Well, it’s my book, so let’s say it all starts on the April afternoon when I came home from Gaynor Junior High and found Sally in the kitchen, which was strange right away, because it was a Tuesday. Sally’s a vocal coach and piano teacher—back in NewYork she worked with people who wanted to sing opera. A couple of her voice students were in the chorus at the Met, and I think there was one doing small parts with City Opera. She’s never had anyone famous, so she always had to teach piano, too, which she didn’t like nearly as much. The singers mostly lived downtown, and she went to their homes on different days, but all the piano people came to our place, and they always came on Thursday, the whole gang, one after another; she scheduled it like that on purpose, to get it over with. But Tuesdays Sally never got home until six at the earliest, so it was a little weird seeing her sitting at the kitchen table with her shoes off and one foot up on the step stool. She was eating a carrot, and she looked about eleven years old.

We don’t look anything alike, by the way. She’s tall, and she’s got this absolutely devastating combination of dark hair and blue eyes, and I don’t know if she’s actually beautiful, but she’s graceful, which I will never be in my life, that’s just something I know. In the last couple of years my skin’s gotten some better—because of the English climate, Sally says—and Meena’s taught me stuff to do with my hair, and I’m actually developing something that’s practically a shape. So there’s hope for me yet, but that’s not like being graceful. It doesn’t bother me. I can live with it.

“They fired you,” I said. “All of them, all at once. A detriment to their careers. We’re going to be selling T-shirts in Columbus Circle.”