“Yeah.”
“No,” Nevins said. “I’m not.”
“Might have saved you some grief if everyone knew that.”
“Might have,” Nevins said. “But I have always thought that it is entirely corrupt to judge people based on what they do with their genitals in private with a consenting adult.”
“I think that’s right,” I said. “Here’s an even worse question. Can you prove it?”
Nevins stopped with his cup half raised to his lips and stared at me a minute, then he put the cup down, and folded his hands and rested his chin on them and looked at me some more.
“Just how do we go about that?” he said. “Go down to the Pussy Cat Cinema, perhaps, see if I erect?”
“Maybe the testimony of satisfied females?” I said.
He nodded slowly, an odd half smile on his face.
“I don’t like this much better than you do, but everybody’s telling me nothing, and I need some kind of fact to wedge in with.”
“What is really, what, ironic, I guess, is that at least one member of the tenure committee knows perfectly well that I’m heterosexual.”
“Care to share the name?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Look,” I said. “It would have to be a female. How many are there on the tenure committee?”
“Four.”
“For crissake,” I said. “I’m a detective. You think given four names I can’t find out which one it was?”
“If I tell you, can you keep it to yourself?”
“I can keep it from anyone who doesn’t need to know it,” I said.
He still looked at me above his folded hands. The odd half smile faded. Finally he spoke with no expression at all.
“Lillian Temple,” he said.
“If that’s true,” I said, “Lillian Temple knowingly lied about you in the tenure meeting. She was the one who introduced the business about Prentice Lamont.”
Nevins nodded slowly, without taking his chin off his folded hands.
“Was this before she was Bass Maitland’s main squeeze?” I said.
“While,” Nevins said.
“Ah,” I said. “And you are too gentlemanly to kiss and tell.”
“That relationship is important to her. I don’t want to destroy it.”
“You’re getting lynched here,” I said, “and won’t say anything in your own defense because it would be dishonorable.”
Nevins shrugged.
“Honor requires difficulty,” Nevins said.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Your old man isn’t the only one for whom machismo is the essence of existence.”
Nevins widened his eyes at me as he sat there, and cocked his head slightly without lifting it.
“You think I’m motivated by considerations of machismo?”
“I hope so,” I said. “I hope you’re not crazy.”
An old fat black woman in white sneakers shuffled to our table, cleared the table debris, including the coffee cups we hadn’t finished, into the cart she was pushing, and shuffled on. Neither of us said anything. I wasn’t even sure she had seen us.
“Have you had other girlfriends,” I said. I wasn’t even investigating anymore. I was simply interested.
“Yes, and I’ve been reticent about them because they have been white.”
“Un huh.”
“And… I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a priggish jerk.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re a professor.”
He smiled sort of automatically.
“Well, I am badly overeducated. I can only relate well to women who are also badly overeducated.”
“And most of those women are white.”
“Yes.”
We were quiet while the old fat black woman came back and wiped off our table with a damp cloth and moved on.
“I’d have thought interracial dating would not have caused problems in your circles.”
