“The Mann Act, isn’t it?”

“Something like that.”

So with bright conversation of that sort we settled it. The book would be written. It would be in the form of a novel. We would take turns writing chapters, each of us writing in the first person from our own points of view. Of course, we would make up some conversation, because no one but Truman Capote remembers everything said to him word for bloody word (and I don’t believe he does, either, for that matter).

“And,” Harry emphasized, “we make it sexy.”

“It would be hard not to,” Priss said. “After all, sex is what it’s about, isn’t it?”

“Sex is what we’re about, love.”

“Sex,” Harry said, “is what sells.”

“Hear, hear.”

“Let’s all go upstairs,” Priss said, through an embryonic yawn, “and go to bed-”

“Hear, hear!”

“-and do unspeakable things to one another, and tomorrow you can start writing about them.”

“Who can?”

“You can,” Priss said, to me.

“I think we should draw lots,” I said. “I’m not entirely certain that I want to-what are you doing? Oh.”

This last was directed to Harry, who had taken up pad and pencil and who was sketching a suburban development. In other words, drawing lots.

“You go first,” Priss said, firmly. “You’re the writer.”

“Well, not exactly that.”

“And it was your idea.”

“Oh.”

So we went upstairs, and to bed, and whether the things we did to one another were speakable or not depends on your point of view, I would say.

And that was longer ago than yesterday, though not by much. I didn’t get directly to work on this. I tend to procrastinate. What you put off until tomorrow, I have found over the years, you frequently don’t ever have to do at all. Occasionally someone comes along and does it for you. Occasionally a problem you have been avoiding goes and solves itself.