She flashed the cash quickly.

“Someone is actually using the family policy for good,” he said approvingly. “See. Exciting things always happen to you. The best I ever got was that woman who kept having me come up to fix her TV. There was a lot of bending involved. I felt used and dirty.”

“It’s the price you pay for being one of those weedy but good-looking types,” Scarlett said.

“Weedy? You hurt me. I prefer tall and scrawny. Unlike my partner, who’s right behind you.”

Scarlett turned. There were a lot of people wandering around…people with massive baby strollers, joggers, the lost, the tourists, the assorted insane. Cutting through them and walking directly for Scarlett and Spencer was a guy that Scarlett felt like she knew. He was just a hair shorter than Spencer, but fuller and more muscular where Spencer was, as she had just commented, weedy. He had sandy hair, loosely cut and slightly overgrown in a very appealing way. There was something almost uneven about his face—one side of his mouth kept creeping up in a smile where the other stayed flat. His clothes were nondescript, just a black T-shirt and a pair of green cargo shorts. He managed to look ordinary, but it was the most engrossing kind of ordinary that Scarlett had ever seen. Ordinary plus.

“Sorry,” he said as he approached. “I had to take the subway. My scooter wouldn’t start. Have you learned all your lines?”

His voice was deep and full, with a very slight Southern drawl softening the end of every word.

“I learned the whole play,” Spencer said. “Backward. Meet my sister. She’s here to help. Eric, this is Scarlett. Scarlett, this is Eric.”

Eric smiled at her like he had known her forever. And it still felt that way. She had seen him. She knew him. He was pointing at her like he knew her as well.

“I saw you,” Eric said. “Just recently. Today.”

“Was it on TV?” Scarlett asked, feeling her face flush.

“Yes! When I was at the gym. You were on some morning show.”

Spencer’s head whipped in her direction. She held up her hands.

“It was an accident,” she said. “I took Marlene to a taping. I was supposed to be in the audience, and I ended up making these…quesadillas.”

“Oh,” Spencer said with a nod. That wasn’t like really being on TV. It wasn’t like she had gotten a recurring role on a sitcom. He relaxed.

“I feel like I’ve seen you, too,” she said.

Eric nodded.

“Was I doing this?” he asked.

He pulled off his backpack and took a running dive and rolled across the ground, doing three summersaults in a row, all the while clapping at himself like he was on fire.

Amazingly, this did ring a bell.

“It was the commercial,” he explained, dusting himself off and walking back. “It got stuck in a lot of people’s heads, but no one can really remember where they saw me.”