Andy nearly had given up hope when he saw the place, tucked between two apartment buildings, across the narrow alley from a florist’s loading dock, its new red awning taut, the gold lettering on the window not yet chipped, the tables within warmly set in white and seated with a handful of couples leaning toward one another over meals. It looked almost throwback, almost like the height of chic in the late 60s, as if every man within would be wearing a sedate suit. As he hurried to the door, he saw a couple near the window snap open a pair of tall, thin menus, and so although it was late for dinner on a Tuesday in Atlanta, and the place was among the few businesses still open at this time downtown, perhaps they would look kindly on him, understand his predicament. Perhaps they would seat him.

He began his story for the host, how it had been the first day of a conference, long speaker, hotel restaurant overbooked, but the young man—hair gelled, nose ring, Bluetooth ear piece, crisp tuxedo shirt, a stark contrast to the formality of the rest of the room—said, “You’re fine. You made it for our last seating. And we have room.”

When he turned to the dining room, Andy appreciated his luck all the more. The handful of couples were just about all the place could handle, and only two tables remained. One was by the kitchen door, and the host was kind enough to seat him, sans reservation, at the other, in a corner along the front, just inside the large window facing the street.

The menu was spare, but every item interesting. He ordered crispy prawns served with a leek slaw dressed with orange and sake, sweetbreads with wild mushroom ragout, a crabmeat beignet, and an entrée of pheasant breast. He was not a food critic, not much of a cook, even, but his work had him travel, and so he had developed a greater-than-typical awareness of food and, more to the point, food trends in the cities where he ate many a business meal. The opinions of others more learned and affluent than he had helped educate him enough to know, with some degree of disappointment, that this chef, this plain-named and tattooed apparition Andy had come to know from online snooping, this Tom Wilson was, in fact, good at what he does.

At the second day of the conference, he doodled through panels. Sitting in crowds for speakers, he popped his laptop and looked for restaurant reviews, finding little yet available. His searching simply re-told what he already knew. Wilson had worked in a few kitchens in the early 90s in Charleston and Hilton Head, then scored a sous-chef spot when Eugene opened in Atlanta, and in 2008 made the leap to opening DeKalb Kitchen. He stuttered when the crash hit Atlanta hard, shifted emphasis from world cuisine to being part of the locavore trend, and enjoyed the good fortune that came with it. Nothing about his personal biography. Nothing about where he grew up. Nothing about his wife.

By the afternoon, Andy was in break-outs, amid loosened ties and nametag hunters and vigorous networking drones with highly sculpted hair. He did much talking and lost the thread of inquiry he had about Tom Wilson. He did the white-collar equivalent of bending to his purpose, however abstracted. But as invitations from long-time colleague friends and the newly eager came, to join them for dinner, for drinks, for some distraction, for a suite party (who books a suite at these things?) his purpose returned, and he declined, knowing he was going to DeKalb Kitchen.

That night, as he enjoyed a charcuterie plate, he thought he saw a glimpse of a tattooed arm through the service doors into the kitchen, but realized that the likelihood was the entire kitchen was similarly sleeved. By dessert, he began to foresee a long and expensive week of dining with nary a glimpse as a reward. Calculating on his phone what a week of meals might end up costing, and how he could either seek reimbursement (unlikely) or domestic forgiveness (equally unlikely) he began considering how he might pay in cash, and then the dessert menu landed on the table, followed by an inquiry from the sommelier, tastevin subtly tinnient against the brass buttons of his coat, as to whether he would like a glass of port. The dessert menu open, the first option a cheese plate with honeycomb, he found his voice stuck.

He remembered the day when he knew he was done with Laney. He’d cleaned up his act, left the band, enrolled at DelCo. She was at the Penn State campus in Abington. He drove up to see her, flush with a new job that would pay just enough to keep him in school for a year. Laney said it’d be good to see him. They sat on a bench across the street from a campus convenience store, he lounging into the bench, she more perched, as if coiled to run. He touched her arm and she let him. He looked at her for any sign of more, but she wouldn’t meet his gaze. Nearby, an overstuffed garbage can spilled onto the sidewalk, and ungainly bees haunted the coffee cups, their buzzing stutter in and out of the garbage a lulling sound. He asked the usual questions, but she asked nothing about him. Wanting to tell her, he almost just blurted what he wanted, how things were getting better.

A bee zagged nearer to her, bumped against her shoe, and began to yo-yo near her shin. Her body tensed, and Andy watched her face sneer its way to irritation. As she stood, he stopped talking. Her focus was the bee. He said, it’s a honeybee. Nothing to worry about it, just let it go.

She said something, almost a whimper. The entirety of her energy narrowed to irritation. As she watched the bee, all he had hoped for in seeing her—a willingness to hear him, the sophistication he recalled when he first met her and her impossible family in a suburban existence that to him seemed regal and otherworldly, how she reveled in the way she felt when touching him—all he had built and overbuilt in the broken vault of his memory, dissipated. In her presence, he felt the world reduced to irritation.

He knew he would think of this moment for years afterward, and that maybe it was unfair. He had seen the face enough. Her view of the world was disappointed, smugly aware of and even anticipating of the ways people and things would let her down, or confirm her worst expectations. He would be the biggest disappointment of all.

He slept with her later that afternoon. He never called her again.

Once, she wrote him, having found his address, and he never wrote back. When later relationships foundered and he took to looking for her online, pasting together the story of her life from vague mentions, he never bothered to call.

