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Elizabeth for owning such a chair, and another at Elizabeth for sitting in it.
    “It’s a gazillion degrees out there, Betts,” Piper said. “If I don’t have iced tea running down my throat in two minutes, I will pass out.”
    Elizabeth smiled wanly and gestured in the direction of the kitchen. “Go for it.”
    “Okay, well, come on,” said Piper, her annoyance mounting. “Come with me and have some, too. I’ll grab a handful of that mint out of the backyard.”
    Piper extended her hand to help Elizabeth out of the chair, and Elizabeth took it, but she didn’t pull herself up. She just held Piper’s hand in hers and looked at Piper with an uncommonly sweet, tired affection in her eyes. Somehow, it was the last kind of look Piper wanted to see. No, she thought. She wanted Elizabeth out of that chair. She wanted Elizabeth to have iced tea in the kitchen. She gave her hand a tug, but Elizabeth shook her head.
    “You go ahead,” she said in a quiet, firm voice. That’s more like it, thought Piper, releasing her friend’s hand. Elizabeth was famous for her stubborn streak.
    When Piper got back with her drink, Elizabeth was sitting up in the chair with her legs Indian style instead of stretched out on the ottoman and with her hair smoothed back into a ponytail. Piper felt like singing at the sight of her. She set the glasses of iced tea down on the coffee table, then pulled the ottoman several feet away from the chair, out of Elizabeth’s reach, and sat down on it, crossing her own legs.
    “Crisscross applesauce,” she said, giddily.
    “I have a bone to pick with you, lady,” said Elizabeth, narrowing her eyes. “You’ve been holding back about our new neighbor. Time to come clean.”
    “What do you mean holding back?”
    Piper had told Elizabeth about the cocktail party, about Cornelia’s ludicrously skimpy black dress and condescending jokes, the way she’d thrown her supposed sophistication in everyone’s faces. “And she had Carter’s exact haircut, I swear to God. And four-inch-high ‘do-me’ shoes.” “Fuck-me” is what she’d meant, but Piper only ever swore in her head. If she had been being completely honest, she’d have had to retract the bit about the shoes. Yes, they were high, but they were understated enough in other ways, little pale gold sandals with thin straps. But Piper could tweak a detail here and there if she felt like it, couldn’t she? She wasn’t a reporter for the New York Times, was she?
    “I mean the hunky husband! What else would I mean?” Elizabeth removed the lemon wedge from the lip of her glass and threw it at Piper. “Holdout!”
    “Oh, him,” said Piper, laughing and, in a single motion, scooping the lemon wedge off Elizabeth’s antique Persian and tossing it in the wastepaper basket in the corner of the room.
    “Yes, him. Parvee Patel-Price nearly had a heart attack this morning. She dropped off some food for us on her way to work…”
    “Don’t tell me,” interrupted Piper. “A casserole.” Parvee Patel-Price was famous for her dinner parties, which the unsuspecting attended fearing or hoping for exotic Indian fare, curry or maybe some of that homemade cheese, and at which she invariably served American dinner-table cuisine circa 1972.
    “Baked tuna-cheddar spaghetti, God bless her, chock full of cream of mushroom soup,” said Elizabeth, grinning. “And a bag of groceries along with it, which she somehow managed to drop on the way up my front walk, just as the new hunk in town was coming back from his early-morning run. He helped her pick up the groceries and carry them in. The man was in my kitchen!”
    “Mateo,” said Piper. “Although he seems to go by Teo. Dr. Teo Sandoval. He’s an ophthalmologist.”
    “Huh,” said Elizabeth, frowning. “I heard he was an oncologist.”
    Piper flushed. Oh, she thought, oh my. She took two sips of iced tea.
    “That’s what I meant to say,” she said, finally. “I’m not sure I’d call him a