This would be my first encounter with Jeff since he’d changed his last name from Slakowitz to Slade. Years ago, when I last saw him, he was a paralegal working the night shift at Skadden, Arps. He moved to L.A., changed his name, and in his first audition, was cast in a supporting role on a forgettable show on FOX. It ran half a season, was canceled by Christmas. Discouraged, he wisely considered a career in carpentry, cabinetmaking, that sort of thing. He enrolled in a woodworking course north of Santa Barbara only to reluctantly audition for and land the lead on a new ABC series about a sexy single dad who helps people find love, rediscover love, redefine love, and there is a mystical component: the sexy single dad is an angel.

In truth, I wouldn’t know. I don’t watch the show.

Now, if Slade was anything like Slakowitz, he wasn’t going to ask me about my new job that night. So I was determined to tell him about the Lucy Foundation and how I was getting to use my background as a scenario creator to look ahead and imagine various futures that might occur, all the result of choices made now. What I wouldn’t tell him was that on the train ride back to Brooklyn, I had done a bit of scenario creating of my own. What if I had become Mrs. Slakowitz/Slade? One version had me living in a Malibu beach house, my hair bleached, my car a convertible, my breasts silicone. That one made me laugh. Another version had me divorced already, embittered by his brutish male behavior. A third scenario had me blissfully happy, living in southern Vermont with my carpenter/cabinetmaker hunk of a husband who’d stopped auditioning not because he’d discovered that he wasn’t much of an actor but because he didn’t need the acclaim of millions, the TV Guide covers, when he had me—I was enough—we were enough—it was enough to wear flannel and homeschool our children and run naked in the snow while we tapped sap from a cluster of maples on our own twenty-two-acre plot of land . . .

This last scenario was more elaborate than the others, which concerned me. If our dreams at night reveal what we’re most afraid of, then our daydreams tell us what we’d most like our lives to be.

Still, I convinced myself, it would be good to see this particular ex-lover in the flesh and to crush for all time any lingering regrets, his or mine, regarding what might have been. Eager to finish the job, I scooted across the room toward the corner booth.

“Excuse me?” I said when I got close enough.

He didn’t look up, probably thinking I was an autograph seeker.

“Hey, Slakowitz.”

This got his attention. He looked up. “Oh, Kate, hi.” He quickly slid out of the booth and stood to greet me. “My God, you look fabulous.”

I kissed his cheek. He smelled of a mixture of cigarettes, cologne, and too much soap. “Jefferson,” I said. “How good to see you.”