Her face changed from a smile to embarrassment, consternation. She shrugged the coat back on and wrapped it around herself and sank down onto the couch into a near fetal position and began to moan. "I've blown it again. I'm so stupid! I can't believe I—"

"No, no, Mad, it's all right, I just—I mean it was sweet of you, but that isn't what I wanted the other night, I just—"

"But that was supposed to be a real turn-on or whatever, that's what the article said—"

He laughed out loud.

"Don't laugh at me," she said miserably. "I'm sitting here naked in a coat with a polyester lining and polyester gives me a rash."

"No, come here, come with me." He got her up from the couch, trying not to notice how the coat fell open and she couldn't really close it efficiently with him holding one of her hands. "Come here."

He led her into his bedroom. "You have to see this," he said. He bent down and picked up the whole stack of sex manuals he had been studying. "Were you reading, perhaps, one of these?"

She looked at the sides and it dawned on her what they meant. She laughed, too. "Oh, you're kidding. You, too? There's another person on this planet as naïve as me?"

"Maybe most people are like us," said Quentin. "They're just ashamed to admit it."

"No, nobody gets to their thirties as ignorant as we are. How did two freaks like us ever get lucky enough to find each other?"

"Listen, Mad, let me tell you something. I'm glad to know you have such a beautiful body. Such a... terrific body. Such a..."

"I get the idea."