Ted skipped to the “class notes” section, where alums wrote in to brag about their lives: “Carlton and I and our seven children (You heard that right, kids—number seven appeared on the scene in February!) spent the summer in Bellagio . . .” “Win just sold his biotech firm and retired at the ripe old age of thirty-three . . .” “Caroline, whose candidacy for governor . . .” He mangled a paper clip as he read.

Ted had never sent in a class note, not even to announce that he and fellow Foggy Bott-iam Allison Cole were engaged to be married, which was the kind of thing that gave alums heart palpitations.

Ted had only had one girlfriend before he met Allison: Margie Kastanienbaum, from Pittsburgh, a pert biology major he’d met in his Philosophy and Religion class freshman year. When he told Margie he loved her after they had sex for the first time, she laughed out loud, thus squelching his plans to give her a pre-engagement ring, to be replaced by a real diamond upon graduation.

There was no further sex for Ted the rest of freshman year. Nor sophomore or junior. He didn’t really mind. Sex, in Ted’s mind, was equivalent with pressure. Pressure to perform. Pressure to please. He’d grown all but indifferent to it in recent years, which was normal as you got older, he supposed. He made a better older man than a younger one, always had—opting to go home weekends to do laundry instead of attending frat parties, choosing the spot on the bunk bed with his brother instead of the sliver of a twin bed in a girl’s dorm room.

Then, senior year, he moved to the group house on 39th Street and everything changed. His room was on the first floor, and Allison’s directly above. She was not just the only girl in the house, but his dream girl. She was petite, with curly auburn hair, and eyes that went from green to gray to blue—sometimes during a single conversation. Allison always had time to talk, and sometimes invited Ted along when she roamed the city, taking photographs. She took in strays, from dogs, to cats, to humans, offering them all a home and warm meals, and, for the humans, symptom-tailored herbal teas when they were under the weather. She was like Wendy in Peter Pan. All five of the guys in the house were in love with her.