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redundantly, “I brought you some coffee.”
    This time I squinted, which was safer, and vaguely made out her female form. Liz, or possibly Betty. Which one was it? Come to think of it, which one was I?
    â€œDo you want your glasses?”
    Ah hah, a clue. Glasses = Bart. “Sweetheart” said to Bart = Betty.
    Sweetheart? Betty? What bed was I in? “Glasses,” I muttered, feeling sudden urgency, and waved a hand in the air until my spectacles were thrust into it. I donned them without sticking the wings in my eyes and blinked around at a bedroom I knew from somewhere. Good God, there was the closet, its door demurely closed. I was upstairs once more in the Kerner house, and had apparently spent the night.
    Oh, really? I struggled to a sitting position, my back against the knurled wood headboard, and looked fuzzily around. This room was furnished with twin beds, in one of which I was roiling about and on the edge of the other of which Betty was sitting, cheerful and not at all hung over, crisp and cute in white shorts and a pale blue top.
    She smiled at me. “Hung over?”
    â€œI think it’s terminal.”
    â€œI brought you some aspirin.”
    â€œGimme.”
    She watched me struggle the aspirin down with gulps of coffee, and her expression was fond and indulgent and maternal, three of my least favorite mannerisms in a woman.
    It was hard to think and swallow aspirin at the same time, but I forced myself. Last night: romantic evening, motorboat, Pewter Tankard. Betty had informed me she never drank anything stronger than wine, so I’d seen to it the table flowed with the stuff. Sherry beforehand, Moselle with the appetizer, Médoc with the entree, and stingers with dessert. (The wine limitation had fallen by then.) I did remember the stingers, but from then on memory faltered. There was a scene involving hilarious laughter and me failing to get out of a boat There was something to do with whether or not we were going to steal bicycles. Beyond that, a veil covereth all.
    At last I abandoned the effort and put the coffee cup on the night table between the beds, saying, “God, what a head.”
    â€œI guess you’re just not used to wine.”
    â€œThat might be it.”
    â€œYou know, you look a lot more like your brother with your glasses off, and your hair tousled that way.”
    I whipped a guilty hand to my head, but could do nothing effective there, and permitted it to drop again to my side.
    â€œHave you ever thought of trying contact lenses?”
    â€œOh, well,” I said. “Glasses are good enough for me.” They were hurting my nose.
    â€œYou’re really very good-looking, you know,” she said, and when I looked at her it seemed to me there was something possessive, possibly triumphant in the set of her head and the glint of her eye.
    Had we? There are things you don’t forget, aren’t there? Aren’t there? I was naked beneath the sheet and thin blanket. Speak, memory. Goddamn it to hell. But memory remained silent. And that is one question it is never possible to ask a woman. They don’t take kindly to the thought of being forgettable. “I think,” I said, “you should take cover. I believe my head is about to explode.”
    â€œI’ll massage your temples,” she offered. “I do that for Liz sometimes when she has hangovers, and she says it helps just wonderfully.”
    â€œAnything,” I said.
    So she moved over to sit on my bed, remove my glasses, and began stroking my temples with her cool fingers. It did nothing for me in any medical way, but it did put her in arm’s reach, so I slid a hand around her waist The smile she gave me was very nearly as lewd as her sister’s, and she said, “Again? You’d better rest.”
    Ah hah, another clue. Again, was it? I stroked a breast and drew her close and murmured, “It’s the only known cure. A medical