I said, “When my sister was in ninth grade, she hung posters like that over her bed.”

With a high-and-mighty sneer, Robin answered, “They didn’t have posters of Brother Huey P. when your sister was in ninth grade.”

“Right, only Ricky Nelson and Paul Anka.”

Glenna started to smile, but she saw me watching her and stopped.

Robin said, “Meyers, you’re a prick. You think I’m some teenybopper with a crush?”

“Nah,” I said. “You’re too old to be a teenybopper.”

GLENNA BUNKED with Robin for the next five days. I was still angry at her and thought about going back to Brooklyn, but I would have had to explain to my mother and father why I was home, and I was in no mood for parental explanations. In lieu of leaving, I avoided her, and we skipped the knockdown drag-outs, though we did have our share of skirmishes.

One evening, when I entered the kitchen, Glenna was about to stick a Swanson frozen dinner in the oven. She said, “Aren’t you sorry for leaving my party?”

“Sorry I went to it.”

“Won’t happen again,” she said, tossing the foil-wrapped tray into the sink and stalking out.

With our different schedules it was easy for me to keep out of range, but I couldn’t avoid the bathroom, and so we clashed there often enough in the mornings that I should have nailed one of those historic-battlefield signs to the door.

Standing in the hall in her robe with her hair wrapped in a towel, she said, “When you met Rick, you could’ve had a little class.”

“And I could’ve been a contender.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“A line from On the Waterfront. It’s on the Late Show tonight. Check it out.”

Glenna was waiting for me the next morning. “I want to tell you something.”

“Must we?” I asked.

“It’ll take one minute, Gordon.”

“Forget it,” I said, going past her. “I wanna get fucked for a minute, I’ll call Rick.”

“You’re insane!” she shouted as I closed the door.

The final volley came two mornings later. I was fed up with our skirmishing and fired a preemptive salvo. Before she could utter a word, I said, “Where do you get the nerve to defend inviting him without telling me? Even my father knew he was out of line taking my mother to Zalman’s so he could see Tamara, and my folks have been married twenty-eight years. There are boundaries to their craziness. Dad broke the rules, and Mom shot him with seltzer. What are the rules with you, Glenna?”

She glared at me. “I like it better when we’re not talking.”

“I can understand why.”

The following day she came back to her room, but neither of us said much and sex was out. I did press myself against her one night when we were both restless, but she sat up and said, “I can’t. I’ve got a cough. Listen.”

She faked a cough that sounded like an advanced case of TB, and I said, “You can’t use a phony cough for an excuse until you’ve been married to a guy for ten years.”