Debra pulls her sweater around herself, warms her tea. She leans against the sink and smiles as she watches her son eat his second helping of eggs, Lydia reaching over to take a cheesy mushroom from the top. Pat looks up at his mother, to see if she’s caught the blatant thievery. “You’re not going to stab her?”

And that’s when a car announces itself on the gravel outside. Pat hears it, too, and checks his watch. He shrugs. “No idea.”

Pat goes to the window, puts his hand to the glass, and peers down toward the driveway, the faint glow of headlights down there. “That’s Keith’s Bronco.” He steps away from the window. “The after-party. He’s probably wasted. I’ll go take care of it.”

He skips down the stairs like a boy.

“How was he tonight?” Debra asks quietly when he’s gone.

Lydia picks at the leftover onions and mushrooms on Pat’s plate. “Great. You couldn’t take your eyes off him. God, I’ll be glad when this play is over, though. Some nights, he just sits there afterward and stares out, with . . . these distant eyes. For fifteen minutes, he’s just done. I feel like I’ve been holding my breath since I finished this goddamned play.”

“You’ve been holding your breath a lot longer than that,” Debra says, and they both smile. “It’s a wonderful play, Lydia. You should just let go and enjoy it.”

Lydia drinks from Pat’s orange juice. “I don’t know.”

Debra reaches across the table for Lydia’s hand. “You had to write it, and he had to play it, and I’m just so grateful I got to see it.”

Lydia cocks her head and her brow wrinkles, fighting off tears. “Goddamn it, Dee. Why do you do that?”

Then, through three layers of floor, they hear voices on the stairs, Pat and Keith, and someone else, and then a rumbling up the steps, five, maybe six sets of feet.

Pat comes up first, shrugging. “I guess there were some old friends of yours at the show tonight, Mom. Keith brought them—I hope it’s all right . . .”

Pat is followed by Keith. He doesn’t seem drunk, but he is carrying his little video camera, which he sometimes uses to chronicle—hell, Debra isn’t sure what Keith chronicles, exactly. “Hey, Dee. Sorry to bother you so late, but these people really wanted to see you . . .”

“It’s okay, Keith,” she says, and then the other people come up the stairs, one at a time: an attractive young woman with curly red hair, and then a thin, mop-headed young man who does look drunk—neither of whom Debra recognizes—and then a strange creature, a slightly hunched older man in a suit coat, as skinny as she is, at once vaguely familiar and not; he has the strangest, lineless face, like one of those computer renderings of a face aging, only done in reverse, a boy’s face grafted onto the neck of an old man—and finally, another old gentleman, in a charcoal-gray suit. This last man catches her attention as he steps away from the others, to the counter separating the kitchen from the living room. He removes his fedora and looks at her with a set of eyes so pale blue they seem nearly transparent—eyes that take her in with a mixture of warmth and pity, eyes that sweep Dee Moray back fifty years, to another life—

He says, “Hello, Dee.”

Debra’s teacup drops to the counter. “Pasquale?”

There were times, of course, years ago, when she thought she might see him again. That last day in Italy, as she watched him motor away from the hotel, she couldn’t have imagined not seeing him again. Not that there was any spoken agreement between them, but there was something implicit, the hum of attraction and anticipation. When Alvis told her that Pasquale’s mother had died, that he was going to the funeral and might not come back, Dee was stunned; why hadn’t Pasquale told her? And when a boat arrived with her luggage, and Alvis said Pasquale wanted him to get her back to the States safely, she thought that Pasquale must have needed some time alone. So she went home to have the baby. She’d sent him a postcard, thinking, maybe . . . but there was no answer. After that, she thought about Pasquale sometimes, although not as often as the years passed; she and Alvis did talk about going to Italy on vacation, going back to Porto Vergogna, but they never made it. Then, after Alvis died and she got her degree in teaching, with a minor in Italian, she’d thought about taking Pat; she even called a travel agent, who said that not only was there “no listing for a Hotel Adequate View,” but that she couldn’t even find this town, Porto Vergogna. Did she perhaps mean Portovenere?

By then, Debra could almost wonder if the whole thing—Pasquale, the fishermen, the paintings in the bunker, the little village on the cliffs—hadn’t been some trick of the mind, another of her fantasies, a scene from some movie she’d watched.

But no—here he is, Pasquale Tursi, older, of course, his black hair gone slate-gray, those deep lines in his face, his jaw falling into a slight jowl, but with the eyes, still the eyes. It is him. And he edges forward a step, until the only thing separating them is the kitchen counter.

She feels a flash of self-consciousness and her twenty-two-year-old’s vanity rises: God, what a fright she must look. For several seconds, they stand there, a gimpy old man and a sick old woman, just four feet apart now, but separated by a thick granite counter, by fifty years and two fully lived lives. No one speaks. No one breathes.

Finally, it is Dee Moray who breaks the silence, smiling at her old friend: “Perchè hai perso così tanto tempo?” What took you so long?

That smile is still too large for her lovely face. But what really gets to him is this: she has learned Italian. Pasquale smiles back and says, quietly, “Mi dispiace. Avevo fare qualcosa di importante.” I’m sorry. There was something important I had to do.

Of the six other people fanned out around them in this room, only one understands what they’ve said: Shane Wheeler, who, even after four quick, desperate glasses of whiskey, is still moved by the bond translators often develop with their subjects. It’s been quite a day for him, waking up with Claire, finding out his movie pitch was nothing but a distraction, trying unsuccessfully to negotiate better terms during the long trip, then the catharsis of that play, identifying with the ruined life of Pat Bender, reaching out to and getting shut down by his ex; after all of that, and the whiskeys, the emotion of Pasquale’s reunion with Dee is almost more than Shane can bear. He sighs deeply, a little whoosh of air that brings the others back into the room . . .

They all watch Pasquale and Dee intently. Michael Deane grips Claire’s arm; she covers her mouth with her other hand; Lydia glances over at Pat (even now, she can’t help worrying). Pat looks from his mother to this kindly old man—Did she call him Pasquale?—and then his vision swings over to Keith, standing at the top of the stairs, moving to the side with that goddamned camera he carries everywhere, framing the scene, inexplicably filming this moment. “What are you doing?” he asks. “Put that camera away.” Keith shrugs and nods his head toward Michael Deane, the man paying him to do this.

Debra becomes aware, too, of the other people in the room. She looks around at the expectant faces until her eyes fall on the other old man, the one with the strange plastic, impish face. Jesus. She knows him, too—

“Michael Deane.”

He draws his lips back over his brash, white teeth. “Hello, Dee.”

Even now, she feels dread just saying his name, and hearing him say hers; Deane senses this, because he looks away. She’s read stories about him over the years, of course. She knows about his long trail of success. For a time she even stopped watching credits for fear of simply seeing his name: A Michael Deane Production.

“Mom?” Pat takes another step toward her. “Are you okay?”