I glanced out the bay window, where the evening sky was purple with a satiny sheen, the dark wisps of clouds like wrinkles in the satin.

I said, “I feel like I’ve known you my whole life.”

Glenna, more impressed by science than mystery, replied, “You haven’t.”

“But I wanted to.”

Now she had another expression entirely, serious, hesitant, vulnerable. “Here I am,” she whispered.

Kneeling over her, I moved the long hair from her neck and began to kiss the strands at the nape, lightly at first, then nibbling at her. Glenna smelled like lemon flowers and vanilla, and she must have turned over because we were kissing, floating together, happy, weightless. It seemed to take forever for our clothes to come off, but I’m sure they did because her breasts were heavy in my palms, and my hands left ghostly prints on her sun-bronzed stomach and thighs. Her breathy murmuring thrilled me, a wondrously intimate sound, and I lost myself in the cadence of her breath, and soon the room was scented with the bouquet of our bodies, and our breathing was a persistent song, becoming part of the music on the stereo as the album played again and again.

FOR THE next seven weeks we were off on our own version of the decathlon, astonished by the events we created and the finish lines we crossed. Did we love each other? I was sure of it then, less sure later on. But I’m jumping ahead of myself here. Laying out the end of the story when our story hasn’t really begun. That’s because there’s no story without conflict, and during those first fevered weeks Glenna and I got along like lovebirds off a funny little valentine. Best of all, she seemed to believe in our infinite future together, the proof being that one night, with the wind sighing in through her bedroom windows and drying the sheen of perspiration on our bodies, she presented me with a new, buttery calfskin case with the key to her house hooked inside.

I held the case in my hand, staring at it.

“Is that okay?” Glenna asked.

I nodded.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“I feel—embarrassed. Embarrassed that I can’t give you one.”

“Someday,” she said, and I don’t think I ever felt more gratitude toward anyone.

I started staying at her place for days at a clip and leaving my belongings there. The bottom two drawers of her bureau were empty—no surprise there since most of her stuff was on her metal desk or thrown around the room or hanging from a rubber tree and a potted palm. I stored my clothes in the bureau, and my razor, toothbrush, and the black-and-white-covered composition books I used for journals in a dented, putty-beige, two-drawer filing cabinet. But the mess flipped me out, and I regularly straightened up while Glenna sat on the bed, watching.

“This is far out, Gordo,” she said, grinning. “Lots of guys wanted to get in my bedroom. None of them ever offered to clean it up before.”