Mack Grunch called me at home and said, “Congratulations, Gordon Meyers. We got alotta mail on that one. The fruitcakes are outta the woodwork and they’re buying papers. Go hunt me up some stories that’ll drive people nuts.”

I guessed that night court in Brooklyn would be a good hunting ground, and Glenna, who had gotten a kick out of reading her quotes in the paper, thought court sounded like a blast when I invited her to join me. Sitting on the curved-back benches, we mainly saw a bored judge slapping the wrists of hookers. The one possibility that I thought would amuse readers was Enid Henstrom, a spectrally thin, chain-smoking divorcée from Red Hook, who had once again gone into the Macy’s on Flatbush Avenue and paid for a shopping spree with a check that bounced out of Brooklyn. The judge asked Enid to explain the rubber check, and when, visibly outraged, she replied, “What can I do? Macy’s won’t give me a credit card,” the courtroom broke up.

After the judge arranged for her to repay Macy’s, I asked Enid for an interview. She said, “Pay my bill, we’ll talk,” and since I couldn’t do that, Glenna and I left. I dropped her off in Spuyten Duyvil, sticking to my decision not to hop into the sack with her by refusing to go inside. I was home in bed when my phone rang.

“Don’t you want to fuck me?” Glenna said.

“Can’t say till my mom gets off the extension.”

I heard an intake of breath on her end and laughed.

“You’re not serious?” she asked.

“My folks are out.”

“Gordon, do you …”

“Do I?”

“Think there’s something wrong with me?”

“Besides your awful taste in guys, you’re perfect.”

I thought Glenna would laugh; she didn’t. “You’re not that awful.”

“What a nice thing to say.”

Now Glenna laughed. “I mean—nothing I can’t help you with.”

“Then we should get going.”

“Tomorrow night at seven?”

“I was thinking we could get started on the phone.”

“That’s a lovely thought, Gordon, but I’m the hands-on type. See you tomorrow.”

WE SAT cross-legged on her bed, her room lit by the rainbow glimmer of a Japanese lantern. Glenna tamped out the joint we’d been smoking in a pearly violet abalone shell, then stretched out on her stomach, curling into herself, head turning on the pillow, looking up at me.

“Great weed,” I said, floating, contemplating the designs on her Indian-print quilt.

“Robin’s homegrown,” Glenna said. “She hangs the plants from the curtain rods in her bedroom.”

Revolver was playing, and even though the stereo was only on the low table at the foot of the bed, the music sounded far away and I watched my hand push up the back of Glenna’s yellow polo shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and a white line left by a bikini top ran across her like a narrow strip of butter-cream frosting. My hand roamed along the soft slope of her back, then under the faded denim of her cutoffs, caressing round, taut flesh before moving up again, her skin a rosy copper color in the lantern light. I knew that I should get on with it, but I didn’t want this moment to end, didn’t want to turn it into a different moment, maybe better, but not this exact moment, with its boundless promise, its serenity, its grace.