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excusing. I ran down, two steps at a time.
    A couple stood there, too hip to be door-to-door religious. She filled her T-shirt, her hair touching her elbows, and at various points she sparkled.
    “Helen and Jeff.” He stuck out a freckled arm. “Lola’s weekend people.”
    Last spring Lola had said something about her new weekend employers, I didn’t remember what, but there was lace at the edges. He was somebody , my mother would’ve said.
    An hour ago, I’d deemed the foray to the market idiotic, even destructive, but now, I invited them in. I needed friends. In the kitchen I sniffed the melon, then decided to save it and brought out a plate of figs, almonds, and Israeli feta.
    The possible Somebody began a rambling talk about Lola, which his wife interrupted. “We hired her because we saw how close she was to William.”
    My Will! This stranger knew my child, in his hours away from me.
    “It’d be nice for the boys to play together.”
    “Who’s your son?”
    “Bing.” She waited. But I’d never heard of him. What kind of name was Bing? They must have named him for Bing Crosby. It couldn’t have been the cherry.
    “And I’m starting a mothers’ group with the moms of kids in Lola’s playclub.”
    Typical of me, I said, “Oh, sure, great,” when I knew I couldn’t do it.
    Then the door yawned open. Will ran to me. I said, “These are the people Lola lives with on the weekend.”
    “Jeff Grant.”
    “Helen.”
    Paul’s face tightened when the Somebody said his name. Paul knew who he was. I asked him to help me with coffee in the kitchen.
    “He’s an indie director, he made that movie The Dayton Widow.”
    I thought, He could help you maybe. Paul was in his second year working for a showrunner who didn’t think he was funny. Just this week, though, he’d had a triumph. At the table read of his script, people laughed. The head of comedy clapped. But Paul still felt precarious. “The room punched it up,” he said. “The biggest laughs were Jack’s lines.” Since we’d moved here we’d been on a treadmill. I’d been holding down the fort waiting for things to settle. It would still be years before I’d realize—we had settled. I was the only one waiting.
    “So Jeff Grant uses our nanny? Man. What are the chances of that?”
    At first it felt weird having Lola in our small house, but now I was used to her. It was too easy to have someone pick up after you to mind much. Will hung on to my knee.
    “She wants to start a mothers’ group and I said yes.”
    “You can get out of it.”
    We went back in, carrying a tray with coffee. Paul said he’d loved The Dayton Widow .
    “And we love her work,” the Somebody said, pointing at me, but I didn’t believe him. My music tended to pull in nuns, librarians, and middle school teachers (not surprising, I suppose, since these were the people I’d grown up with). I’d had my picture in the paper a few times; that was probably how these two knew me. The Eroica Trio named themselves after Beethoven’s Third and the first month they performed, people said, Oh yeah, I’ve heard of you .
    We ended up taking a walk with them, sliding Will into his stroller. Outside, the pavement sparkled and the palms looked still and old. Even though we’d been here two years, we didn’t have friends. Paul was always working, and I stayed with Will. Weekends, Paul crashed on the bed, flipping channels, exhausted from the pressure to be funny. For two years, he’d felt about to be fired. They could let me go tomorrow , he’d told me. Contractually, I have nothing .
    We needed fun.
    The men walked ahead. I always liked the way Paul walked. There was ease to him, a gracefulness. Years later, Will would own that same gait. Paul’s arm conducted Jeff Grant’s laughter, which exploded in bursts. They lived close, two streets over. We found Lola sitting inside a city of blocks. She looked odd in this other house. Their boy ignored Will.
    But meeting this couple,