“You can’t just go like that,” she’d screamed. “How many Dominicans ever make it to Columbia? This is not just about you, Diego. This is about a nation of people.”

“I can’t live for others,” he told her. “I have to live for me. Success or failure will come on my terms.”

“But what if you fail?”

“If I think about that,” he said, “I’ll never try.”

That was ten years ago. Ten years and three features, the most recent one with a forty-million-dollar budget.

Angry with herself for being weak, she went over to a window and watched the boats on the Hudson, fiddling as she stood there with the knot in her sheer white blouse, as the pain seeped back into her navel, which she’d funkified with a clip-on hoop.

“I’m not like you, Diego,” she said, misting the glass with her breath. “In a lot of ways, I wish I could be. I’ve rewritten my novel so many times. It’s gone from serious fiction to mystery, then back to serious fiction, then somehow it became a thriller at one time … and now I think it’s a contemporary romance. You know what? I really don’t know what the fuck it’s about. I don’t even know what I’m about.”

He tried to gather his face in a look that matched his feelings. But it was hard to know which particular combination of his pointy mouth and beady eyes would best convey this thought: We both know what you have to do, so cut the shit and do it. You don’t really want to write, Sylvia. You want to be a success, and you’ll take it however it comes.

But he didn’t say this. Instead, he tried to lighten the mood. He walked over to her with his stomach sucked in, and asked, in a Mae West–meets–Eartha Kitt voice, “How’s Lewis? Tell that hunk of a man that a certain gay filmmaker would like to invite him for dinner and show him the benefits of the Fat for Life diet.”

She laughed out of gratitude.

“What time is he getting here anyway? That trim motherfucker?”

“He isn’t coming …”

“Oh, yeah? What happened?”

“Let’s just say we’re taking a break.” Her expression began to congeal in a frown. “We got into this fight last night and I didn’t like the way he talked to me … and a lotta bullshit went flying in both directions and we learned a little about ourselves … and I decided that I needed some space.”

She told him most of the story.

“You miss him?” he asked.

“Not really …”

“You think he’s missing you?”

“I really don’t care—”

“Oh come on, you can’t stop caring like that.”

He snapped his fingers, a simple act in its own right. But she heard in it the echo of another snap. And in her mind she was sitting across the table from Fire asking herself in a fearful tone, What if I were wearing a dress or skirt, how would tonight be different?