He chose the cheese plate. The honeycomb’s grit fused to his teeth, a bit of smoke in the honey itself. He watched the kitchen door swing again and again, and he thought of all the meanings of portal in the flutter of the doors and the yellow glimpses of the kitchen, its steel, and the shadows of waiters hurrying to cross between worlds.

The host greeted him with a broad smile and said, we should run a tab for you! Andy wished him serious, considered bringing it up, but instead thought of the cash he carried, nearly offered a silent prayer for restraint, and asked for a particular table. He did not tell the host why—he wanted a good view of the kitchen doors. The host, a good host, accommodated.

No appetizer that evening. Rather, to extend his time, he ordered a curried catfish soufflé, due to the menu’s warning that time would be required. He ordered a bourbon for the wait, and his solicitous waiter brought bread.

His skin prickled when a man in chef whites opened the kitchen door and looked directly at him. He matched what Andy knew of Tom Wilson—tattooed right arm, glasses, sideburns. He also had a small hoop in his ear. Without appearing to, Andy sought his right hand, now wrapped in a towel. The man went back into the kitchen and, by the time the door swung back, re-appeared, hands clasped behind his back. He strode directly toward the table, and Andy sipped his bourbon, wanting badly to guzzle the glass.

“Our host tells me this is your third night in a row,” the man said, a big grin transforming him from intimidating to genial. Andy nodded, surprised at his inability to speak. The man continued. He was the sous-chef, Michael something, and his voice was that of a native, at least regionally. By that time, Andy’s chest cavity sagged a bit in relief, and he missed most of what the man was saying—something modest and ingratiating about how the restaurant appreciates repeat customers, and how did Andy hear of them, their local food sourcing, and on and on. It occurred to him that the staff might be wondering or assuming he was a critic or food writer with a magazine, and he was not sure whether to play at that or not when Michael caught his attention again. He asked if, later in the evening, after the soufflé, Andy would like to meet the chef.

It was right there. That easy. And yet it had not occurred to him that this possibility would manifest itself. Half nauseated, half wanting to spring from his seat, Andy managed a nod and a grin, and Michael nodded back and in that bobbing, uncertain way they parted and the sous chef returned to the kitchen.

Her letter had told him about Atlanta. Andy had read it standing by the bank of mailboxes in the lobby of his building, his eyes running ahead of his comprehension as he read to sate curiosity while building in his imagination the life the writing gradually revealed. Laney had moved south to follow her family. Her dad had been promoted and transferred a year after she earned her degree. She had been temping, was intrigued at the idea of no snow, so she moved with them and worked in human resources for a few businesses until landing a position with a huge industrial distributor based in Atlanta. Then the part about Tom. And how she found faith, and was developing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and he imagined her arguing with a Christ figure, then pictured Jesus watching her apply eye makeup, sharing a Kit Kat, lounging in his underwear while she debated which Smiths tape would be the best soundtrack for fucking. It made him laugh, despite the minor pang of familiarity. She would not, he reasoned, use the phrase best soundtrack for fucking anymore, with Jesus or anyone else.

She had a dog. Tom was teaching her to cook. She said she was happy. But he held a letter she felt she had reason to send—after years, after the bad final evening they ever shared, after no exchange at all—to what? Tell him she was OK? Exonerate him? Flaunt something? Do one of the 12 steps?

He kept the letter. For days, he thought about what he would write back. At the time, on paper, he could have made his job, his life, sound like something: traveling, feting visiting speakers, working for the University of Michigan, living in a decent condo, free and unattached. He never wrote. The intervening year distracted him—new job, new condo, new destructive relationship that he foolishly committed to via marriage, the launch of acrimony in a desolate home with two professional vagabonds. Then, about a year ago, he got a card, for his birthday, a quick signature and a question packing so much into punctuation: Write back . . .?—tell me how you are . . .??

The kitchen looked like every kitchen he’d seen on the Food Network. But because it was the end of the evening, the staff were cleaning boards, wiping knives, letting the grill cool. Busboys still stutter-stepped in and out, but the chefs were in a huddle near the cooler door drinking. The one who turned first toward Andy and Michael was Tom Wilson, and he had a few swallows of wine left in an enormous glass.

“You, sir, are our recidivist,” he said.

Andy went into the mode. Big grin. Straight back. A stance for talking money. “It has been a delight so far,” he said.

“How did you enjoy your soufflé?”

Andy appreciated that Tom knew enough—or was confident enough—to ask his question in a way that precluded any possibility of dissent. Andy gushed, talked about flavor balance, bluffed his way through foodie talk. Tom indulged, took a sip of wine, and then said, “I appreciate that. But was it fucking good?”

The other chefs laughed, looked at one another. Tom didn’t break eye contact with Andy. After a bristle subsided, he said, “Of course it was good. I wouldn’t have so much to say if it wasn’t.”

Tom relaxed then and said, “Let me show you around this cavernous kitchen. It’s good to talk to people who enjoy coming here.” He poured Andy a glass of wine and began to talk shop.

Andy asked him if he showed a lot of people the kitchen, and Tom confirmed he did. He said he is still new in town, as far as his business went, and that when he hears about repeat customers—and particularly those who dine alone, and at this shot some side-eye at Andy—he wants to engage.

“I’m not a critic,” Andy said. “Just in town for a conference. I travel a lot, so I eat alone quite a bit, but almost never in the same place twice.”

Tom raised his eyebrows. “I’ll take the flattery.”

