In Mr. Barlow’s new life in New York, he’d broken up with three boyfriends rather quickly. Or had they broken up with him? We’d only heard Elliot’s reasons for finding Eric unsuitable. We never knew what was wrong with Charlie or Dave, but those three guys might have broken up with the snowshoer if he didn’t have sex with them.

“You’re saying the snowshoer never does it—not with women or with men,” I said to Em, who was nodding her head off. She lowered the imaginary gun; she wrapped her arms around herself, looking sad and lonely. What Em wanted us to know was that Mr. Barlow wouldn’t do it—he simply didn’t pull the trigger.

“Bullshit!” Nora said. I knew what Nora thought of guys: they couldn’t leave their dicks alone; guys had to pull the trigger. Em shrugged; she didn’t expect Nora to agree with her. Moreover, Nora was angry that I’d understood what Em meant—I hadn’t needed Nora to translate Em’s pantomime for me.

Yet now I couldn’t understand what Em was saying; she went off on a tangent, pointing to herself and Nora, as if this new pantomime were old business between them. Em was performing a kind of shorthand pantomime—Nora understood her immediately. “Well, that’s entirely different—I get that, Em, but you’re not a guy, for Christ’s sake!” Nora told her.

Em just shrugged; she hadn’t expected Nora to agree with her about this, either. Nora had to explain it to me. When Nora and Em were first together, Em told Nora that she hadn’t been doing it with anyone. If Em hadn’t met Nora, Em said she would have continued not doing it with anyone—not even with another woman. This was what Nora thought was “entirely different” from the idea of the snowshoer not doing it, because Em wasn’t a guy.

It was all just weird to me, and I didn’t really think about it, not then—nor did I have a strong opinion about it. At the time, in the 1970s, it didn’t seem vital to know if Elliot Barlow actually did or didn’t do it—with anybody. At the time, I just knew I couldn’t stop imagining doing it with Em.

I’d noticed that Charlie, the snowshoer’s second boyfriend, was not physically affectionate to the snowshoer in public. Even in the privacy of Mr. Barlow’s apartment, Charlie was restrained in his physical displays of affection; Charlie would rub Elliot’s shoulders when Elliot was standing over the stove, cooking. I would ascribe Charlie’s reticence to his being older—Charlie was Mr. Barlow’s age, and a fellow English teacher. As for Dave, the third fleeting boyfriend, he was a little older than Elliot. Dave didn’t touch Mr. Barlow, not that I saw. “Dr. Dave,” Nora always called him. Dave didn’t specify what kind of doctor he was.

Once, when Nora asked him, Dave seemed purposely evasive about it. “In order for me to see you, your doctor would need to refer you to me,” Dave answered her.