“Have another,” Gregory said. “I suspect you’ll need it.”

Ezra tipped the bottle back and drank again, and this time, it burned a little less, felt a little better. “I don’t even have to see her,” he said. “I mean, I guess I have to see her, but I don’t have to see her. It’s been ten years. Who said I have to care?”

Gregory cupped his shoulder and said, “My man,” and shook his head, like he was in on a secret that Ezra didn’t yet understand, and then he grabbed his scarf and his red puffer and also the two bottles of booze and said, “Let’s hit it. We have an hour at the hotel bar before we head to Burton.”

Ezra didn’t want to make a big scene about the ring in front of Gregory, who, he knew, would make it into an even bigger thing because Gregory was all about delighting in the dramatic. Until Ezra got on bended knee and slipped his grandmother’s ring on Mimi’s finger, he just wanted this for himself. He’d planned to put the ring in the hotel room safe, but that would draw attention to it, so instead, he reached for his coat where it was stuffed in the inside pocket and said, “Ok, just promise me one thing.”

And Gregory turned, with the door ajar, and said, “Anything.”

“Just don’t let me . . . I mean . . . Look, I don’t want to turn this into a drama. You know, with Frankie.”

“I got you,” Gregory said. “I’ll be the buffer.”

Ezra didn’t really know what exactly that meant. He envisioned Gregory rushing over to form a human wall between Frankie and him if ever they were in the same vicinity. But Gregory said it with such confidence, with such enthusiasm that he decided to trust him; he seemed to be an expert in making peace with exes, and when peace couldn’t be found, at exorcising their ghosts. Ezra had never exorcised a ghost in his life.

Ezra thought of Frankie again, of her ghost. He’d been off his anxiety medication for a few years now but always kept a solitary pill on hand. His break-in-case-of-emergency supply. His pulse was already racing at the news of her proximity, and he wondered if this weren’t a bit of an emergency.

“One sec,” he said to Gregory, then dipped into the bathroom and rooted around in his Dopp kit for his pill container: his multivitamins, his calcium, and a single Xanax. He stared into the mirror and resolved he was fine; he really could white-knuckle it out. But then Gregory said from around the corner, “You good, man?” And just to be sure that he really was good, he placed the pill on the back of his tongue and swallowed.

“All set,” Ezra said, emerging from the bathroom. Gregory held the hotel door open and flourished his arm as if he were an usher.

The Portland vodka was already making Ezra’s legs feel rubbery, and he held a hand up against the wall as they lolled down the hallway toward the elevator. Gregory jabbed the button, and the two of them glanced upward as the floor ticked downward.