“Here’s my card if you need me.” Charlie gave him a card and took Frankie’s hand. They walked past three girls who must have been ballet dancers. Their toe shoes were dangling in one piece out of their dance bag. Their faces had been blown wide open.

As they walked back home Frankie said nothing until Charlie finally spoke.

“Do you remember at medical school when you got your first cadaver?” he asked her.

Frankie’s mind had just drifted to walking hand in hand with her parents to the Radio City Christmas show and believing there was nowhere in the world she’d rather live than New York. A year later her mother was dead.

“Yes, I remember,” Frankie answered him. “I called mine Harriet and made up an entire life for her. I believed she was both a Torah scholar and a hula dancer.”

“I couldn’t look at mine for the first week, and every night I’d go home and throw up,” Charlie spoke softly. “I preferred learning about life in textbooks or inspecting a cell under a microscope. I like the deconstruction of life: the smallest elements, like a hair follicle on skin. But I found the whole picture overwhelmingly disconcerting because any moral center to it all seemed completely up for grabs.”

“You’re a good man, Charlie. I never got further than what an interesting skeletal system. I wondered if Harriet the cadaver had good posture,” she said honestly.

“Well, if she was a hula dancer she must have been flexible.” Charlie smiled slightly. “How old was Harriet?”

“I’d say around thirty-five,” Frankie answered.

“How did she die?”

“Ovarian cancer,” Frankie answered immediately.

“Mine had a heart attack at fifty-six.”

“Not a bad life,” Frankie said almost too quickly.

“I’ll be fifty-six in ten years. I suppose you’re right. It’s not a bad life.”

“Charlie, you’re not going anywhere.”

“How do you know that? I could go in for a cup of coffee at Starbucks one night.” He began to recite as they approached her house: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.”

Frankie whispered, “Surely some revelation is at hand; / Surely the Second Coming is at hand.”

“Of course you know the Yeats.” Charlie touched her face. As they arrived in front of her building, he said, “You know everything.”

“No I don’t, Charlie,” Frankie answered quickly. “Charlie, please come upstairs. I don’t think I can bear to be alone just yet.”

Charlie held on to Frankie’s hand as they walked inside.

“Good night, Dr. Acton. Good night, Dr. Weissman. Let’s hope we’re all here tomorrow.” The doorman pushed the elevator button.

“Good night, George,” Charlie answered for both of them.