She took a break from straightening up the apartment and checked her watch. It was time to go to his barbecue.

“So what are you working on these days?” Diego asked, his Buddha belly draped in purple. “Which sistah-mama superstar is gonna be your cover girl?”

“Oh shuddup,” she said, tugging one of his chins. “We’re doing a twelve-page spread on black New Orleans. That’s going pretty well.”

He chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“Black New Orleans. Isn’t that like Latino San Juan?” She punched him playfully. “Umbra kills me, mamí.”

They snuggled and laughed in the filtered light of the stained glass windows, artifacts that he’d bought on a trip to Cochabamba and installed in his West Street loft. Decorated in what he called “homodecorous,” the space was sponge-painted a soft tangerine and divided into rooms by Burmese screens and fabric tents that draped from rings in the ceiling.

Almost a year had passed since he’d seen her. In demand since winning a jury prize at Sundance, he’d been filming a courtroom drama in Australia for the last ten months, and had been back at home for only a week now.

Twice when he’d traveled to New York during the shooting he’d arranged to have dinner with her, and she’d canceled each time because of work commitments. Or so she said. He wasn’t completely convinced. He suspected that she was bearing a grudge from the argument they’d had the week before he left for Sydney, when she’d asked him to critique her novel.

Be frank, she’d said. Be cruel. Let me really know how you feel.

And when he told her the story was ridiculous, she said that fame had turned him into an asshole, to which he replied, “But you were one from birth.”

The fight notwithstanding, it was good to see her. Sylvia was like his sister. Sometimes his mother. But he sensed her need to be his daughter now, and this made him feel important. He seemed to matter less in her life since she’d started dating Lewis. Maybe he was projecting. But still … it seemed that way.

So while the other guests mingled on the roof, he stole her away for a lie-down in his bedroom, a teepee of translucent silk.

At first they talked easily but carefully, their words assuming the cadence of footsteps falling on narrow stairs. Then slowly, as they each became aware of the sameness of the other, their words began to run and skip and race like children scampering over an open field. And they began to open up to each other, he about whether he deserved success, and she about knowing she’d outgrown her job.

“I hate it,” she confessed. “It’s so boring. It doesn’t challenge me. I mean, it’s not just Umbra, it’s the magazine business—you cover the same things over and over again … y’know … sports and media stars … fashion … tropical vacations … gadgets for an easy life. Diego, there are so many mornings when I lie in bed asking God to make me sick so I won’t have to go to work.”