I faked an appreciative cackle. All this chatter, amusing as it might be, was preliminary, a prelude to the big embrace. After all my plotting and scheming and imaginary forays into lust, I had no conscious intention of aborting the mission now. Yet my apprehensiveness increased. All the signs of disaster were chaotically evident—the cold sweat, the dry throat, hyperventilation, the diastolic hammer in my chest, the dead soldier in my pants.

She rambled on, rooting among her memorabilia. How she sniffed glue when she was a little kid, but now her candy of choice, when she could get it, was grass. How she loved to drive Abby’s car backward. That she was allergic to underwear. And all the while her mother watched and heard everything and waited with me in the flickering light of the candles for the next revelation. But there was silence. The moment of truth had arrived, a cosmic event, and I greeted it without zeal or spontaneity. I kissed her, yes, but kind of woodenly, a mannequin’s kiss, praying for rejection, for reprieve, I don’t know what’s the matter with me, something I ate at your father’s repellent table, how about a rain check?

She walked away. “What’s the matter?” I asked hopefully. “You’re not feeling well?”

“Of course not.” She smiled. “It’s just—this is not a good time…”

“Yeah,” I said, grateful for deliverance.

“…to be standing up.” She reached back, recaptured my sweaty hand, and led me like some docile zombie to that lump of a mattress. Oh God! went the weird machinery of my mind, Let me function like a proper man, don’t let her know that I’m dead in the water, that the root of my manhood has shriveled to a worm. And all the while Valerie lay there like a calm sea awaiting my assault.

I kissed her again, gropingly. We sprawled into each other but my body was like an alien interfering presence in a plaster cast—grotesque, unmanageable, an object of hate and outrage, shame, humiliation. I began to bang my head against the floorboards.

Valerie put a cool hand on my shoulder. “It’s all right,” she said, eyes glassy.

“That’s good news.”

“It’s easy,” she said soothingly, “easier than trigonometry. So take it easy.” Her words, her trembling voice, then her hand on my limp sprout of spaghetti—that did it. Miraculously the cast flew off and my whole body became one blazing tumescent cock. With a deep anguished breath, I tumbled on her again and this time, bumblingly and with her help, I succeeded.

We lay there cozily. She smiled. I kissed her once more, inwardly exultant, like a young general who has brilliantly concluded a world-shaking campaign. We gazed at each other. On a sudden impulse I bent over and licked her nose.

“I’d better be getting to bed,” she said reluctantly.