Phoebe took his hand and led him into the nook. Tangled in the ivy at their feet were wine bottles, a pair of blue socks. As they kissed, Phoebe felt the responsibility drain off Wolf like an actual substance and it thrilled her, having that power. Wolf leaned against the wall while Phoebe unzipped his jeans—he’d joked about his permanent erection—now he gasped at the touch of her cool hand. The act itself was more awkward than Phoebe had imagined; being taller, Wolf had to bend his knees, but this didn’t seem to bother him now that they’d begun. Phoebe’s skirt virtually covered them—only the front was lifted. Wolf threw back his head, bracing it against the wall. Afterward he stayed like that, eyes shut, baring his throat while his breathing calmed. After a while he put his arms weakly around Phoebe’s shoulders and leaned there. “I’m gone,” he said.

And he was. Gone. Lost—in her. In bed he gathered Phoebe’s long hair in his hands and moved close to her face, watching the movement of her eyes. “You do what you do” was the nearest Wolf came to explaining all he’d jeopardized to be with Phoebe now. But it was less an explanation than an assertion of the pointlessness, the self-indulgence of attempting one. At times a certain wry fatalism would overtake him, a brooding ill humor whose basis, it seemed, was the belief that everything was lost. These moods terrified Phoebe at first, but their only effect was to drive Wolf back to her with even greater abandon, as if, by surrendering to Phoebe anew, he were proving that this—she—was worth the loss of everything else.