Perhaps because this is my brother’s adopted city I too have begun to consider it my home away from home. How else to explain the relief I feel at being back here again, with my brother and ten of his friends at their favorite restaurant in the West Village. I don’t think I need to point out just how solitary touring can be. I try to compensate for this, as you know. I try, very, very hard. But there are times when I wonder how many years of this I will be able to take. Were I playing in an orchestra it might be different. I would have my group of friends traveling with me. Maybe not all of them friends, but all of them familiar faces. Whereas playing the part of the lone pianist all the time…it goes against my nature. I should have chosen the clarinet. I am telling this to the neighbor on my right at the restaurant. She is the sister of a friend of Rapha’s and is looking very sympathetic, unable to bring the moule of her moules frites all the way up to her lips, so moved is she by my sad story. I should have ordered her dish. My cassoulet is a disappointment—which shouldn’t really surprise me in an American French restaurant, whereas the smell of hers is intoxicating. Not hard to accomplish when making a recipe where the primary flavors are white wine and garlic. All the more reason why I should have ordered it. I am willing her hand to move just a few centimeters in my direction so that the mussel currently stranded in mid-air can find a safe landing spot at the center of my tongue, when a message from my brother pops up on my watch. He has mistaken my lust for my neighbor’s shellfish for something else, apparently, and sent me a single word warning from his phone. I catch his eye across the table and shake my head to convey my confusion, though of course he is unable in the moment to expound on the meaning of his cryptic text. Instead, he rolls his eyes and turns his attention back to his girlfriend who appears to be sitting on his lap. You’ll remember the one. Lily is her name. She of the ear-splitting voice. I believe we have her to thank for clearing out the restaurant, as we have the place to ourselves now. My silent pleas have prevailed and my dinner companion has surrendered the remainder of her dish to me. I don’t feel guilty as it is quite obvious from the circumference of her waist and thighs that she never had any intention of eating more than two mussels and four french fries. I don’t need to ask her what she does for a living to know she must be some sort of model. Certainly she is not an academic like the rest of them. “With a baby at home I have to be careful,” she says, by way of explanation, I suppose, as she slides her dish over to me. All this statement explains is Rapha’s text: she has a baby, ie. she is unavailable, ie. stay away, ie. NO. I cast a critical eye at my brother, which he would read as, “What kind of sex-obsessed predator do you take me for?” if he were not so focused on whatever it is he is doing with his girlfriend’s hair. Is he looking for lice? Or perhaps his wallet? I resume the conversation with my neighbor and ask what I imagine she has been desperate for me to ask. “And how old is your child? You don’t look like you’ve had a baby recently…” Come on. It’s not because she is married and has her little family that it means I am not allowed to compliment her. Don’t be so American. “Baby definitely keeps me on my toes,” she replies, with that happy, faux-exasperation unique to new mothers. “‘Baby’? Is this their name?” I ask in all seriousness, which causes her to burst out laughing. She has found me so funny that even Stentor over there has had to stop her yelling to take note of what is happening at my end of the table. “No…” the new mother eventually manages to say between giggles. “I just call him that.” I am struck by the frustrating discovery that this woman, already pretty to look at when frowning at her shellfish, is truly beautiful when she laughs. I cannot let Raphaël know what I am thinking; especially as he is at this very moment staring me down from his side of the table. I therefore raise the subject of dessert to the general population and manage to create a distraction. I feel my watch buzz with two new messages which I judiciously ignore. My brother can be dramatic sometimes, not to mention rude. Sending messages like this while we are at the dinner table. What would our grandmother say? For a few minutes the conversation did meld to include everyone around the table. But, with the arrival of our desserts, we have quietly reverted back to our private conversations. I am cracking open the caramelized shell of my creme brûlée with the side of my spoon, wondering how best to pose this next question. Doing my best to appear impartial, I ask, “Your husband, he is with the baby tonight?” realizing too late, as my neighbor furrows her eyebrows disapprovingly, that I have made a huge faux-pas in asking a question so laden with outdated assumptions. “Forgive me,” I rush to say before she can reply, “I meant the baby’s other parent. Your partner. Your co-parent. Your—” She is not without mercy, lovely creature that she is. It is the hormones of early motherhood (I have witnessed it before), flooding her heart with the patience and indulgence necessary to endure those trying first months with a small child. With eyes brimming over with mirth she places her left hand on my right and says, “Relax. I was just gonna tell you I’m a single mom…of sorts…” She winks as she says this and runs a contemplative finger down the fold of her white cloth napkin. I don’t need to explain why it is impossible to ask whether this single-motherhood of hers was a deliberate choice, though I am dying to know how this has happened. She seems a bit too savvy, a bit too cool, to have fallen pregnant “by accident.” Too charming and sweet to have been abandoned by an asshole boyfriend—though this is the likeliest scenario, because she is definitely too young to have felt compelled, with no suitable partner in sight, to have this baby artificially placed inside of her. But then, what the hell do I know? She looks twenty-five, she could be forty-five. She could be a widow. She could be a widower. There are a hundred more possibilities which I am too ignorant, too biased, too prejudiced to even conceive of. You see why I cannot ask… It does occur to me the answer may be right at my fingertips in the form of those messages sent by my brother. Though I know perfectly well what they say. It is obvious: I know Raphaël and I know how he thinks. He has warned me not to lead this girl on because she is a single-mother, raising a child alone in an expensive city, desperate to find a father for her young son. Because no matter how much we try to say that we have evolved as a society, the problems of today remain the same as the problems of yesterday. I raise my wine glass and smile at my conscientious, thoughtful, and wise older brother. It is his turn to appear confused. “Do you feel like sneaking off to have a drink with me at my favorite bar?” I hear whispered into my right ear. My poor brother. With all of his scruples, I wonder how many of life’s simple joys have passed him by? It has not even occurred to him that this girl may not be on the prowl for a husband and father for her child at all, but just in the mood for a quick fuck in a public restroom. I am correct, of course. Only not about the public restroom. Her adorable little nose scrunches up at this notion. Instead she suggests we go to her apartment around the corner, and sends a quick message to the baby-sitter, I assume, to warn them of our imminent arrival...