While Tom talked about the kitchen, about his sources, about his methods, the cluster of chefs broke up, drifted through their night ritual of closing down, and one by one moved from kitchen to the small bar in the dining room. Tom was ebullient when he spoke of his work, of the food, of what he did. Despite the strutting beginning to their conversation, Tom’s presence was amiable, big without intimidation, masterful without pretension. Comfortable in his skin. He was a big man, and Andy remembered Laney’s father’s grilling apron: Never trust a skinny chef.

When Tom poured Andy another glass of wine, Andy saw his right hand clearly, and noted the absence of a ring. He even lacked the shadow, the white palimpsest of the recently un-ringed.

By the time they were in their third bottle, talking about great restaurants around the country, about the locavore movement, about toast in San Francisco and food trucks in Los Angeles and the taco stands of Austin and the decline of French classicism in New York, Andy was loose. He had lost track of time, lost the thread of purpose that had pushed his days, and was instead awash in speculation, wondering what Tom Wilson’s home looked like, who was there now, whether Laney sat on a couch somewhere angry at the world and the disappointing people it had brought into her orbit. How he had always left her abruptly, even in their good days, how he had itched to leave, felt he could not be in the room when the anticipation had seeped away, when he was left only with the weakness of their two personalities flicking at one another. Even now, Andy thought, I don’t know how to quit—always too early or too late, an awkward cut, a stumble.

And then Tom Wilson asked, “So, Andrew, where are you from?”

Andy put his glass down and said, “Small town in Pennsylvania, near Philly. Devon.”

Two years ago, the same conference was in Chicago. He’d gone about a month after a new dean had started in the college, partly looking for affirmation, partly looking for who might be hiring. He was sick of Michigan, sick of being pushed around, frankly sick of having to work as hard as he was. But instead of usefully networking, he spent most of the conference drinking the afternoons away with other burnt-out gift planners. By the time he was in O’Hare waiting for the flight back, his sense of momentum had eroded to bile.

He knew such moments were never a time to take stock, but as he motioned to the bartender at a fake Irish pub within the departures terminal, he reflected on loss and pissiness, in equal measure, and obeyed the urge to send a postcard to Laney, the only message being, “I’m doing fine.” That was it. Peevish. Peevish and hammered in O’Hare in a fake Irish pub next to a Five Guys. He enjoyed the irony of Five Guys flaunting their stacks of potato bags right next to an Irish pub, as though they were trying to be historically dick-ish.

Three Jamesons in preparation for the flight, recent nicotine habit kicked, flush from botched executive training and looking forward to a successful campaign event, and mindful of the disaster of a workplace to which he returned, he rifled deep in the accordion folds within his attaché and found the letter Laney had sent years before. The paper was warm from being up against his laptop. He purposely addressed it to her maiden name. Purposely wrote it with a marker, picking the cheesiest postcard he could fine—an aerial view of Chicago, Sears tower, expanse of lake, vantage point of being above it all, a mash up of tackiness, withdrawal and disdain.

He was later sick on the plane. When he landed, long after the postcard had been dropped in a mail slot, long after he had sobered up and regretted the mean-spiritedness of it, the can of communication worms it would open, he wondered what it was, what she had done, what failure in him, moved him to such pettiness. His sister had once said that when he had been with Laney he was at his weakest, at his most subdued, as if he were hampered in the business of living. He thought at the time she was just bitter. But navigating the rental car parking lot, laughing to himself about the metaphor inherent in his poorly executed efforts to find his car, he suspected she had been on to something: he disliked who he was and what he had become, and Laney had become an easy, distant, irritable personification of his failure.

Tom’s head tilted for a moment. He swirled his wine glass on the bar, the elliptical splash of wine within to Andy mesmerizing like a flame, suddenly hot and fierce.

“Andrew—tell me your last name again?”

He wanted to lie. Needed to lie. Too many things were between him and the door. His coat was somewhere, and in his coat, his hotel key. His phone. His life scattered through the restaurant.

“McNair,” he says. “Andrew McNair.”

“Small world,” Tom said. “My wife, she’s from that area.” He paused and maintained eye contact. “Maybe you know her.”

“Maybe,” Andy said. “Who’s your wife?”

Tom smiled only with his mouth. He looked down at his wine and let his gaze stay there. “I’m glad you enjoyed your meals enough this week to come here three times, Andrew,” he said. “It is unusual that I make a patron so obsessively happy with what we do here. It’s flattering. It really is.”

Andy looked at his watch, looked around from the bar. Only the host remained, twiddling over his phone near the host stand.

“Let’s get you on your way,” Tom said. “And my wife’s name is Elaine Wilson.”

Walking back to the hotel, Andy imagined the day that postcard arrived. He assumes Tom had been home, had not yet gone to the restaurant, saw the card. He would ask her about it later. She would sigh like she always did, as if releasing any hope she had for Andy to be better than he was. She would tell Tom Wilson all about the guy she used to date. She wouldn’t say it had been a relationship. And depending on how tight they were, how much they had fought, whether they had children (he still wondered about that), whether they were happy, she might not tell him about the disasters, the clinic, the drugs, all of the pain he caused. Maybe she would have said he was just some guy. But the way Wilson looked at him, at the modulation he showed in their final moments, he suspected Tom Wilson knew all he needed to know.

When Tom had held the door for him to leave, Andy had expected a final word, some caustic warning, the kind of thing he would have done. Instead, Tom held it quietly, let it swing soundlessly shut behind Andy, and then turned the lock. As he strode away, Andy heard Tom jiggle the handle once, a nightly precaution, he assumed, to ensure the lock caught.

