“I didn’t know you had a babe to have trouble with,” I said.

“I don’t really. Just this slut I grabbed at the beginning of the year. Had to set her straight. It’s weird, Dunph. Just because you stick your dick in them, they think it means something.”

“You guys drink up here much?” I asked.

“Never.”

“Want to take off?”

“Yeah.”

I moved toward the door. He opened the window.

“Out this way,” he said.

“On the gutter?” We were on the fourth floor.

“Sure. Drinks are on the house. That way the beer stays cold, no one can see you, and you couldn’t ask for a better view of the moon reflecting off the sludge in the Hoozy. It’s the cat’s nads.”

“I bet,” I said.

Getting out onto the ledge was no problem, and, because it was too dark to see how high up I was, I didn’t get too freaked out. However, I was a tad wary of the rusty two-foot-wide gutter that our lives were tottering on. After a couple beers, I relaxed enough to start enjoying the scenery. Another beer and I was becoming quite the daredevil, venturing a few feet to either side of the window. After four or five pops we began harmonizing on “Up on the Roof,” and by the time we’d each finished a six-pack, I was dancing while Jack sang a medley of Van Morrison tunes. I guess we were making quite a racket but I wasn’t too concerned because for a while there things were starting to go my way.

The next day I won twenty bucks betting on one of Jonathan Wheeler’s football cards. And the following week, when Mort cracked Jonathan’s gambling network, fifteen guys were put on probation but two or three of us were inexplicably overlooked. Almost every afternoon Jane and I met during free periods. The more I saw her, the more I liked her. She didn’t fit into the East Coast prep school mold. Whereas most of the Cornwall girls dressed like hippies, L.L. Beanians, wealthy Parisians, or a combination thereof, Jane dressed, well, differently. Her ankle-length black coat looked more like something my grandmother would wear. And Jane didn’t own a pair of Levis. She always wore funny-looking, creaseless gray pants. I’d never seen anything as ugly. But on Jane they looked great.

She was a natural. Not braided armpits natural, but homemade jam, clean, and healthy natural, an honest-to-goodness farmer’s daughter. She was so unpretentious you couldn’t help but feel like a phony. Jane Weston was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, and yet the thing I was fascinated by is hard to describe. I didn’t even think about hosing her, I was just happy to be near.