He is seventeen going on eighteen and I’m sixteen going on seventeen, just like the young lovers who serenade each other in The Sound of Music, which happens to be my favorite movie at the time. The restaurant is very fancy, meaning they serve a variety of conventional meat dishes and a magician comes to your very own table to do tricks.

My father, an otherwise normal man, snacked on entire sticks of butter as a child. I learned this not from him, but from my disapproving Aunt Sandra in the context of a story about her courtship with my uncle. Sandra recalled dutifully shaking hands with three of her suitor’s four brothers and recoiling in horror at the proffered hand of the butter-smeared youngest child.

Mike came in the day after I arrived. I was at Grace’s watching the harbor when a huge white yacht turned the corner into Falmouth. I listened to the radio and heard Mike’s voice call in for dockage, and ran down to the harbor to meet him. His boat was one hundred thirty feet long and gleaming white.

Do not drive to Vallejo to meet him halfway. Even if your life feels airless and you haven't been laid since you called it off with him two months ago. First of all, you've had two glasses of red wine and it probably isn't a good idea to drive on a freeway that will be crowded even on a Sunday night.