Before I ask you some questions, perhaps you would like some tea?”

“That would depend on what kind of tea you were of ering.”

“So dif ident! Suppose it was Earl Grey.”

I shook my head. “Tastes like pencil shavings.”

“Lady Grey.”

“I don’t drink beverages named after beheaded monarchs. It seems so tacky.”

“Chamomile?”

“Might as well sip but erfly wings.”

“Green tea?”

“You can’t be serious.”

The old woman nodded her approval. “I wasn’t.”

“Because you know when a cow chews grass? And he or she chews and chews and chews? Well, green tea tastes like French-kissing that cow after it’s done chewing all that grass.”

“Would you like some mint tea?”

“Only under duress.”

“English breakfast.”

I clapped my hands. “Now you’re talking!”

The old woman made no move to get the tea.

“I’m afraid I’m out,” she said.

“No worries,” I replied. “Do you want your boot back in the meantime?”

I handed it her way and she took it for a moment before handing it back to me.

“This was from my majoret e days,” she said.

“You were in the army?”

“An army of cheer, Dash. I was in an army of cheer.”

There was a series of urns on the bookshelf behind her. I wondered if they were decorative or if they contained some of her relatives’

remains.

“So what else can I tell you?” I asked. “I mean, to get you to reveal Lily to me.” She triangled her fingers under her chin. “Let’s see. Are you a bed wet er?”

“Am I a …?”

“Bed wet er. I am asking if you are a bed wet er.”

I knew she was trying to get me to blink. But I wouldn’t.

“No, ma’am. I leave my beds dry.”

“Not even a lit le drip every now and then?”

“I’m trying hard to see how this is germane.”

“I’m gauging your honesty. What is the last periodical you read methodically?”

“Vogue. Although, in the interest of full disclosure, that’s mostly because I was in my mother’s bathroom, enduring a rather long bowel movement. You know, the kind that requires Lamaze?”

“What adjective do you feel the most longing for?”

That was easy. “I will admit I have a soft spot for fanciful.”

“Let’s say I have a hundred million dollars and o er it to you. The only condition is that if you take it, a man in China will fall o his bicycle and die. What do you do?”

“I don’t understand why it mat ers whether he’s in China or not. And of course I wouldn’t take the money.” The old woman nodded.

“Do you think Abraham Lincoln was a homosexual?”

“All I can say for sure is that he never made a pass at me.”

“Are you a museumgoer?”

“Is the pope a churchgoer?”

“When you see a flower painted by Georgia O’Keef e, what comes to mind?”

“That’s just a transparent ploy to get me to say the word vagina, isn’t it? There. I’ve said it. Vagina.”

“When you leave a public bus, is there anything special that you do?”

“I thank the driver.”

“Good, good,” she said. “Now—tell me your intentions regarding Lily.”

There was a pause. Perhaps too long a pause. Because, to be forthright, I hadn’t really thought about my intentions. Which meant I had to think aloud while answering.

“Well,” I said, “it’s not as if I’ve come to take her to the sock hop, or ask her to go double-spooning in some tapioca, if that’s what you

“Well,” I said, “it’s not as if I’ve come to take her to the sock hop, or ask her to go double-spooning in some tapioca, if that’s what you mean. We’ve already established my position on dill ying and dall ying, which right now is chaste with a chance for inveterate lust, depending on the ripeness of our rst interactions. I have been told by a source of surprising trustworthiness that I must not paint her too much with my ideas of her, and my intention is to follow that advice. But really? Completely uncharted territory here. Terra enigma. It could be a future or it could be a folly. If she’s cut from your cloth, I have a sense we might get along.”

“I think she’s still guring out her pat ern,” the woman told me. “So I won’t comment on the cloth. I nd her to be a delight. And while sometimes delights can be tiresome, mostly they are …”

“Delightful?” I of ered.

“Pure. They’re burnished by their own hopes.”

I sighed.

“What is it?” the old woman asked.

“I’m persnickety,” I confessed. “Not, incidentally, to the point of being snarly. But still. Delightful and persnickety are not a common blend.”

“Do you want to know why I never married?”

“The question wasn’t at the top of my list,” I admit ed.

The old woman made me meet her eye. “Listen to me: I never married because I was too easily bored. It’s an awful, self-defeating trait to have. It’s much bet er to be too easily interested.”

“I see,” I said. But I didn’t. Not then. Not yet.