The One That Isn’t Moving

Kettleman was at his best in a crisis. No level of human travail was too profound for his timely interventions. If a friend had the flu, Kettleman was there with chicken soup. If the troubled roommate of a former girlfriend was addicted to pills, Kettleman took her in, fed her, and kept her drug-dealing boyfriend at bay while he gave her the strength to resist her fierce cravings. And if she repaid his kindness by ransacking his apartment and selling his expensive speakers for dope, Kettleman forgave her and got her into rehab. He was, in the truest sense of the word, a foul-weather friend. So, when Connor’s wife, Marla, called, as chirpy as if they had spoken six minutes ago rather than six months ago, and said let’s meet at Vesuvio’s for lunch, Kettleman A: knew that she meant Café Roma because she always confused the two, and B: said sure, without getting into anything too heavy with her over the phone.

In the division of assets that follows divorce, Kettleman’s ex-wife, Lenore, had glommed onto Connor and Marla, though her annexation seemed more like a campaign for electoral votes than friendship. Thus, Kettleman knew only the bits of information he’d gleaned from Connor regarding Marla’s slippage back into the troubles that had plagued her when the four of them had been inseparable. At first, random food items began appearing in their refrigerator, for which Marla’s explanations had been vague and cheerfully implausible. Then came her day-long disappearances, and lately the random...