“That son of a bitch! Well, that's what you get for falling for a writer, sister. All men are pigs, but they're the worst… When they want you, it's ‘Oh baby, baby, I gotta have you now!’ Then the fucking muse hits them and they don't know your name. I can't tell you how many times I've been through it.”

Rose tried to picture the man who would want Tristesse. Then she tried to blot out the picture.

“Bobby sublet his pad for a couple of months—I think his tenant is coming in this week—and he took off for some place in Connecticut,” Tristesse continued. “He said he's working on something big. And it's gotta be huge because he quit his job to write it and he's been borrowing money from everyone he knows to keep himself going. Hell, he hit me up for fifty—that's how desperate he is.”

“You said Bobby went to Connecticut?” Rose tried to get her back on track.

“Yeah. Some crap about needing to be in the place where it all started. Whatever the hell that means.” Tristesse drew heavily on her cigarette. “I don't know anything more than that.”

“I do,” Rose said. “He's gone to New Haven.” And he had left her behind. Because he didn't need her. He didn't need to hear the family stories she had planned to tell him; he didn't need to hear her insights about Lu. When Bobby was working he didn't need anyone or anything. Rose was hit with a feeling that was so familiar it was like an old friend. She was a kid sitting at the dinner table, in her mother's apartment, watching her mother push back her plate and call for the car to take her to the theater a half hour early. There was a tricky piece of business in Act Two that needed work, Lu would explain, so she had to cut short their time together. Sorry. Then she'd rush off to the place where she really wanted to be and Rose was left to wander around the apartment all night with a hole inside her that could never be filled.