I park in front of Julie’s house. It’s Saturday; she’s invited me to go swimming at the community pool. Her friend Becky answers the door. Becky is wearing a gauzy black shirt over a bathing suit; the skin under her eyes is smudged black as her shirt. Holding the door open for me, she says, “Thank you for your note. I’m glad to meet you, finally.”

Becky is sleeping on Julie’s sofa until she can find her own apartment. Today is Saturday; on Monday, Becky came home to the apartment she shared with Sam, her fiancé, with a bag of groceries balanced on each hip. Before she could put them down, he told her that he was in love with someone else. He offered to let her keep the apartment, but Becky turned around and went to Julie’s apartment without letting go of the groceries. At Julie’s, she wrapped chicken parts in plastic and put the milk in the refrigerator before she started crying.

Julie told me that Becky has been staying up very late, playing music too loud and keeping busy in the kitchen. On Wednesday night, shortly before midnight, Julie found Becky making green beans vinaigrette. She explained to Julie that the proportions of honey and lemon juice had to be exactly equal. She asked Julie to wait up with her until the beans were chilled, to taste them. Julie convinced Becky to go to bed.

This image upset me. I could not stop seeing a woman bent over in an ill-lit kitchen, her window the only rectangle of light in a dark building. The image superimposed itself on my pillow at night and in the bottom of my coffee cup at dawn. I could not forget it, and so I wrote Becky a short note, telling her how sorry I was that Sam had left her.

Standing at Julie’s door, I say again, “I’m so sorry,” and put out my hand, as if to balance some of her tiredness and pain. Julie comes down the hall, tying the neck of her bathing suit.

“Hey,” she says. “Gil wants to come with us. Mind if we wait for him?”

“Fine,” I sigh. Gil will be late, and I want to get to the pool. It’s summer, it’s hot, and my joints feel funny, as if they’re glued together incorrectly. They don’t hurt, but they feel wrong. Gil is always late. Gil is the reason that Danny, Julie’s husband, moved out of this apartment last month. Danny wants Julie to stop sleeping with Gil, and then he will move back. He writes Julie long, impassioned letters in which he promises to forgive or forget that Julie, despite being married to Danny, slept with Gil several times and plans to continue doing so. Julie has not answered Danny, and she is spending more and more time with Gil. She and I argue about this. I tell her, “It’s not fair to keep Danny hanging. Tell him yes, you’ll stop sleeping with Gil, or no, you won’t, so he can get on with his life either way and you can get on with yours. What’s the problem?”

I go into the living room and sit down on the sofa. Becky’s blanket is folded on the arm. When Danny moved out, he took the chairs from the living room and left the sofa. In the dining room, the table, chairs, and china cabinet are gone; wineglasses and ceramic casserole dishes stand guard in dusty corners. The second bedroom, which used to be Danny’s study, contains nothing but sunlight. Only the bedroom retains any semblance of comfort and normalcy, like before.

Julie sits down next to me, and Becky sits down at the other end of the sofa. She picks up the newspaper and begins looking at apartment rentals. I want to ask Julie if we can leave Gil a note on the front door and just go, but I know she won’t leave without him. The words remain in my throat, unleavened. I get up and look out the window at the bright, cloudless day. Without turning around, I ask Julie what time Gil said he’d be here.

“Around 1,” she says. It’s almost 2. I continue to look out the window. A man across the street trims a hedge. A child bounces a pink rubber ball on the sidewalk. Then I see Danny’s old green car nose into a space across the street. I tell Julie, and she jumps up, cursing.

“Danny said if he ever saw Gil here, he’d beat him to a pulp.” She makes a face, as if Danny is being irrational.

When Danny knocks, Becky answers the door. The two couples—Julie and Danny, Becky and Sam—often did things together. They would cook complicated dinners for each other and take weekend trips. Danny looks pleased to see Becky.

