“So,” he says. “You see Stavros again?”

“You told me not to.”

“Big deal, what I tell you. How was he? Still clutching his heart?”

“He’s touching. Just the way he carries himself.”

“Boo hoo. You analyze me some more?”

“No, we were selfish, we talked about ourselves. He saw right through me. We were halfway into the first drink and he looks me up and down through those tinted glasses and says, ‘You work the field don’t you?’ Gimme a peanut.”

He tosses a fistful overhanded; they pelt her on the chest. She is wearing a twitchy little dress that buttons down the front and whose pattern imitates lizardskin. When she puts her feet up on the hassock he sees clear to the crotch of her pantyhose. She acts lazy and soft; her eyes have relented, though the makeup shines as if freshly applied. “That’s all you did?” he asks. “Eat lunch.”

“Th-that’s all, f-f-folks.”

“What’re you tryin’ to prove? I thought you came East to help Mom.”

“To help her help you. How can I help her, I’m no doctor.”

“Well, I really appreciate your help, fucking my wife’s boyfriend like this.”

Mim laughs at the ceiling, showing Harry the horseshoe curve of her jaw’s underside, the shining white jugular bulge. As if cut by a knife the laugh ends. She studies her brother gravely, impudently. “If you had a choice, who would you rather went to bed with him, her or me?”

“Her. Janice, I can always have too, I mean it’s possible; but you, never.”

“I know,” Mim gaily agrees. “Of all the men in the world, you’re the only one off bounds. You and Pop.”

“And how does that make me seem?”

She focuses hard on him, to get the one-word answer. “Ridiculous.”

“That’s what I thought. Hey, Jesus. Did you really give Stavros a bang today? Or’re you just getting my goat? Where would you go? Wouldn’t Janice miss him at the office?”

“Oh—he could say he was out on a sale or something,” Mim offers, bored now. “Or he could tell her to mind her own business. That’s what European men do.” She stands, touches all the buttons in the front of her lizardskin dress to make sure they’re done. “Let’s go visit Mom.” Mim adds, “Don’t fret. Years ago, I made it a rule never to be with a guy more than three times. Unless there was some percentage in getting involved.”

That night Mim gets them all dressed and out to dinner, at the Dutch smörgåsbord diner north toward the ball park. Though Mom’s head waggles and she has some trouble cutting the crust of her apple pie, she manages pretty well and looks happy: how come he and Pop never thought of getting her out of the house? He resents his own stupidity, and tells Mim in the hall, as they go in to their beds—she is back in her old room, Nelson sleeps with him now—“You’re just little Miss Fix-It, aren’t you?”