Frieda cried out violently, like someone struck. She cried out twice, actually. Then, after a long silence on both ends of the line, she asked, “Are you sure?” as though it were possible that Annie might have made a mistake about this. A question so absurd, so absurdly desperate, that Annie was able to feel for her. To understand, really, deeply, maybe for the first time, how much Frieda had loved him. Had gone on loving him.

They talked for a few more minutes. Frieda wanted more details than Annie wanted to offer, but finally she asked whether Annie had told Lucas yet. When Annie said no, no, of course she hadn’t, Frieda was audibly relieved. “Well, I’ll do that, then. I’m sure he’ll want to come up.”

At about ten thirty, when she knew that everyone at the bookstore would be long settled into various routines, Annie called the office there. She was imagining it as she listened to the phone ringing—the small, narrow room at the back of the store, windowless, the walls covered with autographed posters advertising many of the readings they’d had over the years. There was a long desk against one of these walls where they all sat in a row facing their computers—Erica, the events person, who arranged the readings and all the attendant publicity; fiftyish, hippie-ish Georgie, still lovely in a girlish way—she was the secretary and general factotum; and Emily, small, quick, efficient, who did the books and the ordering. And then, of course, Graham.

Who owned the store. Or was owned by the store.

Or who was the store, she thought.

Emily answered, and in response to Annie’s news said her version of how impossible it was, how unbelievable. Already this felt familiar to Annie, this response, and she did her part. When it seemed that had gone on long enough, she said, “Right now, though, here’s the thing: Could you just get the dinner party canceled? Let everyone know?”

“Oh!” Emily said. “Oh, of course . . .” There was a long pause. “But, should we, shouldn’t I, cancel the reading too?”

“No, no, the reading has to happen. Graham would never have wanted that. Just. I can’t do the dinner.”

“Of course not. Of course, no one would expect that. God!”

“And Jamie, too. Just tell her how sorry we are. I am. And, you’ll have to find someone else to introduce her.” Graham’s job, always. “So, if you could just, let the others know . . . the ones who were coming to dinner? . . . Do you have a pen?”

“Yes, right here. I’ll get paper, just a sec.”

So Annie listed the dinner guests for Emily; the old friends, the two writers, the other photographer, the painter, wives and husbands and lovers. Emily would call them and they would know about Graham, and Annie wouldn’t have to go over it and over it. At least with those friends. There would be others, too many to think of, but now the word would start to spread, wider and wider, and she wouldn’t be in charge of the news. Now it was no longer hers. Graham, his death, were no longer hers.

After she hung up, she sat for a few moments, considering what came next in this long, empty day. She was about to go upstairs to begin to get ready to face it, when it occurred to her that she should let Danielle know that she wasn’t going to be able to come to the opening on Sunday—even the thought of it seemed impossible. She pushed the numbers in, and after a few rings Danielle came on. Annie wasn’t sure what she said, maybe just, “I’m not going to be able to make it on Sunday.” Something like that.

There was a long silence, and then Danielle said, “This better be good.”

9

The moment Sarah clicked off her phone, Thomas, who’d been lying next to her, watching her face as it changed and then changed again, said, “What is it, Sarah?” His voice was urgent with concern.

Sarah turned to him. The early June sunlight through the venetian blinds made stripes across his smooth, tan skin. “It’s my father,” she said in a small voice that sounded unfamiliar even to her. “My father died.”

He sat up. “Oh Jesus, Sarah!” he said. His hand on her back was warm. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” When she didn’t turn to him, he let his hand fall.

“Yeah.” She nodded. “Thank you.” Her voice was still strange to her own ears. She cleared her throat. “I just don’t feel it yet. I don’t feel anything.”

“Of course not. I mean, how . . .”

“Yes.” She gave a great sigh, as if trying to order her breathing. They sat together, both awkwardly upright in the bed, both naked except for the sheet still covering the lower part of their bodies.

“Was he . . .” Thomas faltered. “Had he been . . . ill?”

