The Russian services were glorious. They were still in progress when we left the church around two. We found a diner on 14th Street and drank coffee with our mouths and each other with our eyes. I asked her where she was from, where she was living. She quoted Omar: “I came like water and like wind I go.” And, more specifically, she said that she did not presently have any place to stay. She had been living with some hippies on East 10th Street but had moved out that afternoon; everyone was high all the time, she said, and nobody really did anything, and she had had enough of that sort of thing.

“Come to my place,” I said.

“All right.”

“Come live with me and be my love.”

“Yes.”

And as our taxi raced from the Lower East Side to the Upper West Side, she settled her head on my shoulder. “I have things to tell you,” she said. “I am Phaedra Harrow. I am eighteen years old.”

“Half my age. Do you believe in numerology? I think the implications are fascinating-”

“I am a virgin.”

“That’s extraordinary.”

“I know.”

“Uh-”

Her hand pressed my arm. “I am not anti-sex or frigid or a lesbian or anything. And I don’t want to be seduced or talked into it. People try all the time-”

“That’s not hard to believe.”

“-but it’s not what I want. Not now. I want to see the whole world. I want to find things out, I want to grow. I’m talking too much now. When I drink too much I talk too much. But I want you to understand this. I would like to stay with you, to live with you, if you still want me to. But I don’t want to make love.”