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think he takes a contentious position just to keep things crackling. Then again, I find him awfully hard to read. Perhaps he believes everything he says.
    â€œThat’s rather cynical,” I remark.
    â€œIt’s just how it works,” Ben says. “All relationships are based on a deal. Sometimes it’s verbalized, sometimes it’s not, but it’s always there.”
    Deirdre rolls and unrolls the corners of her napkin, hyperalert to his words.
    He smiles. “I’m sure you two have far more interesting things to discuss than the sordid workings of photography. Deirdre made it quite clear that I was supposed to leave right after hello. Say hi to Sam for me.”
    â€œI will.”
    Ben rises and leans over to kiss Deirdre good-bye, lingering on her lips. I jiggle my spoon between my fingers, uncertain where to look.
    Eventually, they separate. “It was good to see you,” Ben says, resting his hand on my shoulder.
    â€œYou, too.”
    Deirdre watches him walk out and then turns to me. “Sorry. I thought he was just going to walk me over.” There is too much subterranean pleasure in her look for me to think she is sorry at all.
    â€œI take it this means you two are back on track?”
    â€œI guess.” She shrugs. “I know this sounds crazy, but it feels different this time. We’re in touch almost every day, we’re seeing each other more often.”
    â€œWhat does ‘in touch’ mean?”
    â€œE-mail, mostly. He doesn’t like the phone.”
    I can’t help but wonder why even the smartest women are so often willing to contort themselves around a man’s predilections. Myself included. “Does he still want to date other people?”
    â€œWe haven’t talked about it. Frankly, I think he just likes holding it out there as an option. He travels so much, he has his kids every other weekend, how much time does he actually have?”
    This seems mildly delusional to me but there is nothing to be gained by pointing that out. “What’s up with his divorce?”
    â€œYou are in a bad mood, aren’t you?”
    â€œSorry.”
    Deirdre shakes her head. “Nothing. She’s still refusing to sign the papers.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI don’t know, she won’t tell him. She’s some goddamned oil heiress, so it’s not about money.”
    â€œOil heiress? I didn’t know there was such a thing anymore.”
    â€œIt’s old money.”
    â€œApparently.”
    â€œShe and her brothers seem to have a penchant for ending up in rehab in Arizona. They should put their name on a clinic instead ofthat ridiculous arts center in LA. They certainly spend more quality family time there.” Deirdre’s voice, throaty, rich, seemed, even at seventeen, especially at seventeen, hopelessly sophisticated in its perpetual weariness. We are, in many ways, opposites, but we recognized something essential in each other from the very first: Neither of us has the slightest sense of entitlement. An only child, Deirdre shuttled between the two warring camps her parents had set up twelve blocks from each other on the Upper East Side and in the end was left largely alone. Her father moved in with his latest mistress when Deirdre was fourteen. Her mother, sobbing, broken, shameless, sent her two, three times a week to beg him to return. Deirdre still cringes when she recalls the distaste she spied in his eyes, the set of his mouth.
    It left her with a deep-seated abhorrence of appearing needy, as if the very act of asking for anything, ever, is a sign of weakness. Even now I don’t think she can differentiate between justifiable need and neediness. Any amateur shrink—and she has seen umpteen nonamateurs over the years—could tell her that explains Ben, her entire roster of brilliant, ambitious, semidetached men. I’ve told her so myself. She knows, of course, but knowing doesn’t