“He’s got an offer from some big firm,” Osvaldo continued while he waited for Jill to answer the phone. “But he wants to work in the DA’s office. Hello, Miss Fitzmaurice. I have Mr. Molloy here looking to come up.”

There was a long pause as he listened.

“I don’t know, miss. Shall I ask him?” He smiled awkwardly at Ted. “She wants to know what you want.” He held the receiver up so that Jill could hear his response directly.

“World peace and a solution to climate change,” Ted said. “Oh, yes, and about five minutes of her time. Maybe ten. I came all the way from Great Neck.”

Osvaldo listened to her response. “Yes, miss.” This time his grin was grim. “She says to send you up. And if you’re not back down here in fifteen minutes, I’m supposed to call the cops.”

“Thank you,” Ted said. “And give your son my congratulations. The law is a calling, and I hope it treats him well.”

He stepped into the elevator, and before pushing the button, he checked the time. Would Osvaldo really call the police? He would. Fifteen minutes and counting.

There were two apartments per floor, all identically laid out. Jill was waiting at the door to 6A when the elevator doors slid open.

“This had better be good,” she said. “We can talk in the living room.”

It was no longer his home, and the memories clashed with the changes. The artwork in the entryway, previously three Lichtenstein pop-art prints that they had chosen together, had been replaced by dark line-drawing portraits of unsmiling women. Ted guessed that one was Virginia Woolf, but he could not have said exactly why he thought so. The once-white walls were a soft grey, and the Persian rugs they had purchased through multiple daylong, agonizing sessions at ABC Carpet were gone. They now walked on grey wall-to-wall carpeting a shade or two darker than the walls. The furniture, which had been sprawling, off-white, and built for comfort, was now all black leather with gleaming stainless-steel accents. None of this fit with the Jill he had married. She might have gone along with the changes to expunge any faint remembrances of their past, but the replacements had to have been pushed on her. The sole touch of color was a two-foot-tall glass sculpture on a pedestal in the far corner—a vaguely vaginal shape with streaks of lime green and fuchsia running through it. And spots or dots—black and white specks that gave it visual texture. Jill had would not have picked that piece, he thought. It was a gift from Jackie. He hated it.

“A business dinner with clients,” she began without explanation or context. “One of whom is a member of the Reisner family. You’ve heard of them.”