Then the two boarded the elevator. Vera’s room was on the fourteenth floor, Sughrue’s just down the hall. When the elevator arrived at their destination, they both stepped out. Sughrue helped Vera find her room and opened her door for her with the room key. He gave Vera the key, told her in what direction his room was in case she needed anything, said good night, and walked away.

Vera quickly slipped into the extra-large T-shirt with I ? NEW YORK printed on it. It was long enough to end just above her knees. Vera looked for a robe but couldn’t find one. Oh, well, she thought, John’s room was just down the hall. And he did invite me to come, didn’t he? He said in case I need anything, and that’s as nice a way of saying come to my room as a gentleman can say it. I’ll just have to do the inevitable for both of us, won’t I?

Vera opened her room door. She looked left and right down the hallway and noticed it was clear. Excited and flushed, Vera scurried to John Sughrue’s door, took a deep breath, and knocked.

Hard.

During the months of July and August 2012, Billy Constable was assigned the responsibility of running the heavyweight boxing champion of Europe’s training camp at Grossinger’s Resort Hotel in the Catskill Mountains.

This meant the postponement and possible ruination of Billy’s chances to win the attentions of Billie Berry. He was getting nowhere, but now getting nowhere would be a sure thing. She would most certainly have a boyfriend by the time he came back to the city. So Billy Constable departed for Grossinger’s with a broken heart made more so by Billie Berry’s indifferent facial expression when she waved good-bye that Friday at five o’clock. Billy wouldn’t be in the office the next week, or for weeks after that, and she knew it.

“I’m leaving tomorrow for a month or so. Wanna grab a quick good-bye beer with me?” he had pleaded earlier in the afternoon.

“No,” she replied curtly, and disappeared down the hall.

“She didn’t even say, ‘No thank you,’” Billy told Jimmy Joel Jenks. “I think she was glad to see me go.”

The two were splitting a hamburger and a beer after work at P. J. Clarke’s on Third Avenue at Fifty-fifth Street. Billy was setting out for the Catskills early the next morning. The two friends stood at the bar eating their half a burger and splitting a bottle of beer.

“My romance is over, JJ,” moaned Billy.

“I don’t think it ever really started,” replied Jimmy Joel Jenks.

“You know what she told me this afternoon? She said, ‘I hope you find a cute girlfriend up there.’”

“Billy, you’re just too dumb to know she’s doin’ you a favor.”

“I am one sick puppy dog.”

“Like my grandma says, ‘You’ll get over it.’”

So young Billy Constable, from the green hills of Kentucky, rode a bus up to the green hills of New York’s Catskill Mountains.