She had spent more than an hour getting ready the night they were to meet. She dressed carefully—a soft silk shirt, checked, a pencil skirt. Her jeans jacket over that. Dangly earrings, though at the last minute she’d taken those off and substituted the pearl studs her father had given her for Christmas the year before.

She didn’t imagine that much would come from their evening together, though she was interested in Thomas. But then, as it lasted longer than she’d expected, and then even longer than that, she understood that he was interested, too, interested in her.

She liked him. Oh! she liked him. She liked looking at him, his black hair and almost-black eyes, the pretty light brown of his skin. He wore a pressed white shirt, open at the neck, the sleeves rolled up. She liked looking at the shifting muscles in his forearms as he gestured.

She liked him because he asked her as many questions as she’d asked him on the phone when she was getting him ready for the interview. Because they talked so easily.

They talked about their lives, where they’d grown up, how they’d ended up here. He was from New York. He’d been born in Korea, but came to the States when he was two—his father had gotten a job teaching at Columbia.

“This is such a California conversation,” he said. “That assumption that pretty much everyone is from somewhere else. Or that discovery, anyway.”

They talked about radio, how special it was—listening without seeing, being required to imagine so much. They talked about old radio shows. He’d liked listening to the rebroadcasts of The Firesign Theater as a kid. “Good training for Monty Python,” he said. They talked about Monty Python. Then John Cleese. Then John Cleese in A Fish Called Wanda. He said he’d seen it twice on a hot Saturday afternoon when it came out.

He must be around Lucas’s age, she thought.

They talked about the pleasure, the illicit pleasure really, of spending a beautiful summer afternoon in a cool, dark theater, of coming out to a still-hot, still-light evening.

“But you feel guilty too, don’t you?” Sarah had asked.

“Why?”

“Because you’ve wasted the beautiful day. Because you should have been doing something more . . . I don’t know.” She lifted her shoulders. “Worthy, I guess.”

He looked across the table at her for a moment, amusement in his face. “I think I can be of help to you with that,” he said. His eyes reminded her of her father’s, the deep wrinkles when he smiled.

She laughed. “Do I need help?”

“Apparently you do.”

He asked her about herself, about how she got into the work she was doing, about what came next for someone with her job.

“More of same, I think,” she had said. The restaurant had emptied out. There was one other couple still there, and the waitress was setting tables up for the next day.

“You wouldn’t like your own show?” he asked.

“God, no!” Only as she said it did she realize how deeply she felt this. “I’d like to run a show, though,” she said after a moment. “Be a producer. I guess that’s where I’m headed, finally.”

“Why not be the host? You’ve got that wonderful voice, you ask such . . . welcoming questions.” He was leaning toward her now, his elbows on the table.

“Well, thanks,” she said.

“I was, just right away, completely comfortable talking to you.”

She shrugged. “That’s my job, of course.”

“Ah, so it wasn’t especially me.”

He was smiling at her, flirting with her. And here it came, the question that often arose for Sarah with men. Was it the kind of flirting other guys had sometimes done with her, the kind of flirting based on the assumption that she would see it for what it was—essentially a joke? The kind of flirting made possible because of the mutual, but tacit, understanding that it wasn’t intended to go anywhere—the way men were sometimes flirtatious and courtly to old ladies?

Or was it real?

She looked across the table at him, at his dark eyes steady on her, the smile playing on his lips as he waited for her answer. Why not take the risk? Why not?

“It was,” she said in a soft voice. “It was especially you.”

“So that was your mother?” he asked now. “On the phone?”

“Yes.” Something funny must have happened to her face, because he said, “Oh, Sarah,” and reached for her again.

“No, it’s okay. I’m okay,” she said, breathing deeply, making herself stop. “It’s just . . . not real.”

And now, exhaling loudly, she lay back down. After a moment, he did too.

It was almost funny, she thought, lying next to him, both of them looking up at the ceiling—like two people who’ve known each other forever. Like an old married couple. Outside, on the street, the noise of traffic had picked up. She could hear her upstairs neighbor now, thumping around, getting ready for work.

She felt him turn toward her. “How is she doing?” he asked. “Your mother.”

“My mother.” She made a little noise, an attempt at a laugh. “My mother is always okay. That is the division of labor in my family. Or that was the division of labor. My mother holds it all in, my father lets it out.”

“Were you close to your parents? To him?”

“Oh, I adored him.” Now she turned to look at Thomas, grateful to him, he was trying so hard. “She did too. My mother. I can’t imagine her life now. Without him.” She pictured her mother, she saw her sitting alone at the big table by the windows, and felt an unaccustomed pull of pity for her.

“What . . . was he like?”

“Oh.” She smiled. “You could say . . . Rabelaisian. I think, in fact, it has been said of him. Certainly he was big, in every way. A lover of life. And kind. God, I would never have survived my adolescence without him. Without his kindness.”

“Tell me,” he said.

“My father.” She thought of him, she saw him at the same big table, talking, laughing. Making her mother laugh, too. “Well, he was just there. You know, I think he had such a terrible growing up himself that he was just grateful in the aftermath of that. Just glad. A glad person. But also he understood, he understood how some things are just . . . insolubly painful. You can’t make them better, you can’t make them turn out differently. And what he was good at, in the face of that, was offering a kind of . . . joyous sympathy. Or is it empathy? Anyway, he was just there, steady and warm. He made people happy, without even trying.”

He reached over, and stroked her hair. “I love the way you talk about him.”

“You would have loved him,” she said, fiercely now.

His hand stilled on her hair for a moment, and began again. “What was so terrible about his growing up?” he asked.

She smiled. “Most everything, I would say. Plus, I suppose, most of the things that were terrible—that are terrible—about anyone’s growing up.”

“Loneliness,” he said.

“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe loneliness.”

“Sexual desperation.”

She smiled, and he smiled back.

“Acne,” he offered.

“There could have been acne.”

“Unrequited love, probably,” he said after a moment.

“Sure.”

“But what about him in particular?”

Sarah moved closer to him and rested her head against his shoulder and chest. The sun had warmed his flesh. “Where to begin?” she said.

“I can wait,” he said.

She lay there for a moment. “Well, there was the father who ran away, abandoned the family. And was never seen again. And they already had no money, even before he left.” She sighed. “Then the mother who drank. And hit, apparently.”

“Ah.”

After a minute, he said, “And what about your mother? What’s she like? Not unkind, I’m sure.” He pulled his head back to look at her, and she smiled at him, at how beautiful she felt he was.

“Oh no, she is, very kind. But her kindness . . . it takes a different form. My mother . . . she wants to solve your problems. Or she wants you to solve your problems. She can’t . . . sit with you. In your misery. It’s too hard for her.” She changed her voice, made it brusque. “‘Let’s. Make. This. Better!’” She slapped her hand on the sheet covering her thighs with each word.

They lay still for a long moment.

“Good luck with this one,” she said in a small, pinched voice, and started to cry.

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