The fact was that Eunice was a much better person than he was.

Everyone knew the St. Paul Arms. It was a shabby gray apartment building a couple of blocks from the Hopkins campus, home to graduate students and instructors and lower-level university staff. From his old place, Liam could have walked there in a matter of minutes. Even from his new place it was not that much of a drive, but this afternoon it seemed to take forever. Every stoplight changed to red just before he reached it; every car ahead of him was trying to make a left turn in the face of oncoming traffic. Liam chafed all over with frustration. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited for an elderly pedestrian to inch, inch through a crosswalk.

It had not been all that long, really, since Eunice had rushed out his door. He had hopes originally of waylaying her in front of her building, intercepting her before she got inside. As the minutes passed, though, he saw that this was unrealistic. All right: he would just stride on into her apartment and state his case. If the husband happened to be there, fine. It wouldn’t change a thing.

The car radio was playing a Chopin étude that tinkled on endlessly, going nowhere. He switched it off.

There weren’t any parking spots in front of her building and so he turned into a side street and parked there. Then he walked back up St. Paul and pulled open the heavy wooden door of the St. Paul Arms.

Drat, an intercom. A locked glass inner door blocking his way and one of those damn fool intercom arrangements where you had to locate a resident’s special code and punch it in. He searched for Dunstead, realizing to his dismay that he’d forgotten what the husband’s last name was; but he was in luck: Dunstead/Simmons, he found. Oh, yes: the hiss between the two s sounds. He stabbed in the code.

First he heard a dial tone and then Eunice’s overloud “Yes?”

“It’s me,” he said.

No response.

“It’s Liam,” he tried again.

“What do you want?”

“I want to come up.”

In the silence that followed, he frowned down at the collection of footprinted takeout menus that paved the vestibule floor. Finally, a buzzer sounded. He seized the handle of the glass door as if it were about to vanish.

She lived in 4B, the list in the vestibule had said. The elevator looked unreliable and he decided to take the stairs. Evidently a lot of other people had made the same choice; the marble treads were worn down in the middle like old soap bars. Above the second floor, the marble gave way to threadbare plum-colored carpet. Now he regretted spurning the elevator, because he was growing short of breath. He didn’t want to arrive puffing and panting.

Probably the husband was a jogger or something. For sure he was younger and fitter.

On the fourth floor, one door was open and Eunice stood there waiting-a good sign, he thought. But when he reached her, he found her expression set in stone, and she didn’t step back to let him in. “What do you want?” she said again.

“Are you by yourself?”

An infinitesimal adjustment to the angle of her head meant yes, he surmised.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“Don’t bother; I already know I’m only a ‘friend.’”

“I apologize for that,” he said. He glanced around. The hall was empty, but people could be listening from behind their doors, and she was making no effort to keep her voice down. “Could I come in?” he asked.

She hesitated and then stepped back, just a grudging few inches. He sidled past her to find himself in a long, narrow corridor with dark floorboards, a braided oval rug, and a claw-footed drop-leaf table littered with junk mail.

“I am extremely sorry,” he told her.

She lifted her chin. From the spiked and separated look of her lashes, he could tell she must have been crying, but her face was composed.

He said, “Please say you forgive me. I hated to let you walk out like that.”

“Well, get used to it,” she said. “You can’t have things both ways, Liam. You can’t ask me to stay with my husband and then not let me walk out on you.”

“You’re absolutely right,” he said. “Please, do you think we could sit somewhere?”

She released an exasperated puff of a breath, but then she turned to lead him down the corridor.

If he hadn’t known better, he would have said that her living room belonged to an old lady. It was over-furnished with piecrust tables, satin-striped love seats, bowlegged needlepoint chairs, and faded little rugs. Her mother’s doing, he supposed. Or both mothers’ doing-the two women rendezvousing here with their truckloads of family detritus, arranging everything just so for their helpless offspring. Even the pictures on the wall looked like hand-me-downs: crackled seascapes and mountainscapes and a full-length portrait of a woman in a bell-skirted dress from the 1950s, not long enough ago to be of interest.

He settled on one of the love seats, which was as hard as a park bench and so slippery that he had to brace his feet to keep from sliding off. He was hoping for Eunice to sit beside him, but she chose a chair instead. So much for all her complaints about his lack of couches.

“She’s moving in with you, isn’t she,” she said.

“What?”

“Barbara. She’s moving in.”

“Good grief! What a thought. No, she’s not moving in. For Lord’s sake, Eunice!”

“I saw that suitcase! That powder-blue suitcase.”

“That was Kitty’s suitcase,” Liam said.

“It was an old person’s suitcase; you can’t fool me. Only an old person would have a powder-blue suitcase. It was Barbara’s. I bet she’s got a whole matching set stashed away in her attic.”

The notion of Barbara as an “old person” brought Liam up short.

“She’s moving in with you and picking up where she left off,” Eunice said. “Because that’s how married people are; they go on being involved for all time even if they’re divorced.”

“Eunice, you’re not listening. Barbara was bringing Kitty her beach things; Kitty’s going to Ocean City. I can’t help what kind of suitcase she put them in! And anyhow,” he said, stopped by a thought. “What do you mean, that’s how married people are? You’re the one who’s married, might I point out.”

Eunice sat back slightly in her chair. “Well, you’re right,” she said after a pause. “But, I don’t know. Somehow I don’t feel married. I feel like everyone’s married but me.”

Both of them were quiet for a moment.

“I feel like I’m always the outsider,” she said. “The ‘friend’ who’s ‘helping with the résumé.’”

She indicated the quotation marks with two pairs of curled fingers.

“I already told you I was sorry about that,” Liam said. “It was very wrong of me. Barbara just caught me by surprise, is what happened. I was afraid of what she might think.”

“You were afraid because you still love her.”

“No, no-”

“Well, why aren’t you sweeping me off my feet, then, and carrying me away? Why aren’t you saying, ‘Barbara be damned! You’re the woman I love, and life is too short to go through it without you!”

“Barbara be damned,” Liam said. “You’re the woman I love, and life is too short to go through it without you.”

She stared at him.

A key rattled in the front door, and someone called out, “Euny?”

The man who appeared in the entranceway was lanky and fair-skinned, wearing jeans and a short-sleeved plaid shirt and carrying a plastic grocery bag. His blond hair was very fine and too long, overlapping his ears in an orphanish way, and his pale, thin mustache was too long too, so that you couldn’t help picturing how the individual wisps would grow unpleasantly moist whenever he ate.

Eunice jumped up but then just stood there, awkwardly. “Norman, this is Liam,” she said. “We’re just… working on Liam’s résumé.”

“Oh, hi,” Norman told Liam.

Liam rose and shook Norman’s hand, which seemed to be all bones.