“Hey, babe,” he says. He hugs her and kisses her cheek. He says hello to me. We do not know each other as well. Then he asks Julie if she can give him some money. While Danny is in limbo, he refuses to open his own checking account. He is wearing tennis whites, and his fair skin is sunburned.

“How is your game?” I ask, to fill up the silence.

“I hurt my back, so not that great,” Danny replies. “But I’m still playing.”

That’s like Danny. Once, I invited Julie and him to my apartment for dinner. When they arrived, he looked pale and said he hadn’t slept well.

“We could have canceled,” I said.

“I thought you must have spent a long time cooking,” he said. “I didn’t want to disappoint you by not coming.”

Julie gives Danny some tightly folded bills. He puts the rectangle of green into his pocket and then puts out his hand, as if to encircle her shoulder or her waist, but his hand stops short, traces the air, and returns to his pocket. Instead, he asks if he can have some ice cream.

“It’s so hot,” he says.

Julie hesitates and then agrees. Danny goes into the kitchen, and Becky follows him. From the sofa, I can see him eating directly from the half-gallon container, gesticulating with an ornate silver spoon. Beads of condensation shimmer softly to the floor. Becky is talking softly and shaking her head. Danny smiles and replies, and Becky taps him on the arm. For a minute I imagine that Julie will choose Gil and then Becky and Danny can become a couple.

I look away from them and out the window. It’s still sunny, but it’s after 2:30, and the buildings are starting to cast slanted shadows on the street.

Julie sees me looking outside and says, “Oh, fine, let’s just go. I’ll leave Gil a note.” She says this as a present for me. We haven’t been spending as much time together as we used to. For a few minutes, the tension between us subsides, and we smile ruefully at each other. Then Julie calls to Danny and Becky to hurry up. Becky offers to drive. Julie writes a note for Gil and tapes it to the front door, where it makes one half-hearted attempt to flutter and then collapses in the mid-July humidity. I see Danny reading it as we file out one by one and start down the narrow stairs. I wonder if he knows—but of course he must know or, worse, imagine—that Gil spends nights here with Julie; that in the morning, while Gil lies wrapped in sunlight, Julie cooks him eggs and pancakes and brews strong coffee; that they shower together in the small, tiled bathroom; that Gil leaves for work complacent, loved, and fed. These images remind me of what Julie has done. I do not want to meet Danny’s eyes, and I am glad to be the first one down the stairs.

I hear the three of them not far behind me as I reach the cramped vestibule and put my hand on the front doorknob. There is Gil, on the other side of the glass. He is blond and gray-eyed in a faded blue tee shirt, camera strap slung over his shoulder.

“Danny’s on his way down,” I say. “Go back to your car.” Gil looks at me, puzzled, not understanding. “Go!” I repeat, motioning him away. Then he understands and turns around. I push open the door and catch up with him, as if we are any two people walking. I don’t talk, because I can see he is nervous. I fall back as Gil crosses the street to his car, just as Becky appears at my side saying, “What bad timing!”

Behind us, Danny is screaming at Julie, who is holding him back.

“Do you want me to go out of my head?” He pulls free and begins running toward Gil, who is now standing at his car. Danny’s shirt has come out of his shorts. His face is red. Julie is crying. Becky and I encircle her and gently push her into Becky’s car. Everything is bright and slow, as if underwater. Becky has trouble getting the car in gear. My eyes linger on the bright green leaves overhead, on the thin scarlet strap of Julie’s bathing suit crossing her shoulder, and on Becky’s worried face. As Becky’s car lurches past Gil and Danny, I turn around and see Danny standing too close to Gil. Julie is still crying.

Between sobs, she says, “Gil doesn’t know how to fight! Danny will hurt him!”

I want to say something, but I don’t know what to say. Instead, I hug Julie clumsily.

We arrive at the pool.

Julie says, “You two go in and find chairs. I want to call Gil and make sure he’s OK.” She has stopped crying, but her eyes are puffy.

