He trails off, but both of us seem to fill in the blank. The Planner of Park Slope, that’s what I’m called now. That’s what got me out of the wedding business, that’s what the Times wrote about late last year, that’s what’s had me on three conference calls in the last month alone, that’s what’s brought me the deadline I’m avoiding. Custom-designed datebooks and journals and desk calendars, the occasional chalk-drawn wall calendar inside the fully renovated brownstones of my most handcraft-obsessed clients, the ones who have toddlers with names like Agatha and Sebastian, the ones with white subway-tile kitchens and fresh flowers on farmhouse-style tables that never once saw the inside of a farmhouse, let alone the outside of a farm. I don’t so much organize their lives as I do make that organization—work retreats and weekend holidays and playdates and music lessons—look special, beautiful, uncomplicated.

“Are you looking to have me design something for her?”

I haven’t been taking on new clients lately, trying to put this new opportunity first, but it’s clever, I guess, for the one-year paper anniversary. A custom journal, maybe, and it’s not as if I don’t secretly owe him an apology-favor. Of course, if this is what he wants, he’s cutting it close, especially if he wants me to design the full year up front, which some clients prefer. Those here in Brooklyn I’ve mostly got on a monthly schedule, but Reid and Avery, I’m guessing they stay in Manhattan most of the time. Avery had a tony address on East 62nd when she was engaged; she’s got the kind of money I don’t even understand on a theoretical level, much less a practical one.

For the first time something in his face changes, a twitch of those turned-down corners. A . . . smile? It’s possible I forgot what smiles are since he came in here, jeez. But even that brief flash of expression, of emotion—it changes him. Double-take face turns to triple-take face. Take-a-photo-and-show-it-to-your-friends-later face.

He’s very tall. Exceptionally tall. I hate myself for thinking about the symbolism of my pens.

In the context of a married person, no less.

“No,” he says, and the sort-of smile is gone.

“Well,” I say, extra cheerful, “we have other gifts and—”

“I’m not looking for a shopgirl,” he says, cutting me off.

A . . . shopgirl?

Now it’s him that’s made a crack in the space-time continuum, or maybe some kind of crack in my normally frolicsome façade. I wish I could unzip my forehead and release the Valkyries on his person. It’d be worse than the debate team captain mugging, I can tell you that.