard. And the hot summer sun baking the flies that crept up the windowpanes ... lying, the two of them, slippery with sweat, covered by nothing, spread out on the bed with the glare blinding them into an indolent, careless stupor.

There, in that high loft, they had eaten their breakfast, had shared the old bathtub, had cooked and ironed, had roamed naked through the rooms, playing the little piano, had sat, in the evening, listening to the radio, staring into the red button of its dial light, the two of them combined on the couch, on the sagging, dust-sodden couch.

Although, according to Tweany, she was not much good that way. She had learned-been taught-to rest her weight on her shoulder blades and not on her coccyx; that way she could raise her hips higher. But other than purely muscular tensions, she had developed no responses; the experience brought her nothing, and nothing was what she gave back.

It was, to her, very like the time the doctor had stuck his metal probe into her nose to break off a polyp. The same pressure, the same too-large physical unit forcing its way inside her; then pain, and a little blood, and the crickets chirping in the grass of the yard below the window.

Tweany said she was no good: small and bony and frigid. Gordon, of course, had no opinion; he expected nothing but concavity, and that was what he got: no more and no less.

"Tweany," Mary Anne said, "you can't pretend we haven't been-"

"Don't get upset," Tweany said silkily. "You'll get ulcers."

Mary Anne leaned toward him until her small, tight face was almost touching his. "What have you been doing the last two months?"

"Absolutely nothing. Except my art."

"You're staying with somebody. You're never at home; I waited one night all night and you didn't show up. You didn't come home."

Tweany shrugged. "I was visiting."

Next to them, the discussion had become heated. "I never heard of that," Nitz was saying.

"You could have," the blonde told him. "Don't you have a radio? Every Wednesday night Joe has a program over that San Mateo good-music station. Listen to that. He writes up his material; he likes to do it all himself."

"I tried listening to that stuff," Nitz said, "but I can't get with it. It's-old."

Lapsing into silence, Mary Anne withdrew into her own thoughts; the conversation meant nothing to her.

"It's not old. It's still going on; the same material you're doing, only they don't call it by the same name. Milhaud, up in Oakland. And Roger Sessions is at Berkeley; go listen to him. Sid Hethel is at Palo Alto; he's about the best there is. Joe knows him .. they're old friends."