Vigil by Robert Masello

supposed to be meeting Beth and their friends Abbie and Ben Hammond at Minetta’s Tavern for dinner. Opening the envelope would just have to wait. But at least he’d been able to get his hands on it—if he hadn’t, the chances of his getting any sleep that night, or all weekend for that matter, would not have been good.
    The restaurant was only a few blocks away, and when he got there he spotted Beth and the Hammonds at a table near the bar, sharing an antipasto platter.
    “I’m glad you didn’t wait,” Carter said, bending down to kiss Beth on the cheek.
    “It never even occurred to us,” Ben said, spearing an olive.
    Carter laughed, pulled out the empty chair, and sat down. There was a half-empty carafe of white wine on the table, and he poured himself a glass. Ben was still in his banker’s suit, and Abbie—who worked at an ad agency whose name Carter could never remember—was also in a suit, though hers was red with white piping around the lapels and collar. To Carter, she looked like she was auditioning for the role of Santa’s wife.
    “What’s in the FedEx?” Abbie said. “You’re clutching it like it’s a winning lottery ticket.”
    “Oh, just some work I need to get done later tonight.”
    But Beth, who could read him like a book, tilted her head and gave him a curious smile; there was more to it, she knew, than that.
    “What are all these?” Carter asked, hoping to change the subject and gesturing at a bunch of photographs spread out on the table. In one, he could see a winding country road, in another an old farmhouse with a wide front porch.
    “They bought a country house,” Beth said, with enthusiasm. “Upstate.”
    “In Hudson,” Abbie said, proudly. “With four acres of land and an old apple orchard.”
    “And don’t forget the barn falling down in back,” Ben added.
    “That’s terrific,” Carter said, studying the photo of the house, which looked small but well maintained, with a range of low mountains off in the distance behind it. “I’ve been meaning to get out of the city more, I just never had a place to go.” He looked at Ben and Abbie and said, “Thank you so much. I’ll bring my own marshmallows.”
    “Don’t forget the graham crackers and Hershey bars,” Abbie said.
    Beth raised her glass in a toast. “To the landed gentry!”
    “Salud!” they all said, clinking glasses as the waiter approached with the menus.
    After hearing the specials and ordering, the Hammonds went on some more about the house; they’d been looking for a place for months—“we’ve really needed a place outside the city,” Abbie said, “to unwind”—but Carter thought he knew the real, unspoken reason for getting the house. It was meant to serve as a distraction from the problems they were having starting a family—and he could certainly relate to that. In fact, before very long, Beth and Abbie had fallen into their own conversation about Dr. Weston (it was Abbie who had consulted with him first). They lowered their heads toward each other and spoke intensely—and not for the first time Carter found himself admiring the depth of their friendship. As far as he could tell, there was nothing under the sun that Beth and Abbie couldn’t talk about with each other—and probably nothing that they hadn’t. They’d met as roommates at Barnard, and been best friends ever since. Even when Beth went to England for a year to study art history at the Courtauld Institute, Abbie snagged a Sloan Fellowship at the London School of Art. Her original goal had been to be an artist herself, an abstract expressionist, the next Lee Krasner, but things hadn’t worked out that way, and she’d had to settle instead for a lucrative but spiritually less rewarding position as an art director for an ad agency.
    Ben and Carter were just the appendages in this relationship, and they both knew it. While their wives laughed and chattered, and continued to confer in lowered tones, Carter and Ben searched