Liam thought of pointing out that this was only a sort of fairy tale, but he didn’t want Louise any madder at him than she already was.

Eunice said that sometimes, she wondered if Mr. C.’s memory trouble could be contagious.

“For instance,” she said. “We’ve just now been to a retirement party for the receptionist. Their receptionist’s retiring. Mr. C. takes a handful of nuts from a bowl and starts to eat them, but then he stops. ‘These nuts are ransomed,’ he says. I say, ‘What?’ ‘They’re ransomed. Take them away.’ ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You mean-’ But then I couldn’t think of the word. I could not think of the word. I knew it wasn’t ‘ransomed,’ but I couldn’t think what it should be.”

They were standing in the kitchen alcove, where Liam had gone to fetch the ice water she’d requested the instant she arrived. (Outside it was hot and humid, a typical August afternoon as heavy as mud.) He held a glass beneath the dispenser in the refrigerator door, and Eunice stepped up behind him and wrapped her arms around him and laid her cheek against his back.

“It’s like I slipped into Mr. C.’s world for a minute,” she said. Her breath was warm and moist against Liam’s left shoulder.

He filled the glass with water and turned to face her. Instead of taking the glass from him, she unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. He said, “Your water.”

“It’s like I saw what it must feel like to be him,” she said. “How… evaporating and blurry and scary.”

“Let’s go to the living room,” he told her.

He was trying to back away from her, but he was trapped against the refrigerator. Eunice unbuttoned the rest of his buttons, focusing on them intently and not looking up at his face. “Let’s not,” she said. “Let’s go to the bedroom.”

“We can’t do that,” he told her.

“There’s no place to sit in the living room.”

“There are two very comfortable armchairs.”

“Let’s go to bed,” she said.

Her fingertips were delicate points of warmth against his skin. She dropped her hands to his belt and undid his buckle.

“We should sit down,” Liam said. He moved to one side of her.

“We should lie down,” Eunice told him.

He started toward the living room, still holding the glass of water, but when she followed him he slowed to a stop and let her press herself to his back and hug him once again. He felt confused by the combination of her tight embrace and his loosened waistband. His shirttails had worked themselves free of their own accord, and he thought how good it would feel to be free of all his clothes. He wanted to put the water glass someplace but he didn’t want to separate from her long enough to do that.

Then the front door burst open and someone caroled, “Knock knock!”

In walked Barbara, lugging a blue vinyl suitcase.

Liam jerked away from Eunice and clutched his shirtfront together with his free hand.

Barbara said, “Oh, excuse me,” but not in a particularly apologetic tone. She seemed amused, more than anything. She set down the suitcase to push back a lock of hair that had fallen over her forehead.

Liam said, “What are you doing here?”

“You did leave your door unlocked,” Barbara pointed out.

“That doesn’t mean you should walk on in!”

“Well, I said, ‘Knock knock.’ Didn’t I?” Barbara asked Eunice. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

Liam said, “This is… a friend of mine, Eunice Dunstead. She was just helping me with my résumé.”

“I’m Barbara,” Barbara told Eunice.

Eunice said, “I have to go.” Her cheeks were splotched with patches of red. She snatched up her purse from the rocking chair and rushed toward the door. Barbara moved aside to let her pass, gazing after her thoughtfully. Liam seized her moment of inattention to put down the water glass and buckle his belt.

“Sorry,” Barbara told him once the door had slammed shut.

“Honestly, Barbara.”

“I’m sorry!”

“What are you here for?” he asked.

“I brought Kitty’s beach things.”

“Beach?”

Casually, as if his mind were on something else, he let a hand drift to his shirtfront again and he felt for each button and buttoned it. Barbara tilted her head to watch.

“She’s spending a few days in Ocean City with Damian’s aunt and uncle,” she said. “Didn’t she clear this with you?”

“Um…”

“Liam, are you not keeping track of Kitty’s comings and goings? Because if that’s the case, she shouldn’t be in your care.”

“I’m keeping track! I just forgot,” he said.

“Really.”

Eunice would be traveling farther away every second, in tears and no doubt despairing of him, reflecting on how cowardly he was and how unchivalrous and disloyal. But Barbara, for once, seemed in no hurry to leave. She went over to the rocking chair and sat down, plucking at her T-shirt where it was clinging to her stomach. Her outfit today was singularly unattractive. The T-shirt was stretched and smudged with grass stains, and her loose khaki shorts revealed her wide white thighs, pressed even wider against the chair seat.

As if she guessed what he was thinking, she said, “I look a mess. I’ve been cleaning.”

He said nothing. He sat in the armchair furthest from her, perching on the very edge of it to suggest that he had things to do.

“So,” she said. “Tell me about this Eunice person. How long have you known her?”

“What’s it to you?” Liam demanded.

It felt so good to speak this way-to say what he wanted, for once, without worrying about Barbara’s opinion of him-that he did it again. “What’s it to you, Barbara? What business is it of yours?”

Barbara rocked back in her chair and said, “My, my!”

“I don’t ask you about Howie, do I?”

“Who?”

“Howie the Hound Dog. Howie the Food Phobe.”

“Are you referring to Howard Neal?”

“Right,” Liam said, risking it.

“Goodness, Liam, where’d you dig him up from?”

He scowled at her.

“Gosh, I haven’t thought of Howard in…” She shook her head, looking amused again. “Well. So Miss Eunice is off-limits. Fine. Forget I asked.”

Liam said, “You and I are divorced, after all. I do have a private life.”

“You’re always going on about your private life,” Barbara said, “but have you ever considered this, Liam: You’re the only Baltimorean I know who leaves his front door unlocked. Even though you’ve had a burglary! You leave it completely unlocked, but then any time someone walks in you complain that they’re intruding. ‘Tut-tut!’ you say. ‘I’m veddy, veddy private and special. I vant to be alone!’”-this last uttered in a bad Greta Garbo accent. “We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Here’s solitary sad old Liam, only God help anybody who tries to step in and get close.”

“Well, maybe if they knocked first-”

“And I suppose this poor Eunice person is just like all the rest of us,” Barbara said. “All those benighted females who broke their hearts over you. She imagines she’ll be the one who finally warms you up.”

“Barbara! She is not poor! She is not ‘this poor Eunice person’! Jesus, Barbara! What gives you the right?”

Barbara looked startled. She said, “Well, pardon me.”

“Isn’t it time for you to leave?”

“Fine,” she said. “Okay.” She rose to her feet. “I only meant-”

“I don’t care what you meant. Just leave.”

“All right, Liam, I’m leaving. Have Kitty call me, please, will you?”

“Okay,” he said.

Already he was feeling sheepish about his outburst, but he refused to apologize. He stood up and followed Barbara to the door. “Goodbye,” he told her.

“Bye, Liam.”

He didn’t see her out to the parking lot.

He thought of Eunice: how staunch she had been and how forthright. She had not said, “Pleased to meet you,” when she and Barbara were introduced. She had not stuck around and made small talk. “I have to go,” she had said, and she had gone. While he himself, longing though he was to run after her, had cravenly sat down with Barbara and held a meaningless conversation. He was so concerned about appearances, about what Barbara thought of him, that he had failed to show the most basic human kindness.