Larry said he wanted to be a cameraman to make money, but he was studying audio first to learn the ropes, which didn’t make sense to me. The cameraman gig would also be temporary because he was really going to be an actor. Larry always was “in class” or working out with his personal trainer. I liked to think Ina would have dumped him a long time ago if it weren’t for the driving thing, but I wasn’t really sure. She put up with a lot from him. Ina was a TV news producer who was currently freelancing. Because she was never at work, I took this to mean she was unemployed. Her parents owned a busy Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park and I figured they must be helping her out every month.

Ina held her hand up when she spied me at the corner table at Alcove. As she weaved her way toward me through the maze of tables, I felt glad I had called her. I figured Ina was someone I could tell the truth to about what had happened with Dave, and she wouldn’t judge me. Ina herself was recovering from what she described as her “freak-out.” She had been convinced that Larry was cheating on her. All the signs were there: Class seemed to be always running late; he started wearing cologne; and he was definitely working out more. Also Ina had noticed they weren’t having sex as much. The less-sex thing was what had really gotten to her and had led her to snooping through his stuff.

Two months ago, while she’d been moping around the house waiting for Larry to come home again, she’d started nosing through his stuff, and after about twenty minutes of good, solid snooping she’d found his cellphone bill, sandwiched between some of his sides for acting class, hidden in his backpack. She’d started scrolling down the page, checking each number as she went. Ina recognized their home number, the number for his class, and numbers for a couple of his friends, but there had been a series of long calls to a 310 number she didn’t know. One of them had been made at 2 AM and lasted forty minutes.

Ina opened up her day planner and checked the date from a few weeks earlier. Nothing out of the ordinary: It had been just a regular night, which meant she had been at home with him, asleep, and that Larry must have gotten out of bed and gone outside to make the cell-phone call.

So fucking guilty.

To prove her point, Ina dialed the 310 number. Ring, ring, ring. Then finally the machine picked up.

“Hey, it’s me, leave a message and don’t bore me.”