“Well, if you did have one, you might let yourself recognize the actually-not-terribly-hard-to-recognize fact that very young women can get their desire and their admiration and their love for a person all mixed up, and not understand—”
“Not understand what?”
“That to the guy they’re just an object. That the guy might only be wanting to get his, you know, his, you know”—Walter’s voice dropped to a whisper—“his dick sucked by somebody young and pretty. That that might be his only interest.”
“Sorry, not computing,” Katz said. “What’s wrong with being admired? This is not computing at all.”
“I really don’t want to talk about it.”
An A train arrived, and they crowded onto it. Almost immediately, Katz saw the light of recognition in the eyes of a college-age kid standing by the opposite doors. Katz lowered his head and turned away, but the kid had the temerity to touch him on the shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” he said, “but you’re the musician, right? You’re Richard Katz.”
“Perhaps not sorrier than I am,” Katz said.
“I’m not going to bother you. I just wanted to say I really love your stuff.”
“OK, thanks, man,” Katz said, his eyes on the floor.
“Especially the older stuff, which I’m just starting to get into.
“Oh, sure, no, of course. Of course. I’m sorry to bother you. I’m just a huge fan.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Walter was following this exchange with a facial expression as ancient as the college parties that he’d been masochistic enough to attend with Katz, an expression of wonderment and pride and love and anger and the loneliness of the invisible, none of it agreeable to Katz, not in college and even less so now.
“It must be very strange to be you,” Walter said as they exited at 34th Street.
“I have no other way of being to compare it to.”
“It’s got to feel great, though. I don’t believe that at some level you don’t love it.”
Katz considered the question honestly. “It’s more like a situation where I would hate the absence of the thing but I don’t like the thing itself, either.”
“I think
“I think you would, too.”
Unable to grant Walter fame, Katz walked with him all the way up to the Amtrak status board, which was showing a forty-five-minute delay for his southbound Acela.
“I strongly believe in trains,” Walter said. “And I routinely pay the price.”
“I’ll wait with you,” Katz said.
“No need, no need.”
“No, let me buy you a Coke. Or did D.C. finally make you a drinker?”
“No, still teetotaling. Which is such a stupid word.”
To Katz, the train’s delay was a sign that the subject of Patty was destined to be broached. When he broached it, however, in the station bar, to the nerve-grating sounds of an Alanis Morissette song, Walter’s eyes grew hard and distant. He drew breath as if to speak, but no words came out.
“Must be a little odd for you guys,” Katz prompted. “Having the girl upstairs and your office downstairs.”
“I don’t know what to say to you, Richard. I really don’t know what to tell you.”
“You guys getting along? Patty doing anything interesting?”
