They were one of those couples envied by both sexes, including me. Maybe it was the Labor Day atmosphere and release of tension. When Tom stepped away to get another platter of hamburger patties, I asked her about the apparent inequity of this. We're free to talk about other things. Your hamburgers were too rare.
People eat raw meat all the time.
Alice was not, as it turned out, one of those people who make themselves interesting, or flirt, by teasing or criticizing someone of the opposite sex. She really did think the hamburgers I was cooking were much too rare, and our conversation, though it had seemed great from my point of view, in fact never got much off the barbecue level. On the other hand, the way she and Tom communicated was like bursts of microwave transmission, with vast quantities of information, opinions, and insights almost instantly interchanged. I did not hold it against Tom personally, but it was intolerable being around him in the presence of girls. They collapsed in puddles before him, sometimes in the most abject way, and Alice, terrific as she was, seemed not entirely an exception in this case.