Theresa Carmody answers the door.She has the consumption and they’re afraid of catching it from her. She’s seventeen, in and out of the sanato- rium, and she’ll never see eighteen.The boys at the post office say sick people like Theresa know there’s little time left and that makes them mad for love and romance and everything. Everything.That’s what the con- sumption does to you, say the boys at the post office. I cycle through wet November streets thinking of that shilling tip, and as I turn into the Carmody street the bicycle slides out from under me and I skid along the ground scraping my face and tearing open the back of my hand.Theresa Carmody opens the door. She has red hair. She  had  green  eyes  like  the  fields  beyond  Limerick. Her  cheeks  are bright pink and her skin is a fierce white. She says, Oh, you’re all wet and bleeding. I skidded on my bike. Come in and I’ll put something on your cuts. I wonder,Should I go in? I might get the consumption and that will be the end of me. I want to be alive when I’m fifteen and I want the shilling tip. Come in.You’ll perish standing there. She puts on the kettle for the tea.Then she dabs iodine on my cuts and I try to be a man and not whimper. She says, Oh, you’re a great bit of a man. Go into the parlor and dry yourself before the fire. Look, why don’t you take off your pants and dry them on the screen of the fire? Ah, no. Ah, do. I will. I drape my pants over the screen. I sit there watching the steam rise and I watch myself rise and I worry she might come in and see me in my excitement. There she is with a plate of bread and jam and two cups of tea.Lord, she says, you might be a scrawny bit of a fellow but that’s a fine boyo you have there. She puts the plate and the cups on a table by the fire and there they stay.With her thumb and forefinger she takes the tip of my excitement and leads me across the room to a green sofa against the wall and all the time my head is filled with sin and iodine and fear of consumption and the shilling tip and her green eyes and she’s on the sofa don’t stop or I’ll die and she’s crying and I’m crying for I don’t know what’s happening 323