Angela and I don't actually get drunk. She obviously doesn't call up Isabel and Wendy so they can celebrate her 35th birthday again. And I don't go play basketball with Jeff at the Y.

We start with me shutting the front door and asking, "Did she say Happy Birthday?"
"Mm hm," Angela says like a pouty little girl.

Then I guilt-trip myself about forgetting, till I remember that at that point I didn't know when her birthday was. Now I'll never forget it. And, yes, she is very much a Gemini.

I offer to go in the kitchen and bake her a cake.

"Oh, no, Tony, you don't have to do that! Double fudge with walnuts?"

"You got it, Birthday Girl! C'mon, c'mon!"

So we go in the kitchen and I start baking the cake. I got all the ingredients this morning. She sits on the counter, "helping" me, though mostly by testing the frosting by licking it off her fingers.

As near as we can remember, we say what we did seven years and a couple months ago. After no longer bottling up my feelings, it's hard to retreat to a time when I couldn't even compliment her, and I can see it's hard for her, too.

Then she hops off the counter and throws flour at me. Our flour fight! I remember this vividly, as vividly as what came after it.

I grab her and then we look into each other's eyes. We hesitate and then melt into a kiss. It's soft and tentative at first and then more passionate, as if we can't hold it back any longer.

But then she has to break it, to say that she feels faint, so I react as cocky young Tony the self-proclaimed stud. (Seriously, I look back at my Brooklyn self, and he seems as much of a kid as Anthony at Y Camp. I've grown up a lot in the last six or seven years. At least I hope I have.)

She acts out being dizzy, falling onto the floor. So then I have to pick her up and carry her upstairs. We're both trying very hard not to laugh.

We make it to her bedroom and I set her on the bed. I get her nightgown and she tells me, "Wendy was right. You are cute."

I tell her she's cute, too, and hand her the nightgown. I'm about to leave, wondering how we're going to make this work without me taking advantage of a drunk woman, even in fantasy. Plus, I would've wanted her to remember our first time. And this is our first time, I mean as me and Angela, not Them.

She beckons me over and I hesitantly go back to the bed. Then she grabs me around the neck and pulls me on top of her. This time I don't pull away. But then she pretends to fall asleep!

I lie there next to her, with her arms around me. "Oh, I get it. We'll wake up together, but the house is empty and there are no reporters visiting tomorrow."

She doesn't reply.

So I go back to 33-year-old Tony. "Angela, I'm so tired. I'm just gonna rest here for a minute and then I gotta go to my room." Then I fake a loud snore. She giggles quietly.

I remember that it's my fantasy tonight. So I clear my throat and say, "The next morning," like I'm a narrator.

"God, my head hurts!" she mutters.

"Yeah, mine, too."

"Tony?" Her eyes open wide in shock, and then she blinks as if her eyes hurt. "What are you doing here? In my bed!"

"Well, I slept here last night."

"Oh my God!"

"Hey, you invited me."
"Oh, I can't believe what I've done!"

"Ay, relax. If you're thinkin' what I think you're thinkin', you're wrong. All we did was sleep. Just like the time we both ended up in Sam's bed accidentally."

"Oh." She sounds relieved but maybe a little disappointed. Then she narrows her eyes at me. "Why did I invite you to sleep here?"

"You don't remember?"

"Um, not really."

"Well, we went in the kitchen so I could bake you a birthday cake."

"Oh, right. And there was flour?"

"Yeah, you threw flour at me, so then we started playing with it and then I chased you and then, um."

"You grabbed me and kissed me."
"Ay, I may've done the grabbing, but you did the kissing."

"I did?"

"Afraid so."

"Oh my God, I harassed an employee!"

"Ay-oh, oh-ay, it wasn't harassment. I liked it. And I kissed you back. I'm just sayin' you started it."

"Oh. And then we ended up in my bedroom?"

"Yeah, you felt dizzy so I carried you up here. And then you pulled me into bed—"

She puts her hands to her face. "OH MY GOD!"

"And fell asleep."

"Oh. But still. Tony, I'm usually not this aggressive with men!"

"Well, you'd had a lot to drink, so it obviously brought out that side in you."

"But I didn't even know I had this side in me!"

"Well, you are a Gemini."

She blushes. "You poor thing, I attacked you when you were in a vulnerable state, and then—"

"Come on, Angela. I was drunk but I knew what was going on. You were the one who could've been taken advantage of. And you're just lucky that I'm the guy you 'attacked.' "

"So why didn't you take advantage?"

"Well, number one, it would've been wrong. Number two, if we ever did anything together, I mean beyond kissing, I'd want you to remember it. And number three, I don't perform too well when I'm that drunk."

"Oh." She blushes. "How do you feel now?"
"Like I said, I've got a beaut of a headache."

"Me, too."

"You stay here. I'm gonna fix us some tomato juice and Tabasco."

She makes a face and I laugh. Then I head downstairs. Yeah, I bought the juice and Tabasco, along with the walnuts and everything. Hm, six years ago I had to clean up the mess in the kitchen the next morning. I threw out the batter and everything. But the stuff hasn't been sitting out that long tonight.

Well, I put most of it in the fridge this time. Then I mix up a couple glasses of headache cure. Then I take the glasses and the bowl of frosting upstairs.

Yeah, I'm a little worried I'm being too forward, but hell, we've got to go forward, instead of zigzagging like this. It's driving us both crazy!

