I waited for him to explain his joke, which went right past me. “Lorenzo de Medici. A fifteenth-century Italian patron of the arts—”

“Yeah, great, who is this other guy?”

“A high mucky-muck at the Artists United Institute.” My face must have stayed blank. “In San Diego,” he prompted me. “God, you really don’t know anything, do you?”

“Why is he magnificent?”

“Money. They’re swimming in it down there. He’s like an art gangster.”

“Is his name really Lorenzo?”

“Larry.”

“Larry the Magnificent.”

“Whatever. He’s thinking of naming Virdie to an endowed chair the Institute has.”

I considered this. “Would that be a good thing?”

“Yeah, since she’s broke. Did she show you where the plates are?”

I went back to my truck and called Aaron and convinced him the dinner would be a great good time. I did not mention the vegetarian menu. I told him to bring my striped sundress, my red sandals, and some earrings. Then I went to see about the plates.

A long table had been set up between the flower beds and the breezeway, covered with a number of white linen cloths. Ten chairs were in place and there were two more in the screened porch that would do for me and Aaron. Strings of small electric lights were hung overhead, and there were candles set out in earthenware saucers. The garden plantings could have used some attention, but at least they’d been watered and nothing had died.

It makes me sound criminally naive when I admit I hadn’t realized that a poet might worry about money, but I really hadn’t. For one thing, any poet who came to my mind was already safely dead and beyond money troubles. And wasn’t being broke a kind of badge of honor for artists, a testament to how detached they were, how devoted to their art?

It was all right for me not to have money; I was young and unserious and nobody expected me to amount to much anyway. But I didn’t like to think of Viridian as broke, or whatever Oscar meant by broke.

I set out the plates and silverware. I have an unexpected and generally useless talent for folding napkins. It was something I’d taught myself from youtube videos when I was supposed to be doing homework. I considered fans, tulips, hearts, and pinwheels, but all that seemed too fussy and housewifey. I finally settled on a simple diamond fold with the silverware tucked inside. I got my clippers and snipped sprigs of rosemary and flowering ninebark to set across each napkin. I thought it looked nice. I wanted it to be nice.

I walked through the kitchen and found Viridian in the gallery beyond it, putting wineglasses on a serving table. “What else can I do?”