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handsome is as handsome does. Really, you have done handsomely. Music,for example, is only your hobby, and yet you play three instruments. Everyone agrees you are a masterful raconteur, and yet a temperate man (that last, indeed, was the greatest obstacle to my plot). You have a graceful and generous mind. What was the last spiteful comment you made? There are none within my memory. Your minor virtues are countless: you leave proper tips, you hang up your clothes, you are not too proud to take buses. This is just living, you would say, and yet all those thank-you notes add up. Not wishing to embarrass you, I will drop the subject, adding only that we both know what a remarkable child you were and that you have been steadily successful.
    When the coffee cup was heavy in my hands, you sat down on the table and looked at me. “I’m concerned for you,” you said. I was flattered. When you leaned forward, you smelled like tobacco, wool, and skin. The bowls of your cobalt irises float well above the lower lids, and there is white in them like skeletons. I had never noticed that before. The pupils dilated. You do like me. It was time to take your face between my palms and gain your favors with one passionate, authoritative, skilled, yet vulnerable kiss. I said, “Harley is threatening to cut his throat again.” I hadn’t heard from Harley, but it’s a threat he offers preferred women every few months.
    “When did he call?”
    “My mother is dying.”
    “Of what?”
    “The police beat up my grandfather for passing out deaf-and-dumb cards.”
    “Both your grandfathers are dead.”
    “My sister anticipated a walk light, and a taxi ran over her feet.”
    “What did you do today?”
    “I washed DDT off infant peas and baby onions. What do you think of babies, Jeffrey?”
    “They’re very flavorful.” This game we play when I want to inform you tactfully that I am strong enough for the urban nightmare. Your concern must have been assuaged; you removed to a chair beyond the table. We talked about the granular universe, as I remember.
    “Please have a brownie?” My offer perhaps seemed tiresome. For me, I knew you would. I did, too. They tasted indescribably musty. I wanted to say, “It’s only the marijuana.” You were too polite to mention it. You must have felt hungry, because you had another. Then another. I wanted to ask, “And why do you prefer men, Jeffrey?” but I merely said, “You smell good,” and got up to clear the table. We had cleaned the chicken of every morsel of flesh. When I came back, you were asleep. Post nitrates, post Hitler, post strontium-90, I got a hand mirror out of my purse and held it before your nostrils. A healthy fog. Still, I was disappointed. You would indeed be staying the night, but in a near coma.
    Woman, Jeffrey. Joy, by Jean Patou, a dollar a dab. Fragrant, smooth, rosy. Draped in fragrant (lavender), smooth (silk spun by the very worms themselves), and abundant tissues of robin’s egg and full-bodied burgundy. Woman standing in a draft in her tawny stockings regarding her erect nipples with her brown but really yellow eyes, her black hair shifted shinily forward in the light, her clean clean clean face, every pore purged. Let me tell you, J., that I, too, have fallen asleep
in media seductione
. But good heavens, he was not only a freshman given to wearing an orange and black stocking cap to bed on football weekends; he had three splintedfingers and was there on a wrestling scholarship. I removed your shoes.
    After finishing the dishes, dusting and wiping out the china cabinet, mopping the floors, washing the woodwork, replacing the light bulb in the front-hall closet and the one in the back pantry, Windexing the mirrors, sorting through all my makeup bottles and the medicine chest, and hemming up a new dress, I removed your jacket.
    Frankly, Jeffrey, the building of model ships for nautical museums and private collections is nothing so much as honorable. You fashion every