No, it's not too forward, because when I return, she's got on that black lace nightgown I handed her before she pulled me onto the bed. Only she's not wearing it over her clothes, like Mona later told me she was the morning after. The skirt part is very long and satiny. But the top part, Madonna mi! Very revealing.

"I can't believe I fell asleep in my clothes."

"You look more comfortable now."

"Yes, except for this hangover."

"Here." I hand her one of the glasses.

"Thank you."

I clink her glass with mine. "Down the hatch."

"Cheers."

We drink down some of the juice & sauce, not much since we're not actually hungover.

"What's the frosting for?"

"Oh, uh, I just thought, why waste it?"

"Sorry we didn't get to finish baking the cake."

I shrug. "I'll make you another later."

"Thank you."

"So, uh, here's the frosting." I hand her the bowl. "And, uh, I should probably go clean up the kitchen."

"It can wait, Tony."

"I don't know, Angela, we made a shambles of that room."

"I think we need to talk about whether we made a shambles of our friendship."

"No, Angela, it's fine. No harm done."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, we're still friends."

"Then sit and eat frosting with me. Like a friend."

"Here?"

She pats the bed next to where she's sitting. "Here."

"Well, uh, Angela, I mean, come on. Us sitting in bed, eating frosting, with you dressed like that?"

"You don't like this nightgown?"

"No, it's great. You look great in it."

"Tony, what if something did happen between us? I mean now. I'm not drunk anymore. And neither are you."

"Well, yeah, Angela, but you're my boss. And my friend. And I don't want you to stop being either of those things."

"Tony, if the sex were disappointing, I wouldn't fire you over it."

"Disappointing?" I'm very insulted.

"I mean because we might've built up expectations about it. It's been clear for months that there's an attraction between us."

"Well, yeah."

"I don't remember the kiss very well. But I think it lived up to what I hoped it would be."

"Yeah, it did. I mean what I hoped."

"Well, maybe the sex might, too."

"Lady, if you make love like you kiss—" I start to blurt out what I thought when I first kissed Ingrid as an adult. But I can't complete the rest of the thought out loud: "…I want to marry you!" It's too soon, especially for the selves we were six years ago.

"Yes?" she asks softly.

"Then I want to make love to you."

She smiles. "I want to make love to you, Tony."

"Angela," I breathe. Then I take off my shoes.

She pats the bed again so I sit down, with the bowl of frosting in my lap. She reaches in and scrapes off some frosting, then lightly paints my face with it. Then she kisses it off.

So I do the same to her. And then it's necks and ears. I take off my shirt and we move on to chests and stomachs, in her case the chocolate going wherever the lace doesn't cover her.

We're about to remove more clothing when the phone rings.

"Should we get that?" she asks.

"Let them leave a message."

"What if it's one of the kids?"

"The kids are safe in Brooklyn with Mrs. Rossini," I say, because that's where they would've been that morning. In real life, well, Sam's grown up and in the dorms, and Jonathan's got Michael looking after him in California.

I wonder if she'll object, but she says, "You're right. And since the kids aren't home, we don't have to worry about making noise."

"Angela!" I pretend to be shocked.

She shakes her head and then she reaches over to turn on her radio. She must've found the right oldies station, or maybe this is what she listens to anyway. Because the first song to come on is "The Look of Love."

I grin at her and then put my arms around her to lift off her nightgown. "So beautiful," I sigh, not caring if I couldn't have said that six years ago.

"Thank you, Tony."

We lay back on the bed kissing, caressing, without the frosting now. (She puts the bowl on the nightstand for safety.)

Dusty Springfield sings, "Be mine tonight. Let this be just the start of many nights like this."

And we make love, sweet and slow, like the song on the radio, and all the songs that play tonight. Because it goes on for hours. I don't mean I'm inside her for hours, but it's all making love, not just the "sex" part. She helps me take off my jeans and then my jockeys, but she isn't Ingridly greedy. She's a loving, sensuous Angela, like I've never known before.

And at some point we completely drop the pretense that it's 1985. It's 1991, a palindrome year as she points out. The same backwards as forwards. We can look back at the past and ahead to the future, but we are very in the now. Zen sex I guess.

Oh, there is sex! Everything is wonderful, but the sex is the best part of course. Being inside Angela, present-day Angela, so familiar and yet so new.

Yes, I wear a condom. I got tested six months after I broke up with Kathleen, and I'll go again when it's been a full year. And then, well, I don't think Angela has been with anyone, not even Andy, but we'll have to talk about that later. I would love to go back to no condoms with her. Not just because it feels better to me, but because I'm no longer scared that it will make me too emotionally attached to her.

"Oh, My Love, My Darling, I've hungered for your touch, a long, lonely time," the Platters declare. "Time goes by so slowly. And time can do so much."

We hold each other close, except when I support myself. Then I gaze into those luscious, dark, mysterious eyes. Do I know what's behind them any better than I did twenty-eight years ago, when I saw them shyly smiling at me from a rowboat? Am I any closer to solving the mystery of Ingrid?

Angela swims under me, like a lake that starts out calm and turns stormy. Gonna drown again, gonna drown in you, Baby! And I still don't know how to swim! But she rescues me. She is my lifesaver, in all the best flavors.

God, I'm writing poetry in my head again! No one else gives me orgasms like this.

"GOD, ANGELA, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!"

"I love you, too, Tony, but we're not finished here."

And she's right. Well, part of me is finished. But as Etta James serenades us with "At Last," I start using whatever parts Angela wants to help her finish, too.