“But I think so. If one of these jerks doesn’t talk her into living with him instead. But girls now—they’re not so easy to talk into things. They’re, what’s the word, empowered. Judy teases me, the way I keep looking at her, but it’s amazing to me, how beautiful she’s become, even since I saw her last summer. Every tooth, every eyelash, you know, just so exact. She has Dad’s and my cowlick in one eyebrow. And there’s a new switchy quick way she moves and does things. She’s smaller than her mother, though her hair is like Pru’s used to be, but she doesn’t have that sort of awkward broad-beamy semi-helpless thing Pru does. Judy is knit. She went out for all these sports at high school, and works out at this health club. She lets me feel her biceps.”

“She sounds like your mother.”

“Really? Mom’s such a misfit, and Judy’s such a smart fit, but, yeah, maybe in a way. Bonewise.” Those little Springer hands. “I love looking at her hands, they’re almost childlike, but have this kind of graceful, what can I say, composure, and long half-tone fingernails. One half purple, the other yellow. I said to her, USAirways isn’t going to let you get away with that. She says, ‘I know. It’s a fling, Dad. You’ve heard of flings.’ ”

“And Pru?”

“Good news. She saw this ad for ‘Human Resources Assistant’ for one of the big banks down on Market Street saying ‘people-oriented individual’ and they liked her; she’s one of three they’ve narrowed it down to. Her experience wasn’t quite what they want but I guess this guy Gekopoulos wrote her a raving recommendation.”

“I meant you and Pru.”

“Oh. Oh. That’s O.K. You’ve met her, you know what she’s like. She isn’t one to make a big show of her feelings, usually. She says having a man in the apartment is as bad as having two untrained dogs. She should talk, we’re surrounded by her relatives out here, they keep calling up and dropping around.”

“You certainly are more talkative, now you’re back with her.”

“It’s you I like to talk to. Too much, huh?”

“Oh, no. But why do you call her Pru? Your mother calls her Teresa.”

“How’d you know that?”

“She called, to invite me to dinner. Just her and Ronnie. And Billy if I wished.”

“Billy. That goon. I’m sorry I saddled you with him that night. He got me lost, in my own county, and then stuck in traffic at the greatest moment in history.”

“Yes, it was terrible the way he did that. He cries about it in his sleep.”