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retail. Lila’s from Philadelphia.” Carol had the gift of retaining seemingly negligible details about people and summoning them up in unexpectedly useful contexts.
    Soon the room was abuzz with talk. A group of women were admiring the pink-and-gold canvas over the TV unit; Carol had insisted on buying it for May, who, no match for the combined bullying of Carol Newman and Sylvia Cantor, had quickly acquiesced. Now Carol grasped Sylvia by the arm and led her over to May to describe other paintings in her shop. Alan, Sylvia’s husband, Jeffrey, and a third man with a hearing aid were huddled over Alan’s laptop, scanning investment possibilities. Lilawas nodding her head encouragingly while Hy Marcus spoke about his daughter-in-law’s gourmet-cooking course. A widower in a cap (one of the healthier ones that Carol had sighted by the pool) was making a penny disappear behind seven-year-old Adam’s ear and then extracting it from the child’s nostril, while two women whom Carol had met yesterday on the supermarket line looked on. Another group of widowers, who had taken possession of the sofa and whom nothing short of a fire bombing were likely to dislodge, were trying to arrange a golf game around the obstacle course of their respective doctors’ appointments.
    After talking with Sylvia for a while, May retreated with Flo to the side of the room where they stood together, surveying the scene and hoping to escape Carol’s notice. If she saw them together, she would step in and separate them. Carol saw no point in talking to someone you already knew at a party.
    “Who are these people?” Flo wondered to her friend.
    “People Carol found. What can I say?” said May with a resigned shrug.
    “Don’t explain—I know the type. I had a daughter-in-law like that, only my son divorced her. She made him do calisthenics before they had sex. She was a health nut. Ran ten miles a day, macrobiotic food, special breathing exercises. One day he ordered a hamburger and she had a tantrum. She said she wasn’t going to live with anyone who ate a hamburger.”
    “That doesn’t sound like Carol,” said May doubtfully. “She eats hamburgers. And she’s devoted to Alan—in her way. But she
is
a fanatic.”
    “Of course she is,” pronounced Flo. “Just look at her waving her arms. She’s a fanatical arranger. And it looks like we’re about to be arranged.” She gestured toward the knot of golfers on the sofa, whom Carol was clearly eyeing in the view of hauling them over to meet May and Flo.
    “I think you’re right,” sighed May.
    “It’s not such a bad thing, you know. It shows concern for you, in a way. My daughter-in-law—the new one—has almost no sense of my existence. The other day she asked me if I was coming up for Yom Kippur. That’s eight months away! Of course, she may have Yom Kippur mixed up with Passover. Her grasp of the holidays is weak—to my son’s delight.”
    May was still surprised by Flo’s willingness to criticize those close to her. It was a novelty, schooled as she was in the idea that it was undignified to ridicule one’s family. Yet Flo somehow managed to get away with doing it without compromising her dignity. May did not think that she could do such things herself, but she appreciated Flo’s gift and admitted that it made people seem much more interesting. She was looking forward, for example, to meeting Jonathan Kliman (“my son, the
vantz
” as Flo called him) and his second wife (“the ice goddess”).
    “You don’t like your daughter-in-law?” May asked, not altogether innocently. She was eager to hear Flo expound further on the subject.
    “Like? What’s to like? My son goes and marries a girl who is everything I’m not, and I’m supposed to like her? What’s he running away from? He says he likes her quiet elegance. Let him buy a piece of furniture. He tells me I’d like her if I’d get to know her. But how can I get to know someone who rides a horse? It’s an