“You’re right,” says Barry. “Not I. But many did.”
“I’ll think about it,” Timothy says. “I don’t know if I want to leave my koi for that long.” Grumpy and Bashful seem to have struck up a friendship while he was back east, which was not a turn of events he had expected, but he’s not mad at it.
“You’re kidding, right?”
Instead of answering Timothy asks a question of his own. “Barry? Do you think the movies are done with me?”
Barry thinks about this. He really thinks, going through the whole kombucha-sipping process again, then staring for a while at the koi.
“I don’t,” Barry says at last. “I really don’t think the movies will be done with Timothy Fleming for a long, long time. But is there any chanceyou’redone with themovies?”
“I don’t know,” says Timothy. “I worry sometimes that I’ve stayed too long at the party.”
Barry laughs, then, seeing that Timothy is serious, stops laughing. “You know what I always say? As long as the party is still going, there’s no such thing as staying too long. And the party, my friend, is still going.”
“Artistic director,” muses Timothy. It might be exciting. Or it might be lonely. It might be challenging. It might be all three, plus some more things he hasn’t even thought of yet.
Barry looks at his watch. He thinks he’s being discreet, but he’s not. He taps his fingers on his pants, carefully not saying anything.
Finally Timothy says, “You know what? I think I’d like to do it.”
“I should tell them yes?”
“You should tell them yes. I’m not familiar with a season there. Do they do new works, or revivals?”
“Heck if I know,” says Barry. “Probably both.”
“Okay, good. Because I do love a revival, Barry. I really do.”
“I’ve heard that about you, sweetie.” Barry pats Timothy’s hand and rises from the bench. On to the next client; on to the next deal. “I’ve heard that you love a revival.”
Amy
Amy has just sat down at the desk in the corner of her bedroom, where typically she grades student papers. In front of her is a yellow legal pad, her good fountain pen with a box of refill cartridges, and her thoughts. It’s been a long time since Amy has faced a blank pad of paper, one without even a to-do list, and she eyes it warily, like an arctic fox eyeing a vole.
Her phone, which is downstairs in the kitchen, the better to keep her attention where it belongs, rings. Ignore it, she tells herself. School starts in one week, and you have only this precious string of days in front of you. You cannot afford distractions.
The phone stops ringing. See? she tells herself. Nothing is that important. If it’s really important, they’ll call back.
The ringing starts again.
Aw, heck. She’ll just run down and take a gander at who the caller is. Just to make sure it’s not an emergency. What if Sam, all alone on Block Island, needs her? What if Henry and Ava, back in Vermont, need her? What if, God forbid, something happened to Greg at work? If the caller is none of these people, she won’t answer. She’s just going to take thevery quickest peekat the caller ID.
“I’m just going to look!” she says aloud on her way down the stairs. “It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do.”
It’s not Henry and Ava, nor Sam, nor Greg. It’s an unknownlocal number. But what if Henry or Sam lost their phones, and they’re calling from a different number? In May, when Sam really needed her,she’dcalled from an unknown number, at the rental place, and imagine if Amy had ignored that? Sam might still be at the Enterprise in North Kingston, all these months later!
Perhaps she should answer, just in case. And then she’ll get immediately to work.
She answers.
“Amy! I’m so glad I caught you. It’s Bianca, from Friends Forever! Did I catch you at a bad time? I’m in the office, not on my cell, so you probably didn’t recognize the number. I usually call from my cell.”
“Right,” says Amy. “I actually am in the middle of someth—”
Bianca cuts her off; in the way of many true dog people, she reads canine context clues more easily than human ones. “I just wanted to see if you might be up for another houseguest sometime soon. Well, bysoonI mean tomorrow. I’ve got this gorgeous boy looking for his furever home, and I thought of you right away. His name is Charlie. I’m sure he’ll get snapped right up, he’s mostly Lab, and you know how quickly the Labs go.”
Amy hesitates. No, says her inner voice. Absolutely not. But she does know how quickly the Labs get snapped up, so her outer voice says, “How old?”
