“I was only there because I had to walk her from the living room to the front door. I trailed behind. And it was an unheard of mercy, for she was a beauty, blossomed in an instant, and I remained the same awkward peer (only a year older) and barely dared to approach her when we came home for a week. Walking those measly ten feet, I didn’t dare say anything or even touch her, but I secretly hoped that she would do something herself, as a joke, out of pure coquetry, simply because we were together and completely alone. How was she? charming! With that short, shimmering hair, with that undisguised self-confidence that beautiful American women acquire by the age of eighteen, so bold, so jubilantly confident...”