Olivia told me on a Thursday.
I had come home from watching Ethan and Noah argue about cable anchoring to find her
already at my door with wine and the expression of a woman who has decided something
and is not going to be redirected. She had texted twenty minutes earlier: on my way, don’t
cook, I’m bringing things. The things turned out to be a bottle of Barolo and the conversation
I had half known was coming for two weeks.
She came into the new apartment and set the wine on the counter and looked around the
kitchen the way she always does when she comes somewhere new, not decoratively but
informationally, reading the space for what it says about the person living in it.
“Still good,” she said, with the satisfaction of someone whose first assessment has been
confirmed. “It still
