"Hmmhn. How are ya', Handsome?" Mara asked him, looking up into his eyes after their kiss.

"Jazzed," Harry told her. "I finally got a hold of that guy Crawford, and I was right: it smells. What's for soup?"

"Pork chops. You wannah beer?"

"Sure. Why not. Anything on the hearing?"

"S.O.S. Tomorrow afternoon at two. Can you get away?"

"I talked to Got Fried. No problem. I'll come over for you at lunchtime. We can get a bite on the way over."

"I don't know how hungry I'll be, Harry."

"Food helps to ground you, Mara, you know that."

"We'll see. Okay?" She gave him the bottle of Budweiser and returned to her cooking.

Harry opened the beer and took a long swig. It was his good fortune that the song, "Lily Was Here," a big hit from the previous summer and one of Mara's favorites, by a woman sax player named Candy Dulfer came up on the box. It gave them both a little space. Summer nights wafted into the room with the sound of the saxophone and guitar doing contrapunctal responses. They were distanced from the hearing over Paris. They were just two lovers again for those few moments while the song haunted them. The DJ on the station Mara had been listening to decided to play both versions of the song, "back-to-back" , as they used to say in the 'seventies. This was good.

"We're gonnah win this thing, Mara, okay?" Harry said. He hesitated for a moment, tried to fortify himself with more of the beer and then went on. "I really believe that, Babe. You don't have to if you don't want to. But I think that, if the social worker did not see anything else, she saw that we love Paris and we have worked real hard to make a home for him here."