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want, but believe me, if you should make the mistake of ordering the herring today—”
    “Eggs,” I insisted loudly. “Two orders of scrambled eggs with lox. Two toasted bagels with cream cheese. Two coffees.”
    “With the eggs, you want in it onions, of course. And take it from me, today the bialys, the bagels this morning—feh!”
    “No onions. It’s too early in the morning.”
    He shook his head primly. “Twelve-thirty is by you too early in the morning for onions? Okay, okay, no onions. Toasted bialys.”
    With a Rappaport’s waiter, you accept a negotiated settlement. I nodded, he nodded, and he split.
    And I was alone with Robin who certainly was no Girl in the Rain. She stared across the table at me as if she were a female Dondi and I were the provider of the American Chocolate. It bugged the ass off me, made me feel like I was paying for it, made me feel old.
    “Don’t look at me like that!” I said.
    “Like what?”
    “Like buying you breakfast is some kind of pay-off.”
    “Isn’t it?”
    “Christ, no!” I snapped.
    “Then why are you doing it?”
    “Why last night? Did you go home with me so I’d buy you breakfast in the morning?”
    A wounded “Of course not! I just grooved on you.”
    “All right,” I said, making it with a warm smile, “So accept this in the same spirit I accepted that, dig?”
    She smiled back. “I guess I just can’t figure out where you’re at,” she said. “You don’t seem all that, you know, straight, but I can’t tell if you’re...”
    “A head?”
    “Well... yeah...” she said nervously. The boxes people put themselves in!
    “If it’ll make you relax,” I said, “I was a junkie for a year or so.”
    “I don’t groove very well behind smack,” she said, genuinely apologetic.
    “Two points for you,” I said. “Was a junkie—emphatically past-tense.”
    At that point the waiter arrived, set down plates of eggs and lox, buttered bialys, two cups of coffee. She began wolfing it down like there was no tomorrow. Maybe she knew something.
    And then the question came, the question, in caps with tambourine bells on it: “Does this mean you’re down on drugs?”
    “I’m down on smack and speed and downers and anything else you can get really strung-out on. A steady habit is bad news—ask the man who owns one.”
    “But what about grass and hash and... you know...?”
    I smiled, gave her a “paisan” look. “It’s a nice place to visit,” I said.
    I could tell that what was coming was going to be make or break for us as far as she was concerned, because she paused in her gobbling of lox and eggs and stared at me dead-on.
    “Acid?” she asked, all too solemnly.
    Well, I knew where that was at, what answer would turn her on and what would turn her off, but who wants to start a thing with a chick on the basis of an easily-exposed lie? So I opted for the third alternative: truth.
    “I’ve never tried it,” I said.
    It was as if I had told her I was a virgin. She got that kind of gleam in her eyes.
    “Really?” she said.
    “Really.”
    “Are you afraid?”
    I tried to let my true feelings speak for me: “I don’t know. Seems like acid can turn a groovy situation into something beautiful and a mild bummer into a king-sized horror show. It’s all in how you feel at the time deep inside. You’ve got no control. I’ve never had the opportunity to take it in a situation where I could be sure I wouldn’t have a bummer.”
    “Was last night a bad trip?” she said.
    “You mean...?”
    “About 800 mikes worth.”
    Spasms boiled up my arms turning my hands to fists. I wanted to kill her. A fucking acid-head! Literally a fucking acid-head. The whole night had been a lie... all it had been for me... And what had I been for her? A goddamn zonk, a sexual kaleidoscope, an electric stereophonic dildo!
    “You... you...” My throat was constricted with fury. “Last night... that wasn’t even you—”
    “If it wasn’t me, who was