I tried to remember one minute that whole week end when Marion and I weren’t either feeding people, or clearing up from doing it, or preparing to do it again. And presumably she never stopped doing it. But I couldn’t quite see why just because she did, I should. I mean, here was I practically fresh out of the egg, everything was so new to me, and here was everybody telling me to stop driftingy and start living in this world; telling me to start cooking, and sewing, and cleaning, and I don’t know what. Taking care of my grandchildren.

I sat in the studio lost in thought, watching the evening get darker and darker and colder and colder, unable to move. Finally I roused myself and went to look for Jim. I found him wandering aimlessly around the kitchen, peering every now and again into one of the empty cupboards, hoping as if by some miracle to find that particular one filled.

“What is it, Jim?” He looked so forlorn.

“I’ve … I’ve already invited them to dinner on Thursday.”

I took a deep breath.

“O.K.” I said. “Which is the stove and how do you light it?”

When did all those nightmares begin? My mind keeps going back to that Christmas vacation, sophomore year, when I had an English paper to write and spent most of my time in the Public Library. People kept mistaking me for a librarian. They kept coming up to me and asking me for books and things. I thought it was maybe because I didn’t wear hats and at first I was merely annoyed. Then I became frightened. I somehow became obsessed with the idea that the reason they kept mistaking me for a librarian was because that’s what I really was meant to be, and instinctively they knew it. It was sheer fantasy, of course. I mean they probably asked dozens of other people as well and I just didn’t notice. But it started to prey upon my mind. Then I began having this nightmare. Actually I have it so often I’ve even given it a name. It’s called the Dreaded Librarian Dream.

It’s all very vague. It takes place in sort of a vast hall, in the center of which sits a girl behind a desk, or rather a circular counter, which completely surrounds her. It’s funny about that desk: I’ve seen it somewhere before, I know I have, although it’s quite unlike any desk I’ve ever seen in a library. Anyway, the closer I get to this girl, the older she becomes, until she turns into a middle-aged spinster librarian. Then I see that it’s me. People keep coming up to her from every direction asking her for books. They are all going somewhere. In fact it isn’t a library at all, it’s more like a station. Everyone is in a hurry. They are all going somewhere except me. I’m trapped. One of the worst aspects of this dream is that from the very first time I dreamed it I’ve known, within the nightmare, so to speak, that it was one I’ve had before—an old, old nightmare of long ago. That gives it its special ageless, timeless, hopeless quality. When I awaken from it my space urge is upon me stronger than ever.

NOW HERE’S THE heavy irony. So I went back to New York to become a librarian. To actually seek out this thing I’ve been fleeing all my life. And (here it comes): a librarian is just not that easy to become. I’d taken my lamb by the hand to the slaughter and nobody even wanted it. Apparently there’s a whole filing system and annotating system and stamping system and God knows what you have to learn before you qualify. So I finally found a little out-of-the-way, off-the-beaten-track library downtown and they let me put the books away.

We were very hungry but we didn’t want to leave, so we ate there. We had chicken sandwiches; boy, the chicken of the century. Dry, wry, and tender, the dryness sort of rubbing against your tongue on soft, bouncy white bread with slivers of juicy wet pickles. Then we had some very salty potato chips and some olives stuffed with pimentos and some Indian nuts and some tiny pearl onions and some more popcorn. Then we washed the whole thing down with iced martinis and finished up with large cups of strong black coffee and cigarettes. One of my really great meals.

I don’t know what time it was when we went into the bar, but it was dark when we came out. We went to a movie and he kissed me for the first time. We kissed right through it. Coming to life in a movie house on West Fourth Street is an apotheosis I’d have to leave to one of those mad seventeenth-century mystics like Herbert or Vaughan to do justice to. It’s the end.