On the way up to my room I checked my watch against the ship’s clock that hung over the front desk at the hotel to make sure my watch was right. It was. It was eight forty-seven, which meant I had about two hours to wait.

The path was different late at night. It was cool and dark. You heard little rustling noises in the plants that hung over the wall but there was nothing to be seen. The smells were different too. They were dreamier, harder to pin down.

I had left my room and gone down the backstairs through the hotel laundry room and out into the alley at a quarter to eleven. Before that I had lain under my covers, with my clothes on, ready to go, but in bed nevertheless in case Mom came in to kiss me good night. That night she didn’t come in to say good night so I got hot lying there under the covers for nothing.

When I got to the high point of the path to Paraggi I expected Jennifer to already be there waiting. She was always the first to do anything or get anywhere. But she wasn’t there. So I walked farther up the path to see if I could meet her.

Then I got to worrying that I might meet someone else and that he would recognize me and say something later in front of Mom and Dad about having seen me. So I turned around and went back to the high point on the path, slipped over the wall, and sat on the rock ledge below where no one would see me if someone came along.

A lot of the lights on the yachts were still on. I could even hear a little music coming over the water from one of them where they were probably having a party or, as Mom would say, they were in “a drunken stupor pretending to have fun all the while hurting inside because they are lost.”

I heard light footsteps approach the top of the wall and stop. I peeked cautiously over the wall. There in the moonlight Jennifer was standing in her nightgown and bare feet. She didn’t see me so I just looked for a minute before I spoke because she was so beautiful. She didn’t have her hair tied back in her usual ponytail but had let it out. It made her look older and prettier the way it framed her face and hung down her back. I suddenly got very nervous and wished I hadn’t come out to meet her at all because I had no idea what to say or why I wanted to see her so much. Then she turned her head and saw me and said, “What are you goggling at, you silly boy?”

I climbed over the wall and she walked toward me and I said, “How are you?”

“Do I look ill to you?”