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precious. After she died, I got out an old photograph of her and kissed it in the same way, to make myself feel that she had been loved, loved by me as best I could. Now it happened that Felicity kissed me in just that way, carefully, setting one small kiss right next to another, and when she came to my lips, I lay still while she worked over their contours and then down my neck. When she was done, she sighed and lay back quietly. Her hand stroked my arm, up and down. She was bold indeed. She touched me without shyness or embarrassment, or what you might call a sense of proprietorship. I had never felt anything like it. She sighed again.
    I said, “Are you okay?”
    “Right as rain.” We were silent and still. Her hand came up and pushed her thick dark hair out of her face. She spoke softly and sleepily. “What time is it?”
    “After two.”
    “Oh, not that late.”
    I laughed at this very Baldwin sort of reply.
    “What do you have to eat around here?”
    Ten minutes later, Felicity was wrapped in my bathrobe, frying up cheeseburgers in the kitchen. I was sitting by the breakfast bar in my jeans and a T-shirt, watching her. She did it just the way a woman with a husband and two teenage sons would, slapping the meat around almost unconsciously, peppering it but not salting it, toasting the bread I had scrounged up in lieu of buns, finding onions and tomatoes and lettuce. She said, “I could eat both of these after that. You know, I always thought it was so strange that people would go to sleep after sex. I always want to get up and at least eat a good meal. Going to the grocery store. Now that’s a very sexy thing to do after you’ve been getting it on. All the food looks so appetizing.” She flipped the burgers and hummed a little tune, took the second batch of toast out of the toaster. She said, “So, now tell me why you asked if your condo was burning down? That was such a funny line, Joey. You are so funny.” She pressed the burgers with the spatula.
    “Just a come-on. It popped into my mind.”
    “Pure genius.” She smiled.
    She put the burgers on a couple of plates, arranging the vegetables in neat rings, looked in the pantry and found some potato chips, did it all efficiently and gracefully.
    I said teasingly, “Thanks for the burgers, Mom,” and put my arm around her. What I was really doing was getting inside that force field of honest pleasure again. Then Felicity got up, went over to the cupboard, and rummaged around. She came back with Tabasco sauce, sprinkled it all over her burger, and set it down. “Want some?”
    “I don’t need any of my own. I can feel yours inside my nose.”
    “Those Tabasco-sauce people own something called a salt dome.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Oh, it’s a geological formation where there’s a big pool of oil deep in the ground, then there’s a cap of salt over it. You can extract both, I guess. Tabasco sauce is just a sideline business with them. Their real fortune is in oil. Daddy always said that if any of us ever ran into a McIlhenny, marry him or her quick. But we didn’t.” She finished her burger, not without looking at it appreciatively, then ate her chips, licked her fingers, and sat back. Now was the moment to ask her what we were doing, what it meant, what she thought about it, what was next. Instead, I ate my own hamburger. I was not entirely motivated by uneasiness, or fatigue, or even indecision. Right in there with those heavy hesitant feelings was something lighter and more expansive. Along with my knowledge of all the things that could go wrong here, there was a caroling inner voice that kept repeating, What could possibly go wrong?
    I cleaned up the plates, and we went back to bed. It was bright day when we woke up. While I was rolling over, just beginning to appreciate the sunshine, Felicity bounded out of bed, pushing her hair out of her face. She was smiling and stretching, saying, “Oh, Joey, that was nice. Thank you. I feel much