And dreamy people often do not mix well, no matter what you might believe. Dreamy people actually have little to offer one another, tend in fact to neutralize each other’s dreaminess into bleary nugatude. Misery does not want company—happiness does. Which is why I have learned to stay clear of other sportswriters when I’m not working—avoid them like piranhas—since sportswriters are often the dreamiest people of all. It is another reason I will not stay in Gotham after dark. More than one drink with the boys from the office at Wally’s, a popular Third Avenue watering hole, and the dreads come right down out of the fake tin ceiling and the Tiffany hanging lamps like cyanide. My knee starts to hop under the table, and in three minutes I’m emptied of all conviction and struck dumb as a shoe and want nothing but to sit and stare away at the pictures on the wall, or at how the moldings fit the ceiling or how the mirrors in the back bar reflect a different room from the one I’m in, and fantasize about how much I’m going to enjoy my trip home. A group of sportswriters together can narrow your view far beyond pessimism, since the worst of them tend to be cynics looking only for false drama in the germs of human defeat.

Beyond that, what is it that makes me back off from even the best like-minded small talk when there is no chance of the willies nor the least taint of cynicism, and when in principle at least I like the whole idea of comradeship (otherwise why would I go fishing with the Divorced Men)? Simply, that I hate for things to get finally pinned down, for possibilities to be narrowed by the shabby impingement of facts—even the simple fact of comradeship. I am always hoping for a great surprise to open in what has always been a possible place for it—comradeship among professionals; friendship among peers; passion and romance. Only when the facts are made clear, I can’t bear it, and run away as fast as I can—to Vicki, or to sitting up all night in the breakfast nook gazing at catalogs or to writing a good sports story or to some woman in a far-off city whom I know I’ll never see again. It’s exactly like when you were young and dreaming of your family’s vacation; only when the trip was over, you were left faced with the empty husks of your dreams and the fear that that’s what life will mostly be—the husks of your dreams lying around you. I suppose I will always fear that whatever this is, is it.

Even so, I have been happy enough on the Divorced Men’s fishing trips. My habit is not to rent a rod and reel but to walk around and exchange a wry word with the men who are fishing like demons, go get their beers, sit in the passengers’ cabin and watch television, or go up top and stand beside Ben and watch the sonar on the pilot’s deck, where he finds the fish like clouds of white metal on the dark green baize. Ben never remembers my name, though after a while he recognizes me as someone named John, and we have diverse conversations about the economy or Russian fishing vessels or baseball, which Ben is a fanatic for, and which serves as a good man-to-man connection.

On yesterday’s excursion I finished the day doing what I like best, standing at the iron rail near the bow of the Mantoloking Belle staring off at the jeweled shore lights of New Jersey, brightening as dark fell, and feeling full of wonder and illusion—like a Columbus or a pilgrim seeing the continent of his dreams take shape in the dusk for the first time. My plans for the evening were to be at Vicki’s by eight, to surprise her with an intimate German dinner at Truegel’s Red Palace on the river at Lambertville—celebrating two months of love—then have her home early. Altogether it was not a bad bunch of prospects.

Down the railing from me, staring as I was into the sequined gloom, was Walter Luckett, pensive as a judge and quite possibly cold in the spring night, from the way he was hunched over his elbows.

Walter is the newest member of the Divorced Men. He took Rocko Ferguson’s place when Rocko got remarried and moved down to Philadelphia, and came in as an old acquaintance of Carter Knott’s from Harvard Business School. Walter is from Coshocton, Ohio, attended Grinnell, and pronounces Ohio as if it both begins and ends in a U. He is a special-industries analyst for Dexter & War-burton in New York and looks like it, with tortoise-shell glasses and short, slicked hair. Occasionally I spy him on the train platform going to work, but we rarely speak. In fact I know almost nothing else about him. Carter Knott told me Walter’s wife, Yolanda, left him and ran off to Bimini with a water ski instructor; that it’d been a big shock, but he seemed to be “handling things better now.” That could happen to any of us, of course, and the Divorced Men seemed like just the thing for him.

Occasionally, I’ve slipped out to the Weirkeeper’s Tavern after eleven—I do this sometimes to see the sports final on the big screen—and there was Walter, a little drunk and talkative. Once he yelled out, “Hey Frank! Where’re all the women?” after which I couldn’t wait to get out.

Another time I was in The Coffee Spot at dinnertime when Walter came in. He sat down in the booth across from me, and we talked about the Jaycees and what a bunch of phonies he thought they all were, and about the quality of silk underwear you can get out of most catalogs. Some, he said, were made in Korea, but the best ones came right from China; it was one of his industries. And then we just sat for a long time—a hundred years, it felt like—while our eyes tried to find a place to rest, until they finally settled on each other. And then we sat and stared at each other for four, maybe five horrible, horrible minutes, then Walter just got up and walked out without ordering anything or saying another word.