Sailor has positioned himself close by her side, which, not coincidentally, puts him near the cheese. She takes a few of the crackers billed on the package as “handmade in Abruzzo.” She imagines old women in a small factory bent over as they shape cracker dough into deliberately asymmetrical squares. “I’m just going to give him a little snack.” She unwraps a chunk of Humboldt Fog, breaks off a piece, and tucks it between two crackers. Sailor is sitting up on his haunches, his head cocked to one side. Even mooching, he looks majestic. He was less majestic when he arrived. After a few months living in the midst of Graham’s disintegrating marriage, Sailor looked middle-aged. Heavy, slow, fur clotted, one eye crusty with what turned out to be a minor infection. Since he has been here, Cate has taken him to the vet, put him on a feeding schedule, and added green beans to his dinner. She takes him on a couple of walks every day to supplement whatever Graham doesn’t do. They are still participating in the fiction that Sailor is his dog.

“Do you ever feel, deep in your heart, that Lucille Rae might be a crackpot?” Cate has just poured herself a glass of a dramatically expensive wine.

“No, she’s not a crackpot. The crackpots are all focused on stuff that’s already gone down. Falling towers and missing planes. They’re nostalgists. Whatever bad thing that’s already happened isn’t going to happen again. At least not in the same way. It’s much harder to look ahead and beyond. To use events predictively. To form the near future, give it a shape.”

“Okay. Then what is she digging up in hillbilly holler?”

“Don’t call her a hillbilly.”

“Well, she does lives in a hilly part of the country.”

“It’s not the hill, and you know it; it’s the billy. You wouldn’t like it if someone referred to you as a Chicagobilly. Just because she wears terrycloth and her hair is fluffy, you don’t take her seriously. Did your set work tonight?” He is always happy to steer the conversation toward At Ease. Eleanor Quinn, his most recent ex-wife, the one who threw him out, plays one of the main characters. He loves hearing anything unfortunate about Eleanor.

She’s an impressive actress; she’s only attached to this stupid production as a favor to the director. That she and Cate are involved in the same play isn’t that much of a coincidence; the world of Chicago theater is like a tangle of double-sided sticky tape.

“My set isn’t up to the task of saving this play. Some things shouldn’t be revived. Revived implies something that was once alive. Here’s a line.” She pulls the script from her messenger bag, flips through it, then reads aloud.