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She would reach puberty at about the same time that I reached forty Both prospects were unendurably upsetting I started to put my arm around her, and for the first time I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t put my arm around her, and I winced, and she read about Alice while I thought first of Lewis Carroll and then of Vladiht I trudged to the subway and went down to the New Life restaurant on West 28th, where Katin Bazerian dances, wearing the naht the last set When it was over Kitty came to my table and we did in a bottle of rhodytis We listened to bouzouki music and didn’t talk much

Eventually I said, "Get your coat and come home with me"

"I don’t know"

"What’s to know? We’re nice people and we love each other and we should go hoether"

"Oh? We love each other?"

"We always have"

"You drift froirl, Evan, like a bee fro fros in this world than our cockairls talk about relationships They shouldn’t be allowed to use the word

"I always thought you liked our relationship," I said

"Oh, I do Oh, shit, everything’s rotten" And she looked at the floor, and I watched the wine evaporate in lass, and she looked up and said, "He wants to marry me"

"Who does?"

"A… a fellow You don’t know him He’s a nice boy, he works steady He’s an assistant cook at Gregorio’s on the next block and he plans to be a chef in a few years and he loves ether, you know, Iwithlike heroin, for instance

"Evan, when a wo, and I a thirty"

"You’re fifteen?"

"I’m twenty-five"

"That’s halfway to-"

"Between twenty and thirty it’s halfway"

"Oh"

"I mean, this life is fine up to a point, but at a certain point a wo, to want to settle down"

"I know"

"I’m only human"

"Uh-huh What did you tell him?"

"That I didn’t know That I had to think"

"What are you going to tell him?"

"I’m not sure" She was silent for a few moments "You know," she said, her voice softer, "it’s a funny thing, a proposal ofI have been proposed to before but it was never so to take very seriously, or at least I didn’t, you know, on account of not being ready to To be serious, I ood, you know, that someone would ask you to marry him"

"Sure"

"I alondered, you know, if you would someday ask me to, uh, to marry you And hoould feel You know"

"Er"

"I think about it occasionally, because you’re right, we do love each other But I know you’ve never wanted to getBut when this fellow asked ht how I had two minds about it, and I askedinstead of this fellow, and I kneould be just of one mind That I would want to marry you And make a home with you, with you and Minna, sort of a ready-hto you but I couldn’t help it-"

Her voice just trailed off, as if fading in the distance

"I’d better get o home now, Evan," she said a little later "To Brooklyn"

"I’ll take you"