“Thank you,” Frankie answered softly. She was reticent to show Jil how deeply needy she could be. She had once heard a friend refer to a lover as having “the Grand Canyon of Need.” Frankie’s fear was that even the Grand Canyon could only contain a prelude to her need. “Really, Jil, thank you so much.”

“That’s it?” Jil looked at her. “I just laid my sword at your feet.”

“I’m sorry, Jil.” She took his hand. “I saw my father today.”

“Is he worse?”

Frankie suddenly began to cry. “I am so sorry.”

For the sake of her father’s dignity, she wouldn’t tell Jil about the incident at the garbage can that afternoon. “I don’t know. Everything just seems so far from okay right now.”

Jil kissed her hand. “Dr. Weissman, haven’t you heard? It’s a very hard and out-of-whack time. All we can do is try to be very kind to one another.”

Frankie now began weeping uncontrollably. Her face and eyes were turning red and she was gasping for air. Maybe it was for the imminent loss of Abraham’s unconditional love. Or it was for the very conditional affection that Jil, who was only ten years younger than her father, was offering her in his immaculate forest green double-height living room.

“You must think I’m some sort of high school girl on a bender…” Frankie finally stopped crying.

“Hey, things happen.” He gave her a cocktail napkin to dry her face. “Although you might want to write yourself a good prescription. Everyone else in this city is on Zoloft now.”

Frankie laughed. “Actually they’re on Wellbutrin. Doesn’t spoil your sex life like Zoloft.”

“I’ll remember that.” Jil smiled and passed her another napkin.

She blotted her face again. “I guess we better get to Judy Tremont’s dinner party.”

“I could call and cancel,” Jil immediately offered.

“Jil, I’m a doctor.” Frankie smiled. “I don’t want to be responsible for Judy Tremont having a heart attack. If we don’t show up now, we really screw up her seating plan.”

“I do adore you. Nothing passes that clinical and wry eye.” Jil kissed Frankie’s cheek and put her drink on the bar. “My daughter is always reminding me how lucky I am to have you in my life.”

There were two things that Frankie consistently noticed about Jil. He never put a drink on a piece of furniture without using a coaster and he always managed to refer to his daughter. Jil spoke very little about his life prior to the one he had at Sotheby’s. Frankie knew that he came to America at age ten from Budapest and did indeed grow up in Brooklyn. He referred to his high school as “Erasmus Hall,” which to any other Brooklynite is better known as Erasmus, the alma mater of Barbra Streisand and the basketball star Jeremy Fine. Apparently, when Jil was thirty, he briefly married a book editor from Random House. And other than that, Jil revealed very little. Nevertheless, Frankie believed him to be, under the cultivated sophistication, the social gossip and endless opinions about art and décor, a genuinely kind and highly intelligent man.