“He’s with her!” yelped Tillie when, five long minutes later, she emerged from the All State Café. She flailed her arms. “He’s with her!”

“Who’s her?” begged Cass. “Why are you jumping? Who? Penelope’s mom?”

“No,” Tillie cried excitedly, shaking her head wildly. “With the girl walking across the street! The blond one!”

“Fred Something is with Jenny?” gasped Cass.

“Jenny’s with Fred Something?” gasped Penelope.

Tillie nodded.

“No way.”

“Yes way.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Ah-hah.”

They went on like this for a while.

“And get this?” shouted Tillie, clearly pleased to be playing such a crucial role in the escapade. “They were kissing! Kiss-ing! A kiss kiss! On the lips and everything!” Tillie sang. “That happened before I went to the bathroom. And then, when I came back, they were holding hands!”

“I’m going to faint!” whooped Cass, looking not at all like someone who was going to faint.

“Me, too!” shrieked Penelope, who was actually feeling a bit woozy.

“It was really gross,” said Tillie.

“What? The kiss? The kiss was gross?” Cass and Penelope looked on at their friend in horror. They could only imagine what was involved with a gross kiss. Spit? Tongues?

“No, the bathroom,” Tillie said, and laughed. “The kiss looked” — she paused thoughtfully — “the kiss looked nice.”

Once Cass and Penelope were convinced that the kiss was a couples-kind-of-kiss, that Jenny and Fred were on a date, and that the “age-inappropriate paramour” Bea had heard about was NOT Mrs. Schwartzbaum but Jenny — Jenny! Jenny!— they linked their arms to create a chain and spun in circles.

Out of their mouths came brassy hoots and gleeful snorts. They laughed until their voices cracked and their bodies trembled. The stationery store owner accused them of being public nuisances, and an old man in a Yankees windbreaker thwacked Penelope in the shin with his umbrella.

The sky was a dark shade of lavender, and they hadn’t even noticed it was raining out. They sprinted to the Utopia Coffee Shop, where they ordered grilled cheese sandwiches on rye, onion rings to share, and three Cokes.

After dinner, Cass and Tillie decided to walk Penelope home, then share a cab across town. It was drizzling now, and Penelope and Cass crossed Broadway holding a plastic bag over their heads. Tillie said she liked the way the rain felt on her short haircut, which sprouted from her head in tiny wet spikes.

West End Avenue looked bigger when it was dark and windy out; yet, tonight, it still managed to make Penelope feel snug. On Seventy-seventh Street, they hit a red light. Waiting at the curb, the rain falling harder now, Penelope turned her gaze down the block toward Riverside Park.

The street was empty except for a solitary shadowy figure standing in front of a red brownstone; he appeared to be a hunched man poking at the sidewalk with a stick. At first Penelope thought the stick was a metal detector, but then a car stopped, and for a brief moment the yellow headlights illuminated the street, and Penelope realized the stick wasn’t a metal detector but a cane, and the man, small and soggy in his plastic rain poncho, wasn’t poking at the sidewalk, he was writing.

He was writing.

She tiptoed several steps closer, careful not to make sloshing noises in the puddles.

“Hello!” she hollered.

There was no answer.

“Hello?”

There was no response.

The car was gone, and without the help of headlights, Penelope had to squint. She screamed to the man one more time. Nothing. He simply wagged his cane in the air, turned to face Riverside Drive, and hobbled off. He was a slow, unsturdy man, yet Penelope — who was so transfixed she needed several minutes to collect herself — had the eerie sensation that he’d evaporated before her eyes. She didn’t have to look at the square of sidewalk he’d abandoned to know it said: MOE WAS HERE.

Penelope kept standing there. Voices came from behind her.

“He didn’t look crazy,” she heard Tillie say.

“Why are we standing here? We should go catch up to him,” she heard Cass say.

But none of them made a move. The wind grew gusty, and they resumed their walk uptown.

“Who’d have thought Moe would turn out to be a hundred!” exclaimed Cass, finally. They were a block away from Penelope’s house. “Did you see the guy? He could barely walk.”

“Or hear,” added Tillie. “You were screaming loud, Penelope.”

“He must really want to write his name in the street,” marveled Cass. “To hobble around like that!”

“Well, maybe that’s the only way he can make a statement,” said Penelope. They were in front her house now. The night doorman, Jim, emerged to help Cass and Tillie hail a cab.