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Mick flung the Frisbee, its long hanging trail of doggy saliva reflected in the sunlight. He said, “So Pam and Myra's major-babe reputation was too much for the Reececake.”

Reece smiled. “That's correct. Froze him solid. Popsicle City.”

Mick watched Foolish trotting back with his Frisbee. Foolish's life was simple. He ate, he slept, he fetched Frisbees. He never read other people's e-mails. He never judged people on the basis of their secret sex lives. He never worried what people thought of him. Mick said, “What would it pay if I went over and talked to those girls?”

Reece gave him a look. “Depends. Zippo, if you're just going to go over there and ask what time it is.” Mick had done that once before to collect this kind of bet.

“No. I mean, what would it pay if I go actually talk to them.”

Reece narrowed his gaze. “We'd be talking a five-minute minimum.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Reece began to get interested. “And what's our A.O.? We've got to have an attainable objective.”

Mick laughed. “Getting Myra Vidal and Pam Crozier to give plebes like us five minutes of their time is the objective.”

But Reece was shaking his head. “Negative on that. Our A.O. is a phone number. You need to go over there and get one of their telephone numbers.”

Mick chuckled. “Reece, dudester and good buddy, I hate to be the one to tell you, but this is a reality-based show.”

Reece was unfazed. He said, “Here's the deal. Five bucks for a minimum five-minute conversation. Twenty for a phone number.” He grinned at Mick. “Okay?”

Mick knew the one thing he shouldn't do was think about this too much. “Okay,” he said.

“But you pay me five for a failure-to-approach. Okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, eyeing the girls at the far side of the field, “okay. Five bucks for an F.T.A.”

He swung his jacket over his shoulder and headed over in the direction of Pam Crozier and Myra Vidal, with Foolish and Reece close behind. “What're you going to say?” Reece said.

Mick didn't answer. He had no idea what he was going to say.

From behind, Reece said, “I mean, aren't you supposed to have . . . you know . . . like an opening line?”

The who-cares-anyway attitude that Mick had set out with was quickly slipping away from him. He began to feel more like himself, and the one thing he knew he wasn't was the kind of person who strolls up to beautiful girls to strike up casual conversations.

His heart began to pound wildly.

Mick's father had a saying for putting problems into perspective. “It ain't my wife and it ain't my life.”

It's not Lisa Doyle, Mick thought. It's not Lisa Doyle.

This helped only a little.

He was closer now, within thirty feet, entering the no-turnaround zone. At any moment Pam Crozier and Myra Vidal would sense his presence and look up.

It's not Lisa Doyle, it's not Lisa Doyle.

They looked up.

Mick tried to smile. Sweat seemed all at once to pop from every pore of his body. He opened his mouth and tried to say, “Hi,” but his throat had tightened and it came out more like a croak.

Myra Vidal and Pam Crozier stared at the croaking boy. They didn't speak or smile.

Mick was having a hard time breathing. He turned to the one with dark hair and olive skin and said, “You're Myra Vidal, right?”

She nodded. She waited. So did everybody else. Mick could feel it. Suddenly he said, “Do you know Alexander Selkirk?”

Myra Vidal cocked her head quizzically. “Who?”

“Alexander Selkirk.”

“Alexander Selkirk,” Myra said. She said it slowly, as if searching it for a taste.

Mick said, “The reason I ask is he says he knows you.”

Myra said, “Who's Alexander Selkirk?”

“This older guy who says he knows you.”

“How much older?”

Mick took a deep breath. It felt good to take a deep breath. It was as if for the past minute or two he hadn't been breathing at all. He said, “Well, he's about my stepmother's age and she's thirty-one.”

“And he says he knows me?”

Suddenly, in spite of—maybe even because of—Myra's confusion, Mick began to feel better, almost calm, in fact. “That's right. Alexander Selkirk said he knows you intimately.”

Myra stared in disbelief, but Pam Crozier broke into a laugh. “Sister woman! You've been holding out on me! Have you got a cute little old-timer tucked away in a cupboard?”

Mick could see Myra's face moving from disbelief to anger. He himself felt weirdly composed. In a matter-of-fact voice he said, “The reason I came over to talk to you is because when I heard Alexander Selkirk say that he knew you intimately, I had a feeling he was lying. I remembered how nice you seemed and he's kind of a donkey.”

