Lola walked with youthful energy, tugging on Philip’s arm. Every now and then, she’d look up at Philip and laugh. James wished he knew what was entertaining her. He longed to stroll down the sidewalk with a girl, having fun. Instead, he had Mindy next to him. She was, he knew, freez-ing, refusing to wear a hat because it messed up her hair, walking silently with her shoulders hunched and her arms crossed against the cold. When they reached the lobby of One Fifth, Philip and Lola went right up in the elevator with vague murmurings of doing dinner sometime again in the future. Mindy went into the bedroom and changed into flannel pajamas. James thought more about Lola and how he was going to see her the next day.

“Damn,” Mindy said. “I forgot about Skippy.”

“Don’t worry,” James said. “I’ll walk him.”

He took the dog into the cobblestone street of the Washington Mews next to the building. While Skippy did his business, James stared up at the top of the building, as if he might catch a glimpse of Lola hundreds of feet above his head. All he saw, however, was the imposing facade of gray stone, and when he returned to the apartment, Mindy was in bed, reading The New Yorker. She lowered the magazine when he came in.

“What was that business, anyway?” she asked.

“What business?” he said, taking off his shoes and socks.

“About watching My Super Sweet 16.” Mindy turned off her light.

“Sometimes I really do not get you. At all.”

James didn’t feel tired, so he left the room and went into his office.

He sat at his desk, his feet bare, looking out the small window that framed the tiny courtyard. How many hours had he spent at this desk, looking out this window, and laboring on his book one word at a time? And for what? A lifetime of seconds wasted in front of his computer, endeavor-ing to re-create life when life was all around him.

Something’s got to change, he thought, remembering Lola.

He got into bed and lay stiffly next to his wife. “Mindy?” he said.

“Mmmm?” she asked sleepily.

“I do need sex,” he said. “By the way.”

“Fine, James,” she said into her pillow. “But you’re not getting it from me. Not tonight.”

Mindy fell asleep. James lay awake. Several pernicious sleepless seconds ticked by, then minutes and probably hours. James got up and went into Mindy’s bathroom. He rarely ventured there; if Mindy caught him in her bathroom, she would demand to know what he was “doing in there.” He’d better not be relieving himself, she would warn.

This time he did relieve himself, urinating carefully into the bowl without lifting the toilet seat. Searching for aspirin, he opened Mindy’s medicine cabinet. Like everything else in their lives, it hadn’t been cleaned out in years. There were three nearly empty tubes of toothpaste, a greasy bottle of baby oil, makeup in smudged containers, and a dozen bottles of prescription pills, including three bottles of the antibiotic Cipro dated October 2001 — which Mindy had obviously hoarded for the family in case of an attack after 9/11 — along with a bottle of malaria pills and antihistamines (for bites and rashes, the label read), and a container of sleeping pills, on which DANGER OF OVERDOSE was typed. Here was Mindy, he thought, prepared for any emergency, including the necessity of death. But not sex. He shook his head, then took one of the pills.

Back in his bed, James immediately fell into a brilliant Technicolor dream-filled sleep. He flew over the earth. He visited strange lands where everyone lived on boats. He swam across a warm salty sea. Then he had sex with a movie star. Just as he was about to come, he woke up.

“James?” Mindy said. She was already up, folding laundry before she went to the office. “Are you all right?”

“Sure,” James said.

“You were talking in your sleep. Moaning.”

“Ah,” James said. For a moment, he wished he could go back to his dream. Back to flying and swimming and having sex. But he was seeing Lola, he reminded himself, and got out of bed.

“What are you doing today?” Mindy demanded.

“Don’t know. Stuff,” he said.

“We need paper towels and Windex and garbage bags. And aluminum foil. And dog food for Skippy. The Eukanuba mini-chunks. Mini. It’s very important. He won’t eat the big chunks.”

“Can you make a list?” James asked.

“No, I cannot make a list,” Mindy said. “I’m done with doing everything and being everyone’s mama all the time. If you need a list, make it yourself.”

“But I’m the one doing the shopping,” James protested.

“Yes, and I appreciate it. But you need to do the whole job, not half of it.”

