I couldn’t resist calling Elaine to find out how Harker liked her pigtails.

“At first I think he hated them,” she said. “Or maybe he was just stunned.”

“So he didn’t immediately ravish you?”

“It was almost like he was paralyzed. I said something silly like, ‘Don’t you love me anymore?’ He said of course he did. So I asked him to prove it. Not in so many words. Well, more or less in those words. While leading him to bed.”

“How did that work out?”

“Maybe I was too aggressive. I mean we were fucking okay, but I could tell something was wrong. Like he wasn’t really into it. After a while I said something like, ‘Aren’t you going to come?’ He scowled and said, ‘Aren’t you?’ So we kind of separated, him lying on the daybed, me standing next to it. We stared at each other. I’d forgotten all about the pigtails. I said, ‘If I were that French chick, Alyssa, with her hair halfway down her ass, you’d have come sixty-nine times by now.’ He kind of scoffed. He said, ‘Not sixty-nine times.’ ‘How many then?’ I asked. ‘Thirty-three?’ he said. Like he wasn’t sure. A moment later we both laughed.”