“Well, what I mean is you thought I was Sam. On the phone.”

“Who gave you my number?”

“I don’t know.”

“But it’s right there in your book, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It seems to be.”

“Seems, hell. It is. Twice.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, who gave it you?”

“I told you. I don’t know.”

“Where are you from?”

“I don’t know.”

“How old are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where do you live?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s your Social Security number?”

“119...” He stopped.

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“I can’t remember the rest.”

“You married?”

“I don’t think so. I’m not sure.”

“Are you afraid of me or something?” Gloria asked suddenly.

“No. Why should I be afraid of you?”

“I mean, what’s all this smoke screen for? What did Sam tell you, anyway?”

“What?” he said.

“Come on, mister, let’s cut the crap, huh? You met my husband in some goddamn bar last night, and he gave you my number and told you to call me. Isn’t that what happened? So here you are, so cut the crap and relax.”

“Is... is Sam your husband?”

“Yeah,” she said, “some husband.” She paused. “We’re separated. Didn’t he tell you that?”

“No, I... I don’t remember meeting him.”

“Then how’d you get my number?”

“I don’t know.”

“Somebody must have given it to you, right?”

“I suppose so.”

“Were you out drinking last night?”

“I don’t remember where I was last night. I woke up this morning in Central Park, and that’s all I know.”

She stared at him curiously for a moment, her head tilted to one side, and then she said, “I think I hear the coffee,” and rose massively and walked into the kitchen. From the kitchen, she called, “How do you take this, mister?”

He heard her words, and he sat quite still in the ugly maroon chair, and for the first time since he had awakened this morning he felt despair. He sat looking at his clenched hands, his head bent. She came into the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, the coffeepot in one hand, and she said. “Hey, How do you take it?”

He began weeping suddenly. He had not expected to cry, and when he felt the tears rolling down his cheeks, he turned his face away so that she could not see him. But he could not hide the heaving of his chest and shoulders, and she stood in the doorway dumbfounded, staring at him in confusion and sympathy. The tears came steadily, forced from his eyes by the great racking sobs that shook his body. She went into the kitchen briefly to return the pot to the stove, and then she came through the doorway again and walked to the big maroon chair where he sat. She perched on it beside him, and then wrapped both her arms around him and pulled his head onto the vast cushion of her breast, soft beneath the quilted robe, and said, “Hey, hey, baby, what’s the matter? Hey, come on, now, what’s the matter? Come on, now, baby, don’t do this, please, this ain’t right, now come on, baby.”

He sobbed against the comfort of the breast beneath the quilted robe, and he searched for his voice, and when he found it he said, between sobs, “I don’t know how I take it.”

“Huh?” she said, puzzled.

“My coffee,” he answered. “I don’t know how I take it.”

“Huh?” she said.

“My coffee,” he said again, and suddenly she began laughing. The laugh broke from her mouth in a raucous bellow. Her breasts shook, and her belly shook, and his head on her breasts shook, and as each convulsive wave of laughter rocked her body, its seismic echo vibrated through him so that he seemed to be laughing himself by osmosis, and then was laughing himself in actuality. Together they laughed while she hugged him fiercely and protectively to her breast, his laughter coming between the sobs, as though he were uncertain whether to laugh or continue crying, her laughter a warm canopy of sound that fell gently on his ears, that reverberated beneath his cheek where it lay pressed to her giant mother breast.

“Oh, my God!” she said. “You don’t know how you take your coffee!”

“Yeah,” he said, grinning, laughing, crying.

“Oh, my holy sweet mother of God!”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Oh, God,” she said, hugging him, kissing the top of his head, showering laughter and kisses on his face, crying herself now from the force of her own explosive laughter. “Yeah,” he said, and she said, “God,” and he said, “Yeah” again, and then they laughed more quietly for several moments, and then the laughter faded away, and then they were silent. He kept his head cradled on her breast. She stroked his face with her massive left hand. He felt warm and protected against her breast. He wanted to move the quilted robe aside and rest the flesh of his cheek against the flesh of her bosom, but he thought she would misunderstand. And then suddenly he knew that she would not; suddenly he loved this enormous aging Gloria with her hair in curlers and her quilted robe and silly pom-pom slippers and her great warm soft breast holding his head so gently cradled, and her rough left hand softly and caressingly stroking his face. He moved her robe aside, exposing her breasts.

“Yes,” she said, “rest, baby, rest,” and she pulled his head into her soft and yielding flesh, and he closed his eyes and smelled the heavy perfume of her rising from the cleft of her bosom. “What are we going to do about you, baby?” she asked, her voice a whisper now. “You poor dear baby who don’t know who you are, what the hell are we going to do about you?”

“Don’t know,” he murmured.

“You got no idea?” she asked.

“No.”

“Tch,” she said, clucking her tongue, the single sound echoing the despair he had heard in her voice on the telephone when she had thought he was Sam, her husband, calling her because he was drunk again. “You don’t know who you are at all, huh?”

“I don’t even know how I take my coffee,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said, and burst out laughing again.

“Yeah,” he said, chuckling against her breast.

“You take it black, maybe? Were you in the service?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because a lot of guys who were in the army or navy, they take it black. Sam was never in nothing, that 4-F bastard, but he takes his black.”

“Then I’ll take mine black,” he said.

“You want me to go get it now?” she asked.

“Stay,” he said, in sudden panic.

“Okay, okay,” she said, and she patted his head gently, and he snuggled deeper into her bosom, closing his eyes again, strangely at peace. The peace did not last very long. The rope of memory that lay slack and limp at the bottom of his mind was suddenly snapped taut again, suddenly pulled tight from opposite ends. If the rope had not regained its tensile life, he knew he could have rested in the haven of her bosom forever, not caring who he was or where he was or why he was. He could have inhaled her cheap perfume and her honest sweat, allowed her smells and her warmth to lull him to sleep, wrapping forgetfulness about him like a warm blanket, curled on the pillow of her bosom. But he recognized all at once, as if it were a new thought of which he had not until now been aware, that he did not know who he was, and that if he stayed here in this woman’s arms, on this woman’s warm breast, he might never find out. So he pulled his head away from her with a start, his cheek suddenly cold. He stared up into her face, as though surprised to find these warm and protective breasts belonged to a person, and he looked up into her sympathetic blue eyes and plaintively said, “You don’t know me?”