LIFE, SAYS THE philosopher, is a succession of compensations—if you’re lucky. I’m lucky. I lose my job, but I begin a novel. My novel stops, but I get another job. I don’t like the job, but I meet the girl of my dreams. I am no longer a Writer, but I become a legend. Twenty-one and already a legend. It seems that after I left MUI, word of my little biographical inventions spread. The articles were copied on a photo machine and circulated among the help. Staffers who never paid me any heed while I was there began to talk about me. Harvey, the protean faker and fucker, took full advantage of this posthumous fame to get me the other job. He himself had been promoted to chief caption writer at a hundred-and-twenty a week, which both delights and surprises me. I mean, remember what an undisciplined slob he seemed to be at school? With MUI, at least according to Harvey, he is a respected craftsman, a judge of literary style, a master of concision and clarity, a graphic aesthetician. The publisher himself comes to Harvey with the subtlest problems, choices of type face, for instance, and Harvey delivers judgments. He claims he knows nothing of these matters—which claim I have no reason to doubt—but he makes strong arbitrary decisions, backing them up with abstract double talk, and people defer. Harvey says that everybody else at MUI knows a little and consequently is uncertain, whereas he knows nothing and has no doubts. As for caption-writing, which is supposed to demand a special talent, Harvey explains that he merely names the contents of the pictures with the shortest words he knows, arranging them in subject-verb-object order, denies every impulse to use colons and semicolons, and has gained thereby a reputation for expository genius. Anyway, the art department, which was made up of Harvey and the lady art director, decided it needed a picture editor. That’s me. It sounds better than it is, actually. I just hustle my ass around and gather up as many free pictures as I can, from industrial associations, museums, libraries, publicity agents, vacant lots, burned warehouses, garbage cans, and since MUI is an A-to-Z encyclopedia everything theoretically comes in handy. The editor didn’t like the idea of hiring me back, but the art director convinced him that I couldn’t cheat with pictures. I haven’t tried yet, we’ll have to see. When she interviewed me and I told her I didn’t know anything about pictures, she said Don’t worry, you’ll learn, and she showed me a few pairs of photographs. Pick the better ones, she said. In each case I chose the clearer, and this really astounded her. Perfect, she said, perfect! She got all excited, which made me feel like Harvey with his captions. Then, after she hired me, she asked me to tell her the details of getting fired from the writing job. She couldn’t control herself, every time I mentioned the editor’s name, she slapped her knees in delight. My first day back, four people came up to me, introduced themselves, and asked for the same story. The second day back, the publisher himself, a speedy little character named Harry Fox, called me to his office, ostensibly to look over the new picture editor, but really to hear the story. From his amusement I guessed he didn’t like the editor either. As who can blame him? The editor is a big pompous jerk who keeps his jacket on and is said to be banging his secretary, a pimply stringy-haired girl without eyeteeth. MUI’s office is a former town house, very elegant. The writers work in the ballroom, to give you an idea. The art department was once the music room, there’s still a pipe organ against the far wall. The top floor has been made over into an apartment for the publisher and his guests. He doesn’t live there, just flops after the opera, or so he says. I understand he doesn’t flop alone, however. Nor is he the only one that doesn’t flop alone up there. So let me tell you. This was before I went back. Harvey was working late one night, expunging adjectives from his captions, when who should wander into the music room but Mrs. Fox, wife to the publisher. I’ve never seen her, but according to Harvey she’s a well-preserved, ample-breasted, small-waisted, thick-calved, purple-tinted, seasonally tanned grandma of forty-five. Also a crazy good screw, Harvey says. Do you work for my husband, she asks, immediately defining the relationship, because I have a dreadful throat. Would you be a wonderful man and run down to the drugstore and get me some orange juice? I’d go myself, but I’m expecting an important call from Mr. Fox, and so on. Well, old Harvey told her he didn’t think orange juice was any good for a sore throat, but he’d be glad to take her out for a drink if she could wait fifteen minutes until he finished what he was doing. I knew the instant I saw her nosing around, Harvey said, that she was looking for a mount from the stable. The question was who was going to be on top, the proprietor’s lady or the hired help. Well, whoever ended on top, they seemed to have developed quite an affection for one another, because they’ve used the upstairs apartment every night for two weeks, Harvey running home to change his shirt once in a while and explaining to his parents that he’s collaborating with a composer on a musical comedy. Well, as Harvey continued to leave off-white badges of honor on the publisher’s sheets he wondered how come Mr. Fox wasn’t more concerned about Mrs. Fox’s whereabouts of nights, how come in fact he wasn’t using the apartment himself. The question was solved one afternoon when Fox called Harvey to his office. It’s a great Persian-rugged affair with a genuine stained-glass window. I understand, Fox says, bang, that you are in love with my wife and that my wife is in love with you, is this true? Well, Harvey sort of mumbles and nods to keep from fainting. I want you to understand my position, Fox says, I have no intention of standing in your way. I’ve had too many happy years with Mrs. Fox not to respect her emotional needs. I deeply respect the fact that she came to me honestly and openly and told me what happened. I value her for this. I would like you to be just as straightforward. Well, Harvey said that at first he was just too embarrassed to tell the publisher the truth, which was that he was only having a ball for himself. After all, this was the man’s wife, it would have been impolite. So he just sort of praised him for his generosity and compassion, but did he