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happened to women’s liberation?”
    “Dill happened to it,” I said. “Dill’s even talking about an engagement ring. She says if I’m going to be miles away in another college while she’s at Wheaton, I’d better cough up an engagement ring.”
    “Does she really think that’ll stop you?”
    “I think she thinks it’ll stop her. She says she wants to be a real bride, wear white, and have a real old-fashioned wedding night.”
    “Oh, one of those. With the groom so twisted on champagne he can’t get it up, off somewhere in the mountains with a heart-shaped tub in the bathroom.”
    We laughed, and Pete gave my arm a sock. “You’ve got to turn on the charm, Ricky. ‘J’ai tant rêvé de toi qu’il nest plus temps sans doute que je m’éveille.’”
    It was from the same poem that Nicki had mentioned the night before. For a second I felt my blood jump as I remembered Nicki leaning across the table in Sweet Mouth, watching me with her green eyes … “I have dreamed so much of you that it is no longer right for me to awaken.”
    I said, “Is that the only French poem you know?”
    “It’s the only one I know you know … Maybe a night in New York is just what you and Dill need.”
    “Dad’s not going to change his mind. You know Dad.”
    “You can all stay at my place. I’ll move out for the weekend. I’ll stay with Stan and Tina down in SoHo.”
    “Would you do that, Pete?”
    “Anything to get you laid. Tell Dad the girls are staying someplace else. Tell him you prefer my place because it’s nearer all the action.”
    “I probably won’t get laid. I’m not doing a good job of sowing my wild oats before I get married. Dill will probably be the only woman I ever have in my entire life.”
    “Why don’t you play hard to get yourself?” Pete said. “Give Dill some of her own medicine. Tell her The Neanderthal Man and On the Fast Side can have the bedroom. Tell her you’ll sleep in my reclining chair, and she can have the couch. That couch folds out into a bed. You don’t have to mention that … Turn the tables on Dill. She’ll come around.”
    “Oh, a new approach. Approach number four thousand and four.”
    “Try it,” Pete urged. “There’s someone in my Great Writers’ Group who does P.R. work for rock bands. I think I can get you tickets to the Springsteen concert, too.”
    I couldn’t wait to call Dill and tell her.

Chapter Four
    T HE NEXT MORNING PETE was still too sick to drive back to New York with Dad. He was taking the afternoon jitney. Dad said he’d drop me off at school, on his way out of Seaview. That gave him the chance to get on my case about painting the kitchen chairs.
    “When you go home for lunch, I want you to speak to Pete about putting Oscar to sleep, too,” Dad said as he drove toward Seaview High. “Oscar’s too feeble now to enjoy life.”
    “Pete will never do it. Pete loves that old mutt. So do I.”
    “That’s why it should be done. You’re doing Oscar a favor.”
    “Dad? You’re always leaning on Pete. If he told you he’d finished The Skids, you’d say, Well, it’s not published. If he said it was already a screenplay, you’d say, Well, it’s not produced yet—the same way you keep telling him Southworth is nowhere.”
    “Pete doesn’t finish what he starts!”
    “You didn’t let him finish his Ph.D. If you wanted him to be a college professor, you should have let him finish it.”
    “I would have let him. But I wouldn’t pay for it. Pete wasn’t working hard at it. Your grandfather paid for four years of my college. I wasted most of those years … drinking beer, chasing the girls, sowing my wild oats.”
    I was sitting sideways in the front seat watching him. It was hard to imagine Dad younger, drinking beer and chasing girls.
    “I don’t see you as the campus make-out artist,” I said.
    “If I’d stayed one, you mightn’t have seen me at all. Ever. I wouldn’t have been able to afford a family. Luckily, the money