Vanessa missed Joan’s mouth and kissed her neck instead. “Well, I don’t think you’re cuckoo,” she said.

“So you’ll meet Frances at some point,” Joan said, giving a firm nod. “Wonderful.”

Vanessa laughed and pressed herself against Joan’s body. She buried her face by Joan’s ear.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Joan said. “Just because you’re chickening out doesn’t mean I don’t still have to go.” She kissed Vanessa on the mouth. “I’m getting dressed and leaving, and you will just have to miss me.”

Vanessa hung her head and groaned, as if it physically pained her for Joan to leave. “Can’t you stay five minutes longer? Please?”

“No,” Joan said. She could not wipe the smile off her face.

Winter 1982

It was eleven o’clock at night and Vanessa and Joan were at Joan’s apartment, lying on the floor, listening to records. Tonight, Vanessa said, was about Joan learning to fall in love with David Bowie.

“If you love me, you have to love this one thing I love,” Vanessa said. “I can’t be flexible about it at all.”

“I told you I like Hunky Dory.”

“Of course you like Hunky Dory! I couldn’t be with a woman who didn’t like Hunky Dory! But you still have a lot to learn. Starting with the entire Berlin Trilogy.”

Joan laughed. “Okay, but I didn’t act this way when you told me you’d never listened to Ladies of the Canyon.”

“And I listened to every Joni Mitchell album you have, did I not?”

Joan nodded. “Yes, you did. Go ahead and play it.”

“Thank you.”

This was how they spent a lot of their nights together—with an ease and comfort Joan had never known alongside another person.

Whether they were seeing one of Vanessa’s favorite black-and-white movies at an old theater miles outside of town, or the two of them were reading their books together on the couch, or Joan had convinced Vanessa to watch the evening news with her, it was always with a peacefulness that Joan had never experienced.

It was late January, and they had been together for almost six months, but Joan didn’t want to mention it. She didn’t want to feel like she was counting the days, even though she was. And she didn’t want to feel like this could ever end, even though she understood that some love affairs did. Or, rather, that all of them did, eventually. Just the act of falling in love was to agree to a broken heart.

“Steve’s not been around as much,” Vanessa said.

“Because he’s training for his mission?”

“Yeah, but that means I can’t fly with him,” Vanessa said. “I can go up with Duke. But he doesn’t let me fly from the backseat.”

“I mean, none of them do very much,” Joan said.