There was a long hallway on the third floor, with many doors on either side and wheezing radiators. Dria had told me she was in the room at the end of the hall. But I couldn’t tell if she meant for me to turn left or right at the top of the stairs. The prospect of making the wrong decision paralyzed me. What would I find behind the mystery door: Mrs. Blacet fucking a donkey?

So I guessed one direction (the left) and staggered that way. I was overwhelmed, really. I thought about my family, gathered down in Baltimore—the neurotic, self-critical, petty lot of them—cheating at Scrabble and complaining about acid reflux. I saw my uncle Morris smuggling a Daily Worker into the bathroom, a look of assumed failure etched on his brow. My cousin Roy would be spitting at the girl cousins on the stoop. Never had these common miseries seemed so alluring.

Here was the door, big and funereal, like all the Blacet doors. I could not stare at it all night. Madelina was down below me, auditioning for the Inquisition. I opened the thing, and the familiar scent of Dria was upon me: lavender and new stockings.

“You made it,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” I said. “Listen…”

But I couldn’t complete my thought. She was sitting up in bed, naked to the waist, her small breasts just there, glowing in the dim. I was overcome by gratitude, by relief.

“Get over here,” she said. “I’ve been waiting. I’m ready. Were you cunning? You were, weren’t you? Long johns! You’re so cute. Get over here.”

She pulled me into an embrace. “You’re trembling. Are you cold?”

“Not really,” I said. “I’m a little, I guess, freaked out.”

Dria looked at me with her distinguished nose, her lioness eyes. “That is so sweet,” she said. “Don’t be freaked out, Jacob. This is going to be great. You were so good. You waited so patiently. Look what I have for you!” She gestured toward her chest. “These are for you!” She placed my hand on them. “Come onto the bed, Jacob.”

Then I was on the bed and Dria was yanking at my waistband.

“Wait,” I said. “I’d like to…could we talk?”

“You’re nervous, aren’t you?”

Dria lifted the covers. I could feel the warmth of her lower body as a wave, and the scent of her down below. It made me want to crawl down there and curl up with my cheek on her mons pubis. That was about my speed. But Dria had her own agenda. She, too, had been waiting. She, too, was twenty years old. Her body was a configuration of inept desires loosely knit into action. She took my hand and showed me her readiness. She tossed my long johns away.

“I feel a little weird,” I said. “I saw some weird stuff. Downstairs.”