After dinner, bored of the sound of the TV, the three of us eventually sat facing the door. We agreed that, belonging to the last generation to recall a world before TV infested every house, having explored actual woods and fields, we were the luckiest of all. We had been born at exactly the best time. We now sat, in fitful silences, as if awaiting the arrival of someone important.

Maybe one of our old regulars we didn’t feel complete without. Someone big, with perfect naval ensign posture, and not hair so much as locks (like Goldie’s, Harpo’s), some kid with a jawline like the best Pirate of Penzance juvenile lead, ever. Even the thin courtly minor man slumped here with us, gone all wristbone and eyesocket, he too sort of faced the door, as if he was also a big fan of the missing party’s. Every passerby’s footsteps in the hall made us hush, half-turn. We were waiting for him. Before. We aimed in the correct direction just in case our mutual true love appeared for just a moment, popped in with party food leftovers, stories, stage kisses so enlivening, “Ciao, ducks.”

Alabama and I sat swilling low-cal frozen yogurt, and Robert slumped among pillows, eating real ice cream for the weight gain, and we kept rough-housing, teasing and touching like people barely twenty will, and not folks slipping unbidden into their forties. And beyond.

And a last, loud, good old New York time was had by all.

Alabama fetched her overnight bag and prepared to sleep in Robert’s room, the extra bed. You could still hear a foghorn, boat traffic chugging up and down the East River. I would crash on the sitting room’s foldout couch. I stripped and got comfortable quicker than I’d figured. I knew this ease came from having her here. It made him so happy.

Around four, I heard Bam’s voice. First I thought she’d muttered out of a bad dream. I sat straight up without knowing why. “Hartley? You ’sleep? Hart?” Something was wrong.

I jumped up naked and rushed in, arms wavering before me in the dark. I found Angie’s bed empty. Then I saw, by moonlight, the two of them together, curled on his. Robert, in the middle, held up the covers for me and I knew how strenuous even this’d be for him. So I slid in there quite fast.

“Couldn’t start playing around without you.” She leaned over him and she kissed me and gave my dick a little playful harmless tossle.

“Here we all are,” he said, hoarse, straight up to the dark.

“Alone together at last,” I spoke, mostly to mark my place, make it real.

She groaned, “‘Bama’s Back and Two Buggers Has Got Her!’”

We still found each other funny. That was lucky, if only for all it spared the rest of the world. But, hey, we three weren’t hurtin’ anybody.

To be naked as in the old days. (Though, of course, we hadn’t ever really been, not concurrently, not as a quorum. It just remembered that way.)