Page 39, “The Persuasion”
With a hand over my eyes, I talked, saying much more than I wanted to, faster, longer, and in more detail. He listened, eyes shut, leg away from mine, on his back, hands behind his head, elbows on the pillow, quilt pulled across his crotch.
“Goofy,” he finally said, as crawled under the covers. He wriggled his right hand under my left shoulder, ran his foot down my shin, and pulled me on top of him.
“Goofy? Tonin…” He made me laugh.
“He’s goofy, Mary Jane. I met that guy, remember, at the meeting? Where we first saw each other?”
“Where you saw me.”
“Don’t press your luck. The meeting. He’s an idiot. J.H. Pratt let you go? My good luck. In fact, I have to, I think I should, yep, yep, I’m writing Goofy a letter.” He nibbled at my neck.
“To-nin, stop it. What if I write to your old girlfriends?”
“He’s a space cadet, M. I met that guy again at Harry’s in London when Brinkley was there.”
I remembered the night he was talking about. The anchorman from the NBC news show had come to London to interview American students in the antiwar movement. The Fulbrights and Rhodes Scholars from Oxford were invited, and Tonin had been there too. “I listened to him telling Brinkley about ‘quantum metaphysics.’” Tonin hooked his fingers in the air. “We’re trying to stop a blasted war, Mariana. Goofy. He’s out of it, objectively ir-rel-evant.” He paused. I could tell by the way he was breathing that he was going to say something else.
“And, by the way, please be my guest. Write to all my old girlfriends. Go see them in fact. They’ll all love you. Let’s see, do you want to start with Robin?”
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