“So what if it’s like that? What if the awful part is actually the center of the marriage, and the intruder, the drug, is when you love them? What if that’s the thing to try and get rid of, and the seething urge to, you know, drown them in the river, is really who you both are?”

Now there’s no music, just a blank stuffy space where someone, Reynard thinks, should be talking. “That’s kind of a complicated answer to the question ‘Are you still married.’ ”

Rachel laughs and shrugs with the last of the drink. Reynard’s beer has vanished too. This would be the time for another round if the barman were here. Instead—

“Are you that sad?” Reynard asks.

Rachel laughs as if to say no, but does not, does she, actually say the word. “Everything is just a little caved-in lately,” she says. “Ben, that’s my husband, he’s moving up. They plucked him out of the management pool to work with the Vic on the Trail, some aspect of some part of it that always lasts late. It wasn’t, you know, like how it was, how he was, when we first—I never see him now, and we never see each other.”

“You have a beautiful little boy.”

“Nicky is a girl.”

“Whoa, really?

“Yes, does everyone think—”

“I’m more with the other grouping,” Reynard says.

“Grouping,” Rachel says with a sigh.

“Groupings are part of the philosophy of the school,” Reynard says, almost respectfully.

“I know, I know, Nicky’s in Sweet Cookie. And you?”

“I’m with the Baby Jaguars.”

Rachel groans. “That’s so much cooler than Nicky’s. I want to be in the Baby Jaguars. The whole philosophy, I can’t follow it.”

“Aren’t you on the list? It goes out all the time. It’s full of photos.”

“I don’t read it carefully. I scan for Nicky’s little face and delete. I don’t read anything carefully.”

“What do you do?”

“I have a job they charitably let me pretend to do half-time. They’re too nice to let me go, or afraid of a lawsuit, probably.”

“What do you do when you’re not working?”

“I make and eat pancakes for dinner. I wait for Ben. I come here for drinking drinks. Where is Martin?”

“Who’s Martin?”

“The barman.”

“So you come here often,” Reynard says, as if he did not know, and looks at the cash she already has waiting on the counter.

“Monday Wednesday Friday.”

“I’ll join you sometimes, if I may.”

“You stopped drinking.”

“I spend eight to two thirty watching over children according to the methodology of Japanese folklore,” Reynard says, in his defense.