“From what?” she asked, not letting go. Her cheeks glowed with matching wine-blooms, crème brûlé topped with raspberry swirl.

“I had a rough time on my last newspaper job,” I said. I needed to change the subject.

“So, do you have a boyfriend?” I asked.

“Boyfriend? What’s that?”

I felt a sudden surge of sweet, seductive hope. “Been awhile?”

“A long while. I’m married.”

“Oh.”

Hope said see ya, exploded into flames like that car on Highway 45.

“Don’t look so depressed,” she said. “I’m seriously thinking of dumping him.”

“You are?”

“Well, he’s living with a 24-year-old Pilates instructor. So, yeah, it has crossed my mind.”

“So, are you going to get a divorce?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Eventually. Sure. It’s not that easy. We have a son.”

“Really? How old?”

“He’s 4.”

“What’s his name?”

“Cody. Can I be a boringly cliché mom and show you his picture?”

“Do I have to be boringly cliché and ooh and ahh over it?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

She pulled out her wallet and held it open for me. “Go ahead-ooh.”

A blond munchkin pumping away on one of those toddler pedal bikes, with Anna hovering right behind.

“What’s that thing you’re holding on to?” I asked her.

“You haven’t seen the newest contraption for instilling self-confidence and independence in your preschooler?”

“Guess not.”

“It’s a push-and-pedal. Your kid pedals while you push. They think they’re charging down the open road like Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, but you’re the one really steering. Dirty trick, huh?”

“Yeah. Can I get one?”

“The next time I hit Toys ‘R’ Us, it’s yours,” she said. “So, what about you?”

“Me what?”

“Single? Married? Divorced? Divorcing?”

“Number three.”

“Ahh. What’s it like? Getting a divorce?”

I hesitated just long enough for Anna to apologize for being nosy.

I answered her anyway.

“It was pretty much my fault. I kind of fucked it up.”

I remembered something. I didn’t want to-someone starts talking about their failed marriage and the toxic memory drifts over you like secondhand smoke. My sweet and stalwart bride going out for some Starbucks and never coming back. Muttering something about vanilla frappuccino and needing to figure this thing out just before she went through the front door of our apartment. This thing being the very public fraud I’d perpetuated on a major American newspaper-on my marriage too, I guess, since she’d said I do to a bona fide investigative journalist who wasn’t. My ex, an architect specializing in high-rises, tended to see life in structural terms-the blueprint for a good relationship being a foundation built on trust. I’d put too many cracks in the retaining walls, and the structure would not hold.

“Sorry it didn’t work out,” Anna said.

“Me too.”

I asked her why she just hadn’t given me her phone number that night in the parking lot.

“I did. Kinda.”

“You wrote your screen name on my transmission. How’d you know I’d even look?”

“I didn’t. But if you did look, maybe it’s because you were supposed to.”

“Like fate?”

“Maybe. Your engine’s beat to crap-I mean, have you ever changed your oil even once? I thought you’d be under that hood again. By the way-I wrote it on your carburetor, not your transmission.”

I laughed and she laughed back and when I reached for my wine glass, I knocked it over onto her lap.

“Shit,” I said.

We both sprang up, Anna trying to shake off the excess wine, while I grabbed for a napkin, dipped it in water, and lamely wiped at the lap of her clearly ruined dress.

Which is when she did something kind of lovely. Other than not calling me Shrek and storming out of the restaurant.

She said: “If you wanted to sexually assault me, all you had to do was ask.”

SEVENTEEN

Nate informed me that some lady had called.

He swirled his finger by his ear, the universal gesture for certifiably off the wall.

The reason Nate had answered the call from this crazy person was that I’d overslept and wasn’t there.

I’d woken up with what felt like a stupid grin on my face. It was confirmed when I stared in the shower-fogged mirror and didn’t see Mr. Dour staring back. Instead it was Mr. Stupid, back from enforced obscurity. I’d kind of missed him.

When I waltzed into the office, Norma took off her glasses and squinted.

“You look different,” she said.

“Who was it?” I asked Nate the Skate.

He was on his cell, probably conversing with his nudist girlfriend.

“I don’t know. Her number’s on your desk.”

I found the number-Mrs. Flaherty. Probably wondering what progress I’d made, which was zero. I felt a sudden pang of pity for the lonely downtrodden of this world, a social stratum I’d once called home.

I didn’t call her back immediately. No.

I savored my morning coffee, blessed the poor Colombians who’d toiled in the bean fields in order to bring it to me. I suppose if you get enough love and approval, you begin spreading the excess.

To Hinch, for example.

He came out of his office with a vacant look in his eyes. His gray stubble had reached near-beard level. His wrinkled shirt was partially untucked.

“How’s your wife, Hinch?”

Norma began shuffling some papers on her desk.

“What?” Hinch stared at me as if I were a Jehovah’s Witness who’d shown up at his front door on his day off.

“I was just curious how your wife is doing.”

Suddenly Hinch’s eyes became red-rimmed. Just like that. First bland and unfocused, then harbingers of a coming maelstrom. Call it the Aurora Dam Flood Two.

He clumsily wiped at one eye, looked down at his shoes, murmured something under his breath.

“What, Hinch? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

“How my wife is doing… how my wife is doing is none of your business,” he said. He didn’t say it meanly. More sadly.

“I’m sorry. I hope… well, that everything, you know…” I said, letting my stab at consolation stumble into incoherence.

Hinch went back to his office.

There was an embarrassing silence. Nate, who’d held his phone call in abeyance, resumed with a whispered got to get off, baby. Norma peeked at me sideways and sighed.

“She’s back in the hospital, Tom,” she said softly. “God knows, it doesn’t look good.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know.”

My expansive mood had pretty much dissipated. I thought I might as well call Mrs. Flaherty back.

“You want to talk to him?” Mrs. Flaherty asked me after I said hello.

“Talk to whom, Mrs. Flaherty?”

“Dennis.”

“Dennis? What are you talking about?”

I should’ve known what she was talking about. My son came back to say hey, 100-year-old Belinda had told me.

It was getting to be a trend.

WE HAD A NICE CONVERSATION.

Dennis and me.

It was a tad one-sided, since Dennis Flaherty wasn’t big on conversing, and seemed to be speaking underwater. I slapped the receiver against the desk in an effort to clear the foggy reception. It wasn’t the reception; it was Dennis.

“It’s the drugs,” Mrs. Flaherty told me after Dennis relinquished the phone to her and went to his childhood bedroom to nap. “They make him sleepy.”

What drugs were those?

The ones the VA psychiatric hospital used to keep Dennis docile and happy.

“Do you know you were in a fatal car crash?” I asked him after I’d introduced myself.

“Uh-huh,” he answered, in a lugubrious monotone that would never waver.

“How do you think that happened?”

“Dunno.”

“Someone had your wallet.”

“Yeah.”

“Dennis, you understand what I’m telling you? You were buried.”