I could hear the music playing as I took the diagonal across the street, met Annette on the steps, she coming down and I going up. “Max is in one of his moods,” she told me. “Oh, no,” I said, and we both laughed. Annette had agreed to dance for my grandfather. They were working, I knew, on a fox-trot. Max and I had agreed on a waltz. It was what I was best at, what I could learn with the time that I had. “Hey, Annette,” I said. “Yes?” “A dahlia for you.” I handed her one of the three I had taken from the bucket of extras at Bloomer’s. “For me?” she said. “Of course. For you.” “You’re something else,” she said. “And thank you.” Marissa buzzed me in. I laid the other two dahlias across her desk, then joined Eleanor on the couch. She’d just finished up with Peter; she could use a drink, she said: “And I’m not talking about lemonade, either.” She flopped backward on the couch. She had one dance shoe on and one off. She had painted her toenails blue.
