Argentinian steakhouse. His endless good-natured chatter sounded like paper being chewed, and I felt like an ant about to be discovered in a wasp's nest. But Gloria, seated on my right, legs mercilessly crossed, enchanted me. She did it thoughtlessly (I thought) with a deft combination of laughter, eye contact and teeth. I'd forgotten how much more dazzling she was than her daughter, confident and careless, and by the time dessert arrived, I couldn't stop thinking about a switch. This is America, after all, and when you buy the wrong thing you take it back to the store for the right thing.
Two nights later, after Jenna had trampled home with a distressingly unattractive bowleggedness I had only just noticed, and her father was secure in the lap of British Airways, I called Gloria.
"No, I don't think a nightcap is in order," Gloria said. "It's late Eric."
"Are you in bed?"
"Excuse me?"
"I enjoyed our conversation at dinner. I'd like to talk with you some more."
"We are talking."
"Not over the phone. It's an in-person kind of thing."
"Why?"
I didn't have an answer. I had thought she would just agree. Had I imagined her interest? When I had dropped my napkin at dinner for the third time, to get a look at her legs, I'd found it perched between her feet and assumed she had dragged it there.
"Listen," Gloria said, after deflecting a few more of my attempts, "It's sweet of you � although sweet's not really the word, is it? � but I don't think you'd have much trouble finding other, more suitable company for a drink."
"I don't want other company," I said, lamely, petulantly, and after a few more tries Gloria, somehow, relented. Why? Because everything is permitted. Because audacity is all we have. Because living means doing the wrong things.
Fifteen minutes later I presented her with my young fresh face, sneakers, little jeans, and a faded blue T-shirt a size too small.
We split two bottles of wine.

Physically, Gloria and Jenna differed in many obvious ways, among them height (Gloria was shorter), skin color (Jenna was fairer, with freckles), chest size (Gloria was bustier) and feet (Jenna wore a size nine men's shoe, my size); yet for all these seemingly enormous differences, the minor similarities made them seem identical. They smelled the same, they moved the same, they even tasted the same, although Gloria revealed a readier moistness than her daughter and a refusal to return the oral favor; but I didn't mind Gloria's disavowal, knowing that what the mother refused me, the daughter, sometimes even in the same night, would provide. Their twinness was uncanny, at times alarming. With my eyes closed and my head lodged in the arch of Gloria's neck, I couldn't tell them apart: Gloria's rhythm perfectly resembled Jenna's, a halting urgency with a pause every twenty seconds to readjust, as if a pen were poking uncomfortably from an invisible back pocket � perhaps the conscience is small and psychophallic.
On what was our ninth or tenth night together, after we had engaged in another of our frighteningly Freudian fucks, she suggested that we get rid of her daughter.
"Murder her?"
She reached for her wine glass and took a long drink. "Movies," she sighed.

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