THE poet gives him a picture of herself posed naked as a Maja on a couch. The Polaroid is ill-lit, badly posed, unflattering to her stomach, and she is shiny of nose. Furthermore, the couch is ugly, done in inch-square blad-white hounds-tooth check. "Who took the picture?" Simon asks. "Someone," she says, and snatches it away from him.
He is a layman, not a figure in her world. "Youre not a poet, youre a real person," she says. "Of course poets are fuhan real people." She names for his eaihe sed, third, fourth, and fifth most beautiful male poets in the try. "But whos the first?" the layman asks. "We keep the position open so that the guys will have something to aspire to," she says. Does she know all of these beautiful poets? Are they all present or former lovers? Simon has no idea how poets behave. eously would be his best guess, but what does that mean in practice? The poets long red hair strays out over the pale-blue pillowcase; her right foot taps time to a Pointer Sisters record. "The dust in your poems," Simon asks, "is it always the same dust? Does it always mean the same thing? Or does it meahing in one poem and ahing in another poem?" The poet places a hand under a bare breast, as if to weigh it. "My dust," she says, "my ex?cellent dust. Youre a layman, Simon, shut up about my dust."
She was raised in Kansas, where her father is a whole?sale grocer. "He gave me this," she says. She opens a book and removes a twenty-thousand-dollar bond. "It was supposed to put me through medical school. I didnt want to go to medical school." The bond is pretty and blue with some kind of atuary on it. "Shouldnt this be in a money-market fund or some?thing?" asks the layman. "I guess so," she says. "If youre not from Kansas, people in Kansas ask you: What do you think about Kansas? What do you think about our sky? What do you think about people in Kansas? Are we dumb?" She replaces the bond in the book. "You find a high degree of sadness in Kansas."
"WELL its just what I thought would happen what I thought would happen and it hap?pened."
"Hes a free human individual not bound to us."
"Maybe were too much for him maybe he needs more of a one-ohing see what Im saying?"
"It may be just a temporary aberration that wont last very long like when suddenly you see somebody in a crowded Pizza Hut or something and you think, I could abide that."
"But if shes a poet then she wont keep him poets burn their dles down to nubs. And then find new dles. Thats what they do."
"I dont know I still feel threatened I mean Im as generous as the man but I still feel emphatically that our position here has radically altered for the worse. Somehow."
"Poets eat up all of experiend then make poems of it is she any good?"
"He thinks so."
"What does he know hes an architect."
"He was doing p Lit before he got kicked out of USC."
"Whatd he get kicked out for?"
"Slugged a dean in a riot, it was a First Amehing he says."
Tim es in wearing a dark-blue flannel suit with a faint pinstripe. He leaks prosperity.
"Tim!" Veronica says. "Whats happeo you?"
"This is from Paul Stuart," Tim says. "Seven hun?dred bucks. Do you like it?"
"You look like a new man. A new aer man."
"I got something going," Tim says. "Im president of this new outfit were putting together. Medlapse. Its a law firm."
"But youre not a lawyer," Dore says. "Are you?"
"The cept was mine,"