want to get out of there! Well, Fox keeps pushing this broadminded line until finally Harvey has to tell him that he doesn’t think his parents would approve of a formal liaison like marriage. Because of the difference in ages, Harvey explained. Whereat Fox apparently concluded that he was dealing with a businessman, because he pours Harvey a glass of man-to-man Scotch and begins to level. It seems that he also is in love with another party—a young lady just about Harvey’s age. O everything he had said about desiring his wife’s happiness is true, but there are other factors. He would much prefer that Mrs. Fox initiate the divorce proceedings. Not only would she be unhurt that way, but the backing for MUI is coming from her brother, who definitely would not be unhurt if he thought Fox was deserting his sister after all these years. O yes, Mrs. Fox belongs to a very wealthy family, and the publisher ticks off some of her holdings. Also he explains that it is not unusual in these cases for a premarital settlement to be made on the husband, as in fact it had been made on him when he married her, in exchange for signing away all rights to the estate. Why, such a settlement, Fox said, might amount to a hundred thousand dollars, and Harvey should understand that the money would be free and clear, regardless of the progress of the marriage. You mean I could dump her afterward, Harvey said. Exactly, the publisher said. I also thought that a quiet wedding gift from me to you might make the move easier. Say, ten thousand dollars. Well, everybody’s cards were on the desk, and Harvey told Fox he needed time to think it over. Now let me contrast these crass dealings with my own romantic adventures. One of the people who came to see me the day I got back was the girl I dreamed about, the one who put her head on my shoulder and cried. I was actually embarrassed. I mean, we had made love in the dream, which she knew nothing about, of course, but there she was, standing next to my desk, and I was suffused with groiny, comey pleasure. In her hand she had a copy of one of my biographies, about Evan Price, a Salem witch-burner, who had proposed the theory that the local female weirdies were not only possessed of Satan but had regular carnal conversation with him too. Price’s claim to fame rested on the historical fact that he caused three infants, who were supposed to have been sired by the devil, to be burned at small stakes. I had put it all in good encyclopedic language, but nonetheless she thought it was a poignant story. I said I had intended it to be kind of funny, and she said it was, in a poignant way. Well, her name is Prudence, which she says her parents gave her because they waited five years to have her and even then she was a ten-month baby. If her face was made of anything but flesh it would be pretty plain, but she has this fantastic skin, golden and downy with an oval of deep pink on each cheek. I think a drop of water would roll over her skin like mercury. In fact, when she cried in my dream the tears did sort of slide without sinking in. I want to apologize for that letter, by the way. You once said you didn’t like people dumping their souls in your lap, but, Jesus, I felt bad. I guess it was a combination of my father dying and being on my own suddenly. I don’t think it will happen again, and I think that Prudence is the reason why it won’t. There’s a kind of sad solidity about her that makes her very valuable to me. I don’t even know for what, but as if in her there is an important answer for me about myself. Well, anyway, we had lunch together a couple of times, and when I wanted her to see a movie or something with me after work, she asked me to come to her home for dinner instead. To say it was a nice home won’t do it, to say that it was posh or impressive won’t do it. It was all this, but it was also the most attractive home I’ve ever been in. It’s about twenty miles above the city line, along the river. You can’t see it from the road. The path from the road winds in among trees, and suddenly you come on what looks like a magic cottage. But this is only the front. Behind, the house gets bigger and goes down. It’s built on a slope that falls to the river, and instead of the floors being piled one on top of the other, they accumulate gradually one under the other. In the back is a large garden with a gazebo and stone seats and finally a dock. They turned the lights on for me, the air was wet and still and held the bitter smell of leaves and grass. It was like a fairyland. But after dinner, before it got dark, Prudence, her younger sister Billy, and I sat on a stone bench and said almost nothing for I guess an hour, we just listened to the lips of waves talking to the rocks and pilings. I haven’t seen it in full daylight yet, but given a bright afternoon I could imagine never wanting to leave that garden. For a city boy, this was something. No, not for a city boy, I’ve been to expensive country homes, but most of them do nothing for me, no style, just an arrangement imposed on the ground. But Prudence’s home has that deepness that comes to things used by people with good hearts. I sound like I’m in love. Well, if I am, it’s not with Prudence only or her home. It’s with Prudence and her home and her family. The three of them, her sister Billy, who I guess is about fourteen, and Mommie, who, considering that she waited five years to have Prudence, looks as if she must have married at ten. All of them have this wild skin, the golden hue with pink ovals. I never saw anything like it. It’s as if they were three inspired dolls. The old man is dead. They didn’t talk much about him, he died from cancer five years ago, but they all seem to revolve about his absence. Prudence showed me his picture, and he looked like a nice man. Nice in the way people you know are dead look nice, but also nice like he had realized his manhood not at anybody else’s expense. I knew from the minute I pulled into the driveway that Prudence had honored me by asking me there, but it wasn’t until she showed me the picture that I understood how much. At dinner I was it. I mean, the three of them seemed to feed off my manness, and their need brought manness out in me. I wanted to give of myself to all of them, each in the way she desired. And I did. I was capable of being a contemporary to Billy, Prudence, and Mommie together. Playmate and boyfriend and daddie and son and husband. How about that?