At poolside Becky and I spread out our towels on two chairs. The hard-blue sky is now tinged with gray. Only a few people are swimming. At the far end, a boy lifts a girl and drops her back into the water. She squeals—half in fear and half in delight.

Julie comes back to Becky and me and says, “I have to leave now. Gil is picking me up. He and I need to talk. He says he and Danny almost came to blows.” Becky does not look up. Her eyes are closed. I silently repeat the words “came to blows” while I look up at Julie. They sound comic and melodramatic, like an old silent movie. “But, please, you two stay and try to have fun,” Julie says as she walks away.

Becky and I stay. I don’t feel like swimming anymore, and I guess Becky doesn’t, either, because she continues looking at apartment rentals in the newspaper. I stare at the pool and the trees.

Suddenly, Becky says, “I can’t believe the things I’ve heard this year—the lies, the affairs, the double lives people are leading.” She pauses, as if to give me an example, and then shrugs and bends back to her newspaper. She reads in silence, occasionally circling something, as the sky darkens and the wind picks up.

“Would you mind if we go?” she asks. “I think it’s going to rain.” We fold our towels and put on our shoes. I ask her if she wants to get a cup of coffee somewhere, but she says she wants to go look at some apartments.

“I can’t stay at Julie’s too much longer,” she explains. “Being there is awkward, and that sofa is uncomfortable for sleeping. I need to find my own place and get on with my own life.”

Becky drives me back to my car, which is parked around the corner from Julie’s building.

As I get out, I say, “Take care.” I am conscious of how inadequate those words sound. I touch Becky’s arm quickly, right above the elbow, and she leans over and kisses me on the cheek.

“Thank you,” she says. “That’s kind of you. I’ll be OK. Not now, not soon, but someday. I know I will. You take care, too.”

“Sure,” I say. I smile at her and shut the car door. We both wave, and then she drives off.

I sit on the front steps of a building near my parked car as the sky continues to darken. I wish Becky had wanted to go out for coffee. Right now, I’d like to be part of the normalcy and clatter of bright lights and silverware. I want to listen to people talking loudly and rapidly about their ordinary days and predictable lives. I used to be one of those people with ordinary days, planning a delicious life with the beautiful boy I loved. Then last summer he left me for someone else, in one of those random thoughtless ways that people leave each other.

“I met someone else,” he told me. “I love her, not you,” he said. “It’s nothing against you,” he added. “You’re great. And we can still be friends, if you want.”

That’s not what I wanted.

Julie is probably at the diner now with Gil, drinking coffee and eating pie.

“He likes blueberry pie as much as I do,” she once told me. “Danny hated blueberry pie. He hated all fruit pies.” She will comfort Gil over coffee and pie, and maybe they’ll end up sharing a burger or some macaroni and cheese for dinner too, although after dessert instead of before. Comfort food. After they finish eating, they’ll laugh about how good the food tasted in reverse order and drive back to Julie’s apartment.

  I continue sitting on the steps, although the concrete is not at all comfortable and I feel drops of rain on my head. Julie has moved effortlessly from one love to another, and she may yet change her mind or never have to choose. Becky seems determined to make a new life, and I think she’ll succeed. But what happens when a person can’t move forward? I know I need to get back to my own life and stop living on the margins of other people’s stories. I know that.

I sit a little longer, listening as the wind howls and the sky collapses into gauzy, smudged black. No one else is outside. This city has a reputation for tornadoes and brief, dangerous summer thunderstorms. When the storms arrive, everyone goes inside. Everyone except me is somewhere else. I stand up slowly and pull out my car keys. My joints still feel funny. Maybe I should make an appointment to see a doctor. As I open the car door and ease myself inside, the sky opens up and the rain pours down. I grab the steering wheel and shut my eyes. I wish Becky had told me about the double lives people are leading. Maybe it would help me figure out how to live one life: my own. 

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