John Darling had been a great disappointment to Malany. She spent about a week with him hoping for poetic enlightenment. She had even broken her vow of renewed chastity hoping he would have an emotional breakthrough, but the only thing he seemed to be able to produce was one dry martini after another. Malany had never found acute alcoholism alluring or productive. Smoking grass was, in her thinking, a far better stimulant of the imagination.
She left after about a week. Darling was asleep or unconscious—she couldn’t decide which—in bed. She called a cab and waited outside on the edge of the street until the cab came. Honey’s house felt cool and refreshing and, after the self-degradation she had gone through with Professor Darling, she realized she needed a shower. A shower usually made he
