She was late to the event. She didn’t know anyone, hadn’t lost anyone, wasn’t part of the history. This was all okay with her. It was January. She found an apartment on the Lower East Side through a guy she met in her acting class. Larry’s grandmother had lived in the apartment for decades, keeping the rent low; now she was in a nursing home, adrift in an Alzheimer’s haze, only occasionally convinced she would soon move back home. The family, having cleared the apartment of its doilied furniture and ancient knickknacks, sublet it to Anne at what even she, new to New York, could tell was an insane bargain. This was because Larry hoped to have sex with her. She took the apartment and dropped the class. Sometimes he came by, supposedly to pick up his grandmother’s mail or check on the faucets. “I never see you anymore,” he’d say, barely dampening the complaint in his voice. “I’m so busy,” she’d say, never specifying at what. Larry worked in commercials. He was the husband strolling through the house in the real-estate ad, the man grimacing with hemorrhoid pain before exhaling in relief.
