A SPRING CHICKEN I am no longer, and by two o’clock in the morning my jaw splits wide open with yawning. Barbara tells me to hand over the five bucks, and I actually ask her What five bucks?, because I’ve lost count of the lime rickeys I’ve drunk to drown out the syncopation of Barbara’s wise advice.

Our bet, she says, and Oh right, I answer.

I pay her the five bucks and pay the bill, too. Prepare to rise, and that’s when Barbara puts her hand on my elbow.

“I’m guessing he’s yours?” she says, nodding to a man sitting alone at a table in the corner.

I follow her gaze and squint. Big, wide-shouldered man, face too shadowed to properly see. But two things are perfectly clear, even to my addled eyes. Number one, he’s a white man, as fair-haired and pink-skinned as they come. And number two, he’s watching me.

“Hell’s bells,” I mutter.

BARBARA OFFERS TO FIND me a ride home, call me a trustworthy taxi or something, but I figure I’m not going to start being a coward at this particular moment. I march right up to him and ask if he’s ready to leave now.

“Certainly,” Sumner Fox says politely.

He pays his bill—I have the feeling he left a large tip—and takes my elbow like a gentleman. I don’t look back, just sail between the last few tables and out into the lobby and then the open air of West 125th Street. Fox signals to a taxi waiting by the curb, a half block away. I waste an entire moment thinking I’ve been very stupid indeed.

But there’s nothing underhanded about the way he helps me into the taxi and gives the driver my address before he settles on the other side of the back seat, acres of cloth between us. As I settle against the seat and watch the buildings skim by, I experience this feeling of levitation, as if we’re actually flying instead of driving, but the sober part of my brain—if one can be said to still exist—knows this is only an illusion. I anchor myself to the pocketbook in my lap, which happens to contain Iris’s missives, both of them, postcard and letter. I don’t know why I carry them around with me like that. Maybe it’s a talisman—maybe my subconscious is trying to figure out what I should do with them and considers it’s best to keep the objects on hand in case of need.