I asked, ‘Does she agree to this, or do you have a surprise in mind?’

‘I’m not pulling any surprises. I’ve asked her,’ he said. ‘She just shrugged. “Why not?”’

So I accepted, and we spent twenty minutes under the shower, the three of us. Early in the afternoon, he had to make a court appearance and left us two alone together. It was then that I kissed her under the breast and on the inner thigh. Afterward, it was terribly uncomfortable to think about our behavior in the shower – a radical discomfort that year after year became more acute.

Why did Jay set it up? Why did she consent? Why did I participate? I recall that when we were alone, she opened her mouth toward me, yearningly. But she didn’t speak. Nor did I.

‘I suppose Jay read about threesomes in some book. Havelock Ellis, maybe,’ I once said to her.

In the years following their marriage, I was a frequent dinner guest. Friend of the family.

After dinner he generally played classical records on the phonograph. And he presided over the concert – he put you through it with his extremely significant face. Especially the eyebrows. If it was Don Giovanni, he sang both Leporello and the Don. He had no ear at all, and yet he was more moved by it than anyone else. A strange cat, Jay indeed was.

Then, about five years before he died, Jay divorced Amy. The case he made against her was extremely ugly. ‘An open-and-shut adultery charge, and he slaughtered you,’ her lawyer said. ‘He doesn’t have to give you a penny.’

At that time Amy had no money of her own. Dead broke. Looking more than ever the middle-class matron in a tailored suit. She confessed, referring to that time, ‘I had to live in my aunt Dora’s maid’s room. Thank God both girls were away at school. Dora wasn’t too glad to have me. She couldn’t give me any money. When I put the house key in the lock, I heard her running to her room. I was looking in the lining of old purses for change, and I dug down in the upholstered sofa for nickels and dimes. I owe it to Jay that I learned what it means to be wiped out. I had to learn to fight for life – a slug of disgrace was what it took to make a battler out of me.’

Amy’s date this morning was with the old Adletskys. She had become an interior decorator.

Adletsky, never without his cellular telephone, called Amy to say that he would be picking her up at ten A.M. When he rang, on the dot, she went down. The marquee outside her Sheridan Road apartment house was warmed by glowing rods. A vast mid-continental snow bag had burst over Chicago. The flakes were very large. Adletsky’s stretch limousine was very slowly coming up through the snow, lounging along the curb. The doorman stepped forward to open the door and hand Amy in. She took her seat facing the two old people.