"It's tonight or never," Diane said. "Yes," I said. I watched her as she walked back and forth across my bedroom floor. She had on a sheer plasto dress that clung to her round white breasts and full milky thighs. "I'm picking him up at the spaceway," she said. "We're supposed to go dining and dancing tonight." She stopped pacing. "It's my birthday. I'm thirty today." And I was twenty-four and in love. Six years between us. So what? I didn't give a damn. I wanted to marry her, to live with her. "