They sit on high stools at the kitchen’s island. Jason pours the three of them such ample glasses of red wine that the bottle is nearly drained on the first pass. Fiestaware serving dishes filled with catered food slide back and forth across the concrete. They take trial-size dabs and slices. Macadamia-crusted sweet potatoes. Seared duck breast with Chinese plum sauce. Green beans with lemongrass. A berry cobbler topped with whipped cream. Ricky does her usual picking and prodding with the tines of her fork. Once she told Cate about the fashion models’ trick of eating tissue paper to stave off hunger. That plus hooking themselves up to vitamin drips so they could make it through shoots. She related this, of course, as though it was horrifying. But on a higher frequency, Cate caught a note of respect. Jason shows almost no interest in food; it’s just a colorful accessory to a drink—like a coaster or swizzle stick. Both of them do, however, take heaps of her Caesar, the recipe they praise fatuously as world-famous, but the joke did get started because the salad is quite good. Today she put in extra Worcestershire to make up for the missing anchovies.

A second bottle of wine is opened. Jason uncorks like a sommelier. He offers the cork to Ricky. The two of them always drink excellent wine. Ricky knows the wine buyer for the store’s restaurants. She gets both the employee discount and good advice.

Jason says, “We meant to get down to see your play.”

“It closed so fast.” As she says this, Ricky scrapes, with the side of her fork, the slight film of plum sauce off the edge of a piece of duck.

“You dodged a bullet, trust me,” Cate says. She doesn’t mention the New York play. If the opportunity falls through, at least it won’t be placed in the long failure column in her mother’s thick ledger on Cate. Not that either of them acknowledges the existence of the ledger.

“In the theater, though, even if you get a stinker,” her mother says, “I guess at least it’s something new, a new challenge. As opposed to Christmas in the world of retail. All that red.” She takes a deep drink of wine. “Not to mention the green.”

Both of Cate’s parents have careers in the profitable levels of design. Cate sees she probably should have gone some other route entirely—flight school, cardiology—so as not to be so continuously and unfortunately compared to them.

“You should have brought someone along,” her mother says, looking at all the uneaten food. “A chum. Someone with a holiday spirit. Graham even.” Ricky likes to bring Graham into the conversation. He’s male, also the most financially successful person Cate has been attached to. Really, the most financially successful person either of them knows.

“Everyone was busy. Or not into holidays.”