“What’s that?” I asked.

He looked at it as though it were a girl who’d snuck into his room and had taken all her clothes off and here came the question: throw her out, or . . . not.

“A present,” he said.

“Who from?”

“Not from. For. Somebody else. Somebody who failed to show up.”

“A child.”

He shook his big head. “Not a child. She must have lost her nerve. She was supposed to be here yesterday.”

“Maybe she realized you were the kind of man who’d give a stuffed bunny to a grown woman.”

He regarded me through the purple glasses. Amethyst, I thought. My birthstone. Soon I would be twenty-eight. “You are young to be so unkind,” he observed. “She collects stuffed animals.” He turned again to the rabbit and seemed to lose heart. “This is supposed to be a good one.”

“What makes a good one?”

“Collectible. But also it’s pleasant.” He plucked it from the chair and hugged it. “Pleasant to hug.”

“Careful. It’s probably worth more uncuddled.” I put myself on the chair where the rabbit had been. I don’t know why I thought the chair might be warm. He sat in one of the corners of the sofa closest to me.

“I thought you might be her,” he told me. “But you’re not old enough. How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Not nearly old enough.”

“Do I look like her?”

“Oh. I mean, I’m not sure.” He made the rabbit look out the window, and so I looked, too, but the sheers were closed and all I perceived was light.

“A listener,” I said. “A caller. You’re meeting somebody. Linda from Chattanooga!”

“Not Linda from Chattanooga,” he said contemptuously. He put the rabbit next to him, as though aware of how silly he had looked. After a while he said, “Dawn from Baton Rouge.”

I couldn’t remember Dawn from Baton Rouge. “What does she look like?”

“I only know what she tells me.”

“Should’ve asked for a picture.”

He shrugged. “But: cold feet. So it doesn’t matter.”

“And now you’ve invited me instead,” I said, and crossed my legs.

“Oh God, no,” he said. “No, darling—”

I was aware then of what I was wearing: a pair of old blue jeans but good ones, a thin black sweater that showed my black bra beneath. Alluring, maybe, to the right demographic, slovenly to the wrong one.

“Sweetheart,” he said. He got up from the sofa. It was a complicated job, hands to knees and a careful raising of the whole impressive structure of him. “No, let’s have a drink.” He went to the minibar, which was hidden in a cherry cabinet and had already been unlocked, already been plundered, already been refreshed. Imagine a life in which you could approach a minibar with no trepidation or guilt whatsoever.