For the next hour, we went around the National Gallery assessing butts. There are a lot of naked butts in classical paintings. Big, proud, classical butts everywhere, sometimes draped with a little cloth for flavor. We favored the bigger butts with the most detail. We gave points for best cracks, best dimpling, and best smiley curvature around the upper thigh. We differed on only one issue: I liked the reclining butts, Jerome liked the action butts. Butts leading people into battle, butts about to get on a horse, butts giving speeches, butts looking dramatic. Those were his kind of butts. I liked the way the more relaxed butts squished on one side, and the cheeky over-the-shoulder look most of their owners gave. “Behold,” they seemed to say. “Amazing, isn’t it?”

Within an hour, we had three excellent butts on our list. We made notes about the paintings, the periods, the colors, the context, all that. We had just gone back into one of the smaller galleries, one full of tiny paintings, when I felt Jerome standing much closer to me than he really needed to.

“Now, that,” he said, “is a fine butt.”

I looked around. This was primarily a fruit room, with a few paintings of angry priests thrown in for kicks. Only one painting was blocked from my view by a woman standing right in front of it. The woman was wearing a very form-fitting kneelength skirt with a red swing jacket with cropped arms. The jacket stopped right at her waistline, so her butt was well displayed. She even wore seamed black stockings and low, thick heels. Her bobbed hair was elaborately arranged in tight curls, close to the head.

From the loopy smile on his face and the way he was craning his neck a little, I finally figured out that he meant my butt, not hers. It took me a second to realize Jerome could come out with a line that bad—and mean it. I wasn’t even sure how my butt looked in my Wexford skirt. Gray, I guessed. Kind of woolly. But there was a goofy sincerity to his effort that made me flush. We were going to public kiss. Actually here, in this museum, in front of real people and possibly our classmates.

“Sorry,” he said. “I had to say it.”

“It’s okay,” I said, stepping closer. “But I think she heard you.”

“What?” he asked.

We were pretty much face-to-face now, whispering to each other.

“I think she heard you.”

“Who heard me?”

“The lady.”

“What lady?”

We were chest-to-chest and stomach-to-stomach. I had my hands on his waist. He put his hands on my hips as well, but he wasn’t making a kissing face. He was making a “what are you talking about?” face, which is squishier.