"Nope--playing the field. A premarriage elective. Technical studies, how to tease down the most drawers with the least squawk." He said that with no leer but a mild pagan amusement already far removed from the idiom of Emmetville. (As it turned out, Jack went on playing the field quite a while, not marrying till he was thirty-nine; in his terms that probably made sense too.) "You haven't tried it yet, Terry?" The sixteen-year-old Terence flushed unhappily and shook his head on the pillow, wishing there had been a hundred experiences, suppressing an impulse to invent a few. But Jack wasn't dismissing him back to childhood. Jack said: "I hear tell, and ancient memories within this senile bosom do confirm, that in every well-conducted high school there is at least one--how shall I put it with utmost delicacy?--at least one kitty with an available pussy. Or two, or three." He grinned and took his hand away. "Relax, boy. There's no rush." As he finished undressing with his unfussy neatness, he asked: "Remember Cassie Ferguson, in my class?" "Cassie--black hair, skinny, lot of eyebrow. Well well." "Did the quiet, you-be-damn manner fool you? The ones who put out for the joy of it don't make much noise about it. Cassie was very very good for me. More tricks than a monkey on a greased flagpole." Jack turned out the light and sat on his own bed for a final cigarette; he said softly, recalling childhood: "We missed The Express. Did she blow?" "She blew, she blew ..." "Good night, Terence Mann." He turned from the window, from the lights of Winchester. He ran the blunted tip of a thin finger along the edge of the piano's raised leaf, a motion of affection: another friend. A friend not exactly left behind when he went to law school, but-- It seemed to Judge Mann that his present way of existence, compared to that of, say, Michael Brooks, was not very successful, important, or useful to others. A majority of his countrymen would assess it differently of course: Mr. Brooks, never a concert performer even when young--poor health, no presence, no glamor--why, the old boy probably did well to make three thousand a year, if that. Obviously the bitch goddess wouldn't have looked twice.