“Hello.”
“Peter? It’s Bette. I hope I’m not calling too early.”
“No, we’re up.”
He glances at Rebecca, mouths the word “Bette.”
“You okay?” he asks.
“I’m okay. Are you by any remote chance free for lunch today?”
A second glance at Rebecca. Sunday is supposed to be their day together.
“Uh, yeah,” he says. “I think so.”
“I can come downtown.”
“Okay. Sure. What, like, one-ish?”
“One-ish is good.”
“Where would you like to go?”
“I can never think of a place.”
“Me neither.”
“Doesn’t it always seem like there’s some perfect, obvious restaurant and you just can’t think of it?” she says.
“Plus, on a Sunday, there’s a lot of places we won’t be able to get into. Like Prune. Or the Little Owl. I mean, we could try.”
“It’s my fault. Who calls to make a lunch date at the last minute on a Sunday?”
“You want to tell me what’s up?”
“I’d rather tell you in person.”
“What if I come uptown?”
“I’d never ask you to do that.”
“I’ve been wanting to see the Hirst at the Met.”
“Me, too. But really, how could I live with myself if I not only call you on your day off, but make you schlep uptown, too?”
“I’ve done more for people I care less about.”
“Payard’s will be packed. I could probably get us a table at JoJo. It’s not as, you know. Brunchy up here.”
“Fine.”
“Do you mind JoJo? The food’s good, and there’s nothing really close to the Met …”
“JoJo’s okay.”
“You, Peter Harris, are a mensch.”
“So true.”
“I’ll call. If they can’t take us at one, I’ll call you back.”
“Okay. Great.”
He clicks off, wipes a smudge from the face of his BlackBerry on the edge of the sheet.
“That was Bette,” he says.
Is it a betrayal, making a lunch date on a Sunday? It would help if he knew how serious Bette’s … situation is.
“Did she say what it is?” Rebecca asks. “She wants to have lunch.”
“But she didn’t say.”
“No.”
They both hesitate. Of course, it can’t be good. Bette is in her midsixties. Her mother died of breast cancer, what, ten or so years ago.
Rebecca says, “You know, if we say, I hope it’s not cancer, that won’t affect anything one way or the other.”
“You’re right.”
At this moment, he adores her. The cloudy ambivalence burns away. Look at her: the strong-jawed, sensible, slightly archaic lines of her face (her profile could be on a coin)—behind it, how many generations of pale Irish beauties married to wealthy, stolid men?—the graying tumble of her dark hair.
He says, “I wonder why she called me.”
“You’re her friend.”
“But we’re not friend friends.”
“Maybe she wants to practice. You know, try telling somebody she’s not that close to.”
“We don’t know it’s that. Maybe … she wants to confess her love for me.”
“Do you think she’d call you at home about that?”
“I’d say cell phones have made that a moot question.”
“Do you really think?”
“Of course not.”
“Elena’s in love with you.”
“Then I wish she’d fucking buy something.”
“Are you meeting Bette uptown?”
“Yeah. JoJo.”
“Mm.”
“We can go to the Met after, and see the Hirst. I keep wondering how it looks in there.”
“Bette. What is she, sixty-five?”
“Thereabouts. When did you get checked last?”
“I don’t have breast cancer.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It really and truly doesn’t make any difference if you say it or you don’t.”
“I know. But still.”
“If I die, I give you permission to remarry. After a suitable period of mourning.”
“Ditto.”
“Ditto?”
They both laugh.
He says, “Matthew left such elaborate instructions. We knew about the music, we knew about the flowers. We knew which suit to put him in.”
“He didn’t trust your parents and his nineteen-year-old straight brother. Can you blame him?”
“He didn’t even trust Dan.”
“Oh, I bet he trusted Dan. He just wanted to make the decisions himself. Why wouldn’t he?”
Peter nods. Dan Weissman. Twenty-one-year-old boy from Yonkers, working as a waiter, saving to go to Europe for a few months, thinking he’d finish up at NYU when he got back. He believed, he must have believed, at least briefly, that the world was showering bounty on him. He was making good money at the new café-of-the-moment. He and Matthew Harris, his improbably fabulous new boyfriend, would walk together through Berlin and Amsterdam. Madonna had left him fifty-seven dollars on a forty-three-dollar check.
Rebecca says, “I think I want Schubert.”
“Hm?”
“At the memorial. Cremation. Schubert. And please, everybody get drunk afterward. A little Schubert, a little sorrow, and then have drinks and tell funny stories about me.”
“Which Schubert?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think maybe Coltrane for me. Would that be pretentious?”
“No more than Schubert. Do you think Schubert is too pretentious?”
“It’s a funeral. We’re allowed.”
“Maybe Bette’s okay,” she says. “Maybe. Who knows?”
“Shouldn’t you get in the shower?”
Is she eager for him to go?
He says, “You sure you don’t mind?”
“No, it’s fine. Bette wouldn’t call at the last minute like this if it wasn’t something important.”
Right. Of course. And yet. Sunday really is their day, their only day, shouldn’t she be a little more conflicted about releasing him, no matter how noble the cause?
He glances at