Was the attraction the sensuality he was forever flaunting? Did he have a cock as big as King Kong’s? I didn’t know, and I never would, unless we managed to share a urinal sometime, and that was unlikely.

I also didn’t know why Abby was always in evidence. Certainly he was smitten; did he insist (however indirectly) that in exchange for the use of his heap, he be allowed some little patch of her sunlight, to bow in benediction as she passed his way? Maybe he cherished the hope of winning her favors (was I projecting?); maybe he had already done so. It was not totally unimaginable that they shared some kind of débauche à trois. But no, his attitude toward her—the furtive half-smile of appeal, the soft, uncertain gaze of worshipful submission—was hardly proprietary. No; he was a walk-on waiting in the wings, and she wore him on her bracelet, accepting him simply because he was dangling there. Truth was, she accepted everyone, but distantly, and therefore no one. My Last Duchess in reverse, as it were:unconcerned, uninvolved, unresponsive. Never relating to anyone, never resenting anything, she rolled (so I thought) with every punch. I was soon to learn differently.

Derek’s excursions to our cozy little nest were constant. On those days when the eccentricity of the Maryland climate banished winter for a few shining hours, he and Abby and their hostess would repair to the court, where the splashy son of a bitch would prance about like a spastic peacock. I’d hover on the periphery, melting out of the background and into their awareness only when a ball bounced my way before Abby could retrieve it. My overtures, few and puny as they were, did not meet with Derek’s approval; we showed toward each other that grim reserve evidenced in so many cases of undesired proximity.

Sometimes I’d see them lounging in the Chevy, passing around a joint, and sometimes they’d see me (I made sure of it, parading down the avenue of oaks, feigning unawareness, deep in meditation ha ha). But they never offered me so much as a toke. I would have tried it, of course, just to play in their magic garden, although getting stoned was a skill I’d never mastered. Like that snatch-happy president of way back when, I didn’t even know how to inhale.

Most of the time, the cold and the damp and the darkness forced us indoors. We took refuge across the hall from Chatterton’s study, in a room of dusty, haphazard charm. All of its mismatched furniture—Victorian, Federal, a Louis Quinze escritoire—was worn out, beat up, stove in, but polished to a high gloss by the brush of time. The self-contained trio had commandeered it as their own, although of course I managed to hang in during their occupation.