At seven o’clock the telephone rang. I knew it was seven because there was a clock on the wall above the telephone, and I knew it was Emma calling because no one else ever really called. “Oh, John!” she cried. “I did it! I told him, just now. I finally, finally did it and—oh my God, I feel wonderful.”

“What are you talking about, Emma?” In the early evening dusk I walked out onto the back porch and sat down on the top step. I leaned back to allow for the telephone cord, stretched taut from its connection with all the little coils extended as far as they could go. The sky above was maddeningly unspectacular. “Why don’t you start again from the beginning,” I said. “Tell who? What’d you tell?”

“Oscar, of course,” she said, as if who else was there? “We were having dinner early so he could go to his meeting, and he asked me if I had cut the green beans myself or if they were from a can and I told him they were from a can and then I said, ‘I’m leaving you, Oscar.’ I said, ‘I’ve met someone else,’ and—oh, John! I can’t believe it. I can’t stop my hands from shaking.”

I could feel the tension gathering within the coils and I pulled forward a little to allow for some extra slack. “Now wait just a minute, Emma. You said you met someone else? Did you tell him who?”

She hadn’t. She was very clear about that. She had told him it was someone he didn’t know, someone she had met at work, which was technically true; years ago she and I had worked together, before I had introduced her to Oscar, before they had married, before she had strayed. “He left about twenty minutes ago,” she said. “I guess to go get a drink or something. He seemed awfully upset, John. Do you think he’ll be all right?”

“I think Oscar will be fine,” I said. “I think he’s going to route whatever he’s feeling right now into some project, something positive, because that’s what Oscar does. He turns shit into gold.”

“What does that make me?”

“I didn’t mean—that’s not what I meant,” I snapped. Where was this going?

“I know you didn’t. You did but you didn’t. Oh, I don’t know what I’m saying anymore, John. I’m happy, I am. Whatever Oscar does though, I don’t want to be around when it happens. I told him I was going to go stay with my sister in Tacoma for a couple of days—just until the air settles, you know—but I was thinking, what if you came up for a night or two? We could get a room out by the airport and buy a box of bad wine from the convenience store and—what do you say, John? Will you come?”

“Tacoma,” I repeated. “We’ll see. I could take the four-thirty up there, if you could pick me up at the station—”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“And Oscar? What about Oscar?”

“Do you care?” she asked. “You know he talks about you all the time. Isn’t John great this, and don’t you just love John that. I really used to think he was trying to get me to fall in love with you.”

I nodded. “He’s a good friend,” I said, and without any deliberate attempt to foul her mood, there it was: she was disappointed. Already it’d been three days since we’d last seen each other and I was beginning to forget a little what she looked like. It’s hard to be in love with someone when you can’t remember what they look like, and it’s damn scary when they tell you they’ve just handed their life to you on a platter. Another three days and I might forget Emma ever existed. Another three days after that and I might forget this whole thing ever happened in the first place.

I set the receiver by my side and let the tension in the coils slide it back along the linoleum. Clouds were pulling in from the east as I stood up and walked back inside, stopping to return the receiver to its cradle. I poured myself a glass of Jameson, walked into the living room and sat down in the easy chair in the corner. Inside it had gotten dark and I leaned back to turn on the lamp behind me, and then I picked up the book waiting on the side table. It was Waiting by Ha Jin. I opened it to where I’d marked the corner and read for a few minutes before I realized I was going over the same sentence and closed it again.

Of everything I was sorry for, only this did I now remember: I’d been sitting in this chair, reading a book. She’d been standing behind me, reading over my shoulder. What had been the title of that book? I strained to remember it. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, it must have been, or maybe Memories of My Melancholy Whores. But no, those titles hadn’t agreed with her. They were, as she would have said, “all honeymoon and no marriage.” She preferred books with titles like Possession or The Recognitions, titles without such pregnant expectation. She & I would have been a good title, she’d suggested, or maybe You & Me, but I hadn’t really been listening. I had turned the page before she’d reached the bottom. My dear, I thought. I’m sorry.

I said the words aloud to hear what they’d sound like. They sounded good, I thought; so good I wanted to share them with somebody. I got up out of the easy chair and went back into the kitchen and picked up the phone. It was eight-thirty. I realized as I was dialing her number that all the digits had been rubbed clear from overuse, that every number I called with any regularity was a variation on her number. I dialed her number and waited five, six, seven rings before hanging up again.

In my head I ran through the possibilities. Either she didn’t answer because she didn’t want to, or she didn’t answer because she hadn’t heard, or she didn’t answer because she wasn’t there, and if she wasn’t there where was she? Had she left for her sister’s already? The panic came out of nowhere, like a monsoon. I had to get a hold of her before she left, and I was about to pick up the phone again when someone knocked on the front door. Emma, I thought. Thank God.

