“Sure,” Jeannie replied. “He was in earlier. Said to give you whatever you wanted.”

“Make it a carton of Marlboros,” Carter said, “but, Jeannie, do me a favor: make it show up as sandwiches or something.”

Jeannie smiled. “Sure.” She reached for the glasses on a rack behind her.

“What do you mean, she has a thing for me?” I said to Carter.

Carter looked at me sadly. “You stupid, dumb redneck hick. The most beautiful woman you’ll ever see is dragging around like she’s got lead in her ass because of you, and you’re out with Miss Ugly of Nineteen Fifty-five.”

“It was your idea, not mine,” I reminded him.

“So, I was wrong again,” Carter said. “Sue me. Jesus, Bobo, it’s been a year since I saw them. I thought they might improve.” He took the carton of cigarettes from Jeannie and tucked them under his arm and then he picked up two of the Cokes. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

It was a night I remember only in pain. In a private whisper as we were getting into his car to drive to Margaretville, Carter offered me his twenty dollars to kiss Charlotte—fifty if I would touch her breasts. I told him. “If there’s any kissing going on, you can do it, and you know where you can start.” He laughed maniacally.

We attended a movie in Margaretville, then drove to the base of the ski lift at Belleayre Mountain and walked in the cool air under a full moon that was like a lamp dimmed for sleeping. Carter told absurd stories about me—that Harry had almost persuaded me to convert to Judaism, that I was a great-grandson of a Confederate general who had fought at Gettysburg and lost his leg, and that my ambition in life was to be a country music star like the great Little Jimmy Dickens. He begged me to sing for them. I refused. “He’s shy,” Carter explained to the girls. “He knows nobody can understand him, so he doesn’t say much.” He looked at me and winked and he added, “You’d think his mind was somewhere else, wouldn’t you?”

Carter knew.

I was thinking of Amy Lourie.

Amy did not appear for breakfast the following morning. Her parents said she had not slept well. I asked if I could prepare a plate for them to take to her, some muffins or cheese or fruit. “If she wants something, she’ll come down,” Evelyn Lourie said gently. “But thank you for offering, Bobo.” I knew she was watching me carefully. When I served Harry and Charlotte and Erin, suffering Harry’s jesting about his nieces being in love with me, I could again sense Evelyn Lourie’s eyes, which were as beautiful as Amy’s.