We found that the restaurant where we intended to eat was closed; that is, it had ceased to exist. It had gone out of business. It had become a vacancy where a restaurant once had been. The restaurant that formerly had filled the vacancy had been an attractive little place. It had long appealed to us, but for one reason or another we had never entered it. Now we never would. Intimations of mortality hung heavy in the air.
    “What about that little place—” Miranda suggested.
    “Around the corner?” I offered.
    “Yes.”
    “Bar 6?”
    “That’s it!”
    Arriving at Bar 6 moments later, we took a table all the way at the back of the dining room, in the corner at the right as you face the back wall. Across the narrow room, in the corresponding corner on the left as you face the back wall, two women sat with papers spread in front of them. They were looking at the papers, but they weren’t saying anything. Finally, one of them, the one who was younger, not as well dressed, and more nervous, said, hesitantly, “I bought you a necklace.”
    “You what?”
    “I bought you a necklace.”
    “You bought me a necklace?”
    “I bought you a necklace.”
    The older, better dressed, and less nervous one looked at her, first quizzically, then doubtfully.
    “I lost it,” said the first one, looking down.
    “What kind of bullshit is this?”
    “It’s not bullshit—”
    “You bought me a necklace but you lost it? That is bullshit. That is the definition of bullshit. You didn’t buy me a necklace.”
    “I did—”
    “Look, you have got to get ready for this presentation. Focus.”
    “It was a pendant.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “It’s not bullshit. It was a garnet. Pear-shaped. On a gold chain.”
    “A garnet is not my birthstone.”
    “But you like that color. It’s like a ruby.”
    “A ruby is much more valuable than a garnet.”
    “It’s the thought that counts.”
    “No, it is not the thought that counts. If it were the thought that counted, you could have pretended that you bought me a fucking ruby. Then you could have told me that you lost the necklace with the ruby pendant.”
    “You wouldn’t have believed a ruby.”
    “I don’t believe a garnet.”
    The two of them burst out laughing.
    “We’ve got to get to work,” said the older, better dressed, less nervous one.