“I want to see New York especially. I’ve always thought it must look like a cemetery with all those tall gray buildings you see in photographs.” He sighed conventionally: “So many interesting places in the world. Do you like the West?” Nervously, I said that I did. I still feared a possible repetition of that brief outburst. “I like the openness,” said Cave, as though he had thought long about this problem. “I don’t think I’d like confinement I couldn’t live in Seattle because of those fogs they used to have; San Francisco’s the same. I don’t like too many walls, too much fog.” If he’d intended to speak allegorically he could not have found a better audience for I was, even at this early stage, completely receptive to the most obscure histrionics but, in conversation, Cave was perfectly literal. Except when he spoke before a large group, he was quite simple and prosaic and, though conscious always of his dignity and singular destiny, not in the least portentous. I probably did not put him at his ease for I stammered a good deal and made no sense, but he was gracious, supporting me with his own poise and equanimity. He talked mostly of places until Iris came back with tea. Then, as the sky became florid with evening and the teacups gradually grew cold, he talked of his work and I listened intently. “I can talk to you straight,” he said. “This just happened to me. I didn’t start out to do this. No sir, I never would have believed ten years ago that I’d be traveling about, talking to people like one of those crackpot fanatics you’ve got so many in California.” I took a sip of the black, fast-cooling tea, hoping he was not sufficiently intuitive to guess that I had originally put him down, provisionally of course, as precisely that.