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. 'I'm too old to let you practice with me. It wouldn't be good for either of us.'

Ronda Ray, cruising the dance floor, spotted Frank behind the empty tables, but Frank fled before she could ask him to dance. Egg was gone, so Frank had probably been waiting for an excuse to go corner Egg alone. Lilly was dancing, stoically, with one of Father and Mother's friends, Mr. Matson, an unfortunately tall man -- although, if he had been short, he couldn't have been short enough for Lilly. They looked like an awkward, perhaps unmentionable animal act.

Father danced with Mrs. Matson and Mother stood at the bar, talking with an old crony who was at the Hotel New Hampshire nearly every night -- a drinking friend of Coach Bob's; his name was Merton, and he was the foreman at the lumberyard. Merton was a wide, heavy man with a limp and mighty, swollen hands; he listened half-heartedly to my mother, his face stricken with the absence of Iowa Bob; his eyes, feasting on Doris Wales, seemed to think that the band was inappropriate so soon after Bob's ultimate retirement.

'Variety,' said Sabrina Jones in my ear. That's the secret to kissing,' she said.

' "I love you for a hundred thousand reasons!" ' crooned Doris Wales.

Egg was back; he was in his Big Chicken costume; then he was gone again. Bitty Tuck looked bored; she seemed unsure about cutting in on Junior and Franny. And she was so sophisticated, as Franny would say, that she did not know how to talk with Ronda Ray, who had fixed herself a drink at the bar. I saw Max Urick gawking out of the kitchen doorway.

'Little bites, and a little bit of tongue,' said Sabrina Jones, 'but the important thing is to move your mouth around.'

'Do you want a drink?' I asked her. 'I mean, you're old enough. Father put a case of beer in the snow, out at the delivery entrance, for us kids. He said he couldn't let us drink at the bar, but you can.'

'Show me the delivery entrance,' said Sabrina Jones. 'I'll have a beer with you. Just don't get fresh.'

We left the dance floor, fortunately just in time to miss Doris Wales's slamming transition to 'I Don't Care If the Sun Don't Shine.' -- the speed of which prompted Bitty Tuck to cut in on Franny for a dance with Junior. Ronda looked sullenly upon my leaving.

Sabrina and I startled Frank, who was pissing on the trash barrels at the delivery entrance. In a gesture of Frank-like awkwardness, Frank pretended to be pointing out the beer to us. 'Got an opener, Frank?' I asked, but he had vanished into the mist of Elliot Park -- the ever-dreary fog, which in the winter was our dominant weather.

Sabrina and I opened our beers at the reception desk in the lobby, where Frank had permanently hung a bottle opener from a nail on a length of twine; it was for opening his Pepsi-Colas when he was on phone duty at the desk. In a clumsy effort to sit beside Sabrina, on the trunk of Junior's winter clothes, I spilled some beer on Bitty Tuck's luggage.

'You could introduce yourself to her affections,' Sabrina was saying, 'by offering to take all those bags to her room.'

'Where are your bags?' I asked Sabrina.

'For one night,' Sabrina said, 'I don't pack a bag. And you don't have to offer to show me to my room. I can find it.'

'I could show it to you, anyway,' I said.

'Well, do it,' she said. 'I got a book to read. This is one party I don't need,' she added. 'I might as well get ready for a long drive back to Philadelphia.'

I walked with her to her room on the second floor. I had no illusions of making a move on her, as she would say; I wouldn't have had the courage, anyway. 'Good night,' I mumbled at her door, and let her slip away. She was not gone long.

'Hey,' she said, opening her door before I had left the hall. 'You'll never get anywhere not trying. You didn't even try to kiss me,' she added.

'I'm sorry,' I said.

'Never apologize!' Sabrina said. She stood close to me in the hallway and let me kiss her. 'First things first,' she said. 'Your breath smells nice -- that's a start. But stop shaking, and you shouldn't make tooth contact at the beginning; and don't try to ram me with your tongue.' We tried again. 'Keep your hands in your pockets,' she told me. 'Watch the tooth contact. Better,' she said. 'Hands in the pockets at all times; two feet on the floor.' I stumbled toward her. We made tooth contact quite violently; she snapped her head back, away from me, and when I looked at her, incredibly, I saw that she held a row of her front upper teeth in her hand. 'Shit!' she cried. 'Watch the tooth contact!' For a horrible moment I thought I had knocked her teeth out, but she turned her back to me and said, 'Don't look at me. False teeth. Turn out the light.' I did, and it was dark in her room.

'I'm sorry,' I said, hopelessly.

'Never apologize,' she murmured. 'I was raped.'

'Yes,' I said, knowing all along that this would surface. 'So was Franny.'

'So I heard,' said Sabrina Jones. 'But they didn't knock her teeth out with a pipe. Am I right?'

'Yes,' I said.

'It's the kissing that gets me, every fucking time,' Sabrina said. 'Just when it gets good, my uppers loosen up -- or some clod makes too much tooth contact.'

I didn't apologize; I reached to touch her but she said, 'Keep your hands in your pockets.' Then she came up close to me and said, I'm going to help you if you help me. I'll teach you all about kissing,' she said, 'but you've got to tell me something I always wanted to know. I was never with anyone I dared to ask. I try to keep it a secret.'

'Yes,' I agreed, terrified -- not knowing to what I was agreeing.

'I want to know if it's better with my damn teeth out,' she said, 'or if it's gross. I always thought it would be gross, so I never tried it.' She went into the bathroom and I waited for her, in the dark, watching the line of light framing the bathroom door -- until the light went out and Sabrina was back beside me.