Myra's face relaxed. It was a dazzlingly pretty face. “You were right,” she said. “He was lying.”

Pam Crozier said, “But Myra's not as nice as she seems.”

Demurely Myra said, “As a matter of fact, I am. Possibly nicer.”

Mick wasn't sure what he was going to say next, but Myra saved him. She said, “Can I throw the Frisbee for your dog?”

Pam evidently didn't like this idea. “My-ra,” she said in a low mock whine. “What are you doing?”

“Throwing a dog a Frisbee is what. Making some doggy happiness.”

When Myra reached for the Frisbee, Mick glimpsed between her breasts all the way to her flat stomach. “Frisbee's kind of mungy,” he said.

“I don't mind mung,” Myra said.

She threw the Frisbee in a long graceful arc that Foolish caught up with at the shady end of the field. “Wow,” Myra said quietly.

While Myra kept throwing Frisbees, Pam lay on the blanket reading from her textbook—
The Economics of Child Labor in the
Industrial Age
—and Mick and Reece stood there not knowing what to do with themselves. Reece kept sneaking glances at one or another set of breasts. Mick tried to focus his attention on Foolish. Finally Pam said, “I guess you guys can sit down if you want.”

Mick and Reece both nodded and sat. Myra threw another Frisbee, and Pam turned toward Mick and Reece. She'd shifted onto her side, which had a plumpening effect on her breasts. “So do you guys live around here, or what?”

They both nodded. Mick kept his eyes fixed on hers, but he sensed Reece's eyes were wandering.

“You go to Melville or Jemison?” she said.

“Sophomores at Jemison,” Mick said, but he was thinking, Melville? We look like middle schoolers?

Myra sat back down, and Foolish lay down nearby, panting. To Pam she said, “So, what'd you find out about these individuals?”

Pam shrugged. “Sophomores. Carless and clueless.”

Myra said, “Oh, I don't know. I adored sophomore year. And eighth grade was even better.”

Pam flicked a glance at Mick. “For Myra, eighth grade was a twofer. She had a hot boyfriend and developed mammillation.”

Mick made a mental note to look up mammillation.

“We walked everywhere,” Myra said. “When you walk, you talk. It was kind of nice.” She scanned her smile from Mick to Reece. “So what're your names?”

“Mick Nichols.”

Reece pried his eyes from Pam Crozier, who'd resumed reading. “Reece,” he said. “Winston Reece.”

“Winston?” Myra said.

“After that Churchill guy. My mother thinks Churchill was a big deal.”

Pam looked up from her book and said, “Yeah, well, she's right. When the BBC, the
London Times,
and Neville Chamberlain all said, ‘Appease Mr. Hitler,' Churchill said, ‘Resist.' ” She suddenly fixed her eyes on Reece. “You were named after the possibly greatest man of the twentieth century,” she said, “but that still doesn't give you the right to keep staring at my mammary glands.”

A laugh burst from Myra, then from Mick and finally Reece. “Sorry,” he said. “It's just that—”

“You're just a hungry boy at the smorgasbord?” Pam said quickly, which drew more laughs at Reece's expense. As the laughter dimmed, a faint partial melody sounded.

Reece's cell phone was ringing, but it wasn't a ring. It was the first few bars of “Strangers in the Night,” which, when he'd selected it, had seemed hilarious. Now it didn't so much, and Reece was trying to pretend it didn't exist. From one of his baggy front pant pockets the muted
dooby-dooby-do
notes kept sounding, again and again. Finally Pam said, “Is that your cell phone, or do you have a tiny orchestra where your penis should be?”

Mick couldn't help laughing. Reece's cheeks flamed red for a moment, but then he was laughing, too, and reaching for the phone.

“Yeah,” he answered, and when he turned away from the group, Mick knew it was his mother checking up on him. “The park,” he said. “With Mick.” Long silences followed with Reece now and then murmuring, “Okay.” Just before hanging up, he said, “Oh-kay, I'll tell him.”

“Tell who what?” Pam said, grinning.

Reece looked sheepish. “Tell Mick he's invited to dinner.”

“A dinner invitation!” Pam said. She turned to Mick. “Winston wants to take you home to meet his mother! Do you accept?”

Mick played along. “Depends. What are they serving?”

Pam turned quickly to Reece. “What are they serving?”

“Polish sausage and other stuff.”

