“Very nice.”

On his way back from the bar Max turned out the end-table light. The big den was dark all around them, but the fire was warm and bright. When Vic Damone finished singing, there was only the wind outside and the crackling of the fire. Things seemed to have become serious. Max was telling them about certain problems with his novel (the U.S. airman on leave in Italy, the torrid affair with the woman in Tuscany), a problem of diction, specifically: there were no words in the English language to capture the immediacy of their actions and emotions. He thought it was because Anglo-Saxons had so thoroughly cut themselves off from sexuality. Max’s points had a tendency to become complicated when he was drunk, and Henry only partly followed them. He was drunk too, and at the same time alert, his heart beating strongly, his armpits sweating. Effie sat up to sip her drink. She looked down at her breasts and adjusted them, leaned back, and seemed to admire the firelight shining on her bosom. “I told you,” she said over her shoulder, “you’re writing a love story.”

“No,” Max said. “It’s just a game for them. It’s not love. They’re both traumatized, you see. By the war. They’re trying to forget themselves. What I’m trying to get at is the act, the intensity of it, which I think is profound, but it’s almost impossible to express.”

“What I’ve read is beautiful,” Clara said. Max was leaning back with his ankles crossed and she was rubbing her toes lightly over his bulge, and with a primal longing Henry saw that he was hard under his briefs. It was angled to the side, threatening to pop out of the top.

“Whatever you say,” Effie said. “It’s a love story.”

Max laughed. “Okay. How so?”

“I just mean it’ll be advertised that way, whatever you have to say about it. I mean I haven’t read it, so don’t listen to me. But I bet you’d be best to focus on the love stuff instead of all that other mess.”

“All that other mess is the point.”

“Well,” Effie said, and let it go at that, leaning back, shaking her hair out behind her, rubbing her legs together over Henry’s lap.

“Women like to feel,” Clara said dreamily. “Men like to see.” She dropped her head back to look at Henry. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He felt flummoxed. “I don’t really follow, honestly. I think I like both.”