“Hey,” Lawrence said. He wiped his wet hands on his pants.

“Welcome back,” Charles said. He leaned his head against Lawrence’s shoulder. “I’m tired.”

“I know you are. But hey, at least you’re not wearing an adult-sized playsuit,” he said, gesturing to a woman walking out of the jet bridge at the gate opposite the bathroom. She was small, probably not much over five feet tall, with soft pink terry-cloth sweatpants and matching sweatshirt, both of which were snug enough to show off her round bottom and otherwise compact figure. “Weren’t those outlawed a decade ago?” The woman stepped out of the line of traffic and turned around, waiting for someone. A tall man with a moppish head of brown curly hair emerged, nodding at the waiting woman in pink.

Charles spun around so that he was facing the wall. “Oh, shit,” he said. “It’s Bobby’s girlfriend.”

“Not the one in the playsuit,” Lawrence said, turning his body so that they were both facing the wall.

“We can’t both be pointing this way,” Charles said. “Shit.”

“Charles?”

Charles and Lawrence both turned around, arms open wide. “Hiiiiiiiii,” they said in unison. Bobby and his girlfriend had shortened the gap between them, and were now no more than four feet away.

“Hello, handsome,” Charles said, pulling Bobby close for a hug. They patted each other on the back affectionately, and when he pulled out of the embrace, Bobby kept one arm slung around Charles’s shoulder as if they were posing for a team photo.

“How was your flight? Hi, Lawrence.” Bobby smiled widely. He had the easy tan of a person who spent most of his days outdoors, though that wasn’t the case. Lawrence thought Bobby might in fact look too tan, as driving around real estate properties in Miami wouldn’t afford so much sunlight unless he drove a convertible, which seemed unlikely. Maybe he spent every weekend on the beach, his face and arms and chest slathered in tanning lotion, like some 1975 bodybuilder. That seemed unlikely, too. Lawrence wasn’t quite sure how to reconcile himself to the fact that Bobby’s golden-brown suntan was almost certainly fake. The rules were different in Florida.

“Fine. How about yours?” Charles said. No one had spoken to Bobby’s girlfriend, nor had there been any effort to introduce her. Charles knew that they’d met once or twice at a Christmas dinner, or at one of Franny and Jim’s large anniversary parties—maybe it was their thirtieth, five years ago now? Charles had a dim recollection of seeing this woman standing next to Franny’s literary agent, assiduously avoiding conversation by performing an extremely thorough investigation of the ceiling. The girlfriend was at least a decade older than Bobby, which was what had made her sweatsuit so absurd. She was almost Lawrence’s age, young only as viewed from the other side of sixty. Franny had a lot to say on the matter, but only after half a bottle of wine. Until then, she remained coldly impartial. They’d been together for years, off and on, but none of the Posts seemed to care one way or the other, at least in polite company, the way one might ignore the flatulence of an otherwise friendly dog. Charles couldn’t believe that he didn’t remember her name. She was native to Miami, with Cuban parents. Was it Carrie? It wasn’t Mary. Miranda?

“Carmen was so excited, we didn’t sleep at all,” Bobby said, finally looking over his shoulder to find her. “You remember Charles and Lawrence, right?”

“Hello,” she said, reaching out her hand. Lawrence shook it first, then Charles. Carmen had a firm grip, a handshake that surprised them both. She had olive-colored, creaseless skin that belied her age, and a ponytail that looked mussed from the airplane, an off-center whale spout. Lawrence thought she looked like one of the Spice Girls after a decade out of the spotlight, slightly worse for wear.

“Of course,” Charles said. “How could we forget?”

Franny was waiting at the baggage claim, rubbing her hands together. When Bobby and Carmen rounded the corner and came into view, she squealed and jumped awkwardly in her slip-ons, one of which slid off her foot and skidded a few inches across the slick polished floor. She hurried back into it and ran across the room, as slowly as if through molasses. Bobby stooped down to let himself be folded into his mother’s arms.

“Oh, yes, yes, yes,” she said, rubbing his back. Franny felt terrible about keeping Bobby in the dark about Jim, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you explained over the telephone. Now that he was in her clutches, she thought it would be so much easier if information could be passed telepathically, like on a science-fiction television program, just zzzzzzpppp from one brain to the next. “Oh, yes.”

“Hi, Mom,” Bobby said, blinking his eyes at Carmen over his mother’s shoulder. “You can let go, really, I’ll be here for weeks.”

“Oh, fine,” Franny said, and reluctantly pulled back. “Carmen, hello,” she said, and quickly gave her a kiss on the cheek. “The flight was okay?”

“Fine,” Carmen said, smiling. “We watched movies.” She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, stretching out her calves.

“Great,” Franny said. “Did you happen to run into Charles? He should be around here somewhere.” She looked past Carmen, back down the hall they’d come from. Sure enough, Charles and Lawrence were pulling their suitcases behind them, laughing. Franny’s eyes misted over, as if she thought he wouldn’t really have come. She took a few steps past Bobby and Carmen so that they wouldn’t be able to see her start to cry. Charles finally saw her and began to walk more quickly, scooping her up like a long-lost lover after a war.

Franny’s Chinese fire drill went off without a hitch: Bobby and Carmen and Lawrence got in Charles’s rental car, and Charles got into Franny’s car, and off they went. Carmen could drive stick, and so she drove the first car, while Charles drove the second. Lawrence was too tired to complain, and if Charles had perked up enough to go grocery shopping, that was better for everyone, wasn’t it? Charles waved limply from the passenger-side window as the car drove away, Lawrence now the captive of the two strangers he wanted to come on vacation with the least.

“It’s so good to see you, Lawrence,” Bobby said. “I haven’t seen you since before you guys got married. When was that, a year ago? Two years ago? I know it was in the summer.” Carmen jerked the car forward and merged into the airport traffic.

“It’ll be three years next month,” Lawrence said, closing his eyes and briefly thanking a godlike figure that the Spanish drove on the right side of the road. “You know what they say about time.”

“What’s that?” Bobby said, lowering his window shade to take a peek in the mirror. For a moment, he caught Lawrence’s eyes and smiled. Bobby was sweeter than his sister; in fact, he was sweeter than the entire rest of the family. As far as Lawrence could tell, Bobby had no hard edges whatsoever, a quality one didn’t often come across in people who had grown up in Manhattan. Lawrence felt his shoulders relax a bit.

“Oh, you know. It flies.” Lawrence crossed his arms and stared out the window. His own family had never been on vacation together, not since he was a child. Even then, he didn’t think they’d done more than one or two trips to a smoky campsite, where they’d all slept in the same dank, mildewing tent. It seemed like folly to imagine that one could fill a house (or a tent) with relatives and still expect to have a pleasant vacation. He and Charles had already discussed this: after Mallorca, they were going to go somewhere else for a few days, just the two of them, where they would be mercifully free from small talk and other people’s emotional baggage. Lawrence was thinking about Hudson, or maybe Woodstock, but Charles found upstate New York too buggy. They could wait until the weather shifted and then fly to Palm Springs. All Lawrence wanted to talk about was who had a baby, who was still waiting, about wallpaper for the nursery, about names and strollers and where they could buy some nice lesbian’s breast milk.