“Come on! Meet me at Penn Station in half an hour.”

“But I can’t. I’m not ready.”

“What are you wearing?”

“Just old shorts and a T-shirt.”

“Then you’re ready.”

I met him at Penn Station, in half an hour, wearing what I had surmised to be a sailing outfit, strewn from the unhung heaps of clothes lying on the bedroom floor. I had on black ballet pumps, black pedal pushers that I had to struggle to zip, a white and navy horizontal-striped T-shirt that strained under the duress of Play-Doh breasts. I wore fresh red lipstick and large glasses tinted blue. The maybe-maybe hairdo was hidden under a yellow scarf tied around my head.

He met me, wearing flip-flops, paint-spattered surfer shorts, and a tank top that emphasized his broad shoulders and muscular arms. His hair was arranged in punky Afro twists, the one aspect of his appearance that appeared to have required effort and forethought.

He stretched his enormously long legs across the compartment, resting his feet on my thighs.

Though I darted my eyes away from him in what I had always taken to be the internationally acknowledged sign for “Stop talking now, please,” Sebastian maintained a steady stream of conversation, most of it babble. Closing my eyes, I let the babble lick my limbs, like warm waves. He didn’t seem to mind my zoning out. In fact, he too seemed to have zoned out, only through words rather than silence.

An hour passed amiably this way and I realized that one needn’t understand someone, or even attempt to understand them, to find their presence soothing. We got off the train by the Jersey shore, where we were met by a middle-aged lady in a silver Range Rover.

“This is my mother.” Sebastian’s mother was about the same height as me but far more beautiful. She wore khakis, pink patent leather flats, and a white turtleneck. Around her swan neck hung a slim diamond crucifix that glittered in the sun. “Hello, Mrs. Chase. So nice to meet you.” I wanted to add that I had heard so much about her, but I hadn’t, except for in my own head.

They had an exhaustive library in their house. Check Chekhov, check Dostoevsky, check Sartre, check Henry James and Jane Austen, check stories of James Baldwin and plays of Harold Pinter. I couldn’t find any embarrassing books, not one Jackie Collins or Len Deighton. On a top shelf I spied the autobiography of LL Cool J, but, reaching up to grab it, I found it stiff and unread, not a single page bent.

Mrs. Chase made spaghetti, while Sebastian wove his arms around his mother’s trim waist. I beamed inwardly because mommy’s boys are always good at cunnilingus. Mrs. Chase retired to her room to read and we got back into the car, trailing a cut-glass moon round the forks in the road.