She looked at her son, then at Stone. “How can I object?”

“Welcome to the Barrington family, Peter,” Stone said, “such as it is. You and I are the only living members.”

“Thank you, Dad,” Peter said.

“He never called Vance that,” Arrington said.

“He asked me to call him Vance,” Peter said.

“Yes, he did,” she admitted. “I wondered why he did that.”

“Because he knew something I didn’t,” Peter said.

The captain came with menus, and the subject was put aside while they ordered. Then, when the menus had been taken away, Peter said, “Next subject: my new school.”

“Oh?” Arrington said. “What about it?”

“I want it to be Knickerbocker Hall.”

“That has a familiar ring,” she said. “Where is it?”

“Right here, in New York,” Peter said. “On the Upper East Side.”

“A boarding school on the Upper East Side?”

“It’s not a boarding school,” Peter pointed out.

Stone intervened. “Peter now has a home in New York,” he said.

Arrington was looking back and forth between them, her brow furrowed.

“It has a performing arts program, including a film school. I want to do college-level work there and then go to Yale Drama School.”

“Was this your idea?” she asked Stone.

“Only the part about his living with me while he’s in school. The rest is entirely his; I didn’t know about Knickerbocker.”

“Let me think about it,” Arrington said.

“And I want to be eighteen,” Peter said.

“You will be, in two years,” his mother pointed out.

“I mean, when I go to Knickerbocker, I want them to think I’m eighteen. I don’t want to be the only sixteen-year-old among a bunch of eighteen-year-olds.”

Arrington looked at Stone questioningly.

“I think he can pull it off,” Stone said. “Look at him; listen to him. I don’t know any eighteen-year-olds that grown up.”

“But I would miss sixteen and seventeen,” Arrington said, plaintively.

“I wouldn’t miss them,” Peter said.

They put all this aside and dined well. When they had finished their entrees and ordered dessert, Arrington sighed deeply. “All right, I agree,” she said.

“Agree to which things?” Peter asked.

“All of them. You’re Peter Barrington, you’re eighteen, and you can go to Knickerbocker what’s-its-name.”

“Hall,” Peter said.

“And to Yale, too. That’s assuming you can get into these places.”

“I can,” Peter said.

“He never lacked confidence,” she said to Stone.

“Sometimes confidence is justified,” Stone said.

They had a birthday cake for dessert. It had eighteen candles.

10

Stone woke the following morning with someone fondling his crotch. “Is that you?” he asked.

“It had.” better be,” Arrington replied. “And it seems to be working.”

“I can vouch for that,” he said.

She climbed onto him and took him inside her.

“You’re all wet,” he said.

“Normally, I would take that statement amiss, but on this occasion, you’re perfectly correct.” She moved gently up and down. “I liked the way things went last evening,” she said.

“So did I, and I like the way things are going now.”