“Come off it,” she said dismissively.

“You come off it,” I said, sinking to her blather. “You find your schoolwork about as exciting as stacking pants. You live, the only girl, in a dilapidated monastery where you… nonexist.”

“They’ve got other things to think about. And I have my weekends and tennis and, and…”

“Derek. That benighted son of a bitch”—I was appalled, perversely elated by my own rashness—“he could put an upper to sleep.”

“You bore me more than… anyone.”

“Isn’t boredom what you like?”

“I don’t like all this talk. It’s dull and tedious and pointless. Like… like…”

“Like what? Life?”

“That’s right.”

“Only for dopes.”

“That’s enough!” she snarled. “I’m not a dope, I’m dangerous. I’m ready to pounce. Anyway, fuck you,” she said, but her wide, unblinking eyes shone damply, and I felt a scalding shame for the ferocity of my attack. I fumbled toward a pocket to offer my handkerchief, just like in the movies, but I hesitated because it was filthy.

“Don’t think I’m crying,” she said. “I got these windy tear ducts which when it’s leaky…” She was aware of the spoonerism even as it trickled off her tongue. “Jesus,” she said despairingly, “I get everything backward.”

“That’s not true,” I said stoutly.

“I get things wrong,” she persisted.

“Me too. Maybe we could help each other.”

“Nobody ever helps anybody.”

“I’d like to try.”

“What would you do?”

I hesitated. Moments ago I had botched my first foray into crisis management. I was afraid I’d do it again.

“Well…?” she said impatiently.

“I’d talk to you.”

“You mean you’d tell me about Stanislavski,” she said, unimpressed, “and palindromes and stuff like that?”

“And I’d listen to you, feel you…”

“What?”

“Feel your presence,” I was so oozing with sincerity I spoke in italics, “always be conscious of it. I’d touch you.”

“Let’s not get carried away.”

“What I mean, like scratch your back if you wanted me to—say you got an itch in an unreachable place.”

“That sounds like a thrill and a half.”

“I want to know you…” I might have added “in the biblical sense,” but instead I played my trump card: “I’d help you with your homework.”

“Tonight? I got to write a poem…”

“It’s a deal.”

“…about nature? You can make it rhyme?”

“We’ll do a springtime number—lambs gamboling in a vernal grove where the woodbine twineth, a purling brook and tender buds unfurled…”

“You’re crazy,” she said quite matter-of-factly. “Would you like to kiss me now?”

I nodded dumbly. Unblinking, she waited, as if to prove her immunity to my caresses. And it was more than that: a tacit acceptance of our contract, and with it an insistence on not taking greedily without giving a little something in return.