I stood in the horror of the pause. My hands were shaking. I had never known a person as bold as Amy Lourie. Her mother’s eyes felt attached to my face.

“I think that’s up to Bobo,” Joel Lourie judged. He smiled and again said, “Bobo?”

“I—I would like that. Yes, sir.”

“That’s not asking me; that’s agreeing,” Amy argued.

Carter came to my rescue. He said, filling Amy’s glass with water, “You know he’s from Georgia. They don’t ask girls for dates down there. They hit them in the head with a stick and drag them off by their hair.”

Joel Lourie laughed robustly.

“So, I’ll have to do it for him,” Carter continued. “As an example of good manners.” He looked at Amy with a preposterously affected gaze, like Clark Gable feeding on the eyes of Vivian Leigh. “Will you go to the dance with me—me, being Bobo—tonight at Arch’s?”

Amy giggled again. “I’d love to. I didn’t think you’d ever ask.” She turned to her mother. “Is that all right?”

Evelyn Lourie’s disbelieving stare moved from me to Amy. “I think it would be disgraceful not to go, after your behavior,” she said stiffly. Then, to me: “I apologize for her, Bobo.”

“There’s no reason for that,” I said. “It’s fine.”

I left the table and went into the kitchen and then into the walk-in cooler and stood, leaning on a crate of grapes, breathing deeply. In a moment, the door opened and Carter stepped inside. “Bobo, do me a favor. When you get ready to take her to bed, remember me. I’ll be right there, in case you need a substitute.” He laughed at his own humor. “Indeed, I will.”

And so that night, I went to the lobby of the Inn and formally asked Nora Dowling to call Amy for our date.

“You behave with that girl,” Nora warned. “Don’t let anything happen.”

“I won’t,” I said.

Amy bounded down the stairs, followed by her parents. She took my arm.

“Ready?” she asked.

I mumbled, “Yes.”

She pivoted us to face her parents. “You know where we’ll be,” she said brightly.

“Don’t be late,” her mother cautioned.

“No, ma’am, we won’t be,” I promised.

As we walked away from the Inn toward Arch’s, I knew that Joel and Evelyn Lourie and Nora Dowling were standing at a window, staring at us, wondering. And I did not blame them. I, too, wondered.

After the dance, with the ghost-heat of her body still pressing against me and the scent of her perfume rising from the collar of my shirt, I walked Amy back to the front porch of the Inn. Through the thin curtains of the window, I could see her parents playing bridge with another couple at a game table in the lobby.