“I can’t. She’ll charge me a cancellation fee. And things are at a pretty delicate stage with her.”

“Meaning things are not so delicate in my case?”

“No, I don’t mean that at all,” I said, holding the necktie I had chosen next to the shirt hanging on a chairback. “But don’t forget: We’ve got this rule not to trespass on each other’s lives. You eat dinner with your fiancé and I’ll have a date with my girlfriend. What’s wrong with that?”

“You know what’s wrong with that. Look how long it’s been since you’ve seen him. You met him once, and that was four months ago. It’s just not right. Every time I arrange something, you run away. Don’t you see how rude you’re being? He’s your sister’s fiancé. It wouldn’t kill you to have dinner with him once.”

She had a point there, so I kept quiet. In fact, I had been trying to avoid crossing paths with him, but to me it seemed the most natural thing in the world to do. We had nothing in common to talk about, and it was exhausting to tell jokes using my sister as a simultaneous interpreter.

“Will you please just join us this once? If you’ll do that much for me, I promise I won’t interfere with your sex life till the end of the summer.”

“My sex life is pretty feeble at the moment. It might not make it through the summer.”

“You will be home for dinner this Sunday, though, won’t you?”

“How can I say no?”

“He’ll probably fix the stereo for us. He’s good at that.”

“Good with his hands, huh?”

“You and your dirty mind,” she said, and hung up.

I put on my necktie and went to work.

The weather was clear all that week. Each day was like a continuation of the previous one. Wednesday night, I called my girlfriend to say we couldn’t get together on the weekend. She was understandably annoyed: We hadn’t seen each other for three weeks. Receiver still in hand, I dialed the college girl I had made a date with for Sunday, but she was out. She was out again on Thursday and on Friday.

My sister woke me up at eight o’clock on Sunday morning. “Get out of bed, will you? I have to wash the sheets.”

She stripped the sheets and pillowcase and ordered me out of my pajamas. My only refuge was the bathroom, where I showered and shaved. She was getting to be more and more like our mother. Women are like salmon: In the end, they all swim back to the same place.