He nods. After a pause, he says, “It was all very calculated. And very difficult.”

I stare at him.

He says, “You’re sort of right that I was trying to torture you. It was an elaborate ploy to get you to . . .” He seems unable to finish.

“Get me to what?”

He looks embarrassed. “I thought that if I could increase your desire and your frustration you’d be more likely to forgive me for knowing what you really look like, once you found out I knew. It didn’t work, of course.”

We talk for hours. When we get tired, we lie on the couch, one of us at each end of the sectional. We keep talking for most of the night, covering countless topics.

The last thing he says to me before we finally fall asleep on the couch is, “Okay, I guess we can be friends. I’ve missed you. Having you in my life in whatever capacity is better than not having you at all.”

Even though I can’t be his lover, I love him more than ever.

PETER AND I get together frequently. It’s usually my initiative, sometimes his.

It comforts me to be with him. So I keep asking him to come over.

When he points out, pleasantly, the abundance of my invitations, I simply say, “I like to be with you.”

He never turns me down. The few times he can’t make it, he makes a counterinvitation, usually for earlier or later the same day.

I CATCH MYSELF staring at him when I think he’s not looking. But sometimes he catches me. Like the time we were sitting on my couch, watching a movie, and I thought the angle would make it impossible for him to know I was gazing at him, and he said, “Why are you staring at me like that?”

Blushing, all I could say was, “You have good peripheral vision.”

“Yeah. So why are you?”

“Just looking at what a good friend you are.”

His eye twitched.

WE MAKE A point of not getting together on Valentine’s Day to avoid the romance aspect. But we make up for it by seeing each other five evenings in a row after that.

I don’t know what Peter did on Valentine’s Day. I don’t ask. As for me, I stayed home working.

FINALLY, ONE DAY, when I call Peter—as I often do to ask him if he wants to come over and hang out—he tells me, “You don’t understand. It’s very difficult. I am practically delirious. I could get killed crossing the street because I have fantasies and I don’t see the cars.”

“Fantasies?”

“Yes, fantasies!” he barks. “Fantasies of running my fingers through your gray curls until your wig falls off. Of peeling that strangely erotic gelatinous monstrosity off you and enlacing you in my arms. I even have fantasies of not peeling that thing off you and enlacing you in my arms anyway and making love to you with that thing still on.”

To this, all I say is, “Please come over. I miss you.”

“Okay, I’m here,” he says, an hour later, covered in snow and carrying takeout sushi.

We watch a movie chastely on the couch. We eat, and chat for an hour about this and that. He goes home.

AND THEN, I feel it slipping. A sadness sets in. He’s less talkative. More pensive. Our frustrating nonsexual relationship seems to be taking a toll on him, and I get a sense it’s affecting other areas of his life as well. He’s less interested in his job. He skips network meetings. His anchoring of the news is detached and glum. I’m worried. I don’t want to be responsible—even indirectly—for any damage to his career, health or happiness.

Maybe it’s selfish of me to want a friendship from him. Maybe I should let him go.

But I can’t. I tried it, didn’t like it.

A COUPLE OF days later, when I’m in Peter’s neighborhood, I call him to see if he’d like me to stop by and say hello.

He hesitates. “Yes, actually. Why don’t you come over. I’d like to talk to you.”

At Peter’s place, we sit on the couch. He looks at me sadly and says, “The time has come for me to stop seeing you.”

I’m taken off guard. “But, you’re not ‘seeing’ me. We’re not dating. We’re just friends.”

“I know. I gave it my best effort, but friendship with you doesn’t work. Not for me.”

I don’t respond.

“It’s better for us this way,” he says. “My frustration at wanting more from our relationship outweighs the delight of your company. In fact, the more delightful your company is, the more unpleasant it is for me to be in it.”

Even though I’m heartsick, I decide to respect his decision.

As I head back home, I try to persuade myself that he’s right and that it was too hard for me, too. I’m so downtrodden that when I enter my building I hardly hear Adam the doorman telling me I’m a shameless display of genetic deficiency. And he throws in “Vile serpent” for good measure.

I KNOW I should move on with my life, try to forget Peter, but I keep pondering our situation, wishing we could remain in each other’s lives.

And that’s not the only thing I’m tormented by. I’m also saddened by Lily’s relationship with Strad, which hasn’t been going well for quite a while now. Since Vieques, he remained nice enough and adequately loving and affectionate, but there was a faint sadness that hung over him most of the time, that Lily couldn’t help but sense. And he hasn’t mentioned marriage since Vieques.

He sometimes makes insensitive comments, which Lily tries not to take personally because she knows she’s not the only one he’s done this to. She often heard him complain about having to walk on eggshells around various customers, friends, and family members, even way back when she used to work with him in the musical instruments store. When she mentioned this to Georgia, Georgia replied, “Walking on eggshells is what stupid people call the effort required not to offend someone. For smart people, not offending takes no effort.”

Lily knew Strad wasn’t stupid, otherwise she couldn’t have fallen in love with him. But as for his emotional intelligence, it did seem a little higher when she was beautiful.

Lily has gone back to trying to compose a piece that will beautify her permanently. But her heart’s not in it. The prospect of manipulating love through unnatural means doesn’t appeal to her as much as it once did.

Even though she fails to compose that piece, in the process of trying she ends up developing a different and hugely significant musical skill: the ability to beautify—and create a desire for—things even when they’re not there.

Yet Lily is barely interested in her new stunning accomplishment. She’s preoccupied by her relationship with Strad.

Georgia, on the other hand, is very affected by Lily’s achievement. “You dwarf me, Lily,” she tells her. “It’s demoralizing. Every time I get over it, you come up with some new and even greater accomplishment that makes all of my accomplishments seem even punier than before. For example, today I was going to tell you guys that last night I finished writing my novel, but now it hardly seems worth mentioning.”

We explode with congratulations and cheer. We ask her if we can read it. She says not yet, but soon. She says she e-mailed it to her agent this morning and wants to wait and hear her reaction.

GEORGIA DECIDES THAT she will throw a party at my apartment in two weeks to cheer Lily and me up. She says she’s also secretly throwing this party for herself to celebrate the completion of her novel and because she hasn’t had a party in a while and it’s overdue.

Georgia has mixed feelings about the parties she throws, which she always holds in my apartment because of space considerations. She invites lots of people from the literary world, yet she has trouble tolerating them. But she can’t help inviting them. It’s a compulsive need—wanting to be in the loop while loathing the loop.