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glistening streaks on the wet pavement-red, green, and yellow mostly. Two young Boston cops strolled past, heading toward Park
    Square, their slickers gleaming in the rain, the plastic covers on their hats looking oddly out of keeping.
    "In all that time," Susan said, "you have spoken maybe for five minutes, total, about your past."
    "My past?"
    "Yes, your past."
    "What is this, an old Bette Davis movie?"
    "No," Susan said. "I know you as I am sure no one in the world knows you.
    But I only know you since we undressed that first time in September 1974.
    I don't to this day know how you got to be what you are. I don't know about other women, about family, about what you were like as a little boy, peeking out at the adult world, trying to grow up, getting scarred in the process."
    "Heavens," I said.
    Susan smiled. Dampened the tip of her tongue with her wine. I drank the rest of my Sam Adams. The waiter noticed and raised an inquiring eyebrow.
    I nodded and he hustled over a fresh bottle on a silver tray.
    "It's a rainy day," Susan said. "We have nothing to do but look at the rain and watch the people go by on whatever street that is out there."
    "You've lived here since the Johnstown flood," I said. "That's Arlington
    Street, runs from Beacon Street in the north to Tremont Street in the South
    End."
    Susan smiled the smile she always smiled when you knew she hadn't the slightest interest in what you were saying, and she knew it, and she knew you knew it.
    "Of course," she said.
    The only other people in the bar were two women at a table, with Bonwit's shopping bags piled on the two empty chairs; and a guy at the bar, reading
    The Wall Street Journal and sipping what looked like a Gibson, up. The women were drinking white wine. Both of them smoked. Susan settled her gaze on me and waited.
    "Well, we had a dog named Pearl," I said.
    "I know that," Susan said. "And I know that you were born in Laramie,
    Wyoming, and that your mother died while she carried you and you were born by caesarean section and your father and your two uncles, who were your mother's brothers, raised you."
    "Me and Macbeth," I said.
    "Not of woman born," Susan said. "But that's all I know."
    "And all ye need to know," I said.
    "Many people would welcome the chance to sit in a quiet bar on a rainy afternoon and talk about themselves to an attentive listener," Susan said.
    "Many people pay one hundred and fifty dollars an hour to come and sit in a quiet office and talk to me about themselves."
    "Do they know you used to wear polka dot panties with a bow?" I said.
    "Most of them don't."
    I drank some beer. I looked out the window at the wet, wind-driven cityscape. The small rain down can rain.
    "My father was a carpenter," I said, "in business with his wife's two brothers. They were very young when I was born. My uncles were seventeen and eighteen. My father was twenty."
    "My God," Susan said. "Children raising children."
    "I suppose so," I said. "But this was the depression, remember, and people grew up early those years. Everyone worked as soon as he could, especially in a place like Laramie."
    "Your father never remarried."
    "No."
    "And your uncles lived with you?"
    "Yeah, until they got married. They both married late. I was in my teens."
    "So you grew up in an all-male household."
    I nodded.
    "My uncles dated a lot, so did my father. There were always girlfriends around. But they didn't have anything to do with the family. The family was us.
    "Three men and a boy," Susan said.
    "Maybe four boys," I said.
    "All unified by a connection to one woman."
    "Yeah."
    "Who was dead," Susan said.
    I nodded.
    "They were all fighters," I said. "My father used to pick up spare money boxing, around the state, at smokers, fairs, stuff like that. And my uncles did the same thing. Heavyweight, all three of them. One uncle fought for a while at light heavy until he filled out."
    "And they taught you."
    "Yeah. I could box as far back as I can remember."
    "What were they