I know, I know, writing it down now it looks like a reasonable, really friendly thing to say to somebody who hadn’t been the least bit friendly to him since the day Sally introduced us. And I know it makes me look totally pathetic to say that I just sort of nodded and mumbled, “I guess,” and made a lightning get-away to my room and Mister Cat and my favorite radio station that I wasn’t going to be able to get in London. But the thing is, I didn’t want him to be reasonable, I wanted him to be cold and mean, or anyway at least stupid, so I wouldn’t have to worry about his feelings, or about liking him better than Norris. He was probably a better person than Norris in a lot of ways, I already knew that. So a lot of people are, so what? It didn’t make any difference to me.

Back then, I didn’t even know what Evan did for a living. I didn’t want to know. Sally told me he was an agricultural biologist, doing stuff for the English government on and off, but I didn’t have any idea what that meant, except that she said he talked to farmers a lot. He’d been in Iowa or Illinois, someplace like that, going to seminars and conventions, and then he’d come on to New York, I don’t remember why, and that’s how he became definitely my mother’s only pickup ever. They met at a concert—I think she wanted me to go with her, but I went over to Marta’s instead—and Sally came floating home that night, late as Mister Cat, bouncing into my room to tell me she’d met this sweet, funny English person, and they’d gotten thrown out of the West End, not for being drunk, but for sitting and laughing for hours without drinking at all. When she went off to bed, I heard her for the longest time, still laughing to herself.