Alone in a bar on Madison Avenue where I’d taken refuge from the cold, I glanced at the clippings Paul had given me. There were two sets. The first were the original perfunctory ones which had appeared, short, puzzled ... the reviewers, knowing even less philosophy than I, tended to question my proposition that Caveswood was anything more than a single speculation in rather a large field. I’d obviously not communicated his magic, only its record which, like the testament of miracles, depends entirely on faith and to inspire faith one needed Cave himself.
“What do you think about the guy?” the waiter, a fragile sensitive Latin with parchment-lidded eyes mopped the spilled gin off my table (he’d seen a picture of Cave among my clippings).
“It’s hard to say,” I said. “How did he strike you?”
“Boy, like lightning!” The waiter beamed; a smile which showed broken teeth spoiled the delicate line of his face. “Of course I’m Catholic but this is something new. Some people been telling me you can’t be a good Catholic and go for this guy. But why not? I say. You still got Virginmerry and now you got him, too, for right now. You ought to see the crowd we get here to see the TV when he’s on. It’s wild.”
It was wild, I thought, putting the clippings back into the folder. Yet it might be kept within bounds. Paul had emphasized my directorship, my place in the structure ... well, I would show them what should be done or, rather, not done.
Then I went out into the snow-dimmed street and hailed a cab. All the way to Iris’s apartment I was rehearsing what I would say to Paul when next we met. “Leave them alone,” I said aloud. “It is enough to open the windows.”
“Open the windows!” The driver snorted. “It’s damn near forty in the street.”
4
Iris occupied several rooms on the second floor of a brownstone in a street with, pleasantest of New York anachronisms, trees. When I entered, she was doing yogi exercises on the floor, sitting crosslegged on a mat, her slender legs in leotards and her face flushed with strain. “It just doesn’t work for me!” she said and stood up without embarrassment for, since I’d found the main door unlocked, I’d opened this one too, without knocking.
“I’m sorry, Iris, the downstairs door was....”