"Ooooh!" said Maggie. "Dermatologist. Lar is getting Botox! No wonder she looks to be in the first flush of youth."

"Do I?" Larissa asked quietly.

"No wonder you kept asking me how young you looked. Now I know your secret. How much does he charge?"

"No Botox, Mags, sorry," Larissa said, "just a routine checkup of moles and things."

They discussed this for an inordinately long time. Moles and cancers, what they were supposed to look like, what they morphed into, the signs of danger, where the moles appeared, the suddenness and yet the inevitability of bad news coming upon you (that was Ezraa"of course!) and then what you did with that bad news. Now no one wanted to play cards anymore. Everybody knew someone who had melanoma on their back, basal cell on their face, squamous cell on their arms.

The irony of this conversation did not go unremarked upon by Jared, who in the car on the way home said, "Larissa, you didn't think that was odd, talking about moles at such excruciating length?"

"No, why? Did you?"

He coughed. "You and I both know you haven't got a single blemish on that body of yours, not a single mark of any kind, not even a childhood scar!" Jared chuckled. "Waxing all poetic about non-existent moles. You're hilarious. So why'd you blow Maggie off?"

She chuckled too, sheepishly. He leaned over and kissed her at the red light. "You're so funny. Why don't you just tell her you don't want to hang out all the time? Tell her you're reading. It wouldn't even be a lie. You are actually reading nowadays."

"Yes." Larissa's gaze focused on the road.

Sat.u.r.day pa.s.sed and Sunday too, and then Monday came, and she drove her Jag to Stop&Shop.

Kai wasn't there. Not there on Monday, his day off from work, when he always showed up and they did their weekly shopping together.

Larissa didn't know what to think. She hung around thirty minutes on Monday, ten on Tuesday, and then Wednesday morning came and she looked at herself in the hall mirror, at her straight highlighted hair, her sensible brown eyes, her long arms, slender fingers, her body, trim from walking, from downward-dog yoga poses, everything still slim, still in proportion. She thought about a manicure with Fran, maybe a mommy-and-daughter day in the city with Emily, just the girls. She thought about organizing a fundraiser for the spring play, she thought ahead to planning the Hawaii trip in August and whether they should take an extra day for Memorial Day Atlantic City weekend.

Larissa thought of writing to Che, telling her she'd been eating kinilaw for two months, and she ruminated on packing up all her winter sweaters and taking out her summer shirts. But what she really contemplated was never ever ever going to Stop&Shop again, and the knot inside her for a brief moment was untied and loose of anxiety, like dangling threads. Clear of everything.

She would go back to King's. Sure it was crowded and the aisles were narrow, and the parking lot was tiny, but her leg wasn't broken anymore, and to celebrate, she got on the treadmill for thirty minutes and watched a talk show and then showered, and cleaned her bedroom, and got dressed, and made coffee and sat in the kitchen for five minutes, ten minutes, planning dinner and vacation, with Love's Labors Lost opened to the page that said, The blood of youth burns not with such excess as gravity's revolt to wantonness. And in her head, brutal words swirled about like blood-on-snow candy canes. What are you doing here? What do you want? Is it music? We can play music. But you want more. You want something and someone new. You want ecstasy.

She bolted from the island, got into her car and drove to Stop&Shop.

He wasn't there.

This time Larissa waited an hour, as if saying goodbye. She sat in the parking lot, overlooking the graveyard, eating sushi and listening to Chet Baker singing "These Foolish Things" that made his heart a dancer, and wondered about spring, and whether she needed new shoes, new sandals, perhaps. A girl always needed new sandals for spring. At two she drove to pick up Michelangelo, and sat quietly in the parking lot at her son's school. So close to the end, to the beginning. So close to the middle, which implied just as much ahead as there had been behind. And yet close to absolutely nothing.

5.

The Navigation System

On Thursday Larissa called the Jag dealership to schedule an appointment for service. "Have you had the car for three months, Mrs. Stark?" Brian, the service manager, intoned into the receiver. He had a seedy voice.

"Um, no," she stammered. "But I think the oil might be low."

"Has the oil light gone on?"

"No, but the car's making a funny noise at higher speeds, like a rattling noise."

"What kind of speeds?"

"I don't know. Seventy?"

"Hmm. Okay. Bring it in tomorrow, we'll check it out."

When Larissa hung up she wondered if there was a way they could tell that she'd never taken the car on the highway, had never gone above fifty in it; that it was smooth as silka"all the way to fifty. How high was self-immolation-by-lying-to-service-station-flacks on the list of venial things human beings were taught not to do?

On Friday she brought the Jag into the shop. She looked for Kai's amber bike, but couldn't catch a pumpkin glimpse of it. Brian, a tall, scrawny man with thin greasy hair, shook his head. "We're busy before the weekend," he said. "You really had to bring it in early. I told you to bring it in by eight, and here it is, nearly ten. Can you leave it till Monday?"

Not to have her car for the weekend? But then she'd have to explain to Jared that there was something wrong with it, and Jared knew about cars, he might get upset, go in, or call. Might demand another car. Perhaps cancel the deal. So much scrutiny. Too much.

"No," she said. "I can't leave it, we're going away. Please, can you try for today?"

"Miss, I don't know." She loved it when they called her missa"her, a wife, a mother.

