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If the boy never got to first base as a guitarist, then the jawing lost its significance, the triumph was denied to Berger. It was on David’s fame that he, Berger, wanted to weigh himself. Jaysus, he wailed, what kind of celebrity chasing is that? He smelled of cheese and bed and failure, sitting at the table with his head in his hands. The interview was over an hour ago and now he would hear from friends the words of praise, the quotations from Torres, as if these friends of David had been there themselves to hear the words drop like jewels from his lips, all of them closer to God because they were friends of him who sat up there in God’s hotel room, playing music to enchant God’s ears.
    So he stayed away from his friends, who were also David’s friends. For almost two weeks he eluded any knowledge of that interview. He gave lessons to his students in his own apartment or in their homes, and in this time it was as if he were seventeen again, living again that period of himself. He felt as if he were instructing them without having learned anything himself first, and he hated his students for exacting more of him than he was capable of giving. Again
he was in that age of self-derision and yet of great expectations. A celebrated musician would recognize him and prove to everybody, once and for all, Berger’s genius. After every lesson his armpits were sticky and he would have trouble in civilly saying good-bye.
    On the evening of the twelfth day he drove across the bridge to visit the Van Grundys. They were still at supper, Van and his wife and the two kids, eating a kind of crusty lemon dessert, and they made a place for him to pull up a chair. He had coffee and dessert with them, and joked with the boy and the girl, finding a lift in the children’s slapstick humor, the upside-down, inside-out humor, and in the midst of it he turned his face to Van Grundy at his left, the smile of his repartee with the children still on his lips, the hot coffee wet on his lips, his spoon, full of lemon dessert, waiting on the rim of his bowl—all these small things granting him the semblance of a man at ease with himself—and asked, “Well, did Torres flip out over Davy?”
    â€œYou don’t know?” Van Grundy replied. “He told everybody as fast as if it were good news,” raising his voice above his children’s voices demanding the guest’s attention again. “Torres kept interrupting. Every damn piece Davy played, Torres didn’t like the way he played it. What’s the matter you haven’t heard? Something like that happens to a person he’s got to spread it around, along with his excuses, as fast as he can.”
    The coffee he sipped had no taste, the dessert no taste. “Is he going to Palermo anyway?”
    â€œOh,” said Van Grundy, stretching back, finding his cigarettes in his shirt pocket, offering one to his wife by reaching around behind the guest’s chair, “he won’t go to Palermo now. He can if he
wants to, he’s okayed as a pupil, but since Torres isn’t throwing down the red carpet for him he won’t go as less than a spectacular. You know David.”
    â€œEven if he doesn’t like old Tommy anymore he can learn a thing or two from him, if he went,” Berger said, sounding reasonable, sounding as if all his problems were solved by bringing reason to bear.
    â€œHe’s already taken off for Mexico City. A week ago. He’s going to study under Salinas down there if he can get that cat to stay sober long enough. Say he’s always said that Salinas was better than Torres. He’s stopping off in Los Angeles to ask a rich uncle to subsidize him. He was going to do it anyway to get to Palermo on, so now he’ll need less and maybe get it easier. Hasn’t seen his uncle since he was twelve. Got a lot of nerve, our Davy.”
    â€œWhat did you think of that Rivas woman?” Van