Carmen drew him farther into the cave of the apartment, and they kissed some more, and Pat was fine with that; he was nervous and needed a minute to remember how you made out with someone for the first time. As it got going, she pulled away, cooed, and went to get him a beer. He ignored the run-down, smoky, smelly apartment with dark feculent cloths draped over the blinds and a winking fluorescent light in a kitchen full of unwashed dishes and cruddy takeout containers. He was past everything that was sad and cheap about this. He teetered a little but tried to stand as still as was possible on his bad leg and against sloshing tides of booze in his bloodstream. Carmen returned with beer in a glass that Pat hadn’t seen her pour.

“Time to get comfortable.” She pointed up and down the line, at his shoes, his suit. “Do you want to take a shower first, baby?”

“What now?”

“Why don’t we take a shower together, okay?” Her mien was chorelike. And then Carmen started to strip down. There was the red bra, now matched with silky red panties, and she twirled toward him while taking off various threads of jewelry.

“What do you think?”

Pat chuckled and entered some soothing fantasy where his consort came toward him to take his shield and his sword, then undress and anoint him, and not because Pat was too besotted to get out of his own clothes. No, Pat was alligator hearted, in the full churn and rush of being ready for this. Carmen’s hand undid his shirt buttons, the zipper to his trousers, and . . .

“Oh, Pat, so nice to meet you.”

And when the clothes came off, she led him to the shower and stood him in the tub. The showerhead was on a cord, and she soaped him up. Bursting his priapic bubble, Pat imagined himself like a dog being hosed down. She stood outside the tub and just lathered him with baby shampoo and then teased his dick a little, and it smelled like talc and flowers, and when was the last time he got laid? That anyone besides Patrick Francis Malone had touched him there? She rinsed and toweled him off, and now he had to piss like a racehorse because of all the whiskey, and she positioned him over a trickling toilet made of blue porcelain.