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getting a flat tire on her bicycle tour of the Loire Valley and the fourteen-year-old French boy in a red beret who had fixed her bike and tried to have an affair with her. George made up a song about “ Je voudrais parler à Carla ” which was pretty good. She asked him how things seemed in Bangladesh, but did not mention the Beatles. He asked her if she’d like to come back to his room and listen to some sitar tapes. She had said—her friend Joan still can’t get over this—“I have to get up really early tomorrow” and went back to her cabin.
    The painter was moving toward the door. The guard looked at her watch. In an hour Carla would be in her apartment on East Thirtieth Street stirring canned blueberries into a bowl of ricotta cheese, sitting on the floor by the TV set, watching the news. She would probably get a call from Michael, who was in his third year at Johns Hopkins medical school, was studying for his gastrointestinal exams and didn’t want her to visit until the end of the term, because it might break his concentration.
    She tapped the painter on the arm. He turned around, looked interested but not (as she would be, if it happened to her) startled. She wouldn’t have done this if she had realized how handsome he was. She said, “Do you want to have dinner?”
    Normally, if there was going to be a man coming over, Carla would take at least half an hour arranging things in her apartment. She would bury the magazines like Family Circle underneath a stack of New Yorkers , put something classical on the stereo, or a very unmelodic jazz album somebody once gave her that she doesn’t really like. When she came back to the apartment with Greg there was a pair of underpants on the floor in the hall (she had been late for work, dressed in a hurry, hadn’t remembered those were the ones that never stayed up). There was a three-quarters-eaten Mounds bar on the kitchen counter and a copy of the National Enquirer , bought for a story on Marlon Brando’s life in Tahiti.
    She was not embarrassed. She was surprised to realize that she wasn’t asking a great many questions—where did he come from, what did he do, what brought him to New York, did he have brothers and sisters. He did not volunteer much, but she didn’t find the silence with him uncomfortable. She said, “Like an omelet?” He said, “Sounds good.” She put on the Rolling Stones’ Out of Our Heads and turned on only one light. They sat on floor pillows across from each other. When he chewed she could see all the bones in his face. He smiled at her. She took off her shoes and pulled a couple of bobby pins out of her hair. He said, “Do you have any coffee?” She ground the beans while he chewed one. She put on Bob Dylan, “Lay Lady Lay,” and didn’t worry that it might seem too obvious. He put down his cigarette and moved beside her on the floor. She let the telephone ring for about a minute before it stopped. He unbuttoned her shirt and said, “How does this work?” when he couldn’t undo her bra, which hooked in the front. She had never slept with someone right off like that.
    “You know who that was back at the falls?” Virgil says to Jill, after a minute. The song on the radio is “Rock Lobster.”
    “Some woman that bought the house down the road from my parents,” she says. “She comes into Sal’s sometimes for a doughnut.” They don’t say anything for a minute, listening to the song.
    “Why?” says Jill, grabbing at his crotch and tickling him. “Modest?”
    “I’ve got to get the wheels on this thing realigned,” says Virgil. “Damn potholes.”
    “You know,” says Jill, “you don’t have to pull out before you come anymore. I’m pregnant anyway.”
    “Are you going to start in on that again? You’ve been hanging around too much with crazy girlfriends.”
    “You’ll see,” she says, smiling.
    It’s five-thirty when Greg and Carla reach Ashford. Carla takes out the envelope that has Sally’s