Early that morning in the first week of July, after three days of steady rain, the sun came out to glitter briefly on the steely waters of the bay. That spring and summer were exceptionally cold. Swimming was still a bone chiller. The usual weekday gaggle of moms and kids was sparse for so far into the season. BJ didn’t care. Her kids were grown or gone. She had no one to amuse but herself. She hummed as she did the few breakfast dishes. It wasn’t that she despised the tourists. They were what they were, rolling into the public parking lot in their pricey new SUVs, herding their kids down the beach, dragging coolers, and towels, and blankets, the kids swinging plastic buckets so they could capture and torture unsuspecting periwinkle snails, razor clams, and sometimes, if they were deft enough to catch them, small fish.

Midday the ice cream truck arrived with its familiar bell ringing. The driver, a grizzled man in middle age, drove by with his upper arm jutting out the window, displaying a tattoo on his bicep of a mermaid, en flagrante delicto, wrapped around a trident wielding Neptune, which was none of her business. She had a couple of ill-conceived tattoos herself that had blurred with age. She tried to remember the feel of the prick of the needle, but it was like what they always said about giving birth. The memory of the pain fades.

The pain she felt that morning was more of an ache, deep in her chest. Not the usual psychic ache. Each breath felt like she was trying to breathe underwater. The air bubbled out in an audible wheeze that rattled her. Allergies or a harbinger of the flu, she thought. Need to get outside. Into the fresh air to clean out whatever she’d been breathing while cooped up in the rain soaked house. As much as she wished for sun, she wasn’t looking forward to oppressive heat like last summer when the temperature was stuck in the high nineties for days on end, and the marshland on the banks of the river stank at low tide for no visible reason other than it was so damned hot. First world troubles she tried to tell herself. She had no right to complain. The air-conditioned house kept her cool although she wondered what was breeding in those coils, convinced it was what had turned her every breath into piercing pain.

“If it worries you so,” her middle daughter said during one of her infrequent calls, “replace the damn thing. When’s the last time you changed the filter?”

BJ pretended not to have heard her, said the cell service was lousy at the back corner of the lawn, although she wasn’t on the lawn for fear of ticks; she was on the deck sweeping up the Niger seed shells the gold finches dropped from the feeder. It amazed her that they were able to separate the insides from the tiny black shells. The proof was the mess, which she had to clean up day after day until the showy yellow birds moved on for the winter.

Despite years of striving for anonymity, trying to live just an ordinary life, fame was threatening to close in on her again.

“Why not,” her oldest daughter said, “sounds like a juicy part, and you keep saying you could use the money.”

That was true. The part was a dowager queen in a TV series that, to her mind, was grossly overhyped. Twenty years ago, when she left the industry in a desperate attempt to save her drug-addled son, she was playing romantic leads. He was a young teen. Got his nose into meth and coke until it bled. The dad was long gone. The girls’ fathers were gone too, but it never seemed to affect them the way it affected him, or to be more accurate, afflicted him. Raising a boy was different. The girls were predictable, steady, reliable. He was an energy ball, awkward, gangly, angry. Still she could see what a handsome man he was going to be when he filled out. She bought groceries with an eye to what would beef him up, but the only ones who beefed up were her and the girls. That was years ago though. Since then, they’d all slimmed down. Except for the wheeze she looked and sounded pretty good for her age.

The casting agent liked the newly acquired huskiness of her voice. The wardrobe mistress sent drawings of what the costume designer had in mind for her part, long flowing robes in jewel tones and headpieces that were gem-encrusted wimples. The whole get up looked like something a counter culture nun might wear. Those robes looked heavy, too hot, for scenes she’d been told would be shot on a beach in Croatia in August. They reminded her of the last time she walked the beach.

It was last summer, during the heat wave. The sand within sight of the lifeguard stand was packed, so she walked and walked until she was past the crowds, to where the beach was sprinkled with groups, here and there, sunbathing and playing Frisbee. She could see a black cluster in the distance. As she got closer she was surprised to see several families. The women were dressed in long black robes, their faces covered except for eye slits. The men were as close to naked as anyone could be in their skimpy black Speedos. The kids all looked to be under the age of three. They were dressed in brightly colored bathing suits like any kids you’d expect to see on the beach. A mix of boys and girls, toddling towards the water and BJ wondered at what age those little girls would be stripped of their individuality and imprisoned in layers of suffocating black cloth.

It was low tide. At that end of the beach the exposed sand flared out into rivulets and tidal pools. The robed women rose to follow their children. The men didn’t even glance their way. She watched the women chase the kids out onto the flats, all the way out to where there was open water. The children ran into it, laughing and splashing each other. The women waded in after them, their robes floating up around them, as they called out in a language BJ didn’t recognize. She looked back to see if the men were watching. What would they do if there were an emergency, if one of the children waded out too far and was caught in the current or dropped into a hole carved out of the sand by the tide? No way could the women swim dressed like that, and the men were oblivious.

But wasn’t it always the way?

Her ex kept saying, “He’ll grow out of it. It’s a phase. All kids experiment. Boys will be boys.” Then he took off for a film festival overseas with wife number three. She was the one left to retrieve the kid when he was expelled from the pricey private school, to rescue him from drowning in an ocean of bad choices. She was the one left to listen to his glib valium online for sale excuses, over and over, while his sisters finished high school, then college, got jobs, made lives with men, not of her choice if she’d had one, but they’d turned out to be good guys nevertheless.

