“Well, I love you. I can tell you that. I think I love you to death.” I had pulled the sheet up around my breasts. Doing it was bad enough. Letting someone look at my breasts was going too far. “Where are Charles William and Irise?”

“I don’t know. Are they in the living room? I don’t know if they came in or not. I wasn’t listening.”

“How will we find out?”

“We better look. God, we’re drunk, aren’t we? What time is it?”

“It’s four-fifteen.”

“I’m going to look out the door.” I got up and found a bathrobe and put it on and looked out the door. Irise was asleep on the sofa. Charles William was nowhere to be seen. A light was burning in the kitchen.

“Come back to bed,” he said. “Let’s get some sleep.”

“Okay. I guess it’s too late to worry about them anyway.” I lay back down beside him and covered us with the bedclothes. Then I curled up into his arms and fell asleep. I had done it. I was as good as married.

The next morning Charles William introduced me to Davie. We were at the KA house waiting for the Wreck Parade to begin. Our Wreck had already been hauled by truck to the starting line on Shaw Street. It was a surreal room mounted on the chassis of a yellow jeep. Walls melted down into the wheels. Windows curved down into the seats. The steering wheel was an ellipse of melted stars. A fake motor was mounted on the side. Colored smoke poured out of the motor, red, yellow, blue, green. An engineering major was driving the thing. All Charles William had to do was stand on the street and watch it go by and wait to pick up his award as the designer.

“Dee, come here a minute.” He was drinking a Bloody Mary from a silver mint julep cup. “Come back here with me, I want you to meet someone.” He took my hand and led me into the kitchen where a boy with golden hair was polishing glasses with a cloth.

“This is Davie,” Charles William said. “Davie, this is Dee. I want you two to love each other.” The young man put down the cloth and held out a hand to me. He was shorter than Charles William, not much taller than I was, but he was very beautiful, as beautiful as a girl. He smiled at me and held out his hand. Charles William bent down and kissed him on the cheek. Light poured in the kitchen windows onto the brass pots hanging above the stove. Light rang out against the brass and fell down onto the painted cabinets and spotted our arms and hands.

“I’m so glad to know you, Dee,” Davie said. “He talks about you all the time. He thinks you’re wonderful.”