But I didn’t. I stood and looked at Walter, who by now had walked halfway across the empty lot in his walking shorts and sweater, and had turned toward me and assumed a posture I can only describe as heartbreaking. And I could not say no. Walter and I had something in common—something insignificant, but something that his heartbreaking posture made undeniable. Walter and I were both men, Vicki or no Vicki, Lambertville or no Lambertville.

“Only one,” I said into the parking lot darkness. “I’ve got a date.”

“You’ll make it,” Walter said, lost now in the bleary seaside lowlights of Brielle. “I’ll see to that myself.”

In the Manasquan Walter ordered a scotch and I ordered a gin, and for a while we sat in complete uncomfortable silence and stared at the old pictures behind the bar that showed record stripers caught off the dock. I thought I could detect Ben Mouzakis in several—a chesty young roughneck of the Fifties, a big immigrant’s crazy grin, no shirt, muscles bristling, standing beside some other taller men in khakis and two hundred dead fish strung along a rafter board.

The Manasquan is a dark, pine-board, tar-smelling pile of sticks inside and in truth it is one of my favorite places for small departures. Any other time I wouldn’t have minded being there one bit. It has a long teak bar with a quasi-nautical motif, and no one makes the first attempt to be friendly, though drinks are poured honestly and at a reasonable price for a touristy seaside area. Sometimes, arriving too early for our excursion, I have walked over, taken a seat at the bar and bought a good greasy hamburger and felt right at home reading a newspaper or watching TV alongside the few watchcap fishermen who huddle and mutter at the end of the bar, and the woman or two who float around speaking brashly to strangers. It is a place where you’d be happy to consider yourself a regular, though when all is said and done you have nothing at all in common with anyone there except some speechless tenor of spirit only you know a damn thing about.

“Frank, were you ever an athlete?” Walter said forthrightly after our long and studious staring.

“Just an athletic supporter, Walter,” I said and gave him a grin to set him at his ease. He obviously had something on his mind; and the sooner he got it out, the sooner I could be blazing a trail west.

Walter smiled back at me ironically, gave his nose a disapproving pinch, pushed up at his glasses. Walter, I realized, was actually a handsome man, and it made me like him. It isn’t easy for handsome people to be themselves, or even try to be. And I had a feeling Walter was trying to be himself for the moment, and I liked him for that reason, though I wished he’d get on with it.

“You were out at Michigan, is that right,” Walter asked.

“Right.”

“That’s Ann Arbor, not East Lansing.”

“Right.”

“I know that’s different.” Walter nodded thoughtfully and sniffed again. “You couldn’t be an athlete there, I comprehend that. That’s like a factory.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“I was an athlete out at Grinnell. Anybody could be one. It wasn’t a big thing, although I’m sure it’s gotten bigger now. I never go back anymore.”

“I don’t go back to Ann Arbor, either. What’d you do?”

“Wrestled. One forty-five. We wrestled against Carleton and Macalester and those places. I wasn’t very good.”

“Those are good schools, though.”

“They are good schools,” Walter said. “Though you don’t hear much about them. I guess everybody wants to talk about sports, right?” Walter looked at me seriously.

“Sometimes,” I said. “But I don’t mind it.