The following day she worked until six, then met Hal in an outdoor place where they shared guacamole. There was this sweetness between them, an echo of extreme youth. He drove her to basically a flophouse where he was renting a bare room, saving every penny till he made it as an actor. He really was beautiful, with long, slender arms and those legs that she had always called “fried chicken legs” when they were kids because they were tanned with blond hairs all over them that made her think of glistening grease. He told her how weird it was that she had turned up at the bookstore like that because in the past year he had started thinking of her a lot and regretting how they had parted. The next few days she was over at his room often, talking and doing a little kissing, but they didn’t make love. They just reminisced about the past and stared into each other’s eyes. Hal claimed that he didn’t want to be with Justine physically unless they were together as a couple, because he was in love with her and he would be too hurt if it didn’t work out. So now, here she was, wallowing in nostalgia with Hal in his flophouse while Elliot waited in the three-month apartment for her to get back to the nostalgia she felt for him and their days in college. She was trapped in a kaleidoscope of nostalgia. She returned to New York and the confusion continued. She and Elliot shared hilarious dinners and then went to bed and stared at the ceiling. Hal flew east to see his mother but also to be with Justine. He invited her to go to his mother Sybil’s house near Rochester. Justine knew Sybil from the days she and Hal went out in boarding school and she had come upstate for the weekend, Sybil banging on the locked door of Hal’s room yelling, “Do-not-get-that-girl-pregnant!” as Justine read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on Hal’s bed, fully clothed. But Sybil did have a point.

Justine knew if she went to Hal’s mother’s house this would be a statement that she and Hal were going to be together. She could not decide whether to go or not. Elliot was at his brother’s house in White Plains babysitting the palsied dog for the weekend and she spent an afternoon in an agony of indecision. Then, as she wondered what to do, she found herself packing her bag to go visit Hal at his mother’s place; that was how she discovered what she had decided.