“You wouldn’t believe what he did.” Malcolm finished his beer and moved closer to me. He put his hand on my arm as he talked. Later he put his hand on my leg and I let him leave it there. This was what I had been waiting for. Poetry and music and wild conversation. Yes, I said in Molly’s voice. Yes and yes and yes and yes. I forgot the disturbing elements of Charles William’s life. I forgot everything but Malcolm’s hand on my leg and the way it made me feel. By the time we finished lunch all I wanted in the world was to let him kiss me. Later he did kiss me, on the way to the apartment in the car and on the couch in the living room while Charles William and Irise did whatever they were doing in the bedroom.

The green dress, that’s part of what happened next whether anyone wants to believe it or not. Last week, when Charles William called me from the hospital to talk for seven hours, the first thing he wanted to talk about was that dress. “Do you remember that green dress, Dee?” he asked. “That you wore to Homecoming with Malcolm?”

“Of course I do. How could anyone forget that dress? I would never even have tried it on if you hadn’t been with me.”

“You were gorgeous in it.”

“I was, wasn’t I? Or anyway I thought I was and I guess that’s the same thing.”

A green satin dress, the green of Irish hills, so very green, so shiny and tight and short, cut down so low in the bosom that my nipples almost showed. Only Charles William could have found that dress and made me believe I was beautiful in it. Only Charles William could have talked me into wearing it. I put it on that night with my gold high-heeled sandals and wore it out to vamp poor Malcolm Martin who was already thoroughly vamped from my having sat on his lap all the way into Atlanta. Poor Malcolm Martin, a boy as vain and cold and unloving as my father, a perfect match for my animus.

Later, much much later, we locked ourselves into the bedroom of Putty LaValle’s apartment and I took off the dress and we did it. Whatever I had thought doing it would be, this was more terrible and exciting and interesting and endless than anything I could have imagined and even if I was doing it wrong I wanted to go on doing it.

“You might get pregnant,” he said at last. “I have to get some rubbers if we’re going to keep on doing this.”

“Are we going to?”

“I don’t see why not. I hope so.”

“Do you love me?”

“I guess so. Sure, I think I do.”