To Mick, Pam said, “Polish sausage and other stuff.”

“Sure,” Mick said. “Why not?”

“Good! That's settled. Now, what about us? Are Myra and I invited?”

Reece gave her a brightening look of real surprise. “Sure. Do you want to come?”

Pam grinned. “No. But it was polite of you to ask.”

They laughed and then there was a lull, but it didn't feel like an awkward lull. Clouds that had been massing to the east were now directly overhead, and when one of them passed in front of the sun, Mick shivered and wondered if he could put his jacket back on. Myra, evidently following his gaze, pointed to it. “So here's what I want to know. Whose jacket is that, where'd you get it, and what'd it cost?”

Mick said, “Mine, Plan B, and eighty bucks.”

“Can I try it on?”

She slipped it on and left it unbuttoned. Mick and Reece sat imprinting the image in their memories. Pam said, “God, Myra, you look like this year's Harley calendar.”

Myra smiled and began to take it off.

Mick said quietly, “If you want it, you can have it.”

Myra looked at him. She didn't speak, but her look said, You mean it?

He nodded. He meant it. He said, “Looks a lot better on you than me.” This was true, it did look pretty great on her, but it wasn't just that. If she took the coat, she'd take the green disk, too, and maybe he could just forget it ever existed.

But Myra was shrugging out of the coat. “Nope,” she said, and for the first time gave him such a thorough look that Mick thought he could feel it going through him. Then she said, “It's incredibly sweet of you to offer, but nope.”

Nobody said anything for a few seconds. Finally Mick said, “Well, it was nice of you guys to talk to us.” They didn't say anything, so he said, “I guess we'd better go now.”

He stood, and Foolish and Reece stood, too. They'd started to move away when Pam said, “You know, just so you could start getting in the habit of it, you should've asked us for our phone numbers.”

They turned. Mick said, “Okay. Would you give us your phone numbers?”

“No,” Pam said, “but it was definitely worth a try.”

They all laughed and then there was a strangely pleasant stillness among them that ended when Myra said, “But you know what? You guys could give us your e-mails just in case we might want to check up on your progress.”

“Really?” Mick said.

Myra found a ballpoint pen. “Here,” she said, “write them down on my hand so I won't forget to log them when I get back to the dorm.”

Mick knelt and held the back of her hand with his left hand while printing carefully with the other. Her hand was soft, and her body had the pleasant buttery smell of suntan lotion. After he was done, Reece wrote his e-mail address on Myra's hand. He seemed to take his time. When he finally leaned away, his face was flushed. Everybody grinned at parting.

“Vaya con Dios,”
Myra said.

Mick looked back. Myra was smiling. Pam was already putting her shirt back on.

Mick, Reece, and Foolish walked across the grass without speaking until they were safely out of earshot, then Reece spoke in a low, excited voice. “Okay,” he said, “when you were writing your address did you see what I saw?”

“Dunno,” Mick said. “What'd you see?”

“Nipple! Or the aureole part of it or whatever that's called. It was just barely peeking out of her top.”

“Let's consider for a moment your vivid imagination,” Mick said.

“I didn't imagine it. I saw. I saw plenty. I saw Myra Vidal's nippleodeon up close and personal.”

Mick noticed that Reece was walking faster than normal. He said, “You seem pretty hyped-up about this.”

Reece grinned. “Oh, heck, yes. I mean, I was beamed to Bazongaville.” They walked a little farther, and he said, “You know what that was? I'm going to tell you what that was. That was the highlight of my sexual career up to now.”

Mick said, “Reececake, unless you count certain onanistic practices, you've had no sexual career up to now.”

“Yeah, but now I do,” Reece said. “I was three inches from Myra Vidal's partially exposed nipple.”

Mick laughed. “It's true, only a major stud could've peered into her bikini like you did.”

Reece smiled serenely. “Rag all you want. I saw what I saw and I know what I know.” He wagged his eyebrows. “The excitable member was in a state.”

Mick said nothing more. The truth was, he was feeling pretty good himself. He'd talked to two college girls and found out that besides being really, really pretty they were funny and nice. In fact, he'd realized as they were talking that even though they didn't look at all alike, Myra reminded him of Lisa Doyle, except older and chestier and brown-haired instead of red. But she really did remind him of Lisa. It was something about how friendly her eyes seemed.