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which was perhaps understandable as it was about four hundred miles from where I lived.
    “Seems like the kinda place you’d go with your father,” said Bunny pensively. “For man-to-man talks and stuff. My dad’s like that about the Oak Bar at the Plaza. He took me and my brothers there to buy us our first drink when we turned eighteen.”
    I am an only child; people’s siblings interest me. “Brothers?” I said. “How many?”
    “Four. Teddy, Hugh, Patrick and Brady.” He laughed. “It was terrible when Dad took me because I’m the baby, and it was such a big thing, and he was all ‘Here, son, have your first drink’ and ‘Won’t be long before you’re sitting in my place’ and ‘Probably I’ll be dead soon’ and all that kind of junk. And the whole time there I was scared stiff. About a month before, my buddy Cloke and I had come up from Saint Jerome’s for the day to work on a history project at the library, and we’d run up a huge bill at the Oak Bar and slipped off without paying. You know, boyish spirits, but there I was again, with my
dad.
”
    “Did they recognize you?”
    “Yep,” he said grimly. “Knew they would. But they were pretty decent about it. Didn’t say anything, just tacked the old bill onto my dad’s.”
    I tried to picture the scene: the drunken old father, in a three-piece suit, swishing his Scotch or whatever it was he drank around in the glass. And Bunny. He looked a little soft but it was the softness of muscle gone to flesh. A big boy, the sort who played football in high school. And the sort of son every father secretly wants: big and good-natured and not awfully bright, fond of sports, gifted at backslapping and corny jokes. “Did he notice?” I said. “Your dad?”
    “Naw. He was three sheets to the wind. If I’d of been the
bartender
at the Oak Room he wouldn’t have noticed.”
    The waiter was heading towards us again.
    “Look, here comes Twinkletoes,” said Bunny, busying himself with the menu. “Know what you want to eat?”

    “What’s in that, anyway?” I asked Bunny, leaning to look at the drink the waiter had brought him. It was the size of a small fishbowl, bright coral, with colored straws and paper parasols and bits of fruit sticking out of it at frenetic angles.
    Bunny pulled out one of the parasols and licked the end of it. “Lots of stuff. Rum, cranberry juice, coconut milk, triple sec, peach brandy, creme de menthe, I don’t know what all. Taste it, it’s good.”
    “No thanks.”
    “C’mon.”
    “That’s okay.”
    “C’mon.”
    “No thank you, I don’t want any,” I said.
    “First time I ever had one of these was when I was in Jamaica, two summers ago,” said Bunny reminiscently. “Bartender named Sam cooked it up for me. ‘Drink three of these, son,’ he said, ‘and you won’t be able to find the door’ and bless me, I couldn’t. Ever been to Jamaica?”
    “Not recently, no.”
    “Probably you’re used to palm trees and coconuts and all that sort of thing, in California and all.
I
thought it was wonderful. Bought a pink bathing suit with flowers on it and everything. Tried to get Henry to come down there with me but he saidthere was no culture, which I don’t think is true, they did have some kind of a little museum or something.”
    “You get along with Henry?”
    “Oh, sure thing,” said Bunny, reared back in his chair. “We were roommates. Freshman year.”
    “And you like him?”
    “Certainly, certainly. He’s a hard fellow to live with, though. Hates noise, hates company, hates a mess. None of this bringing your date back to the room to listen to a couple Art Pepper records, if you know what I’m trying to get at.”
    “I think he’s sort of rude.”
    Bunny shrugged. “That’s his way. See, his mind doesn’t work the same way yours and mine do. He’s always up in the clouds with Plato or something. Works too hard, takes himself too seriously, studying Sanskrit and Coptic and those other nutty