Now Sarah looked at him, at this perfect man in her bed, at his face so full of real concern. “No,” she said. “No. He had a heart attack. In the night. So . . .” She lifted her shoulders. “He just didn’t wake up, I guess.”

“So. Not a hard death, anyway.”

“No, there’s that.”

“But a shock, it sounds like.”

“Yes,” she said.

The complexity for Sarah of this moment with Thomas was that she didn’t know him very well. She wasn’t ready to be grief-stricken with him. To share her father’s death—her father’s death!—with this gentle man she’d now been to bed with three times. It made the death seem even more unreal, even more impossible, having to find a reasonable way to speak of it with Thomas. It wasn’t reasonable. It shouldn’t be spoken of reasonably.

Her father! He was so alive for her. There was some part of her that almost literally did not believe it was real—his dying. She sat very still, waiting to feel something. Thomas sat behind her, watching her breathe, feeling helpless.

They’d met when he called her at the radio station to ask her out. Before then they’d talked on the phone twice, but that was work, that was when she was calling him, when she was getting him ready for his interview.

This was her job. To do the reading, or listen to the music, or watch the movie—all things the radio host, Shelley, wouldn’t have time to do for every single guest. To mark the passages in the book, to gather the quotes, to make excerpts of the dialogue in the film, to summarize reviews—criticism, praise. To frame the questions, to work out a plan for the discussion and run it by Shelley and Mary, the producer; and then to talk with the guest, to be sure he would be easy to work with. To ask some of the questions Shelley might be asking. To make it possible for both people—guest, host—to sound at least knowledgeable, and perhaps—this was the goal, anyway—much better than that.

Thomas had just published a book on what he called “The Silent Minority”—Asian Americans—and after reading an enthusiastic review of it, Sarah had proposed it at the group meeting at which they planned out the programs for the following week. Thomas was funny on the phone, relaxed with her and seemingly at ease with himself. By the end of their conversation, she was sure everything would go well, he was so articulate, so comfortable with what he knew. So confident in his opinions. And more, she’d liked talking to him so much. This was always a good sign.

They didn’t speak when he came in—she was in the booth, and then she had to leave to take a call before his segment was over. But when he phoned her at the station the next day, he said he was disappointed not to have met her. Perhaps they could have coffee? A drink?

Watching him cross the room to her, the only woman sitting alone in the café, the only woman waving at him, Sarah could tell he was disappointed again. She was used to this, this disappointment, but also used to the interest that preceded it—the interest based on her voice, which made the disappointment almost inevitable.

She was, as a high school acquaintance had once said to her, meaning it kindly at the time, okay-looking, and she’d learned, slowly, to make the best of that. She’d lost weight in her sophomore year of high school, the same year she’d made herself try out for any school play that came up. She got character parts—Ursula in Bye Bye Birdie, Mrs. Gibbs in Our Town. She’d had to work then to get her voice, so loud, so braying in childhood, under her control, so as not to overpower the other actors in their scenes with her. And backstage, she’d watched what makeup could do, though what she wore for her own roles emphasized what was least attractive about her. She made friends, of a sort. People who would at least say hello as they passed in the halls, or talk with her when they worked together.

It was better in college, where she’d worked at the student radio station among a bunch of eccentrics, running the eleven o’clock jazz show. At first she knew so little about what she was doing that she had to consult regularly with Graham. For a while, then, she was playing the music she’d heard in childhood as it had floated upstairs to her bedroom from the parties her parents were always throwing. But slowly she came into her own tastes. Diana Krall, Joshua Redman, Irvin Mayfield Jr., Jane Monheit.

In the talking she did between the musical segments, she tried to make her voice perfect for that hour—deep, restful, knowledgeable. That show, and maybe the voice she created for it, led to an internship and then a job at the radio station in San Francisco.

So when she talked to Thomas on the phone, she sounded confident, and she was. Her voice sounded like the voice of someone wise and sophisticated and curious and perhaps, sexy.