A Song in the Daylight. Paullina Simons

why’d you finally agree to do it?”

      “Because your husband begged like a pauper. He didn’t know how else to stop Leroy.”

      “No one can stop Leroy.”

      “Thank God differential equations are too hard for a ten-year-old.” Larissa ordered squash soup and a Waldorf salad with grilled chicken. Maggie got a Neiman’s sampler. While Maggie was ordering, Larissa surreptitiously glanced into her purse, to make sure the cell phone was on ring and not on silent.

      “But are you really going to do Much Ado About Nothing?” Maggie shook her head.

      “Yes, that’s my compromise. Apparently I have to compromise. I wanted the airy Comedy of Errors. But no. I had seven naysayers. They insisted on something other than what I wanted. Well, fine. They got their way.”

      “But see, Ezra said Leroy and Fred don’t want to do Much Ado anymore.”

      Larissa laughed deliciously. “Oh, they don’t want to do it anymore! As I suspected. Then why’d they suggest it?”

      “They said just to put something out there.”

      The monkey bread came; the girls dug in.

      “I knew it,” she said. “All that yackety-yak just to be contrary. Well, too late. And too bad. We’re doing it.”

      They spent the rest of lunch talking about Bo, whose boyfriend, Jonny, was close to getting a job, and about Ezra, who was so overworked, with his three classes, running the English department and overseeing the theater department that the other day he actually forgot the name of his only child. “And I mean, forgot, Lar. He blanked at Dylan, as if he couldn’t understand why this cranky drummer boy was in his house.”

      As they were paying, Larissa’s cell phone rang. The caller ID read Passani, K.

      “Hello?” Was he calling her from his cell phone and not from work?

      “Hi. It’s Kai.”

      “Hey.” She fought the impulse to turn her back to Maggie so she wouldn’t have to talk to him with her face showing.

      “Car’s ready,” he said. “Are you going to be able to pick it up? I know school must be letting out soon.”

      “Yeah … and I’ll have my son with me.” She nodded to the waiter, to Maggie, to give her the receipt to sign, to leave a tip, to take her credit card, to close her purse, to get up, push the chair back, all the while on the phone with him.

      “Well, look, how about I bring the car, and you two can give me a ride back. That okay?”

      “That’s okay.” What else could she do? There was no way she could leave the car at the dealership overnight. What would she tell Jared? “On second thought, let me leave it overnight. I’ll pick it up tomorrow. The kids have … things this afternoon.”

      “You sure? You don’t need it?”

      “I have my truck.”

      “Well, fine. I’ll bring it to you in the morning then?”

      She was about to say fine, all this with Maggie watching, listening—to everything! But then remembered she blew off theater today, and she couldn’t not show up again tomorrow. “I’ve got stuff to do in the morning. Noon?”

      They agreed he would bring the car to her house at noon. He had a good phone voice. Of course he did. Of course he would.

      Larissa hung up without saying anything, Maggie’s eyes interfering with her inane courtesies.

      “Who was that?”

      “Jag dealership.” How nice and passive! “They installed a nav system.”

      “What do you need one of those for? Where do you go? Can’t find your way to the mall, Lar?”

      “Oh, funny today, Mags.”

      With the check paid, they traipsed across the black-and-white tiled floor.

      “You didn’t tell me your car was in the shop.”

      “It’s not like it’s in the shop. Nothing’s wrong with it.”

      “So why didn’t you tell me about the nav earlier when I asked where your car was?”

      Larissa sped up. If she wasn’t able to answer Maggie’s questions, how in the world was she going to answer Jared’s?

      “You bought what?” said Jared, setting down his dinner fork, which signaled the heightened level of his commitment to the conversation.

      Larissa shrugged—her most nonchalant shrug. “The car was supposed to come with it. We got a model without it. But it’s supposed to have it.”

      Jared was silent. “Larissa, it’s not what the car is supposed to have. It’s not whether or not you need it.”

      “What is it then?” she said casually, her pleasant face on, the smile at her lips.

      “It’s that you would, could, spend three thousand dollars of our money without even bringing it up in a five-second conversation first.”

      “I know. I’m sorry about that. Honest, that was a mistake on my part. It was an impulse buy. I’d gone in for service, and then ordered it on the spot without even asking Brian how much it cost. I thought it would only be a few hundred bucks. By the time they installed it and I paid for it, I was as shocked as you, believe me, but I was already in for a penny.”

      “Three hundred thousand pennies.”

      “I know.”

      “Do you have the receipt?”

      “I do. It’s in my bag. You want to see it?”

      “I don’t want to see it, but I do need it for our records.” His eyes were on her, not blinking. “Who did you buy it from?”

      “What?”

      “Who did you order the system from?”

      “Brian, I told you.”

      “Who’s Brian?”

      “The service guy in the back.”

      “Not Chad?” He paused. “Not Kai?”

      “Never got to the front of the dealership, honey. I’m really sorry.” She smiled sweetly. “Jared, I know it’s a lot of money to spend all at once, but strictly speaking, what’s the difference between spending it all in one gulp, and buying four or five pairs of shoes or boots, which I do all the time without calling you up on the phone, interrupting your board meetings, saying, sweetie, I saw this awesome pair of Gucci’s; do you mind?”

      To Jared’s credit, he mulled that one over. “The difference,” he said at last, “is of degree. It’s too much, it seems out of the ordinary.”

      He was right. That’s what it was. Out of the ordinary.

      Larissa rushed to Pingry in the morning to sit with Sheila and Leroy and line by line edit Much Ado down to high school production size, chewing the pencil between her teeth, mindful of the time, ten, eleven, nearly noon.

      “I gotta run, guys,” she finally said.

      “But we’re not done!”

      “Can you finish up? You have some very good ideas. Just a couple of things: Sheila, don’t cut too many of Don Pedro’s lines; he is after all the conscience of the play. And Leroy, same goes for Benedick, who is the hero. Even in a comedy that role is given some prominence.”