“Evening, John,” said Oscar. “Sorry to drop in on you. I was wondering if you had a minute.” It had begun raining. Oscar was still wearing his work clothes—slacks and a button-up shirt—but he’d taken off his tie and had on over the shirt a loose wool sweater. I almost expected to see the dinner napkin still tucked into his collar.

“Sure, Oscar.” I stepped out of the way and closed the door behind him. Oscar shook off the rain and looked around the room—at the chair in the corner, the lamp, the book laid spine-up next to the glass of Jameson.

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“No,” I shook my head. “I was trying to do some reading, but—” I shrugged my shoulders. “I couldn’t get into it. I guess my mind’s not in it at the moment.”

“I know what you mean.”

“So,” I shrugged. “To what do I owe this pleasure? Just in the neighborhood?”

“In the neighborhood? Sure, I guess. No,” he shook his head. “Not really. Shit, John.” He looked up at me. “Do you believe in true love?”

I guffawed, I’m sure, because that’s what you do when someone asks if you believe in true love, even if you do—sometimes especially if you do. “What?” I laughed. “Have you been reading Nabokov and listening to Beethoven again?”

“I’m serious, John. I’m not joking around here.”

I looked down. “I know.”

“Emma’s—” He shook his head. I held my breath. “You know how much I care about Emma. She’s everything to me, John. If I ever lost her, if something ever happened to her—” he let the ultimatum hang there like a lead balloon.

“Have a seat,” I said. “You want something to drink? I’ll be right back. Let me go get you something to drink.” Oscar took a seat on the couch and I went back into the kitchen and rinsed out a glass in the sink. I played with the idea of trying Emma on the phone again but decided against it. I brought the bottle of Jameson back with me because I figured we’d need it—or at least I’d need it, if only to defend myself.

When I returned Oscar had taken over the easy chair and picked up the Ha Jin. I set his glass on the coffee table and poured him a stiff two fingers, then gave myself a nice little top-off.

“Is this any good?” he asked.

“Sure, it’s good,” I said. “I haven’t finished it yet, that’s how good it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want to savor it, you know. Get as much enjoyment as I can before it’s finished.”

“Yeah,” Oscar shrugged and set it back down, conspicuously losing my place, and for a minute I chafed over the time it’d take me to find that sentence again. The telephone rang and Oscar looked over at me. “You want to get that?” he asked.

“No,” I shook my head. “I’m sure it’s no one important.”

“Suit yourself,” he shrugged, but then we waited five, six, seven rings in silence. After the eighth ring, whomever it was hung up.

“So, you want to tell me what’s going on?” I asked. “Does Emma know where you are?”

“No,” he shook his head and balled himself up into the sleeves of his sweater. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “What do you think of Emma? She’s pretty amazing, isn’t she? I mean, don’t you think I’m one lucky son of a bitch to have found a girl like her? That’s all I’ve been thinking about these last couple of weeks—what a lucky son of a bitch I am. I mean, you knew me back in college. Who’d have thought, right? Back in college, you were always the real ladykiller. I would have just been happy not to end up alone. Huh. And look where we are now.”

“I’d rather not, to tell you the truth,” I said.

“No,” said Oliver. “I guess not.” He took a drink and set it back down on the coffee table. “I mean I’ve started buying self-help books, John. I bought The Tibetan Book of the Dead. I stash them under the mattress like porn.” I suppressed a giggle not because it wasn’t funny, but because I remembered Emma telling me about finding them one day when she was looking for my watch.

“No,” he went on. “You should laugh. It’s funny, isn’t it? I mean you take one thing and it’s fine. It’s an exception. But you gather them all up and look at them and you’ve become a cliché.” He took another drink. He was sipping. Mine was empty. “By the way, do you know what time it is?”

I looked down at my wrist before remembering the watch wasn’t there anymore. “No,” I said. “There’s a clock in the kitchen, though—”

“Doesn’t matter,” he shook his head. He leaned back and started rocking in the chair. “Just the other day, for example. We were back at the hospital getting some more tests done and—it’s strange, you know—the hospital? The first time you go there it’s like another planet—so sterile and foul at the same time—like an airplane, I guess, but then you keep going back and before long it’s like you know everything about it. You know in what waiting room you’ll find the good magazines, you know if you try to buy anything but a Diet Coke from the soda machine on the third floor it’s going to steal your money. This place you despise—it’s the only thing you recognize anymore.”

“Are you having some medical problems, Oscar? What do you need tests for?”

“What? Oh, I thought Emma would have told you by now. She has breast cancer,” he said. “Wait—why? What did you think I was talking about?”

We stared at each other for I don’t know how long, until finally Oscar stood up and walked over to me. I don’t know what I expected him to do, but he just walked right on past, into the kitchen where the telephone was ringing. He picked up the phone. “Hello?” he said, and then he handed it to me, right at me, in my face, like a gun. “It’s for you,” he said.