“Tell her I’ll call her right back,” Wilson says through the intercom. “Tell her I’m on another call.” The truth is that Wilson hasn’t yet decided where to take Isabelle to lunch, but he knows this will make Ruth furious; she can’t understand his indecision and had wanted an answer before he’d even left for work. He’s narrowed it down to three options: the pizza place around the corner to which they’ve always gone when Isabelle has come with him to the office for a day, a new diner he’s read about, and the Mexican place where they make the guacamole at your table. Ruth is right; it’s silly to make such an issue about where to have lunch, but really he knows the where of it is only part of the issue. The where of it has nothing to do with what kind of food he’d rather eat; the where of it matters only insofar as where silence would be the easiest, where there would be enough around them for Wilson to comment on in order to break the silence now and then—but he cannot tell this to Ruth. He doesn’t even like to admit it to himself. What kind of father is he, he thinks, to dread lunch with his daughter? To think of this dread fills him with shame, but he cannot help it.

The Mexican place would be good because of the guacamole preparation—it would be something to remark on, certainly, along with the decorations—the piñatas hanging from the ceiling, the handwoven rugs and hats on the walls. And the musicians who come to the table and serenade—that would take things out of Wilson’s hands for ten minutes, anyway. He hasn’t been to the diner, but he knows it’s done in fifties style, so he assumes there’s probably a jukebox and photographs of people like James Dean hanging on the walls, maybe a motorcycle in the corner—all good distractions.