We still have cable, more than one hundred choices of sports, garden shows, cooking demos, home restoration, cartoons for the children, some movies. All the movies are PG—no horror, a smattering of light comedy, those four-hour epics about Moses and Jesus. Then there are the other channels, but they’re all password protected, viewable only by the head of household and males over eighteen. No one needs much imagination to guess what kinds of shows are on these channels.

Today, I choose golf: pure boredom involving a metal stick and a ball.

When my coffee is cold and the leading player reaches the eighteenth hole, the doorbell rings. It’s an unusual occurrence during the day. I mean, what would be the point? The only people who aren’t out at work are women, and what would they do? Sit in silence and watch golf? Company only draws attention to what we no longer have.

I realize I’m still wearing my robe when I open the door and find Olivia, pink scarf knotted tightly around her head, not a shred or wisp of curl peeking out.

She checks me over, a slow, disapproving look from my neck to my feet, and holds out a nearly empty sack of sugar and a measuring cup.

I nod. If it weren’t still pissing rain, I’d let her wait on the porch while I take the cup into the kitchen and pour sugar into it. Instead, I motion for her to step inside, out of the wet.

Olivia follows me to the kitchen, and the stack of dirty breakfast dishes receives the same frown my bathrobe did at the front door. I’d like to slap her, or at least tell her what I think of her sanctimonious attitude. When I take the measuring cup from her hands, she grasps my wrist. Olivia’s hands are cold, moist from the rain.

I expect some sound, some uppity, self-righteous little “Hm,” but she says nothing, only regards my counter, its ceaseless blinking of the three-digit number.

She actually smiles, and the smile brings back a memory of another day, another unexpected doorbell ring, another request for a cup of sugar, a half-pint of milk, an egg.

“Mind if I sit a minute?” Olivia said two years ago, not waiting for a yes before she planted her ample bottom on the sofa in the den. I’d left the TV on, tuned to some talk show or another, while I waded through final exam blue books. Jackie Juarez was going head-to-head with three women, each of them dressed like a cross between Donna Reed and an Apollo-era astronaut’s wife.

“Oh, isn’t she something,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Which one?” I asked, holding out the Rubbermaid container of milk.

“The one in the red suit. The one who looks like Satan.”