Uncle Jerr wasn’t as confident as Namath about an outright victory, but, “Jesus Christ,” he’d said to me over the phone after the betting line was printed in the papers, “Joe wouldn’t let New York down, he’s gonna cover that spread.” Uncle Jerr bet four grand on the Jets with his bookie, and although I didn’t mention it to Glenna, I’d risked one-fifth of my life savings by springing for a grand of my uncle’s action. I doubted she would’ve been impressed with my investment strategy.

“My dad won’t be watching the game,” Glenna said. “My mother says football’s disgracefully violent.”

“Which is why it’s fun to watch. And I’ll be watching with your dad, not your mom.”

When Glenna had returned from Palm Beach and informed me that her parents had invited us over, I was still myopic enough to believe that her reluctance to introduce me had been a symptom of her uncertainty toward me. Thus, I was glad to be presented for parental blessings and wanted to make a decent showing. I’d let Glenna trim my hair and gone to Brooklyn to grab my rust-brown corduroy suit and black cashmere turtleneck. Glenna had been uptight as we got ready to go, putting her coral-and-white Fair Isle sweater on backward. Her nervousness made me feel calmer about our visit, but my calmness disappeared in the GTO when I realized that the fate of my money would be decided in the dark, that I wouldn’t have the satisfying delusion of influencing the game’s outcome by watching it on TV.

I swung onto West 247th, a wooded road of expensive homes. Her parents’ house was a futuristic, flat-roofed hexagon of redwood with triangular glass wings on either side. While the exterior owed its inspiration to Sputnik, the interior was as gloomy as a medieval hall. The cavernous living room had a slate floor with Persian rugs here and there in lonely islands of color. A massive, freestanding steel fireplace commanded the center of the room like a Space Age idol, and the only light besides the failing orange flicker of the logs was the feeble light gathering at the hexagonal windows that were scattered like stars across the redwood walls.

“Glenna,” a woman called, “I’m in the kitchen,” and a swinging door opened, and the woman came out, saying, “I expected you ten minutes ago.”

“Sorry, Mother,” Glenna said, tensing up beside me.

I’d anticipated seeing some of Glenna’s beauty in her mother. And it was there, except that it had been frighteningly transfigured by chic apparel and a rigorous diet. Mrs. Rising was twice her daughter’s age and looked half her weight. Her leopard-print blouse and miniskirt hung on her gaunt frame, and her black, geometric-patterned tights and white Courrèges boots drew special attention to her swizzle-stick legs. Her hair was teased back from her face in a cloud of dark smoke, a style that seemed calculated to exhibit her splendid tan and assert that here was a woman who vacationed regularly in the sun. Unfortunately that same sun had given her complexion the texture of an alligator purse, and the effect of her outlandish modishness and conspicuous middle age on me was the sensation that I was beholding a psychedelic human flower in the throes of a simultaneous bloom and wither.