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don’t know, then you don’t really love her.”
    â€œI do love her. I’m crazy about her.”
    â€œThen you should have no doubts. If she’s the one, really the one, you should know it.”
    â€œLook, Biferman, I don’t see anything wrong with having some doubt before such a tremendous transaction. It’s normal. Why not? And anyway, you never went out with a girl in your life. How would you know?”
    â€œI went out with a girl.”
    â€œWhat, in high school? I’ll bet you did. You forget, Biferman. There are no girls in DeWitt Clinton. I went there too.”
    â€œYou didn’t know me then,” Biferman said angrily, looking more intently at the darkness.
    â€œDo I really need to have known you then? I know you now. I see you on Sunday walking alone in Van Cortlandt Park. I spend forty hours a week within two feet of you. I go home on the same train. I meet you in the morning, rain or shine, on the corner. What is there you have hidden from me, Biferman, what is it that gives you the right to tell me, when finally after so many years of being alone I find someone I think I can love, that I don’t really love her? For Christ’s sake what am I supposed to do, be a perfectionist? I can’t do that. I just can’t do it. I can’t stand being alone. It’ll work out. Biferman, I can’t stand being alone.”
    â€œ
I
can stand being alone,” said Biferman.
    â€œWell then, maybe you’re unhuman. Maybe you’ll spend the rest of your life at that desk and go home every night in the cold to a dark room, and eat every night at Katz’s, and what the hell do you do in the evening anyway?”
    â€œI thought you knew me.”
    â€œOh, now I know. You’re going to give me a story about a woman you keep.”
    â€œNothing like that at all.”
    â€œYou don’t keep a woman?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œYou had a girl then?”
    â€œYes, I had a girl. I don’t want to talk about it.”
    â€œNo, tell me. Please, I want to know.”
    â€œLook you. I don’t know what you think or how you think, but if you’re thinking that being within two feet of me for forty hours a week gives you a good idea of what I’m like, well then I wouldn’t even tell you how much I earn each week.”
    â€œEighty-six fifty, shmuck. And by the way I’m your only friend.”
    â€œI guess you are my only friend.”
    â€œYeah. And you know something else, it’s difficult to say, but you’re my only friend too.”
    The train came. They boarded without a word and since Biferman could never in the world have shouted what he so badly wanted to say, since Biferman could never in the world have shouted under any circumstance, he was silent during the ride, and he just looked off the track at the sparkling lights on dark bridges, and the little red lights of planes in the sky moving toward Queens and the airports, the flashing of car headlamps, a faraway neon which seemed so much like a jewel in velvet, the thin black trees, and the wind which in some moments he was sure he could see.
    At the end of the line, where the subway stops in an orange-roofed building above the street near Van Cortlandt Park, they exited by the appropriate stairs and when they reached the street, cut across an enormous field which seemed like prairie country, or even the steppes of Central Asia in winter, for it was dark and the wind whipped the fine snow in their faces as they walked with heads bent to the stars which might have been the stars of the clear desert or the stars of the sea so bright and beautiful were they, and as they walked they gained confidence for they were away from the city, undefeated, free.
    â€œHarold. When I was in high school I was fond of reading. I still am. As soon as I did not have to go to Hebrew School any more I had time to read. Do you know the bookstore on 231 Street near