Smoke curled from Wilma’s cigarette and made Marya’s eyes water but she never complained, never shrank away. The odor was mixed in with the sweet familiar scent of her perfume, which Marya would always remember as the most mysterious and wonderful scent on earth. (What precisely was Wilma’s perfume? White Shoulders Lily-of-the-Valley, in a sturdy cut-glass blue bottle from Woolworth’s in Innisfail. Marya would have stolen a few drops for herself except she reasoned that her thievery would be detected; Wilma would punish her, or, what would be worse, she’d ridicule her in front of the others.)

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of games over the years; each building to a virtual fever of anticipation and excitement; each intensely real . . . and not one to be recalled. Only the slapdash way Wilma dealt out cards or shook dice, her wrists suddenly graceful, elastic, a cigarette slanted between her lips. Only the way she grinned when things went well, as if she were genuinely surprised. And, when luck went against her, that sigh, that shrug of the shoulders, which Marya was still imitating twenty years later: “The story of my life.”

When the games took place somewhere else—at a neighbor’s house, in one of the junked cars in the lot, over by the canal—they lacked a certain spark, a certain momentum. No one seemed to be observing from above; no one knew enough to make wise statements. Only children played. Outcomes didn’t matter. There were winners and losers, sometimes rather nasty losers (Marya herself could turn nasty in an instant), that was all.

THE FIRST TIME Lee approached Marya she thought it was just a game, the things he did to her. One of the boys’ games.

It left no mark, in any case. She couldn’t claim that she was hurt.

Only afterward—years afterward—did she realize that Lee must have been as surprised as she. Because it happened so swiftly in such choking half-sobbing confusion, a matter of seconds, scrambling and twisting—wrestling? tickling? was it one of the rough tickling games?—in the front seat of the blue Buick—and that was all.

“Now don’t you tell, you,” Lee whispered, panting, frightened, giving her a little shove as if he wanted her away from him at once.

Marya’s greatest astonishment arose from the fact that he had allowed her, a girl, to see the most secret part of his body. And it frightened her that he was frightened; she’d never seen a boy his age in such a state. Face flushed, hands trembling—he might, if he wanted, actually hurt her quite a bit.