She tried cajoling, using the voice she used on her children. "Come on. Maybe it's nothing. Just a simple oil change."

Brian looked into the monitor. "Car brand new, factory-delivered four weeks ago. I don't think it's the oil. Who sold you this car? Kai?"

That's all she needed, an in. "Yes. Is he here? Maybe he can help?"

"Nah, he's not. Besides he's not a mechanic."

"Yes, but I have a technical question for him. I lost the card with the keyless entry code."

"I can get you that. I'll have to call the factory."

"And," Larissa continued, "I wanted to see if he could order me a navigation system."

"A nav? Really? Well, I can do that for you. He's not here anyway."

"Will he be back on Monday?"

"Dunno." Brian wasn't looking at her as he typed up her order on the computer. "He had a funeral or something. Had to fly back to Hawaii, I think. We don't know if he'll be back. He just left abruptly."

A funeral!

"Don't worry. I'll help you." Brian grinned. "I do this stuff. Kai just sells the vehicle. All the after-sale service, I do. Sign right here. I'll call you in the afternoon. Do you need a ride?"

"I kind of do, yeah."

"Hmm. Lemme see." Brian paged Gary, the other salesman, who gave Larissa a ride home. On the way they barely talked. Except for the words she couldn't help.

"So what happened to my salesman?"

"Who? Kai? No one knows. He took personal leave. Our manager asked him when he was coming back and he said he didn't know."

"Is he coming back?"

"The way he left, we don't think so."

"Did he clear his desk?"

"Never had anything there to begin with." Gary shrugged as he drove. "Weird guy. But a good salesman, I'll give him that. Very good." He smiled. "The ladies liked him."

"Did they?"

"Yeah. He could really turn on the charm when he wanted to."

"Huh," said Larissa, staring straight ahead at Springfield Avenue. She enjoyed the grilled cheese sandwiches at the Summit Diner. Maybe she could go back to having them. "I didn't see much of that. Neither did my husband. Make the next right on Summit."

Gary laughed. "No, the husbands never saw much good in him, that's true."

What was she going to do? After she was dropped off, she rushed to Michelangelo's school; she was the mystery reader that afternoon and had plumb forgot.

Of course the car was fine. "I can find nothing wrong with it, miss," said Brian when he called later. "You gonna come pick it up?" She thought about asking Maggie to drive her to the dealership, but didn't want it to get back to Jared that there might be a problem with the car. Gary came to pick up her and Michelangelo, and Larissa had to pay a hundred and thirty dollars to Brian for doing nothing.

Afterward she took Michelangelo for ice cream at Ricky's. The boy had yum-yum bubble gum and she a crazy chocolate; they sat at one of the outdoor tables and licked their cones and chatted. It was an unseasonable sixty-four degrees, sunny, windy. Michelangelo talked about Jumanji, the book his mother had picked to read to his cla.s.s. He didn't understand why so many kids were scared by it, because he wasn't scared at all, and he watched the movie like thirty-one times. Well, you are a good brave boy, Larissa said, licking her crazy chocolate through clenched teeth, through a tight throat.

He might not be coming back. That was something she wasn't ready to get used to, the suddenness of it. Sitting next to Michelangelo in his blue camo pants, dripping melting bubble gum ice cream on them and licking his fingers, Larissa watched her son for a while with her arm on his back. Kai wouldn't leave his bike behind. She was sure of that. He wouldn't leave his Ducati Sportcla.s.sic behind.

But what if he didn't leave it?

On the one hand, such a welcome breath of liberation.

On the other, emptiness that felt like pale death.

Monday morning she met Maggie for a quick coffee before her play meeting at ten. They discussed Dylan, who was demanding drums for his birthday, and Maggie, usually indulgent, this time was terrified. "Drums, Larissa. Do you understand?"

Larissa understood. Drums were loud.

"No one else in the house will be able to live."

"There's no one else in the house."

"Ezra likes it quiet so he can read."

"Frankly a little less readingaperhaps drums are exactly what you need."

"Don't joke, it's not funny."

"You'll be fine. Put Dylan in the bas.e.m.e.nt."

"The bas.e.m.e.nt is where our whole life is! Our pool table is there. Our air hockey. My treadmill. I know I never go on it, but it's still there. My washer and dryer."

"So don't get the drums."

"He says he can't live without them."

"We say that about a lot of things."

"He doesn't."

"So? He'll learn not to be able to live without something else."

"Hah."

"Seriously, divert him. When Michelangelo wants a lollipop three minutes before dinner, I don't give in. I give him a crayon instead."

"I hope your child doesn't suck on too many of those," said Maggie. "Because how long can you fool a six-year-old? Soon he'll figure out a crayon is not a very tasty subst.i.tute. Dylan is sixteen. He can't be talked out of things that easily."

"Easily? You have met Michelangelo, right?" Larissa got up. "So offer Dylan something else. I gotta go. Creative meeting with your husband and Leroy."

Maggie laughed. "Ah, yes. Waiting for G.o.dot. Ezra is treating this like a Shakespearean tragedy in and of itself."

"Isn't it?" Larissa was wearing jeans, a jeans jacket, a white T-shirt, a bandanna around her hair.

"Who's going to take you seriously at this meeting?" said Maggie. "You look twelve."

Why did she beam? It was too late for that.

6.

Much Ado About Nothing