tail, but my back was too high, and I couldn’t count past the first two.”
Banks finishes his drink.
“Would you like me to get you another drink?” I ask.
“That’s an awful imposition,” Banks says, extending his glass.
I take the glass and go downstairs. A copy of
“Thank you very much for the cookies,” I say.
“It’s nothing,” she says. Her earrings are on the table. Her feet are on a chair.
“Tell them we ran out of gin if they want more,” I say. “I need this bottle.”
“Okay,” she says. “I think there’s another bottle, anyway.”
I take the bottle upstairs in my armpit, carrying a glass with fresh ice in it in my hand.
“You know,” Banks says, “they say that if you face things—if you just get them through your head—you can accept them. They say you can accept anything if you can once get it through your head.”
“What’s this about?” I say.
“Your arm,” Banks says.
“I realize that I don’t have an arm,” I say.
“I don’t mean to offend you,” Banks says, drinking.
“I know you don’t.”
“If you ever want me to yell at you about it, just say the word. That might help—help it sink in.”
“I already realize it, Banks,” I say.
“You’re a swell guy,” Banks says. “What kind of music do you listen to?”
“Do you want to hear music?”
“No. I just want to know what you listen to.”
“Schoenberg,” I say. I have not listened to Schoenberg for years.
“Ahh,” Banks says.
He offers me his glass. I take a drink and hand it back.
“You know how they always have cars—car ads—you ever notice . . . I’m all screwed up,” Banks says.
“Go on,” I say.
“They always put the car on the beach?”
“Yeah.”
“I was thinking about doing a thing with a great big car in the background and a little beach up front.” Banks chuckles.
Outside, the candles have been lit. A torch flames from a metal holder—one of the silliest things I have ever seen—and blue lanterns have been lit in the trees. Someone has turned on a radio, and Elizabeth and some man, not recognizable, dance to “Heartbreak Hotel.”
“There’s Schoenberg,” Banks says.
“Banks,” I say, “I want you to take this the right way. I like you, and I’m glad you came over. Why did you come over?”
“I wanted you to praise my paintings.” Banks plays church and steeple with his hands. “But also, I just wanted to talk.”
“Was there anything particularly—”
“I thought you might want to talk to me.”
“Why don’t you talk to me, instead?”
“I’ve got to be a great painter,” Banks says. “I paint and then at night I smoke up or go out to some bar, and in the morning I paint . . . All night I pray until I fall asleep that I will become great. You must think I’m crazy. What do you think of me?”
“You make me feel old,” I say.
The gin bottle is in Banks’s crotch, the glass resting on the top of the bottle.
“I sensed that,” Banks says, “before I got too wasted to sense anything.”
“You want to hear a story?” I say.
“Sure.”
“The woman who was driving the car I was in—the Princess . . .” I laugh, but Banks only nods, trying hard to follow. “I think the woman must have been out to commit suicide. We had been out buying things. The back seat was loaded with nice antiques, things like that, and we had had a nice afternoon, eaten ice cream, talked about how she would be starting school again in the fall—”
“Artist?” Banks asks.
