“What don’t you like about them?” he said.

“Oh, well, where to begin?” Patty said. “How about the flipflop thing? I have some issues with their flipflops. It’s like the world is their bedroom. And they can’t even hear their own flap-flap-flapping, because they’ve all got their gadgets, they’ve all got their earbuds in. Every time I start hating my neighbors around here, I run into some G.U. kid on the sidewalk and suddenly forgive the neighbors, because at least they’re adults. At least they’re not running around in flipflops, advertising how much more laidback and reasonable they are than us adults. Than uptight me, who would prefer not to look at people’s bare feet on the subway. Because, really, who could object to seeing such beautiful toes? Such perfect toenails? Only a person who’s too unluckily middle-aged to inflict the spectacle of her own toes on the world.”

“I hadn’t particularly noticed the flipflops.”

“You really do lead a sheltered life, then.”

Her tone was somehow rote and disconnected, not teasing in a way that he could work with. Denied encouragement, his sense of anticipation was waning. He was beginning to dislike her for not being in the state he’d imagined he would find her in.

“And the credit-card thing?” she said. “Using a credit card to buy one hot dog or one pack of gum? I mean, cash is so yesterday. Right? Cash actually requires you to add and subtract. You actually have to pay attention to the person who’s giving you your change. Like, for one tiny little moment, you have to be less than one-hundred-percent cool and checked into your own little world. But not with a credit card you don’t. You just blandly hand it over and blandly take it back.”

“That’s more like what the crowd was tonight,” he said. “Nice kids, just a little self-absorbed.”

“You’d better get used to it, though, right? Jessica says you’re going to be up to your armpits in young people all summer.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“It sounded more like definitely.”

“Yeah, but I’m thinking of bailing. In fact, I already said so to Walter.”

Patty stood up to put their tea bags in the sink and remained standing, her back to him. “So this might be your only visit,” she said.

“That’s right.”

“Well, then, I suppose I should be sorry I didn’t come down sooner.”

“You could always come up and see me in the city.”

“Right. If I’d ever been invited.”

“You’re invited now.”

She wheeled around with narrowed eyes. “Don’t play games with me, OK? I don’t want to see that side of you. It actually sort of makes me sick. OK?”

He held her gaze, trying to show her that he meant it-trying to feel that he meant it-but this seemed only to exasperate her. She retreated, shaking her head, to a far corner of the kitchen.

“How are you and Walter getting along?” he said unkindly.

“None of your business.”

“I keep hearing that. What does it mean?”

She blushed a little. “It means it’s none of your business.”

“Walter says not so great.”

“Well, that’s true enough. Mostly.” She blushed again. “But you just worry about Walter, OK? Worry about your best friend. You already made your choice. You made it very clear to me which one of us’s happiness you cared more about. You had your chance with me, and you chose him.”

Katz could feel himself beginning to lose his cool, and it was highly unpleasant. A pressure between his ears, a rising anger, a need to argue. It was like suddenly being Walter.

“You drove me away,” he said.

“Ha-ha-ha! ‘Sorry, I can’t go to Philadelphia even for one day, because of poor Walter’?”

“I said that for one minute. For thirty seconds. And you then proceeded, for the next hour-”

“To fuck it up. I know. I know I know I know. I know who fucked it all up. I know it was me! But, Richard, you knew it was harder for me. You could have thrown me a lifeline! Like, possibly, for that one minute, not talked about poor Walter and his poor tender feelings, but about me instead! That’s why I’m saying you already made your choice. You may not have even known you were doing it, but that’s what you did. So live with it now.”

“Patty.”

“I may be a fuckup, but if nothing else I’ve had some time to think in the last few years, and I’ve figured some things out. I have a little better idea of who you are, and how you work. I can imagine how hard it is for you that our little Bengali friend’s not interested in you. How terrrrribly destabilizing for you. What a topsy-turvy world this turns out to be! What a total bad trip! I guess you could still try working on Jessica, but good luck with that. If you really find yourself at a loss, your best bet may be Emily in the development office. But Walter’s not into her, so I don’t imagine she’ll be too interesting to you.”

Katz’s blood was up, he was all jittery-jangly. It was like coke cut heavily with nasty meth.

“I came down here for you,” he said.

“Ha-ha-ha! I don’t believe you. You don’t even believe it yourself. You’re such a bad liar.”

“Why else would I come down here?”

“I don’t know. Concern about biodiversity and sustainable population?”

He was remembering how unpleasant it had been to argue with her on the phone. How grossly unpleasant, how murderously trying to his patience. What he couldn’t remember was why he’d put up with it. Something about the way she’d wanted him, the way she’d come after him. A way that was missing now.

“I’ve spent so much time being mad at you,” she said. “Do you have any idea? I sent you all those e-mails that you never responded to, I had that whole humiliating one-sided conversation with you. Did you even read those e-mails?”

“Most of them.”

“Ha. I don’t know if that makes it worse or better. I guess it doesn’t even matter, since it was all in my head anyway. I’ve spent three years wanting a thing I knew would never make me happy. But that didn’t make me stop wanting it. You were like a bad drug I couldn’t stop craving. My whole life was like a kind of mourning for some evil drug I knew was bad for me. It was literally not until yesterday, when I actually saw you, that I realized I didn’t need the drug after all. It was suddenly like, ‘What was I thinking? He’s here for Walter.’ ”

“No,” he said. “For you.”

She wasn’t even listening. “I feel so old, Richard. Just because a person isn’t making good use of her life, it doesn’t stop her life from passing. In fact, it makes her life pass all the quicker.”

“You don’t look old. You look great.”

“Well, and that’s what really counts, isn’t it? I’ve become one of those women who put a ton of work into looking OK. If I can just go on and make a beautiful corpse, I’ll have the whole problem pretty well licked.”

“Come with me.”

She shook her head.

“Just come with me. We’ll go somewhere, and Walter can have his freedom.”

“No,” she said, “although it’s nice to hear you finally say that. I can apply it retroactively to the last three years and make an even better fantasy out of what might have been. It’ll enrich my already rather rich fantasy life. Now I can imagine staying home in your apartment while you do your world tour and fuck nineteen-year-olds, or going along with you and being you guys’s den mother-you know, milk and cookies at three a.m.-or being your Yoko and letting everybody blame me for how washed-up and bland you’ve gotten, and then throwing horrible scenes and letting you find out, the slow way, how bad it is to have me in your life. That should be good for months and months of daydreaming.”

“I don’t understand what it is you want.”

“Believe me, if I understood that myself, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I actually thought I did know what I wanted. I knew it wasn’t a good thing, but I thought I knew. And now you’re here, and it’s like no time at all has passed.”

“Except Walter’s falling for the girl.”