• Firm up employment (steady job at design house, maybe full-time gig at some school).
• Unlatch from Dana and get a real girlfriend.
• Don’t take money from parents.
• Brush teeth two minutes two times a day (get timer).

Neale pulls a bag of taco chips out of a cabinet. “Your problem is how hard it’s going to be to find someone to follow Dana. To match that ferocity.”

“Yes. That’s the bitch of it, right?”

palate cleanser

She’s mortified by her appetizer. On the menu it sounded fanciful. Now it just seems decadent, and decadent is always embarrassing. Like Roman orgies in movies where servants are peeling grapes for the reclining emperor, where the guests are eating off human tables—naked women on all fours.

“I feel a little weird eating, you know—I guess I didn’t think it was going to really be gold. What’s it doing? Being a little metallic glaze on whatever this tiny egg is? Whatever bird it came from. I hope not a parakeet from some Thai forced-hatching factory.” She pokes through the thin skin of gold leaf and they watch the yolk seep up. Neither of them says anything when Cate lifts off the gold film and sets it on the rim of the plate. They sit across from each other at a table much larger than necessary for two people eating dinner. It’s a size more appropriate to spreading out maps, plotting a voyage or a war.

“I know, I know. It does seem like what they were probably eating in the dining room of the Titanic. I didn’t know it would be this fancy, hardly anything is anymore. Except this place, I guess.” Maureen’s sympathy has a hollow ring to it. She actually seems quite comfortable spearing a forkful of foie gras (for Christ’s sake), nestled in a pillow of salted cotton candy. Cate has brought up issues of animal cruelty before, and Maureen always seems sensitive in the moment, deeply nodding her support, saying annoying stuff like, “Poor things, they can’t speak for themselves so we have to help them.” But then she will turn around and tuck into something like this.

Cate scans her from across the table. As a costume designer, Maureen of course costumes herself. Her clothes make tiny statements without calling attention to themselves. Odd collars, the occasional hat. She has an extremely articulated tattoo on one shoulder—a Japanese fan. She wears a lot of pale green, also navy, to set off her hair, which is dark red, Botticelli crinkles, both bunched up and falling down.

Tonight would probably be a good time for Cate to reveal her discomfort about over-the-top restaurants like this one. But she can’t find her way to that conversation. Maureen loves expensive dining, and can afford it. She has spent the past decade dressing actors, for plays, musicals, sometimes operas. Operas, Maureen says, are the costume designer’s diamond mine.