James fiddles with an unlit cigarette. He doesn’t look up when he says, Well, he’s never around now, is he?

He’s around enough, she replies, but her tone is defensive, and James and I both know he hit a nerve.

Before they leave, James grabs Becky’s hand and spins her into his arms as if they’re starring in some old MGM musical.

You know I only give you a hard time because I care, he tells her.

Do me a favor and care a little less, she says. In response, he smiles a smile that lights up the room, and I know that everything between them is okay again.

Saturday morning, I take a page out of my brother’s book (“better to ask for forgiveness than permission”) and leave the house before my dad is awake and complaining. I meet Becky and James outside The Strand. James has his head stuck in a book of Frank O’Hara poetry, and he keeps stopping to read bits of it to us as we walk through the Village.

Becky and I glance in the windows. Pastry shops. A cigar shop where Becky goes in and buys a pack of clove cigarettes. I took the money from my mother’s purse, she says. I figured if she could buy drugs for her boyfriends, she could buy me a pack of cloves.

James pulls his head out of his book to respond, but I shoot him the same look I give Connor when I want him to stay quiet.

We pass a couple of sex shops. James keeps walking. I pretend to look away, glancing out of the corner of my eye. Becky stops in front of the window. Cocks her head. I wonder how you’d use that, she muses.

James and I keep walking forward, and she has to jog to catch up with us.

Later, James asks if we should be worried about Becky.

I don’t know, I reply, but she said she’s worried about you.

Why on earth would she be worried about me?

Before I can think better of it, I jump at the least frightening thing on Becky’s list. She thinks you’re lonely, I say.

He stops, leans back against the wall of a bodega, and takes a long drag on his cigarette. Why does she think that? he asks, measuring his words.

I shrug, regretting I’d said anything. You know her, I say. She thinks everyone should be in love.

James’s eyes cloud over as they seem to do so often these days.

There’s a reason that love is a four-letter word, he says as he pushes off the wall and starts walking again.

We’re quiet until we make our way up the stairs to James’s apartment.

She needs a name, James says, draping himself around an armless mannequin that one of the roommates found on the street. She’s painted gold and wearing a shiny red ball gown with steel-tipped boots and a black scarf decorated with tiny white skulls.