“You’ve got kids, right? I’m sorry, that was nosy. It’s just what I’ve heard around the coffee urn.”

“I have two children,” she said.

“Two kids. Wow. You’re a young mom.”

“I’m twenty-seven.”

“That’s young. I’m twenty-five myself, but I feel”—he shrugged, grinned—“twenty-seven. It’s admirable work you do.”

“Thank you again.”

“No, I don’t mean just here. I mean working here and raising two kids on your own. There ought to be a medal for that.”

She hadn’t told him she was on her own. He’d heard that around the coffee urn too. As she took the last bite of her sandwich, he stood up, and she exhaled around the bite. Enough for one day, she thought. It was exhausting, trying to feel worthy of all this attention.

Then he turned around and asked if she would go out to dinner with him that Friday, and she said yes.

It becomes little more than wordplay, after a certain hour. I’ve been proposed to sounds less decisive than I’m considering a proposal of marriage. A certain man I work with sounds more mysterious yet somehow less promiscuous than a gentleman I know. She won’t actually mention the Watteau. She knows she would sound crazy if she did. But declaring herself the reincarnation of an eighteenth-century model does lend a sense of importance to who she is, and she really has come to believe that it might be true. Maybe she just stared at the textbook reproduction of the painting for so long one night during her first pregnancy that she dreamed herself into it, and in the morning that dream felt like a memory that had always been there. But maybe not. He preferred the morning light sounds more impressive than He painted mostly in the mornings.

There is a thread of movement in the corner of her eye, and it’s so late and the apartment is so silent that it startles her. She jerks in the chair, her leg knocking against the aluminum leg of the table. By the light of the candle burning in the kitchen she sees a cockroach skirting the puddle of water in front of the refrigerator and crossing the floor. Dear Mr. and Mrs. Ragazzino, I intend to remarry.

I intend to accept the proposal of a certain man I work with.

Your son needs to know that I am seeking a divorce.

Your son needs to come home.