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Sooal of recruiting new members A few tie Often she went someplace to await further instructions, and no instructions came; finally she'd be moved somewhere else, and told to wait some more

"I can't really convey what it was like," she said "Maybe I should say that I can't really remember what it was like The party beca else because you were living a lie, so you never got past the surface stage in relationships outside the party Friends and neighbors and felloorkers were just part of the scenery, props and stage dressing in the false front you were presenting to the world Besides, they were just pawns in the great chess ga on That was the heady part, the drug- you got to believe that your life was o she'd begun to get profoundly disillusioned, but it took a while before she was ready to write off such a big portion of her life It was like a poker game- you were reluctant to fold a hand when you already had so much invested in it She fell in love finally with someone as not in or of thehie fell apart "I realized the e was just a way out of the PCP," she said "If that's what it took, so be it You knohat they say about ill winds I got a divorce I ure out how else to get my hands on an apartet here? And where is it you've got to?"

I'd been asking odda ti?"

"Close to fifteen years I had a wife and kids, I lived in Syosset That's on Long Island"

"I knohere it is"

"I don't know that you could say I got disillusioned One way or another the life stopped suiting ot a roo house?"

"A little better than that The Northwestern Hotel"

"You're either rich or rent-controlled"

"I'm not rich"

"You live alone?" I nodded "Still o"

She leaned forward and put a hand on top of mine Her breath was richly seasoned with scotch I wasn't sure I liked s it that way, but it was a lot easier to take than the smell in Eddie's apartment

She said, "Well, what do you think?"

"About what?"

"We looked on death side by side We told each other the story of our lives We can't get drunk together because only one of us is drinking You live alone Are you involved with anybody?"

I had a sudden sense- on the sofa in Jan's loft on Lispenard Street, with Vivaldi cha

"No," I said "I'm not"

Her hand pressed down on mine "Well, what do you think, Matt? Do you want to fuck?"

I was never a s years, every once in a while I would get the urge and buy a pack of cigarettes and sht after the other Then I would throw the pack away and it would be arette

Jan didn't smoke Toward the end, e decided to see other people, I had a couple of dates with a woether, but one night we exchanged a couple of kisses, and it was quite startling to taste tobacco on her mouth I felt a flicker of revulsion I felt, too, a brief yearning for a cigarette

The taste of whiskey on Willa's mouth was far more profound in its effects This was to be expected; after all, I didn't have to go to arette, and if I did pick one up it wasn't odds-on to put me in a hospital

We e She was only a couple of inches shorter than I, and we fit well together I had already been wondering what it would be like to kiss her, before she said what she'd said, before she put her hand onI mostly drank bourbon, scotch only rarely, but it didn'tto s, all of them too well interwoven to be sorted out There was fear, and a deep sadness, and of course there was the longing for a drink There was excite to her whiskeydirectly froainst h

I put a hand on her ass and gripped her where her jeans were thin Her hands dug into ain

After a moment she dreay and looked at me Our eyes locked Hers ide open, I could see all the way in

I said, "Let's go to bed"

"God, yes"

The bedrooht cah the littleShe switched the bedside laain and took up a book of ht a candle, but the wick sputtered and theShe tore out another match and I took the match and the candle away froh

Her bed was a double There was no bedstead, just a box spring on the floor with aat each other and getting out of our clothes There was an appendecto of freckles on her full breasts

We found our way to the bed, and to each other

Afterward she went into the kitchen and caht beer She popped the top and took a long drink "I don't knohy the hell I bought this," she said

"I can think of two reasons"

"Oh?"

"Tastes great and less filling"

"Funnyat all I always liked strong tastes, I've never wanted light anything I like Teacher's or White Horse, the dark heavy scotches I like those rich Canadian ales When I s with a filter on it"

"You used to sed it It was a way to bond with the working people- offer a cigarette, accept a cigarette, light up, and smoke your brains out in solidarity and comradeship Of course once the revolution was acco would wither away like the dictatorship of the proletariat The corrupt tobacco trust would be smashed and the far dialectically correct Mung beans, I suppose And the working class, free froer have the need for periodic whiffs of nicotine"