Roberta says she lives in a new house just off Stringers Bridge Road with her youngest son and a couple of dogs. She knows everyone in town, it seems. As they sit perched on the sticky wooden stools, people swing over to the bar to talk with Roberta, mostly about exercise. “You remember Sherri Taylor?” she says, and a few of them do: Barb, Sue, Linda, Dave, Randy, Kayleen. It’s strange how warmly they greet her. Nobody even remembers that Sherri had been a Playboy Bunny, and if they do, they don’t say so—well, except for Pete Becker, who is fat and balding, his fingernails still dirty from oil. “You look good,” he says, and winks. “California agrees with you.” Roberta rolls her eyes and sips her drink out of her straw. She waves him away like a fly.

Sherri tells Roberta about Mitch and Violet, her job at the art museum, about Bayard and his many proposals. “He sounds perfect,” Roberta says.

“Please don’t say that,” Sherri says, troubled.

“Why not?”

“Well, speaking of men who sound perfect, I was in for a big surprise earlier today.” Sherri waves down Jimmy and asks for another round to fortify her before launching into the story.

When the drinks arrive, Sherri tells Roberta about the spooky encounter with Arthur’s son, and the conversation with Jerry afterward. “I mean, I know this sounds crazy, but I got it in my head that in some parallel universe Arthur had kept on living the life he was meant to lead—that we were supposed to lead, together. I don’t know how to explain it, Berta. He never even told me he loved me, but all these years I’ve been obedient to that story.” She was more than obedient. She’d mythologized Arthur, choosing to forget that she’d ever had ambivalent feelings about him when he was alive. Perhaps she should have given her younger self more credit for her intuition. “I convinced myself that Arthur was the yardstick I needed to use to measure other men against.”

“Some yardstick.” Roberta puts her rock-hard arm around Sherri’s shoulders and gives her a surprisingly soft hug. It is exactly what Sherri needs in that moment. “I have a lot of thoughts,” she says. “The first is that it isn’t the worst thing in the world to suffer under a beautiful illusion for most of your life. There are lots of stinkers out there, and he raised the bar for you. Why not have high expectations?”

Over the years, Sherri had met plenty of men who’d let her down, both emotionally and in the bedroom, but the idea that an Arthur existed, someone who could cherish her body and soul, had bolstered her, given her confidence that she deserved more. Sherri is grateful for that. “What’s your other thought?”