“Huh?” James said, thinking that this was yet another great beginning to a typical day in the life of James Gooch.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought,” Mindy said. “As you know, writing my blog has made me examine things I haven’t wanted to confront.”

Perhaps it had, James thought, but it didn’t appear to have made Mindy any more sensitive. She just went on and on, running people over.

“And I’ve come to the conclusion,” she continued, “that it’s crucial to be married to another adult.” Before he could respond, Mindy rushed out of the room. “Aha!” he heard her exclaim, indicating that she’d had a burst of inspiration about her blog.

“One of the joys of not having it all is not doing it all,” Mindy wrote.

“This morning I had a Network epiphany. ‘I’m not going to take it anymore!’ The constant doing: the laundry, the shopping, the folding, the lists. The endless lists. We all know what that’s like. You make a list for your husband, and then you have to spend as much time making sure he follows the list as it would have taken you to do the job yourself. Well, those days are over. Not in my household! No more.”

Satisfied, she went back into the bedroom for another round of hounding James. “One more thing,” she said. “I know your book comes out in six weeks, but you need to start writing another one. Right away.

If the book is a success, they’re going to want a new one. And if it’s a failure, you need to be working on another project.”

James looked up from his underwear drawer. “I thought you didn’t want to play mama anymore.”

Mindy smiled. “Touché. In that case, I’ll leave your future up to you.

But in the meantime, don’t forget about the mini-chunks.”

After she left, James dressed carefully, changing his jeans and shirt several times, finally settling on an old black turtleneck cashmere sweater that had just the right amount of dash and writerly seriousness. Looking in the mirror, he was pleased with the result. Mindy might not be interested in him, but it didn’t mean other women weren’t.

On his way to the gym that morning, Philip ran into Schiffer Diamond in the deli. She’d been on his mind ever since her phone call on New Year’s Eve. He told himself that he hadn’t done anything wrong, and yet still felt a need to apologize — to explain. “I’ve been meaning to call,” he began.

“You’re always meaning to call, aren’t you?” she replied. Now that Lola was moving in to his apartment, it should have been the absolute end of Schiffer’s feelings for Philip. Unfortunately, her feelings hadn’t gone away, causing an irrational irritation toward him. “Too bad you never do.”

“You could call me,” Philip said.

“Oakland.” She sighed. “Have you noticed we’re grown-ups now?”

“Yeah. Well,” he said, shifting through a display of PowerBars. This reminded him of the dozens of times he’d been in this deli with her in the past — buying ice cream and bread after sex, coffee and bacon and The New York Times on Sundays. There was a comfort and peace in those moments that he couldn’t recall having had again. He’d assumed then that they’d be together forever doing their Sunday-morning routine when they were eighty. But there were the other times, like after a fight, or when she’d left again for L.A. or a movie location after making no plans for their future, when he’d stood here bitterly, buying cigarettes, and promising himself he’d never see her again.

“Listen,” he said.

“Mmmmm?” she asked. She picked up a magazine with her face on the cover.

He smiled. “Do you still collect those things?” he asked.

“Not the way I used to,” she said. She bought the magazine and headed out of the store.

He followed. “The thing about Lola,” he began.

“Philip,” she said. “I told you. It’s none of my business.” But she only ever called him by his name when she was angry with him.

“I want to explain.”

“Don’t.”

“It wasn’t my choice. Her parents lost all their money. She didn’t have anyplace to live. What was I supposed to do — put her out on the street?”

“Her parents lost all their money? Come on, Philip,” she said. “Even you’re not that gullible.”

“They did,” he insisted, realizing how ridiculous it sounded. He un-wrapped his PowerBar and said defensively, “You were with Brumminger.

You can’t be mad at me about Lola.”

“Who said I was mad?”

“You’re the one who’s never around,” Philip said, wondering why women were always so difficult.

“I’m here now, Philip,” she said, stopping on the corner of Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue. “And I’ve been here for months.”

She’s still interested, Philip thought. “So let’s have dinner.”

“With Lola?” Schiffer said.

“No. Not with Lola. How about next Thursday? Enid’s taking Lola to the ballet.”

“That’s an honorable plan,” she said sarcastically.

“It’s two old friends having dinner together. Why can’t we be friends?