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getting ready to go, Terry came up to me and was all, “Hey, I liked your drawing. Aren’t you that chick who saved the president?”
    Fortunately, he had put his jeans back on by then, so I was able to look him in the eye and go, “Yeah.”
    He nodded and said, “Cool. Thought so. That was, you know, brave. But, uh…what’d you do to your hair?”
    â€œJust wanted a change,” I said brightly.
    â€œOh,” Terry said, appearing to think about that. “Okay. Well, that’s cool.”
    Which isn’t all that reassuring, if you think about it. I mean, seeing as how it was coming from someone who makes a living standing around without any clothes on.
    Still, I guess I wasn’t as cool in the studio as I thought I’d been, since on the way down to the car—David had offered to give me a lift home—he asked, barely able to contain the laughter in his voice, “So, what’d you think of Terry’s…inguinal ligament?”
    I nearly choked on the Certs I’d slipped into my mouth.
    â€œUm,” I said. “I’ve seen bigger.”
    â€œReally?” The laughter disappeared from David’s voice. “His was pretty, um, pronounced.”
    â€œNot as big as some of the ones I’ve seen,” I said, meaning the guys on Manhattan public access.
    Then, seeing the stunned expression on David’s face, I wondered if he knew that’s what I meant—the guys I’d seen on TV, I mean.
    Also, whether we were really talking about inguinal ligaments.
    â€œI just hope it’s a female model next time,” Rob, the Secret Service agent, said, looking sadly down at his drawing pad. “Otherwise, I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do to the guys back at the office.”
    David and I laughed—nervously, in my case. I mean, I was still kind of shocked. I know that, as an artist, and all, I should see a naked body as just that—a naked body, the subject of the piece I was creating.
    It was just that I couldn’t help thinking about David’s you-know-what and wondering if it was as big as Terry’s (probably not, judging by his reaction to my inguinal ligament comment).
    Which of course led me to wonder if I even wanted to see David’s you-know-what. Up until today, I’d been pretty certain I did. You know. Someday.
    Now, I wasn’t so sure.
    Of course, it wasn’t like there’d been all that many opportunities for this kind of thing between us. Trying to find a private moment with the son of the leader of the free world is challenging, to say the least. Especially when there’s always some guy with an earpiece lurking around.
    Still, we did our best. There was my house, of course. My parents have a rule about boys in the bedrooms—i.e., they aren’t allowed in them.
    But my parents aren’t always home. And Theresa’s not usually around on weekends. When everyone else is gone—at one of Lucy’s games, or Rebecca’s qigong demonstrations, or whatever—David and I occasionally get a chance to engage in a little tonsil hockey, and sometimes more than that. Last Sunday, as a matter of fact, things between us got so, well, heated that we didn’t even hear the front door slam. It was only because Manet, my dog, scrambled up from my bedroom floor to go greet whoever it was who’d come home early—Rebecca, dropped off from a friend’s slumber party at the Smithsonian—that we didn’t get caught in an extremely compromising position.
    Not that I imagine Rebecca would have cared. When we came down the stairs, acting like we’d been doing nothing more exciting than homework, she just went, “Did you guys know that trans fats, like the ones found in Oreos, account for only about point five percent of daily calories for Europeans, as opposed to an estimated two point six percent for Americans, and that that’s one reason why