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attendant says, and Sadie sits still, waiting, her pain and therefore her want growing more intense. Her knee starts to jiggle and she makes it stop. She’ll get the Bloody Mary mix. He’ll get the vodka. In the unlikely event that he doesn’t get it for her, she’ll cease all conversation, put away her reading materials, and sleep.

4
    I t was at the end of June that his friend Stuart had urged John to go to a divorced parents group. They’d been out at O’Gara’s, watching the Twins screw up a close game against the White Sox on the big-screen TV. After the game was over and they’d finished the postmortem, Stuart told John that his wife, Angie, had suggested the group for John—she’d read some story in the paper about it. “Right away, you’d have something in common with all those people,” Stuart said. “You could make some friends, maybe even find another woman. And you want a divorcée, you don’t want a widow or someone who’s never been married. If you get a widow, she’s always going to be mooning over her husband. If you get someone over forty who’s never been married, you’re looking at a whole world of trouble.”
    “I almost didn’t get married,” John said, and Stuart lowered his chin and looked over his glasses at his friend.
    “What, you think I’ve got problems?” John asked.
    “Aw hell, who doesn’t have problems.” Stuart signaled to the bartender that he was ready for the check. Then he said, “Listen, I don’t want to make you feel bad, but you’re getting a little weird. I mean, I’ll bet you walk around talking to yourself.”
    “You don’t talk to yourself?”
    “Not as much as you do. You talk to yourself way too much.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Don’t you?”
    Silence.
    “Hey,” Stuart said. “Don’t think I’m … I’m just saying I think people are meant to be with people. You suffer in a marriage; but alone, you suffer more. Did you ever read that Mark Twain book Extracts from Adam’s Diary ? Adam thought Eve was a real pain in the ass, talking too much, looking at her reflection in the pond all the time, getting them expelled from Paradise , for Christ’s sake! But what he said at the end was that he was better off living outside the Garden with Eve than inside it without her.”
    John said nothing, took a last pull on his beer. It occurred to him to say that Adam didn’t have ESPN, but he got the point. He got it.
    “I think you should give it another shot, that’s all. Go to this group and just sit there and listen. If nothing else you hear some stories other than your own. Maybe you meet somebody to have a meal with, to bounce ideas off of.”
    “That’s what you’re for.”
    Stuart put his coat on, turned up the collar. “Yeah. But I can’t be the one to do it all the time. You know? You need more than me.”
    For so many years, Stuart had been filling in the gaps, propping him up, and John supposed Angie had grown tired of it. So he agreed to find such a group, and Stuart told him there was one meeting the next night, at a Unitarian church not four blocks from him. John knew the building—he’d often admired the architecture.
    “How do you know about that meeting?” John asked, and Stuart shrugged. Meaning, John realized, that Angie had found itbecause they’d been talking about him. Poor John. Gotta do something about John . It was embarrassing, like someone telling you far too long after the fact that your zipper was open.
    At ten of seven the next evening, John was in the dimly lit basement of the church, searching for the right room. There were a number of things going on, including a cooking class that was filling the hall with the scent of chocolate. He’d taken some care dressing, finally settling on a casual look: white shirt, jeans, black sneakers. A khaki jacket against a light rain. After he arrived at the church, he’d gone into the bathroom for a leak but also to make sure his cowlick was down. Then he came out