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wear a helmet,” said Mrs. Somerville. “Kidding! Now let’s both try to get some sleep—that is, as soon as I give the ombudsman an earful.”
    “Mom, blogs don’t have—”
    “I know, Lola.”
    Lola laughed. I really oughta give her some more credit. “Good night, Mom.”
    “Good night, Lulu.”
     
“I’m going up to feed Quentin Frye’s cat!” Lola waved cheerily at the doorman. Never mind that Quentin was allergic to cats, not to mention dogs—yet another reason he and Lola could never be together—or that it was the middle of the night.
    The doorman looked up, startled, from his Sudoku. Lola hadn’t realized he’d nodded off. “Morning!” he said, waving her in.
    Piece of cake. Quentin hadn’t mentioned that the doorman, much like the building, was prewar. In his case, Peloponnesian, Lola figured. She headed through the lobby.
    “Excuse me, miss?”
    Uh-oh.
    She turned to face the doorman, sure he’d realized he’d just waved in a complete stranger under utterly false pretenses, sure he was about to tell her to take a hike.
    “I mean, ma’am?”
    Oh, God. How matronly do I look?
    “Yes, sir?” Act casual.
    “Wondering if you could do me a favor, while you’re on your way up there?”
    Phew. “Of course!”
    “Stray piece of mail for Mr. Frye.” He held out a white windowed business envelope and looked at her with rheumy eyes. “Mind leaving it for him?”
    “Not at all,” said Lola. She slipped the envelope into her bag.
    “Much obliged, ma’am,” said the doorman, touching the brim of his dusty doorman cap.
    I so love that he just said “much obliged” and tipped his cap, Lola thought. So much so that I’m over the “ma’am” part.
    She smiled and waved and headed down the hall, her mission back under way.
    Lola remembered both this place and her singlehood in their faded glory. The small apartment building was the type where your first therapist, the one you had when you still wanted someone “nice” and validating, would have had her office: thick but worn beige carpeting, lovely mahogany detailing that needed a touch-up ten years ago, one of those teeny rickety elevators with an accordion door like a child’s safety gate. The security camera, though, that was new. Times change.
    Following Quentin’s instructions, Lola found his bike in the first-floor storage room where all the tenants kept theirs. Quentin was one of those serious bicyclists who ride around Central Park in long slim groups like schools of fish. He kept an extra key duct-taped under the seat—no doubt Mimi’s idea. Poor head-in-the-clouds Quentin; his apartment door evidently locked automatically behind you, usually at the very moment you realized you’d forgotten your key.
    Poor Mimi, for that matter.
    Lola eased herself into Quentin’s apartment. She had forgotten how nice it was. What’s a nine-letter-word for affords on puzzle-writer’s salary ? She had no idea. It was all dark paneled wood, like dorm rooms in movies about Yale. It was a two-bedroom—he used one as a study—with a sliver of a kitchen, its beige counters nearly bare. There was a public-radio-logo umbrella in a stand by the door, right next to the canvas man-bag Lola was looking for.
    She plopped on the bed—which, in the middle of the night, was more enticing than the desk chair—with Quentin’s iBook, musing that, after six months of marriage, the whole dating thing seemed at once very far and very near away. On the one hand, she could no longer fathom waking up in any bed but her own or doing the toothpaste-on-her-finger brush of shame—though she had always half-enjoyed the challenge of tracking down an Americano and a decent muffin in whatever neighborhood she’d woken up in. On the other—and the thought made her smile as she waited for the computer to fire up—sometimes she’d momentarily “forget” that she was married, and when Doug called for whatever reason, she’d get that he called! bloop in her tummy.