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mid-August. “As many as you did,” he held up the first three fingers of his right hand, “it was very good.” The second act of the play An Older Lover portrayed their last meeting on a Friday afternoon in early September. Placing her gold American Express Card beneath the bill, “it was twelve dollars a glass.” On a bench in Bowling Green Park, she offered her pregnancy and their relationship as a solution to his unhappy marriage. “Usually I don’t drink wine,” he drummed his fingers on the table, “but that was great,” and looked around the dining room before adding the rest of his line, “Why would he give you the bill anyway?” He refused her proposition and she decided to get an abortion as soon as possible. She wondered how he would thank her for dinner, “because I was the one who asked for it.” She made arrangements to get to the office a few hours early the following Tuesday in order to leave by noon for her one o’clock appointment at Planned Parenthood. He frowned before asking, “Don’t you think that’s rude?” She died in a cubicle when the American Airlines flight-number eleven from Boston with eighty-one passengers and eleven crew members aboard was flown into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Cindy’s wire-bound notebook was closed on her lap and the ballpoint pen was tucked between the pages. “It might be a French restaurant,” she admonished him sweetly, “but we’re not in France.” I nudged Cindy with my left elbow. He nodded, “I guess we should—” As she interjected, “are you still…” Cindy returned my smile with a wink before looking back at the stage. “I’m sorry, what were you going to say?” While the lights slowly faded to black. “No, you go ahead.”

First Friday in June

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    S tephanie and Karen were drinking Frascati while seated at Karen’s kitchen table. She lived in a railroad apartment across the street from the Greenpoint branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Karen was a painter who’d just been dropped by her gallery and that disappointment had nagged at their conversation over dinner. Stephanie and Karen were close friends, partially because Stephanie wasn’t an artist, and she was one of the least cynical people that Karen knew. What was left of the grilled chicken and asparagus pasta remained on the mismatched plates before them. The yellow linoleum floor glowed beneath the circular fluorescent light in the center of the high ceiling. A framed reproduction of Bruegel’s “The Tower of Babel” hung on the wall above the green Formica table. “So what was he like,” Karen placed her glass on the table, “your architect?” Stephanie winced with a grin, “he was really charming,” and her enthusiasm was still blushingly obvious. Karen nodded encouragingly, “that sounds like a lot of fun.” “And smart…” Stephanie didn’t need much encouragement, “not self-consciously smart, but really smart.” Karen was tired of listening to her own litany of complaints, “Was it romantic?” Stephanie thought of the man who had chatted her up on a Soho street corner, “we had a bottle of wine with lunch as well,” closed her eyes and claimed, “he is so, like, drop-dead gorgeous,” then picked up her glass, “but it would be just too weird,” and sipped her fruity white wine. Karen leaned back in the chair, “you just said that you liked impulsive people.” Stephanie exclaimed, “I said I liked spontaneous people,” with a forced laugh. “No,” Karen pointed at her, “you said impulsive.” “Well,” Stephanie was still a bit tipsy from her lunch with Alan when Karen opened the bottle of Frascati, “I meant to say spontaneous…” and her initial conversation with Alan,