I first met Sandy...

-3-

he must have said so when Paul made advances to him; and
Paul's explanation must have gone like this.

He had met Fred Melton and me nearly two years earlier
when we had come to the apartment with friends of ours who
were interested in buying one of his etchings. The door was
answered by Jared French, who shared the studio part of the
apartment with Paul in the daytime. He said that Paul was
not there but that he might be if we returned in half an hour.
Paul and he were very reclusive. They had a special series
of rings, even for the few people who knew their telephone
number, that they listened for before they would lift the
receiver. They seldom answered the doorbell unless they were
expecting someone; and I do not think we would have been let
back in if Jared had not said that two of the people who had
come, Melton and I, were attractive. But we were let back in.
Before we left, Paul asked me if I would pose for him; and
on Saturdays during the next months, when I had the day off
from my unemployment-agency-found job as officeboy in an
insurance company in the financial district, he drew half a
dozen portraits of me.