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bringing all shame down upon himself, was that he had begun sniffing and injecting too with his Austria-met pals. It had all been fun, hitchhiking, scanning maps, sleeping in the woods sometimes. Could have been healthy, Jack realized. Instead, he had behaved like a spoilt child, in a quiet way going wild, being uncivilized just when he had, he remembered, fancied that he was being more civilized, more real than ever before. His father had not let him forget that misadventure. And Jack had a scar like a dent about an inch long on the left side of his forehead up near the hairline, not from a blow struck by the Yugoslav police, but from bumping into a doorjamb on his first day in prison. His head hadn’t been clear that day. Lest you forget, Jack often thought when he noticed the scar in a mirror. He meant, lest you forget you were once behaving like an asshole, there is the scar to remind you, and to remind you not to let it happen again. In a way, Jack’s prison stint of four months had continued in his parents’ house, his mother being cheerful and inclined to forgive, but his father ruled the roost. Jack had been subjected to a couple of lectures from his father, in private, and a promised twenty thousand dollars to start him off in New York as a free­lance journalist or artist, or until he found a job in those two fields, had somehow been forgotten. Jack’s brother Christopher’s stock had risen, Jack felt, just because his father had set all his hopes on Christopher then. Christopher, three years younger than Jack, had fallen into line and joined his father’s company after Harvard.
    And then just before he had flown the nest or the coop to try his luck in New York, Jack had met Natalia at a party that Jack’s mother had insisted that he go to, a black-tie affair, something to do with a charity. This had been at someone’s house near Trenton. Jack’s family had had a summer house near Trenton then, and Jack had come east with them. Out of the blue, out of the dulness, out of the shame that still haunted Jack, there had been Natalia, making a funny remark to him in her low, seductive voice as they stood with champagne glasses in some big room before the buffet supper began. Jack believed that he had fallen in love at first sight. There was such a thing, he was sure, and he had fallen in love at once with her voice. He had lost her for half an hour, found her again, and asked for her telephone number. I’ve got a car, he had wanted to say. I’ve got a car, Natalia had said. Let’s clear out. Words that stuck in his memory.
    How was it that he had said all the right things that night? He didn’t recollect that he had been especially brilliant. They had laughed a lot, and on his part it had been due to repressed excitement. He had met the girl of his life. And wonderfully, as they said in the old songs, she had liked him. But he knew why, he was enough of a breakaway for her, and yet not too much. It might have been just an affair, but she had become pregnant. And Jack knew now, if he hadn’t been sure then, that Natalia would have had an abortion if she hadn’t wanted the child and by him. Her family had put up no opposition, because after all Jack came from the right stuff, a decent family with some money in the background, even if he hadn’t yet found a career, and maybe he’d come to his senses and drop his art work and join one of his father’s companies that made herbicides and pharmaceuticals.
    Jack went into a coffee shop. He didn’t know or care where he was, but he thought he was on the upper part of Greene Street. He ordered a coffee, white.
    And now there was Louis in a crise. Cancer. Maybe. He’s awfully brave about it, Natalia had said with a rare but fitting earnestness, Jack thought, considering that cancer was an earnest subject.
    Now there was a bit of slumming for you! Natalia’s best friend, her soulmate, from the