That was when the door swung open on a tiny moon-faced girl who looked to be Corey’s age but for the breasts that swelled the fabric of her white turtleneck. “Hi,” she said, smiling dutifully at them, “come on in. I’m Suzie, by the way, the daughter,” and then, before he could hand her the wine or even calculate if it was appropriate to present it to a child, she’d turned and padded away on her bare feet and he and Joanie were left standing there in the entryway.

The house was warm, the voices louder now, the jazz defining itself as John Coltrane’s latest LP, which he himself didn’t have the money for though he was dying to have it and could see the cover in his mind’s eye, all blue, the saxophonist’s head looming over the neck of the instrument as he lost himself in a passion that was as evident on his face as a sexual climax. It was a profound, aching kind of music, and he’d fallen under its spell at the record shop one day, listening to it over and over when he should have been elsewhere, should have been studying. He looked at Joanie. She looked at him. He shrugged. “I guess we just go in?”

In truth, she was the one with the confidence in this relationship, not that he felt in any way inadequate, just that sometimes in social situations he tended to try too hard and that left him off balance, at least until she took charge. Which she did now, leading him by the hand through the foyer and into the living room, where there was a fire going and twenty people standing around with drinks in their hands as if they were at a cocktail party. If he hung back—just briefly, just for an instant—it was because this wasn’t what he’d expected at all. What had he expected? Something more intimate, more clinical, monkish even. This was supposed to be his initiation into the inner circle, not just another cocktail party.