The entire cast and crew of the Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy will be vacationing “in an undisclosed location” from Saturday, July 29, 2023, through Sunday, August 6, 2023. The serialization will resume on Monday, August 7, 2023.

     Once upon a time, we knew a couple who seemed quite content in their life together, but read on. After fourteen years of marriage, they began a little game, something the husband discovered in his idle reading. The Romans, he learned, had a custom of marking each day as happy or unhappy by dropping a white or black pebble into an urn. To the husband this sounded like fun. ...

THEY REACH THE CORNER in silence. Then Liz stops and turns on Matthew a look he takes for sadness. Actually it’s the look that people employ when they have to convey bad news to someone toward whom they feel bottomless enmity. “Listen, Matthew,” she says, “I guess I’m kind of on edge. You know? It’s an unsettling period for me. Exciting, but unsettling. I’m a nervous wreck, to tell you the truth. And then seeing you again — and everything.” ...

     Liz sits in silence, fuming. She looks around the room. Matthew sees defiance in her eyes, as if she were daring anyone to look at her, to register any acknowledgment of the little scene. In the mirror, he scans the room himself, to see if anyone is registering any acknowledgment. ...

     A waiter is suddenly at their side. “One of you wanted an order of bouillabaisse stir-fry?” he asks. “Oh, God. What jerks,” says Liz. Matthew has the fleeting impression that she’s about to cry. “We did order it, but I canceled the order,” says Matthew. The waiter stands looking at him with no expression. ...

     “I asked her for a spoon, and I told her to bring you some of this bouillabaisse stir-fry.”     “Oh, you didn’t.” “I did. You’ll like it. You don’t like that stuff. Why should you have to eat something you don’t like?” ...

FOR A WHILE Liz and Matthew sit in silence and eat. Matthew is eating something really delicious, a concoction of the chef, identified on the menu as “bouillabaisse stir-fry over angel-hair pasta.” He ordered it partly out of incredulity, but he’s finding, to his surprise, that the chef swims very well. ...

MATTHEW LOOKS down at his glass. The drink does not quite cover the olive. “I should have ordered another martini,” he says.     “Here, have some of mine,” says Liz.     “I don’t want some of yours. I want one of my own. A full one.”     “You know something, Matthew? You drink too much.”     “This from the woman who passed out on my couch a couple of weeks ago?”...

     She glances around the room, to give the appearance that she has no intention of speaking further, but her glance falls on the angular beauty and she discovers that the angular beauty is looking at her, so she turns back to Matthew in self-defense. She finds him staring at her. He’s wondering whether he ought to tell her that she doesn’t play the game of waiting to be asked what she means as well as she used to when she smoked. ...

     Two fire trucks pull up outside the restaurant, lights flashing, but without sirens. Red light sweeps the length of the restaurant, again, again, again. The waif leads a beautiful young couple into the dining room. The woman is slender and extraordinary. She has the kind of cool beauty that has always attracted and intimidated Matthew. ...