LITMIR.BIZ

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in her own rental car as she sat wedged between cars of strangers who also believed they knew Kara.

      Kara had been the last of her single friends, the last one without children. Margot’s childhood friends from Long Island now had one, two, and three kids; their photos decorated her refrigerator doors. When she got together with them, they talked about the price of day care and finding good schools, and soccer practice and dance classes, and husbands who worked too hard or traveled too much or didn’t help around the house. When Margot and Kara got together, they talked about theater and auditions and Margot’s business and Kara’s latest adventures. They laughed about the old days, about their lives, about nothing. There was a time they talked about Brad a lot, then intermittently, then not at all. More recently, they’d talked about Mike.

      Had Margot misunderstood anything Kara said about Mullet? He really hadn’t come up much in conversation.

      At the cemetery, Margot pulled into the gravel parking lot and walked up the hill toward the awning. Brad had arrived already, and Margot took a spot beside him a few feet behind the awning. From where they stood, Margot could see the parking lot and could watch the line of skinny women wearing black stockings in the eighty-something-degree heat as they marched up the hill. The ground was soft from recent rain. Margot was glad she hadn’t worn heels, and a little bit glad some of the other women had.

      Having seen the casket open, Margot felt odd seeing it closed now and knowing that Kara was inside and that no one would open the box or look at Kara’s face again. The part of Margot that always liked to double-check—car doors, grocery lists, unplugged irons, credit scores—had an impulse to look inside. She imagined herself slowly opening the lid a crack, the way she’d open the oven, careful not to upset a soufflé. She’d look close at Kara’s waxed face, whisper her name, poke her with a toothpick perhaps—to be sure she was dead. Margot tried to recreate the image of Kara she’d seen at the funeral home. It really was a crumby-looking ring.

      The ceremony was mercifully brief, and as soon as it ended, Kara’s little sister, Gwen, pulled away from the family and lit a cigarette, just as Kara would have done. Mullet pushed out from under the awning and did the same, muttering “Oh, man” in what sounded like a stage whisper.

      WHEN she arrived at Kara’s mother’s house, Margot wandered to the dining room, where the table was covered with moist finger sandwiches, competing bowls of potato salad, and a surprising number of cans of dry-roasted peanuts. Perhaps there’d been a sale. She tried to resist the instinct to criticize, to put on her caterer’s hat and judge the menu and presentation. The carafe of chardonnay on the sideboard made her smile. You could fill a carafe with piss, and my stepdad would call it fancy, Kara once said. My family really knows how to put the k in klassy. Margot poured herself a glass and braced herself for the sharp taste and strained conversation.

      She gave her condolences to Kara’s mother, Lucy Ann, who seemed glad to see Margot but said very little, and to Kara’s stepfather, Randy, whose thickly Southern “So-good-of-you-to-come” poured out in one word. Margot said a few words to Kara’s half-brothers, who hovered in a corner, somberly passing a hand-held video game back and forth, and she reintroduced herself to Gwen, who was moving about the house in a mask of officiousness. Margot even sucked it up and said hello to a few of the girls from the drama department. One of them said, “Oh my God, I didn’t see you before”—which was a lie. Another said, “It’s wild how different everyone looks”—but “everyone” meant Margot and “different” meant fat.

      If she hadn’t quit smoking last year, this would have been a good time for about thirty consecutive cigarettes, so Margot topped off her wine and went out to the carport where she and Kara used to smoke in their college days. It still smelled like ashtrays, which was a comfort, though now it had more bicycles and toys than before. The ice chest where she and Kara used to sit had been replaced by a box of sporting equipment. Margot was marveling at all the basketballs and soccer balls and baseball paraphernalia when the side door opened and Mullet walked out.

      The revulsion felt like a bubble inflating inside her stomach.

      “Am I interrupting?” he asked.

      “No,” she said, reluctantly.

      He lit his cigarette, cupping the flame in his thick hand. Margot thought about going inside.

      “You want a smoke?” he asked.

      “I quit,” she told him.

      He nodded.

      They exchanged silences.

      “Pretty crazy shit,” he said after a minute. “I’m the fiancé, Steve Donegan.”

      He said the words with an ownership that made Margot uncomfortable, and she wished he’d trip over a stray baseball, but she took his extended hand. “Margot Cominsky,” she said. “I’m a friend of Kara’s from college.”

      “Cool,” he said. “Yeah, I remember her talking about you.” He sucked on his cigarette and blew the smoke out the side of his mouth. Margot could smell it. She could almost taste it.

      “You from around here?” he asked.

      “New York.”

      “Oh yeah, me too.”

      “I know,” she said.

      They both nodded.

      Margot dropped her eyes to a row of muddy sneakers beside the door. Mullet flicked an ash into the driveway.

      Then Margot said, “I didn’t realize you were a couple.”

      “Oh yeah, I know. Kara was nervous about telling people ’cause of, you know, the age difference. But I’m sure she’d have introduced us soon.”

      “I would hope so. If she was engaged.”

      “Absolutely, no doubt. It just sort of happened, you know. One minute we’re talking about maybe looking for a bigger place together, the next we’re saying the M-word.”

      Margot’s throat felt dry. She took a sip of wine from her plastic cup.

      “How did you two meet?” she asked after a minute.

      “At a bar,” he said. “Lemon Drop—you know it? Near Prospect Park? Anyway, it’s a neighborhood place we both used to hang out at. We would see each other, talk. One day she needed a place to live. We started out as roommates. One thing leads to another . . .”

      Mullet is acting like a giant hemorrhoid, Kara had once growled over the phone.

      The story, as Margot had heard it from Randy, was that Kara fell asleep on Saturday night and didn’t wake up. She’d taken some kind of drug the night before, and Mullet didn’t realize she’d gone too far until the next morning when he tried to wake her up.

      “So, you found her . . . unconscious?” Margot asked.

      “Yeah, it was pretty crazy.” Mullet dropped his eyes, then pushed his hair behind his ear, looked up, and continued. “Saturday night she fell asleep watching TV on the couch, so I went ahead and left her there, thinking no big deal. Then Sunday morning, we’re supposed to go to Pancake King for brunch, so I make coffee and I’m talking to her and stuff, trying to wake her up before I realize.”

      Margot tried to picture Mullet saying “Good morning” to Kara’s dead body. Then she tried not to picture it.

      Mullet held out his pack of Marlboros. “You sure you don’t want one? I wouldn’t tell.”

      She shook her head. “I can’t.”

      He finished the cigarette and dropped the butt into a soda can that seemed to be in the corner for that purpose. Then he lit another and put the lighter and box of cigarettes beside the can. “I’m leaving them here in case you change your mind. Kara’s sister keeps bumming smokes from me, so I said I’d leave them out.”

      “Thank you,” Margot said.

      “I couldn’t quit at a time like

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