This is the first David is hearing of Arthur K’s hardon. In previous tellings of that steamy adolescent night long ago, gawky Arthur K and sultry, dark-haired, dark-eyed Shirley were necking in the backseat of the Pontiac and suddenly Shirley’s blouse was unbuttoned and her skirt was up above her waist. Until now David had naturally assumed there’d been an erection, else how could Arthur K have “made out”? He’d also assumed that Arthur K had gone home sated and sans erection, there to discover his sister Veronica sitting at the kitchen table weeping and spooning chocolate pudding into her mouth.
But now, all at once, a hard-on.
Ta-ra.
“I think she had that same effect on everyone,” Arthur K says. “Shirley. Well, she was so fucking beautiful, you know. Blond hair and blue eyes, Jesus, she looked like a shiksa, I swear to God, you’d never know...”
You’d never know, David thinks with shocking clarity, that in every version he’s heard of Arthur K’s story so far, Shirley has had long black hair and brown eyes, and — in at least one telling — crisp black pubic hair. But now she is a blonde, and David forges an immediate connection which he scribbles into his notebook as 
Arthur K doesn’t hear him writing this time around because he is too busy staring up at the ceiling in David’s office, where apparently he is visualizing his blond, blue-eyed Shirley-Veronica shiksa...
“... half sitting, half lying back against the pillows, crying her eyes out. Her room was on the way to mine,” he says, “this was a railroad flat, you had to walk through one room to get to the next one, there was like a corridor running straight through the apartment from one end of it to the other, with the rooms strung out along the way. Her light was on, she used to have this little lamp with a shade on it, on the table beside her bed. The door was open. I could see her lying back against the pillows, sitting there sobbing, her legs stretched out, she was barefoot. Wearing this little skimpy blue robe she always wore, a pink nightgown under it, I could see her pink nightgown, there was lace on the bottom of it, the hem. I said, ‘Sis?’ Whispered it, actually, because my parents were sleeping right down the hall, there was Veronica’s room first, and then mine, and then the big bedroom where my parents slept. ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked her. ‘Sis? What’s wrong?’ And I went inside and sat beside her on the bed.”
Arthur K falls silent.
David waits, scarcely daring to breathe.
“A lot of guys felt the same way I did about her,” Arthur K says at last. “Shirley. She was the class cock-tease, in fact.”
And the moment is gone.
And soon the hour is over.
On Wednesday morning, just as his second session that day is ending, the telephone rings. His patient, an obsessive-compulsive named Susan M, asks as she does after each session, changing only the day each time, “So I’ll see you on Friday, right?” and when he says, “Yes, of course,” she says, “Same time, right?” and he says, “Yes, same time,” and the telephone rings. He is picking up the receiver as Susan M, waggling her fingers in farewell, closes the door behind her.
“Dr. Chapman,” he says.
“Hi, it’s Kate.”
“Kate?” he says.
“Duggan. Rhymes with huggin’.”
“Duggan?”
“Or, come to think of it, muggin’ might be more appropriate.”
“I’m sorry, I...”
“Kate. From the park. The victim, remember?”
“Oh. Oh, yes. How are you, Miss Duggan?”
“Kate. I’m fine. They caught him,” she says. “At least, they think it’s him. Guess where they got him?”
“Where?”
“In the park. Trying to steal somebody else’s bike.”
“Did they find yours?”
“No, he’d already sold it. He’s a junkie, we were right.”
We, he thinks.
“What happens now?”
“I have to go to the precinct later, identify him. That’s why I’m calling. Do you think you could come with me?” she asks at once, and somewhat breathlessly, as if knowing in advance he will say no. “I told the police there was a witness, and they said it would help if they could get a positive ID from someone other than the victim. That’s me. The victim.”
“Well...”
“I know you must be busy...”
“Well, as a matter of fact I’ve been away, and...”
“...but this won’t be till six tonight. The lineup. I work, too, they know that. The cops. I told them that’s the earliest I could get there. They’ve already got him on the attempted robbery, the one in the park yesterday, but they really want to nail him if it turns out he’s the one who stole my bike, too. So if you could come to the precinct, it really would help. If you want to, that is. As a public service, that is.”
“Well, actually, I won’t be free till almost six. So...”
“That’s okay, you could meet me at the precinct, it’s not far from your office. And I don’t think it’ll matter if you’re a few minutes late.”
“Well, you see, Miss Duggan...”
“Kate,” she says.
“Kate,” he says. “I’m not sure I...”
“Please?”
He does not know why the image of her sitting on the ground, ankles crossed, flashes suddenly into his mind, the side-slit in the very short green nylon running shorts, the hint of white cotton panties beneath.
“Say yes,” she says.
The stage is behind a thick plate-glass window which the detective running the lineup assures them is a one-way mirror, or a two-way mirror as it is sometimes called in some precincts, he says, go figure. What it is, they can see into the next room where there’s the stage with height markers on the wall behind it, and a microphone hanging over it because the detective plans to ask all the people they parade to repeat the words the suspect said in the park last Friday — “First to you, Miss Duggan, and then to you, Dr. Chapman” — but nobody in the next room could see them where they were sitting here in the dark. None of the people in the other room would be able to hear any of the conversation in here, either, the conversation in here would be private and confidential.
The detective goes on to explain that all of the people they’ll be looking at will be black men of about the same age as the suspect. This was so no smart-ass lawyer could come in later and say the identification process had been rigged, like say they put six Vietnamese fishermen and the one black kid on the stage there, some choice that would be, huh? The detective wants them to take their time, look everybody over carefully, nobody can see them or hear them out here in the dark, there’s no danger of anybody coming after them and trying to do them harm later on. Just take your time, he tells them, see if you recognize anybody on the stage there, see if anybody’s voice sounds familiar, okay?