Once she read an article about a ferry that went down off the coast of Indonesia. The men did nothing to help the burka clad women floundering in the water under the weight of their robes because it would have been immodest to remove them. The men swam to shore and let the women drown.

But that’s not what happened that morning last summer. The kids came when called. They all made it back safely to the men with the children laughing and the women happily chatting the whole way. The children rushed to be hugged and wrapped in towels by their fathers while the women unloaded containers of food from a cooler, and they all settled into a picnic on the beach.

A sudden wave of loneliness overwhelmed her. Who was she to judge them, she asked herself, less as a question than a statement of fact. She walked a ways more up the beach that day until she was out of sight of people. She never wore a bathing suit anymore. Her legs and arms, in cut-offs and a well-worn t-shirt, were once white and smooth. Now they were freckled with age. When did that happen? When did her own skin become so unfamiliar?

The boy had such beautiful skin. When his sisters were fighting pimples he never had one. There were so many things he never had. What he did have was hair so dark it was almost back and eyes so blue it was hard to look away from them. No braces for him. His baby teeth gave way to a straight set of whites that made his smile radiate with the confidence he never had. She held that thought when the phone rang. It was her neighbor, Carla.

“Suit up,” she said, without even a hello. “Time for a walk.”

Ever since her son, her beautiful boy turned ravaged man, was found unresponsive in a parking garage downtown, Carla had worked at buoying her. She was a small woman, a widow with steel gray hair and enough loss of her own to be understanding.

BJ’s daughters were less attentive, as though their brother’s early departure was a foregone conclusion and she should just get on with living her life. Easy for them, they were still young, and fed up. So much energy was expended on him, so little on them. They didn’t need it. They knew how to breathe on their own. BJ put on a pair of water shoes and walked out to meet Carla in the street.

“I’m up for a good long one today,” Carla said as they headed down the slope.

“Shorter, please,” BJ said. “I didn’t sleep well last night and I’ve got this congestion.”

For emphasis she took a deep breath and let it out so Carla could hear her wheeze.

“Pine pollen,” Carla said, very matter of fact, then, “Mayim was stuck in traffic on the turnpike for hours last night. Construction.”

Carla’s daughter, Mayim, aka Margaret, aka Maggie before she started working for an Israeli falafel maker in Jamaica Plain had gotten in touch with her Jewish roots, which didn’t sit well with her atheist mother. BJ listened to Carla drone on, the whole way down the hill, through the parking lot, onto the beach, about how her daughter wanted her to participate in some ceremony for Jewish women, which involved a ritual bath.

“I didn’t know Jews went in for baptism,” Carla said.

The sky had clouded up again. The wind off the water was just cold enough to be uncomfortable even though BJ wore a sweater. Gulls drifted overhead and she had to admit, outside in the bracing air, she felt better.

She hadn’t told Carla about the part. And she’d sworn her girls to secrecy. Everyone thought celebrity was such a great thing but if she had a nickel for every minute of hurt celebrity caused her she wouldn’t have had to consider exposing herself like that again. She wasn’t sure she could withstand the loss of privacy, and the inevitable scrutiny. She was more resilient then. And the boy was… well… she was still hopeful. She was forty-five. He was only thirteen. Her baby. His picture was plastered all over the covers of the tabloids, his hair cut in a blunt Prince Valiant bowl, and those eyes. That was the end of it for her. She left LA to hide out at a house on a beach north of Boston, to try to lead a more normal life for her children. A lot of good it did. She lost him anyway.

Carla was still talking about the ritual bath, something about her daughter immersing herself in Judaism and purity. BJ was still thinking about her character. According to the script, she was a strong woman, manipulative, using her status as the matriarch to play her children against one another to disastrous results. Carla babbled on. BJ was so lost in her own thoughts that she only caught bits of Carla’s monologue, something about “the memories we shared…”

The Wednesday after next was the first table read, if she agreed to take the part. When she was young, before children, and complications, she got excited about new opportunities, especially when they were handed to her. A pinch of recollection made her smile. Maybe she did still have the juice for it.

“You tiring out?” Carla said.

BJ kicked up the pace.

“Not yet. Let’s keep going.”

They followed the shoreline around the bend to where the inlet opened out onto the bay.

“You know what I really appreciate?” BJ said.

Carla shook her head.

“You’ve always been unimpressed by who I was.”

Carla laughed. “You know what they say. Everyone one pisses and shits the same.”

She dragged her toes in the sand as she walked, leaving what looked like claw marks of a giant bird. She laughed again and did a little jig. BJ stopped to pick up a branch, stripped of its bark by the tides. There were so many random small things to be found on the beach; only occasionally something so big survived. It felt good in her hand, like an ancient staff a dowager queen might carry to control her unruly minions.

They turned around. Waves gently lapped the shore. The gray haze lifted like a curtain revealing a Technicolor cloudscape. It was the kind of sky she saw when they first moved there. She’d walked the kids down to the beach that first day. It was low tide. Her teenage girls were preoccupied with finding shells and sea glass. It was the boy who looked up, spread his arms with a theatrical flourish, and shouted, “Ta da!”

The grief hit her like a blow to the chest. She stopped walking.

Carla said, “You okay?”

There was no way to answer. She simply nodded her head, and let the stick steady her until she recovered enough to walk on.

On a late October night in Greenwich Village, the rain was like a mist and it was unseasonably warm. When Jonathan saw a café with an outdoor table sheltered by an awning, he sat down to wait for Carole. Forty-two, he was thin and almost six feet, with dark curly hair and dark eyes. He wore a dress shirt and jeans. He still couldn’t believe that if things went according to plan, in six months he’d be adopting Carole’s baby.

