“A lunch, Vee. A lunch where one of the lunchers doesn’t eat anything.”

“Maybe he wasn’t hungry.”

“The way he played with his food seemed hostile.”

“You play with your food sometimes,” she said.

“Vee, there was something unspoken at that lunch. It wasn’t just that he didn’t eat anything and told those stories about Dad. It was all oblique and empty, like a ritual.”

“Ritual,” she said, doubtful, as if I was overdramatizing the event. “Of what?”

“Of rejection. Like the sort of thing some African tribe might do as a way of ostracizing someone in the clan. Except he was inventing the whole procedure, like creating a tradition that had never existed before. The rejection ritual of the uneaten meal.”

“Oh god,” Vita said.

And that was the end of the discussion, from which I emerged unconsoled.

A few days later, Vita said, “We’re having a cookout on Saturday for Gabe and some of his friends. Why don’t you invite Frank?”

“He doesn’t like me.”

“But I like him,” she said, which was clearly a dig at me.

When I phoned him to invite him, Frank said he wasn’t sure he could make it and that he needed some time to think about it.

“Frank, it’s the day after tomorrow.”

“I’ll let you know,” he said. This hesitation was usually Frank’s way of indicating that he might get a better invitation in the meantime.

Vita said, “You’re so paranoid,” when I told her this.

I did not hear from Frank and assumed he was snubbing us. But on the morning of the cookout, he called and said, “See you later.”

He came carrying a small brown bag, and when he doffed his baseball cap, his lopsided face became fuller and more distorted, as he said hello in a grouchy way to me with one side while offering a twinkling gaze to Vita with the other side. He went to the smoking grill and setting down the bag, he removed two hot dogs and two bottles of beer. He tossed the hot dogs on the grill and uncapped a beer, saying “Cheers,” to Vita. The other side of his face still regarded me with displeasure.

Gabe and his friends waved from where they sat eating under a tree. Frank jerked his head at them, as he tonged the sweaty, split-open hot dogs onto a paper plate.

“Mustard?” I said.

“Bad for you. High fructose corn syrup,” he said to me, while his eyes searched for Vita.

“I wish there was something I could do to please you.”

Walking away, Frank said, “Piss in one hand, and make that wish with the other, and see which one fills up faster.”