But clearly, he made an exception for GinnyMarie, a “lover of the beach,” according to her Twitter bio. Proud Mama to My Furbabies, Yoga Is Life, God Bless the USA. The banter between those two . . . Well, it sparkled, didn’t it? It scintillated. Apparently, Ginny was looking for a funny movie to see and Eric was suggesting the works of Ernst Lubitsch, extolling the virtues of Trouble in Paradise in five separate tweets, less than a minute apart, all this taking place during lunchtime today, when he’d claimed to be in the throes of a breaking story and too busy to meet up. Granted, a Twitter conversation took moments, while lunch with one’s wife was more of a commitment. But was Robin wrong to ask for commitment from a man who seemed so distant lately? Who had worked more late nights in the past two months than in the previous three years? A man who failed to mention in half a dozen tweets about Trouble in Paradise that he had seen that very movie with his wife at the Film Forum in NoHo fifteen years ago, that it was one of his wife’s favorites, and that when they were both grad students at Columbia, she’d taken him, well, dragged him to it, actually, as part of an ongoing campaign to educate this otherwise knowledgeable man on films made before 1990? What’s on your mind? Robin had asked Eric last night when she’d rolled over to find him sitting up in bed, eyes open, staring. Nothing, he had replied, which for all she knew was the truth. Eric the enigma. Unreadable, even as his wife transformed into the type of person who stalked his Twitter feed, who was jealous of a lover of the beach in a red, white, and blue bikini top who called her ferrets furbabies and hashtagged the word blessed.

Robin’s work extension buzzed. Assuming it was Eileen, she closed Twitter and corralled her thoughts back to her column—about a proposed all-female remake of The Magnificent Seven, which she was in favor of, despite (or more likely because of) all the online hate it was receiving from men.

Robin cleared her throat. “That was fast,” she said.

“Ms. Diamond?” The voice was male and young. Reedy. Touch of vocal fry.

Robin glanced at the caller ID screen and saw an unfamiliar outside line. A 213 area code. Los Angeles. Movie publicist, she thought, readying for the pitch. What I wouldn’t give for a glass of wine . . . “Yes?”

“Hi. My name is Quentin Garrison. I work for KAMC, an NPR affiliate in the Los Angeles area, but I’m out in New York right now.”

“Yes?”

“I’m working on a podcast.”

Robin frowned. “Yes?”

“I hear noise in the background. Is it hard for you to talk privately where you are?”