It had only been a few weeks since his lawyer friend Peter, also gay, had told him about Carole. Two months pregnant, she was twenty-eight and single, lived in New Hampshire, and not only wanted to give up her child, but she preferred a gay male couple or a even a gay single man. Whenever Jonathan had vaguely thought about becoming a father he’d assumed he’d have a husband, but he was starting to worry that he’d always be alone. Carole had liked his being a college teacher and that he lived in Manhattan. Although she wasn’t Jewish, she seemed pleased that he was. (Apparently when she was in high school a gay male Jewish neighbor had been very important to her.) Jonathan wondered if she also didn’t want the baby to have another mother.

The one time he and Carole Skyped he’d worried about her seeing how his apartment had only one bedroom, but when he’d shown her the large dining area that could be converted to a bedroom, she’d said it was fine. He’d also made clear that in addition to his salary, he had enough inherited money to raise a child in an expensive city. Now he was paying for Carole to come down for the weekend so they could talk in person. No papers had been signed, and even when they were, at any point and up to seventy-two hours after the birth she’d be able to legally change her mind.

Suddenly she was there. Her shoulder-length reddish-brown hair looked cheaply dyed, her eye-makeup was too dark for her pale skin, and her front tooth was crooked, but she was prettier than she’d looked on Skype. She wore a faded yellow blouse with embroidered daisies around the collar and sleeves, and black pants. There were several rubber bands on her wrist. Jonathan tried not to look at her belly.

They sort-of hugged, barely touching.

After she sat down she kept glancing at the street. Although Halloween was several days away, it was a Friday night and many people walking by wore costumes.

“It’s so exciting to be here,” Carole said.

“Your hotel’s okay?”

“It’s really nice.”

He hoped she realized how much it had cost.

When the waiter came Carole ordered a Diet Coke. She told Jonathan he should feel free to have a drink.

The idea of his not drinking hadn’t even occurred to him.

Although he’d referred to his sabbatical in his application letter, he brought up again how although it would be over in the fall, he’d of course hire a nanny. He felt as if he were at a job interview.

It turned out Carole didn’t know what a sabbatical was. She was intrigued.

“Even though I plan to work until my due date,” (she worked at a thrift shop near Dartmouth College), “I feel like this time in my life, especially since I’m not—keeping the baby—it will be like a kind of sabbatical for me.”

He wasn’t sure what to say.

He didn’t know much about her. She’d gone to a community college. The baby’s dad (who wasn’t in the picture) was white. Peter kept telling him he should thank his lucky stars that she didn’t want to be part of the child’s life.

“Another thing I want to make clear,” Jonathan said, “is that I’ll send him or her to private school if that’s what…they need.”

Carole kept looking at the people walking by. There was a group of small children wearing costumes. Their moms were dressed like princesses or prom queens and had expensively streaked brown or honey-colored hair.

“And as I said in my letter,” Jonathan added, “I hope to marry one day.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Do you belong to a temple?”

“Not at the moment.” Should he add that he could join one?

When his wine came, he felt too shy to toast the baby.

Carole ordered pizza. Jonathan ordered fish, then changed it to a burger.

After the waiter left, there was a long silence. It felt like awkward date.

“There’s something you should know,” Carole said.

“Okay,” he said slowly.

“I don’t want to find out the baby’s sex before it’s born. I want it to be a surprise.”

He nodded in what he hoped was an encouraging way. He hadn’t really thought about finding out early.

“If you want to know, you can talk to the nurse in the office. Just don’t tell me. OK?”

“I don’t care about the gender.” He should have used a different word. “I’m just as happy not to know the sex.”

“Okay. But if you change your mind, don’t tell me.”

“I won’t change my mind.”

After another silence he talked about his job. He didn’t go into how his specialty was modern English poetry, or that his sabbatical project was about Philip Larkin’s early poems.

“Do you like Stieg Larson?” Carole asked.

“I keep meaning to read him,” he lied.

“He’s so good. You’ll love him. ”

She was watching a man walking by who had a snake around his neck. His bare chest and arms were covered with tattoos.

“I’ve seen him around the Village before,” Jonathan said. “He always has that snake. It’s not just that it’s Halloween.”

“I love New York!”

She’d better not expect him to keep paying for her to visit.

When their food came, they ate mostly in silence.

There was an almost full moon. With the streetlights shining through the mist and the small groups of people wearing costumes, everything looked romantic. And here he was, alone and part of what was basically a business transaction.

“I’m thinking about going back to school,” Carole said. “Maybe something like social work. Or maybe nursing….”

“If I can help with your applications in any way, I’d be glad to do it,” he said. “I’ve helped quite a few students.” He didn’t mention that he’d also helped his former cleaning person and his doorman’s son.

His burger was huge and he wasn’t used to eating so much meat. He ordered more wine.

Carole was eating her last slice of pizza when the waiter started to take away her plate.

“Hey!” Jonathan said to him. “Where’s she supposed to put down her pizza?”

Barely apologizing, the waiter put back her plate.

“Only in New York,” Jonathan muttered as the waiter walked away. “They charge exorbitant prices and then they can’t wait to get rid of you.”

She put what was left of her slice on her plate. “Wow! Thanks. I never would have had the nerve to say anything.”

He’d joke to Peter that he felt like her knight in shining armor.

