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mother called this morning and asked if I could come take care of her. She's got bronchitis and the doctor told her to stay in bed for two days. Call me there after six on my cell.
    We should talk when I come home.
    Love you,
Mona
    I read the note through twice, three times, put it down on the sink, got some ice water from the refrigerator, drank that, and then read the short but pregnant message again.
    Why hadn't she called me at work? That was the main question in my mind. She could have asked me what I was going to do for dinner, if I wanted to help her with her mother. And what was this "We should talk"? Was she mad about the night before? She never asked me to stop. I would have backed off if she had only said "no more."
    I didn't mind that she wasn't home. I liked being left alone to stare out the window. Many nights Mona went to events with magazine clients. She was often sent out of town to do research or conduct interviews. But there had never been just a note on the table.
    I didn't love Mona. But then again, I didn't love anyone: not my parents, who were like strangers after I came to New York; not Seela, though I was very fond of her; not Svetlana. I didn't feel bad about my lack of feeling for Mona because I wasn't secretly giving love somewhere else.
    We weren't passionate but at least we were civilized. We took walks together and raised Seela well. We ate a sit-down dinner every night we were both in the house.
    And now there was just a note on the dinette table.
    It was five to six and so I called her cell phone.
    "Hello?" she said in her clipped, I'm-in-a-hurry tone.
    "Hey, honey? What's going on?"
    "Oh . . . Ben."
    "Yeah. How come you didn't call me?"
    "Didn't you see my note?"
    "You usually call."
    "I was in a hurry."
    "The phone is faster and better than a note," I said.
    "I was upset," she confessed.
    "About what?"
    "Ben, I have to take care of my mother and I have a new assignment at work. I'm going to be busy all night and for the next few days. So can we put this on hold for a while?"
    "Just tell me what's wrong. It's only a few words. A sentence. You're married to a man for over twenty years, have a daughter with him, and you can't spare a few words?"
    She sighed as if greatly put upon and then said, "I can't do this. I have to go," and disconnected the call.
    I pressed the redial button but the call went directly to her answering service.
    You have reached Mona Valeria. I cannot take your call right now. Please leave a number or call back.
    It was only after I threw the cordless unit down, shattering it on the kitchen tiles, that I realized how enraged I was. And there was something else: I wanted a drink.
    This also was something new. I never wanted a drink. Never in all the years after I went off alcohol. I craved cigarettes aplenty, but it wasn't until after that phone splintered on the floor that I looked around, the way I used to do, for a bottle with a government seal on its neck.
    "Hello," she answered sweetly.
    "Hi, Lana," I said.
    "Ben." In the silence after my name I thought I might have heard a hesitation. But I was so upset that I had no room to contemplate any new suspicions.
    I was using Mona's home-office phone.
    "I need to come over, baby," I said.
    "Sure. Now?"
    "If you don't mind."
    "It's your house too. You could come here and live with me if you wanted."
    The thing about Svetlana was that she was what I called "emotopathic." She could read the feelings rolling off almost anyone and say the things that they needed to hear.
    She didn't want me to come live with her. She didn't pretend that there was anymore to our relationship than there was. She only knew that she heard loneliness in my tone and so she made up a happy little family for us-her and me together in a tiny studio on the West Side.
    *  *  *
    I made it to her place in a little under forty-five minutes. Rush hour traffic meant I had to ride the subway instead of getting a taxi, and the train always takes longer than