“If the pencil doesn’t stay put,” she said, “you have the uplift to ditch your bra.”

Taking the mosquito from Glenna, Palmer said, “Robin, put those away.”

“Palm, you sound exactly like Stroop,” Robin said, grinning and rebuttoning her blouse. “Meyers, you have to off that pig in the newspaper. Otherwise, I’ll have to get Phillie’s lawyer on the case. My mother’ll freak out, and spending money for shit people can’t admire isn’t where my father’s head’s at. Will you call Stroop tomorrow?”

I said, “Not gonna happen, Robin. But I’ll give you the money to buy a bra.”

“Does the Long Island Press pay you enough for bras?” Palmer said.

I locked eyes with him, and Glenna defused the situation by saying, “Palmer put the coffee on. I bought a pumpkin pie for dessert.”

I made a tactical miscalculation by not laying out Biff then and there, because the putdowns continued. Sometimes, he would make snide remarks; other times, he would conduct a medical colloquy with Glenna, speaking of bilirubin or blastomycosis like a shaman reciting kabbalistic abracadabra. But whatever the conversation, Biff never failed to pause and explain the technical terms to me with the exaggerated simplicity of a teacher instructing a drooling idiot on the intricacies of tying his shoes.

Afterward, alone with Glenna, I’d say, “What’s Biff’s problem?”

“Palmer can get weird, but he’s only fooling around, and he likes talking about work. You’re^__”

“Too touchy?”

“Exquisitely sensitive,” she said.

Maybe I was. The literary pornographer and sage Henry Miller once observed that a writer must grow accustomed to living with humiliation. With the two short stories I’d submitted mailed back in my self-addressed, stamped envelopes with preprinted rejection slips, and my query letters to do articles for the national magazines rarely answered at all, I recognized the wisdom of Henry’s observation. Humiliation, though, must have been easier for him to get used to than it was for me, because he was cavorting with Parisian whores, while I was hanging out with med students and an ob-gyn resident. My father had been right about one thing: he raised me to be a doctor, not to marry one.

I voted for Humphrey and told Biff about it, but he pecked at me until the Saturday before Christmas. Glenna was flying to Palm Beach in the morning to join her folks at the Breakers hotel, and Biff was flying there on Tuesday to stay at his family’s forty-seven-room cottage and to play in a polo tournament. Glenna would be in Florida until the day of New Year’s Eve.

“You’ll be okay, won’t you?” she said late that afternoon as we lounged in bed.

“I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too. When I’m down there, all I do is follow my mother around and watch her charge goodies at Cartier and Chanel.”

“Those are educational excursions,” I said.

“How’s that?”

“She’s showing you the advantages of choosing a proper husband.”

“Gordo, that’s not me, you know that.” She kissed me. “I’ll be back soon. And you have an assignment to do; you can use your Christmas presents.”