Thinking of Robin, I decide this is a good time to write another letter to her. I didn’t bring any paper, but I can tear a blank page out of the back of this paperback. “Anyone have a pen?”

From her fringed leather bag, Tinsley produces a fountain pen with a gold nib. When she leans over to hand it to me, the neck of her blouse falls open, and my eyes suddenly have minds of their own. It’s disconcerting. I’ve never encountered someone so overtly sexual before, someone who seems to harbor actual exhibitionistic tendencies. Barry’s saying that she does as she pleases feels like something of an understatement.

“I love when he goes to the warehouse where they sell waterfalls,” she says, not taking her eyes off mine.

“And you have to buy them in sections and put them together,” I add. We share a smile, a connection, the intimacy that comes with being members of the subgroup of freakerati who subscribe to Richard Brautigan’s off-kilter vision of the world. And today it’s all amplified. The spacey hash high, the literary connection, and, yes, I’m forced to admit, the titillation of Tinsley’s secretive exhibitionism.

“So, when’re you gonna see your girlfriend?” Cousin Barry asks without taking his eyes off the ladybug kite high above. Has he picked up on the vibe between Tinsley and me?

“Twenty-six days,” I answer.

“Where is she?” Tinsley asks.

“A camp north of Ottawa.”

Barry turns. “For real? Zach and Eva are crashing at a farm somewhere around there. He keeps saying I should make the scene.”

“Avoiding the draft?” I ask.

“Naw, he’s Four-F. Flat feet.”

4-F for flat feet? That’s a surprise. A borderline condition like that might exempt you from the army in places like Houston or Pittsburgh, where there is a plentiful supply of draft-aged grist for the military, but it’s been my impression that at the army induction center in Brooklyn, they’d slap a pair of orthotics on your feet and ship your woeful behind straight to basic training.

And while I’d never begrudge Cousin Barry his mental problems, they do come with a silver lining. His stints in the loony bin have resulted in his receiving a 4-F classification as psychologically unfit for service.

Barry relights the hash joint. “Remember the first time I got you high?” he asks me in the tight, breathless voice of one who is trying to keep smoke from escaping his lungs.

Before I answer, I also take a hit. When Tinsley accepts the joint from me, her fingertips caress my hand in a way that doesn’t feel accidental. “First time I smoked, I didn’t feel a thing,” she says. “Did you?”

“They told me to swallow the smoke,” I recall. “An hour later, I burped and a puff came out.”