I believe Janet felt at ease, too. She was standing close to me, and had draped a pretty striped sweater over her bare shoulders. We were looking away from each other, watching the parade of another city night.

Completely without having planned to do it, I said, “Would you want to go out on the river?”

She turned her face toward me and her eyes were slightly wide and it was easy to see that she’d had a little tickle of understanding what I’d meant, or had made a good guess, and the idea was exciting to her.

“I have a key to the BU boathouse. Have you ever been out in a racing shell? Would you want to?”

“Wouldn’t we need another seven or eight people to fill it up?”

“They have some that are made for two.”

“Are you going to drown me?”

“Not unless one of us makes a huge mistake.”

She moved her eyes in small jumps across my face, and I wondered if I’d pushed the elastic edges of our nice easiness too far too fast and it was going to break open and all the good air between and around us was going to rush off up Newbury Street. I stood still and let myself be looked at. In a situation like that, it is the next thing to impossible for a man to imagine the kind of fear a woman is capable of feeling. I knew that, at least. I knew there was no reason for her to be afraid in that way, and knew I couldn’t say so.

“How weird are you?” she asked. “Really.”

“Weird within normal boundaries.”

She looked at me for another five or six seconds.

“The water will be flat on a night like this. The moon’s almost full. I rowed four years in college, I even have a Head of the Charles medal, and I can give you a written guarantee you won’t fall in.”

“Is it hard exercise?”

“Not tonight.”

More of the dark eyes on me. I liked it. I was innocent, I was good. I had, for some reason, not even been having indecent thoughts. I wasn’t trying to charm her or seduce her or Joe Date her; I was just feeling something different, some freedom I didn’t usually feel on first dates, didn’t usually feel at all. Had never really felt, in fact.