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Trophy Wife
    crowd—those topics were out. Pop culture could kill an hour, he
    thought, as long as she appreciated old movies and good theater.
    And the conversation would come to an abrupt end if she men-
    tioned Mamma Mia or any boy bands. That was for certain.
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    R o b B y r n e s
    He sighed. It was going to be an afternoon spent in light con-
    versation about growing up in Buffalo. There was no way around it.
    The squeaking wheels of a gurney snapped him out of his
    thoughts. Noah looked up to see the empty cot pass him, pushed
    by a short, cute, and very blond nurse. And since the nurse was also male, he offered a smile and received one in return.
    Too damn easy , he thought, watching the nurse as he guided the gurney through the waiting room. The man gave him one last
    glance and smile as he left, and Noah returned to the Tricia
    dilemma.
    It was not that Noah didn’t like Tricia. But his father was sixty-
    four, she was thirty-eight, and Noah was thirty-four. To Noah, it
    was . . . strange. Uncomfortable.
    At least when his mother remarried she had the decency to
    marry someone who was only a decade younger. Sixty-four related
    to fifty-four much better than sixty-four related to thirty-eight. As the son who had to relate to all of those people, Noah considered
    that an undeniable truth. A stepmother who was basically his own
    age was just . . . wrong .
    He looked again after the departed nurse, wondering if an after-
    noon assignation would be appropriate while his father was in a
    hospital bed, before deciding that, although it would be more fun
    than forced conversation with Tricia, it would also be tacky.
    Propriety was so unfair in this sort of circumstance.
    Minutes later Tricia walked into the waiting room and, spotting
    Noah, motioned for him to join her. Wordlessly, he obeyed.
    They walked the few blocks from the hospital to Max and Tricia
    Abraham’s Park Avenue apartment. The day was warm, the side-
    walks were busy, and neither of them—lost in their own thoughts
    and not quite sure how to relate to one another outside of pleasant smiles and banal observations about the weather or the traffic—
    felt the need for conversation. When they reached the lobby of the white-brick building at the corner of East Seventy-third Street,
    Tricia excused herself to get the mail, which was as close as they came to conversation. Then, envelopes in her hand, they ascended
    in the elevator to the eleventh floor in silence.
    Once inside the apartment, Noah dropped his bag in the foyer
    and awkwardly followed Tricia as she walked room to room, dis-
    W H E N T H E S T A R S C O M E O U T
    39
    tractedly straightening things that didn’t need straightening. It had been a while since he had been home, Noah realized, and—as he
    had expected—Tricia had been busying herself redecorating.
    Almost certainly through his father’s influence, there was now a lot of leather in the apartment: couch, armchairs . . . even the padding at the edges of a set of end tables. He felt it made the large living room seem more closed and intimate, although the light curtains
    on the large south-facing windows and the tasteful use of flowers
    were clearly Tricia’s efforts to soften the testosterone-driven room.
    Tricia walked into the kitchen, all modern and metallic, filled
    with appliances Noah couldn’t begin to identify, which uniformly
    bore the logos of what appeared to be an array of German and
    Swedish firms. It was only when she reached the refrigerator that
    she finally asked him, “Are you going to follow me everywhere for the next few days?”
    He blushed. “Uh . . . I just thought you might need help.”
    “What I need,” she said, opening up the refrigerator, “is a glass
    of wine.” She took an uncorked white wine bottle from the shelf inside the door. “Care to join me?”
    “Sure,” he said, impulsively trying to forge a bond with her even
    though he really didn’t feel like having a drink, especially so early