“Did you tell him to get real?”

“No. Everybody was wrecked on Lebanese hash, and the guys wanted it to happen. I remember a radio was on. Aretha was singing ‘Chain of Fools,’ and we’re dancing and then we’re fucking. I didn’t know the one I started with or ended with. But I felt ashamed. Those schmucks could’ve been humping ground-hog holes for all they cared.”

Robin glanced up from the fire. I didn’t feel disgusted, only sorry that she’d been hurt. I smiled at her.

“I’m tired,” she said, and I learned another secret about her as she traded her olive-drab pants for white long johns; she didn’t wear panties; and the momentary sight of her dense triangular mat turned me on.

It was pitch-black when Robin shook me from sleep. She was sitting beside me, giggling. “Listen,” she said, and I heard the rhythmic moaning of sex reverberating above the gurgling stream. Robin explained that she’d awakened me because the noise belonged in my article.

“It woke you?” I asked.

“I had a bad dream—that I had breast cancer. It’s a med student’s dream. I got up to examine myself.”

“No cancer?”

“Nope. Here. Feel.” I was too surprised to resist as she guided my right hand under her sweatshirt to one of her high, round, incredibly firm breasts. “‘Press your fingers in a circular motion around an imaginary clock,’” she recited. “‘Begin at noon, then one, two.’ That’s it. You’re feeling for any abnormal thickening. Rigid tissue in the lower curve is normal. Press there, Meyers, there. Go in, to the nipple. Squeeze it between your thumb and index finger. Is there a discharge? No discharge. Keep squeezing it, will you?”

A thickness rose in my throat. Robin didn’t have the confidence to kiss me, but she was confident about her knockers, and like a boxer leading with his best punch, she shoved them in my face. I wasn’t sure if she had the slightest feeling of affection for me or if she was intent on paying back Glenna for her effortless allure and for all those Friday and Saturday nights that Robin, unlike Glenna, had spent alone. Yet, as we rolled on top of my sleeping bag and I pressed myself against Robin, and she wrestled off her long johns and my Jockey shorts, I couldn’t have cared less about her reasons. Her skin was so warm in the nighttime chill, and I listened as the flattering urgency of her sighs and whispers became part of the rustling of the wind in the leaves overhead. Moving my mouth from her breasts, I raised up and looked off in the darkness, where fireflies lit up the woods with flashing yellow lights. Fear gathered in my chest; and I couldn’t catch my breath again until Robin’s legs came up around me, and I closed my eyes. The ride began, slow at first, as if we were being carried through the dark by the wind, but soon Robin was digging her fingers into my shoulders and bucking with the lust of the desperately lonely, and I rode along with her, pushing and pushing, shocked at how easy it was for my own anger and unbridled need to masquerade as passion, while Robin moaned, “Thank-youthankyouthankyou,” as though it were a declaration of undying devotion.