M’s boss’s wife had her phone on the table next to her and it kept buzzing. She flicked away a few calls with her manicured fingers, always turning back to me and smiling and apologizing, rolling her eyes a little. They’re supposed to leave me alone! she said. She said something like that.

My eyes moved back and forth between her and her new baby. How could both be real? Her baby was so much younger than mine and yet she had those painted fingers, those people calling her on her phone, had that hip in that dress. Perhaps it all came down to the half-bottle of champagne mothers were given here in the clinics, after they give birth, the Descamps linens that lined the airy privately insured beds, perhaps these things that seemed so fine and frivolous were actually like graceful toeholds on the side of a cliff. Perhaps your baby was the ocean you would otherwise fall into, perhaps your baby’s mouth was like the mouth of those birds where all the teeth point backwards, preventing escape, like those birds whose backwards pointing teeth continue all the way down their throats.

There was some art hung on the wall, hammered metal of some kind. The light reflected off it and lit her perfectly from behind, so she looked softened, like she had a glow about her. I thought about a piece of advice that I’d heard somewhere or other, that for a woman to look her best, she should pin a diamond into the lapel of her jacket. This was so that light, when it caught the diamond, would shine on her face softly, without other people realizing the trick. M’s boss’s wife was like that now, lit from behind, the light almost holding her up like Venus on her seashell. Well, she was beautiful like that. I wondered if she always sat in that chair, in that spot, in that light.

Text bubbles popped up on the screen of her phone and she glanced down a few times, pulled up her calendar, moved her thumb down the screen. They want me to fly to a meeting in Dubai, can you imagine? The answer was of course, No, I couldn’t. But I said it anyway, No, I can’t! Like that, and arranged my face to show I was surprised and impressed. To show I really couldn’t imagine it. Sometimes of course the faces that we make are true.

She typed away into her phone and called over to M’s boss eventually, saying something like, but think of her voice here, her accent, the way she almost touched her manicured finger to the corner of her painted lip when she spoke, Darling, I’ve got to go to Dubai! Yes, at the end of the month! What will the nanny do!

Then she turned to me and said smiling, Well, I suppose she’ll get along. Then she said, Really I don’t know how you manage with two. I could never do it, I’d be crawling up the walls! You must be so busy!