A statement of fact, Cathy thinks. Certainly not a nasty thing to say, after all this time. It wouldn't have been so bad, Cathy says, if Rebecca hadn't been the maid of honor. Maybe too far. "It's been fifteen years," she finishes up. "It doesn't sting anymore."

Rebecca and men, huh? Rebecca shrugs; the transaction is complete. It doesn't sting anymore and so it never happened. They can meet again. "Tell me everything! I want to know everything about you, and what's going on with you. What is going on with you? What is the biggest thing happening in your life, right now?"

Right now? Right this second? The Bahamas. Lenny. The taste of wedding cake, my new scarf. My trial separation. A new car, hidden away in the shadows under a sunny rainy day. A giant hole in the yard, with a couch down inside it. Certainly not Stage IV melanoma.

"Nothing!" she says brightly, of course, and asks Rebecca for a moment. "You look so great!" Rebecca calls to her, up the stairs. Wan but vibrant, like a blue-eyed iris with that scarf around her neck.

Upstairs Cathy calls Lenny, hurriedly, nervous, overwhelmed and annoyed but concerned with the thing in front of her. Downstairs, in the middle of her message warning him off, the doorbell rings.

Paul's confused by the artist at the door; Cathy comes zooming down the stairs and she introduces him to her husband. She lies terribly, as Lenny covers a smile with his hands. Paul's gregarious, friendly, welcoming, wonderful. Lenny can't deny him. Lenny comes in for a drink, and they smile nervously and sigh, one breath. Conspirators. "I am freaking out!" she whispers, as she pours her lover his first drink. "A lot of anxiety!"

Lenny talks her down, with the facts: "It's a party, thrown just for you. So have a couple of drinks, talk to your friends. Enjoy yourself." Cathy doesn't want to have a couple of drinks or talk to her friends or enjoy herself: She wants the Bahamas. "I want to be on a beach without my shirt on, no sunscreen, sunning myself with wild abandon. Do you see what happens when I try and do something spontaneous? I get screwed out of it!" But the flight is late and the guests are old, he points out. "Maybe you can have it all."

Lenny is a bad idea, Cathy says, with a good head on his shoulders. They repair back to the party singly. He touches her hip and she smoothes the touch away. Sean's eyes, coming in from the backyard, grow wide.