“Yes, maman,” said Adrianna, called Dria—my girlfriend. We were in college, a couple of sweaty econ majors. We’d been together for eight months and four days. This was my first visit to the Blacet mansion, to meet the family, which, by some calculus I didn’t quite understand, meant that Dria was now, suddenly, against all dependable odds, willing to fuck me. She was tucked beside me in an angora sweater that made me want to rub her chest with my cock until both of us caught fire.

Also in the room were Dria’s father, Bud, and her little brother, Sandro. They were wearing identical Polo sweaters the color of Tang. Paco, the handyman, stood watch over the roaring fire. Madelina, the housekeeper, was manning the eggnog. She looked ready to murder everyone in the room.

Suzanne beckoned me to step forward, toward a large cedar box. Inside was a selection of bright silver tchotchkes.

“Ornaments.” Suzanne placed her hand on my forearm. “Relics of our past. We put them on the tree every year. As a way of remembering.”

“That’s great,” I said.

“Choose one,” Suzanne said. “This is the Blacet way.” She pronounced her surname with a Parisian lilt (blah-say) and laughed at her little rhyme.

“Really?” I said. “I mean, I don’t want to take anyone’s favorite.”

Suzanne looked at her husband.

“Nonsense!” Bud said. “Nonsense! Choose one! Go ahead!”

“Volume,” Sandro said.

Bud fiddled with his hearing aid.

The ornaments looked priceless, all of them, little bells and angels and stars. I choose the shabbiest-looking one, some kind of pewter peg, and hung it on a low limb.

“Oh,” Suzanne said. “Perfect. So big and perfect and shiny. Isn’t that nice, Jacob?”

“Yes,” I said. “Very pretty.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“Not really,” I said.

“It belonged to my grandpère Marsen,” she said. “His shoehorn.”

“You were going to guess vibrator, weren’t you?” Dria whispered. “Weren’t you, you dirty little Jew horn?”

Jew horn. Was this a term I should have viewed as acceptable? No. But it was what Dria called me in her moods of amour, those brief, intense periods during which she wanted nothing more than to wriggle her soft little hand down the front of my good corduroys.

It was a horrible term, a slur, a clear indicator of Dria’s various cultural pathologies. But I wanted to have sex with her really badly. It was a bodily compulsion. I had certain ideas about what it would be like to be up inside her, like the ocean, like flying, like licking marmalade off the good silver. I was—if I may point this out to the assembled jury—not quite twenty years old.