It turned out she didn’t expect to go to his apartment (which a friend in real estate had just helped him de-clutter as if he were putting it on the market) or to see him on Saturday. She was leaving early Sunday.

Suddenly he was so cheerful he wondered if he were tipsy.

A witch and a ghost, on bicycles, whizzed by.

As he waited for the check, Carole said, “There’s something else I have to tell you.”

She’d changed her mind! She’d gotten herself a free weekend in New York, and now she was keeping the baby.

“The thing is,” Carole said, “you can’t be in the delivery room. My best friend, Diane, she’s going to be there with me. We’ve been friends since first grade….”

“That’s fine.” He’d thought more about taking the baby back to his apartment than about the birth itself. He realized that actually, he was relieved.

______

After they signed adoption papers Jonathan found it harder to concentrate on his writing about Larkin. He dated more frequently than he had in a while, but no one seemed promising. Peter invited him to dinner with a gay couple, one of whom was the biological father of their seven year-old daughter. They showed Jonathan many cute pictures, and he briefly wished he’d used his own sperm with a surrogate. He downloaded a Stieg Larsson novel, but although he could see the appeal he couldn’t finish it. He went to Barnes and Noble and skimmed a few childcare books. He googled a few stores that sold furniture for children, but was too superstitious to buy anything yet. He scheduled an appointment with the psychotherapist he’d stopped seeing several years before. He was surprised when, as Jonathan told him about the adoption, the therapist got teary.

Once a week he called Carole. He’d ask how she was feeling, and she’d say she was fine. He’d ask about her job, and she’d say they were busy or not very busy. She never asked him anything.

One day she said she’d just been to her obstetrician and had heard the baby’s heartbeat.

“Too bad you weren’t there.”

Was she trying to make him feel bad? Should he offer to come to New Hampshire one weekend? He didn’t know her well enough to read her signals.

Their best conversation was when he mentioned he’d seen Conan O’Brien at Starbucks.

Jonathan decided that if this didn’t work out, he’d never try to be a father again.

______

In February Carole invited him to New Hampshire.

“You can meet my obstetrician, Dr. Vo. I really love her. And you can hear the baby’s heartbeat.”

He rented a car, arrived in the late afternoon, and was amused that the inexpensive hotel Carole had recommended gave him a suite with two sinks and three beds. Relieved when Carole texted she had to work late and couldn’t have dinner with him, he went for a walk. There were a few office buildings, a luncheonette, several bars and a drugstore. There was a big empty storefront where groups of elderly people were playing bingo. Carole had suggested he try one of two restaurants near Dartmouth, but he didn’t want to get back in the car. He found a small pizzeria. Standing next to him at the counter was a sexy dark-haired man in his twenties, a little shorter and heavier than Jonathan, with blue eyes and a five o’clock shadow. Maybe he was the baby’s dad! Life suddenly seemed complicated. Jonathan wasn’t sure he was ready.

The man took his slice and left. Jonathan sat in a booth near a window. The pizza was pretty good. He wished they served wine. Not many people walked by, but he looked for the Jewish gay neighbor who’d meant so much to Carole. No one seemed possible.

The next morning he picked Carole up at her apartment to drive her to Dr. Vo’s office.  Despite the cold, she was standing outside her small brick apartment building, her black ski jacket half-unzipped. When she got in and fastened her seatbelt, he couldn’t help seeing how big her belly had gotten. He had the impulse to say something he would never say—Zowie!

During the half hour drive they made small talk, but there were awkward silences. At one point she said the baby was kicking and asked if he wanted to feel it.

“But I guess you’re driving,” she added quickly.

Not sure if he should pull over, he kept driving.

Dr. Vo’s practice was associated with Dartmouth Hospital. There were two other men in the waiting room. People must assume he was the dad. He wasn’t sure if that was exactly true. Carole took out her phone. She was wearing a pink top with ruffles on the sleeves. It looked stretched out and faded. Maybe she bought it at the thrift shop where she worked. He checked to see if she still had rubber bands around her wrist. She did.

The waiting room had photographs of mountains and lakes on the walls; the only reading material seemed to be about gynecology. One of the pregnant women reminded him of a colleague. He tried to think about a Larkin poem, but finally just sat there.

A nurse came in and announced that Dr. Vo had an emergency. She couldn’t say how long the wait would be. Two of the pregnant women agreed to see the other physician. Soon Jonathan was the only “dad.” After a while, just he and Carole were left.

Carole had put her phone away and was staring into space. Her hand was on her stomach. Idly, Jonathan asked her if she’d thought any more about going back to school.

“As I said, I’d be happy to help with applications.”

“Okay,” she said. “You already offered. Enough!”

They barely knew each other, and he’d managed to make her angry. He wasn’t sure what to do.

“There’s a Yiddish word, genug—it means ‘enough,’” he said quickly. “My mom—she’s been dead ten years now—she’d use all these Yiddish expressions.” He smiled at Carole.

She didn’t smile back.

“Anyway, she’d tell this story about when I was a little boy.”

He used to hate it when she did.

“One day I got angry with her about something, and I happened to be holding a pencil. And, I threw at her.” Why was he telling this stupid story?

“It didn’t hit her or anything. Actually she caught it, but then she kept going on about how it could have hit her. ‘See how sharp that point is? It could have gone into my eye! You could have really hurt me.’ She went on and on about it. Finally I said, ‘Genug Mom.’” He smiled.

“Were you a bad boy?” Carole asked.

The idea seemed to please her.

“I guess. Sometimes.”

She took out her phone.

