“I hate people who do; they tell you they’re coming next Tuesday meaning you damn well better have the place presentable and something edible in the fridge. I prefer these last-minute arrangements. Someone calls you up with despair in his voice and demands to be seen right away. You light a few candles in the hopes they’ll hide a multitude of sins.”

“Did I have despair in my voice?”

“That’s how I interpreted it. Why else would I have invited you over?”

She took a sip from her wineglass, handed it to him, and headed back to the kitchen with his bottle. He wasn’t sure if this was his drink or if he’d been assigned the task of holding it for her, but when she reappeared a few minutes later, she was drinking from a glass so full she had to sip carefully. She sat at the opposite end of the sofa, one leg tucked under her. “Your wine is much better than mine,” she said. “You don’t mind finishing up that stuff, do you?”

He was insulted by the request but flattered by her honesty. “I guess not,” he said.

Rosemary frowned, as if she was disappointed by his answer, proof that she wasn’t dealing with a worthy opponent. She threw an arm across the back of the sofa, and the red silk robe slid open. Desmond could see the curve of one pale breast and the dark edge of her nipple. She was watching him over the rim of her wineglass, and flustered, he turned to the window. The lit-up building offered some dull conversational inspiration. “How are your classes going?” he asked.

“Oh, please. You don’t really think I’m the kind of person who sits around my apartment wondering how my classes are going, do you? I put in my time, they send me my paychecks; as for the children . . .” She shrugged.

“And yet,” he said, “I suspect you’re a good teacher.”

“Of course I am, albeit in a monstrous Miss Jean Brodie sort of way. I get personal with them immediately, talk endlessly about myself, and ask all kinds of inappropriate questions about their sex lives. I don’t know what they learn, but at least everyone stays awake, which is more than someone like Thomas Miller can claim.”

Or Sybil Gale or any number of the professors Desmond had taught with, each of whom claimed to care more about his students than Rosemary. What if she turned out to be the truly devoted teacher and they turned out to be self-absorbed academics who couldn’t read the pulse of the students sitting and snoozing in front of them? Still, every harsh word out of her mouth made the sad, thoughtful narrator of Dead Husband seem more like a fictional creation. He looked at her warily and said, “How much of what you say should I believe?”