I took a knife and cut away slabs. What remained looked pale and helpless, like it had just been born. I wrapped it with tinfoil to keep the heat from getting away.

The table looked like something from a fairy tale, all our food steaming: slices of turkey fanned like the pages of a book, roasted vegetables that were dark and crinkled at their edges, the charred ends of broccoli florets, black-striped carrots; a swamp of stuffing with squares of bread poking through the gravy like they were struggling for air.

Abe hovered behind Stella, flapping an extra heat glove as she pulled our sweet potatoes from the oven. “Watch that!” he said. “It’s hot!” He touched her with care, as he had done with me.

Omar arrived first, holding a bottle of dark rum. “It’s a favorite where I come from,” he said. “If you have some Coca-Cola?”

We didn’t.

“Ah!” Omar grabbed a glass from the table. He poured half an inch of rum and drank it straight. “Just plain, then. This is another local custom.”

Every Friday afternoon, Omar sent an e-mail to my work account that said, Many good wishes for your weekend. He showed me how to respond in Spanish: Para ti también. It felt like we were writing song lyrics.

He handed Abe the bottle. Abe handed it back. “Not for me,” he said.

“You should take some,” I told him. “It won’t…you know. If you want it.”

“It’s fine,” Abe said. He seemed impatient.

April arrived in a denim skirt and cowboy boots with a scarf around her throat, pale rose and gauzy, and a bottle of wine in each hand. “One’s for the table,” she said. “The other one’s for me.”

I could taste the wine from looking at it, like one of those time-lapse television programs that shows an acorn becoming an oak tree, the stages quick as finger snaps: the opening pang against my tongue, the warm wash of draining the first glass, the phlegm in my throat after another, the dark thick feeling of my whole body swaying.

I took both of her bottles and then I guided her toward the couch, where Omar was speaking to Abe in gunfire Spanish. I heard something loco, and then I heard super-grande, the first syllable made to sound like soup. Abe’s legs were crossed and his arm was draped over the back of the couch, our couch, the one that made me think of Haitian children, and his beard looked like a sweatshirt his skin was wearing. His fingers were pale. When he gestured, you could see the wires of his joints doing work under his skin.

“April,” I said. “This is my son, Abe.”

“Hey, Abe,” she said. “Nice place.”

“You work with Tilly?” he asked.

“We share a cave downtown,” she said. “If that’s what you mean.”

“Is that so?” He smiled.

“Yep,” she said. “Doing legwork for men without souls.”

“Abe works there, too,” I said. I’d told her before, I was sure.