“Listen, can I ask you a question?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “I’ve noticed you wear these rubber bands.” He gestured toward her wrist. “I’m wondering, is there something special that you use them for?”

She smiled. “Lots of things. Like they make the lids of jars easier to grip. You can wrap a rubber band around the end of a candle, so when you put it in the candleholder it’ll be less wobbly. You can shorten an electrical cord with a rubber band. Maybe this is TMI, but before I got maternity pants, I used a rubber band to keep my jeans closed.”

The nurse told Carole she could go in. Jonathan would join her later.

He texted Peter that he was about to hear the baby’s heartbeat.

When the nurse called him in, Carole, in a green robe, was lying down. Dr. Vo, Asian, petite and pretty, wearing a white coat and boots with very high heels, was fiddling with some equipment.

“This is Jonathan,” Carole said. “I told you about him. He’s a professor at a college in New York.”

Dr. Vo nodded but barely glanced at him.

“He lives in Manhattan.”

Jonathan wished for Carole’s sake that Dr. Vo would at least pretend to be a little interested. He felt like saying something like, She’s just as good as you are.

Apparently there was a problem with the baby’s heartbeat or with hearing the baby’s heartbeat.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all,” Dr. Vo said. She went to get a different machine.

Jonathan wasn’t sure what to do. “Do you want me to wait outside?” he asked Carole.

“No. I don’t know. I guess so.” Maybe it was the green gown, but she looked sort of green.

Walking out, he realized he should have offered again to stay. And now here he was in an empty waiting room, alone again.

After a few minutes the nurse came to the doorway.

“Everything’s fine,” she said. “But Dr. Vo had another emergency. You’ll have to hear baby’s heart another time.”

He was close to tears. “The important thing is the baby.”

He wanted to buy Carole lunch at the nicest restaurant around, but she said she was wiped out and just wanted to go home and take a nap.

As she suggested, after he dropped her off he drove back to Hanover, had lunch at a fancy hotel and walked around the Dartmouth campus. He and Carole had planned to have an early dinner, but she called and said she still wasn’t up to being with anyone.

He told himself that he had no right to be, but he was hurt. He could have gone to her apartment and made her dinner. It had been a long time since he’d cooked for anyone.

He ate pizza at the same place. It wasn’t as good.

______

He was surprised the next morning when Carole called from the lobby.

“I was afraid you checked out. Can I come up?”

He tried to straighten the room. As she knocked he was throwing the spread over the bed he’d slept in.

“Come in!” he said heartily. “Excuse the mess.”

She kept on her unzipped jacket.

He took his suitcase off the chair, but she didn’t sit down.

“I meant to ask you, did you like Dr. Vo?”

“Very much.”

“She also teaches medical students,” she said proudly. “At Dartmouth.”

“Really good school.” He wondered what she wanted.

“Listen, remember when you asked me what I do with my rubber bands? Give me one of your dress shirts. I’ll show you how to pack it.”

“Now? I mean, unfortunately I only brought this one…” he looked down at his shirt, “and the ones I already wore.”

“That’s okay.”

He went to his suitcase and reluctantly handed her a wrinkled shirt.

Ignoring the other two beds, she spread it out on the rumpled one he’d slept in.

“Watch carefully,” she said.

First she buttoned it. She turned it over, folded the sleeves in some way he doubted he’d remember, folded the shirt length-wise and then rolled it up from the bottom. She took a rubber band off her wrist and put it around the middle of the shirt.

“Packing it this way keeps it from wrinkling.” She handed it to him.

“Great! That’s great!” He put it in his suitcase.

“Do you have a book with you?” she asked him.

“I just brought my Kindle.”

She took another rubber band from her wrist and handed it to him.

“When you get home, you can use this as a bookmark.”

Carefully he put it in his wallet.

If she ever had a child that she…he couldn’t think of a better word than “kept”…she probably knew about lots of rubber band projects they could do together. Their apartment would look like a cheery nursery school classroom. For the first time, he felt sorry for her, giving up her child.

______

Three weeks before the baby was due, Carole didn’t respond to either his text asking how things were going or to his email, and she didn’t answer his text the next day asking if everything was all right. He went from being sure something terrible had happened to her or to the baby, to worrying she’d changed her mind about the adoption. Maybe the dad had reached out and she’d taken him back. Or a gay couple was suddenly in the picture, and she’d decided that two dads were better than one.

Too nervous to do it himself, Jonathan asked Peter to call the local police and hospital. Nothing.

At night he lay awake. He should have found a bigger apartment. He should have joined a temple. He could have done a lot of things. He felt as if someone had died.

Whenever he went out, he’d notice children everywhere. A toddler in his building was often in the lobby with his nanny, and he kept saying bye-bye to Jonathan.

“Bye-bye,” Jonathan would croon. Then he’d turn around and say it again. And then again.

The third day Carole called.

“There’s something I have to tell you.”

She was crying, and at first he couldn’t understand what she was saying.

At Carole’s check-up, a new nurse had inadvertently revealed the baby’s sex.

“At first I was so upset, I couldn’t do anything. But I’m better now. And don’t worry. I’m not going to tell you the sex. Unless you really want to know.” She paused. “Do you?”

“I’m fine.”

He didn’t say that he was so relieved, he didn’t give a fuck about the gender.

______

Carole went into labor on a sunny morning in early May. Jonathan’s bag had been packed for weeks, each shirt neatly folded and rolled up with a rubber band. He got to the hospital that evening, and a few days later he took his baby home.