He is tanner, trimmer, and much better-looking in person than he is on television, a medium that tends to bring out the Muppet in his physiognomy. He's wearing a red tie with elephants on it -- all GOP senators own clothing with elephants on it -- a smart blue suit, and a Tiffany watch. He's talking on his cell phone. He will keep talking on his cell phone for the next ten minutes.

"Heeeeeello. Hello? . . . Yeah . . . Early-Bird!!! How ya doin'? . . . Well, right now I'm doing a little interview . . ."

It's Earle Mack, real-estate developer and D'Amato's friend for more than twenty years.

". . . and then I'm going to meet Joe Grano from PaineWebber, and then I'm going to meet one of the lawyers I'm dealing with on that Holocaust thing at 6:45, Mel Weiss, and then I'm going to see you and Carol. What are you guys doing? Where you guys gonna be? . . . You gonna let me know? . . . Call me back and let me know. . . . Where is she? . . . She went out to the Hamptons already? Very bad. . . . Verrrry BAD. . . . All right, pick out a place. . . . I don't know. . . . I don't know! . . . Do I want good food?!"

He rolls his eyes extravagantly back into their sockets.

"Do I want good food or bad food?! I want GOOD FOOD! . . . Okay, babes. Bye."

A lull between conversations. "Let's have a drink," he proposes, looking at me and the sweet young aide he has brought along with him. "We earned it." He turns to the waiter. "Did we earn a drink? And what happened to the air-conditioning?"

The waiter apologizes about the stuffy room and says the management is looking into it.

"Tell them to put it on," says D'Amato. "It's a hot table." He gestures to me. He gestures to his aide. "Hot table. Hot hot hot."

The phone rings again. This time it's Bruce Blakeman, presiding officer of the Nassau County legislature.

D'Amato looks up at the waiter. "I would like a drink."

Into the phone: "Bruce-ster, can I have a drink?"

To the waiter: "He says I can have whatever I want. Let me have a white wine, please. Pinot Grigio."

Back into the phone: "How ya doin', baby? What's happening?" And so it begins again, until Bruce-ster's phone cuts out. The sign-off, as always: "Okay, babes. Bye."

He raises his glass to good health, then cups his aide's face in his hand and kisses her on the cheek, apologizing for missing her birthday. "This is my baby," he coos. "This is my young 'un. I love her. She tickles me." She shows him the new diamond-stud earrings her boyfriend has just bought her. "Heh heh!" D'Amato claps his hands, drums them on the table, and gives her a high five. "Are we breaking him in? We're breakin' him in, aren't we? Oh, God, that's good! Now he's actin' like a man. Now he's bein' a stand-up guy."

This manic little revue could have been orchestrated for my benefit. But I doubt it. D'Amato has always had a special gift for chewing scenery. His boffo style made him one of the great paradoxes of the Senate: The more outlandishly he behaved, the more real he seemed, because his colleagues were such a bunch of pre-programmed, note-card-toting stiffs.

But now, out of office, D'Amato is even looser, if that's possible. "I make a little joke," says D'Amato. "When people say, 'What's the difference between now and before?,' I say, 'Listen, it's the same. People used to wave at me before, when I was senator, and they wave at me now.' Before, they waved at me like this" -- he holds his hand high about his head and extends his middle finger -- "and now they wave at me with all their fingers." He nudges his aide, laughs.

Then he gushes about his golf lessons, spending more time with his grandkids, and being able to accept plane rides from Donald Trump, which he couldn't do as a senator, because the Senate's ethics rules barred gifts in excess of $50. But he also speaks with startling candor about being released from the tedious obligations of political life. "This weekend," he says, "I won't be preoccupied about having to stop in and see So-and-so who's a major contributor or benefactor. I won't have to go to a little town where they've invited me for the Fourth of July, where it's important you be there and show that you care for them."

So has losing liberated him? I ask.

"Totally!" he shouts. "I mean, I could bite you!" He laughs again. "No! Don't!" And he throws his hands over my tape recorder like a goalie pouncing on a loose puck.

For almost a full year, D'Amato says, he knew he was going to lose the 1998 election to Chuck Schumer. "I never let anybody know that, and I dealt with it," he says, "but I could read the numbers. I knew what was happening."

As the election drew near, he really knew: The "putzhead" comment had cost him, and the armature of his political campaign, usually as tightly rigged as a Swiss clock, was flying apart. His television spots were relentlessly negative, and his campaign manager, Jon Lerner, was an aloof Midwesterner who lacked experience in New York politics.

There was, of course, another problem: Schumer had all of D'Amato's scrappiness, tenacity, fund-raising zeal, and media savvy, plus a degree from Harvard, a reputation for being a serious policy nut, and an essentially clean history. That was a tough combination to beat.