“That’s not true.”

“It’s not?”

“Sometimes we hold hands during the picture.”

“Be still my heart. Is it some sort of platonic thing, Bern? You’re soul mates and there’s no real physical attraction?”

“No,” I said. “Believe me, that’s not it.”

“Then what’s going on?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Have you just been playing it ultracool? Waiting for her to make the first move?”

“No,” I said. “The first night I offered to see her home. I didn’t really have anything in mind beyond possibly kissing her good night, but she said no, she’d take her own cab, and I didn’t press it. I was just as glad. Why ride all the way across town just so I could ride all the way back again?”

“Is that where she lives? On the East Side?”

“I think so.”

“You don’t know where she lives?”

“Not exactly.”

“Not exactly?”

“I mentioned that I lived just a few blocks from the Musette. And she said I was lucky, that she lived a long ways away.”

“Didn’t you ask where?”

“Of course I did.”

“And?”

“‘Oh, a great distance,’ she said, and then she changed the subject. What was I going to do, cross-examine her? And what real difference does it make where she lives?”

“Especially since you’re never going to wind up there.”

I sighed again. “The third or fourth date, I forget when, I suggested she might like to see my apartment. ‘Someday,’ she said. ‘But not tonight, Bear-naaard.’”

“‘Bear-naaard.’”

“That’s how she says it. You know something? I hate rejection.”

“How unusual.”

“I mean I really can’t stand it. She was very nice about it, but all the same I felt like an oaf for asking.”

“So you never made another move?”