“It ain’t a cha-cha,” the guy said, “but get goin’. The wife’s comin’.”

I raised my arms; Glenna took my hands; and before we’d made our first turn, I felt as though I were dancing with a shadow—if the shadow had long brown hair and radiant green eyes and a body that gave off a perfumed warmth while moving with precise, exquisite steps.

“Hey, Fred,” the guy called out. “You havin’ trouble keepin’ up wit Ginger?”

“No,” I said, and Glenna laughed.

When the song ended, Glenna leaned into me, placing her palms on my chest, and said, “Am I better than the grandmothers?”

I smiled down at her. “Much. And prettier, too.”

“Good answer. You ready to take me home?”

We thanked the guy in the Caddie, and as we headed to my car, I decided that when we got back to Spuyten Duyvil, I wouldn’t try to talk Glenna into bed. Not to pique her interest or put her down, but because I thought that I was on the verge of having something real with her and hoped to avoid confusing passion for love, and the best way to do that was to keep my hands to myself.

It seemed like a logical strategy on that mild September evening, with the festive sounds of Little Italy simmering behind us, yet had things proceeded logically, I wouldn’t have been moved, decades later, to write them down.

“HI, PALMER,” Glenna said as I followed her into the house. “You remember Gordon?”

Biff the Brooks Brothers Mouse, in a madras, collarless surfer shirt and white shorts, was sprawled on the living-room couch, reading a Freak Brothers comic. He brushed his lank hair from his eyes and gave me the once-over, appearing less than thrilled by what he saw.

“The reporter,” he said. “What paper was it?”

His tone was unfailingly polite, which in my opinion didn’t make him any less of a douche bag, because his question implied that I’d have to work for the New York Times before he could be expected to remember my employer.

“The Long Island Press,” I said.

“Where’d you go?” he asked Glenna so peevishly that I wondered if their past or present was less platonic than Glenna had led me to believe.

She told Biff, and he said, “Outta sight,” the sardonic lift to his eyebrows intimating that the San Gennaro festival was anything but—unless you were a camera-toting rube from Toledo.

“C’mon upstairs,” Glenna said to me.

I hadn’t altered my outlook on opening-night sex, but I wasn’t about to decline the invitation in front of Biff, who looked me up and down as if I’d wandered into the living room by mistake and then refocused on the reefer madness of Fat Freddy, Phineas, and Freewheelin’ Franklin.

Trailing Glenna up the stairs, I surveyed the velour seat of her hip-huggers as it shifted with raw, animal grace, and on the second-floor landing, Glenna abruptly turned and commented, “Tits’ll do, but the ass is a winner.”