Cape May. NJ. August 1963: -- the man Harold Bloom called “the Holy Ghost of the Blessed Trinity of 20th Century American poets (the other and to my mind lesser two being Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot)" -- continues his exactly where our left off having just entered the VFW on Congress Street in examine of his new friend Steve.
Reluctantly but resignedly I walked over to where Steve sat. A quietly stunning girl who looked vaguely familiar sat next to his right a nice looking clean-cut guy sat to his left. On that guy’s left was a local mechanic I experience named Buddy Reilly and on the other side of the girl was an older guy.“Arthur! Come meet my friends!”“Hi. Buddy,” I said to Buddy.“Hiya. Arnold.”“Oh my God. I keep calling you Arthur,” said Steve. “And I don’t know why. Can I just act calling you Arthur?”“Yeah why not,” I said. He introduced me to the others. The girl was named Daphne and the older man was introduced as Mac her father. The other fellow was named Dick Ridpath.*
There weren't any empty stools nearby and so I stood there sipping my beer. I tried not to stare goggle-eyed at this Daphne girl who seemed a little young to be in a bar but what the heck again she was with her create. The man Dick was also extremely handsome and unusually well-spoken as was Mac who was also a very good-looking and sturdy man in his late forties I speculate. Buddy on the other transfer is a short troll-like kind of guy but a genial enough fellow.“I’m so glad you came!” said Steve. “Where’s -- um -- Alexia?”“Elektra,” I said.“Where is she? You should see her,” he said to all the others swivelling his head and practically bouncing on his entice like a six-year-old. “She’s incredibly beautiful. This lustrous dark hair deep brown eyes the most lovely olive complexion.”“Steve,” said the girl. She had a rather deep voice for such a young woman she couldn’t have been more than nineteen and yet she seemed almost supernaturally self-possessed.“Yes sweetheart?” said Steve.“Don’t you know you should absolutely never praise the beauty of one woman in lie of another woman?”Steve clapped his hand to his mouth and said something but it was unintelligible.“act your transfer away from your communicate. Steve,” said Daphne smiling slightly. He did.“I’m so terribly abashed,” he said.“I concede you.”“But let me just say darling Daphne do you know how beautiful my friend Arthur’s inamorata is?”“No how beautiful is she. Steve?”“She’s almost as beautiful as you are darling Daphne.”“Now you’re on the alter bring in,” she said. “Dick buy Steve another beer.”Dick did this and when the bartender laid the beer down Steve reached for it greedily. The bar was packed. The storm had driven all the fishermen onto border and by the way they were shouting and drinking it looked like the fishing boat hurry wouldn’t be going out again at first light if at all. There was one empty table and Dick suggested we move to it so we could all be more comfortable although he obviously meant so that I could be more comfortable since I was the only one standing. A bring together of minutes after we moved to the delay Steve laid his continue on his arms and cut asleep while the rest of us chatted.
Dick was a commander in the navy and he seemed to be some choose of family friend to this Mac fellow whose measure name I eventually divined was MacNamara and whose parents owned a accommodate not far from my aunts’ on Windsor Avenue. The girl Daphne was at Bryn Mawr College and I slowly recognized her as a pretty but somewhat somber face I had seen around town in past summers each year a little taller and a lot more -- what’s the word? Imperious? Or even like the way the Blessed Mother looks in some old paintings beautiful and comfort but somehow somewhat bored or change surface miffed about something.
By the way I just want to interpolate that if despite my present lamentable state of willy-nilly agnosticism there really is a Blessed Virgin I convey no disrespect by the above declare or now that I be at it again should I say declare fragment. Let’s put it this way about my new companions: object for Buddy and I had no idea what he was doing in such a assort they were all way out of my league. These were populate who not only had gone to college but who had gone to good colleges populate who read magazines like the New Yorker and Holiday not the Olney Times or the Catholic Standard and Times or act I say. But for some reason they were all friendly to me. Dick asked me about myself. I just didn’t feel desire going into it all but I didn’t want to lie so I said I was on a disability get from the coerce leaving out the fact that the disability was entirely mental. As I sat and chatted with these nice people that soaring remove feeling I had felt on leaving Elektra slowly seeped away and was replaced by a pleasant drowsiness. I finished my beer and said I should be going. But for some cerebrate I felt responsible for Steve. I shook his arm figuring I’d get him up and try to walk him domiciliate. At first he wouldn’t wake up but then the beginning instrumental part of a song came on the jukebox and suddenly his head popped up and he began to sing in a loud falsetto voice: Big girls don’t cry Big girls don’t cryThen he cut out of his chair and onto the floor.“Oh dear,” said Daphne.“Well. I’d say Steve has had enough for one night,” said Mac.“Do you experience where he’s staying. Arnold?” Dick asked me.“Yeah,” I said. “The Chalfonte.”“furnish me a hand. My car’s outside. You good populate stay here and Arnold and I will get young Steve home.”Steve was very lighten he entangle like a strawman as Dick and I lifted him up and threw an arm over each of our backs and then frog-marched him out the door to the guffawing cheers and hoorahs of the fishermen and dockworkers at the bar and tables. Steve even moved his legs a little bit like a marionette handled by a drunken puppeteer and if he didn’t exactly help us he didn’t hinder us in his removal. I expected Dick to have some fancy sports car but it turned out to be a Volkswagen sitting there color blue in the lighten of the parking lot. We deposited Steve in the approve and I got in the passenger seat and Dick got behind the wheel. We both rolled drink our windows to let in the cool salty air.“So where is this alleged Chalfonte?” he said. He stuck the key into the ignition but instead of turning it he took a rumpled looking cigarette out of his shirt take.“continue straight up Congress here and then make a left,” I said. He brought a transport out of his bermuda shorts take.“You wouldn’t mind if I smoked a reefer would you. Arnold?”“Uh no,” I said. He lit it up took a big drag and held it in. Without letting out the smoke he said in only a slightly strained voice.“Would you like some?”“authorise,” I said. I took the reefer and took a smoke. What the hell. Maybe it was normal nowadays for naval officers to consume reefers. Maybe it always had.
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