The afternoon she was getting on a plane to go to New Orleans, Carmen stopped in the Apple store downtown to switch her service from her old phone to the new one that Tibby had left for her.

She had to wait in line, and then wait endlessly for the so-called genius salesperson to transfer all her contacts, so that by the time she got out of there she was running really late.

She saw as she raced back to the loft that the black town car was already waiting to take her to the airport. She finished packing in a hurry. She went down to the car and then raced up to the loft again when she realized she’d forgotten her makeup bag. By the time the car pulled onto the FDR Drive she was half an hour later than she should have been.

It ought to be fine, Carmen told herself. Travel departments always loaded on extra time. She immediately thought to pass the time checking her email and making calls, but the new phone was not booting up properly. She turned it off. Maybe AT&T needed a little time to switch the service. Her fingers itched.

She grabbed a copy of People magazine from the seat pocket. She remembered how much she used to love these gossipy magazines. At Williams, between Dostoyevsky and Marx, she’d be gobbling up Us Weekly and OK! She’d believed they were faithfully recording the magical world of celebrity. But the more she knew the business, the less she enjoyed the magazines. Every page she turned, she saw the manipulations, the gears showing. She saw how much of the coverage was bartered and bought. She used to look at the red carpet pictures and be dazzled, but now she saw Botox and fake teeth, starvation and double-sided tape.

Maybe they lost their thrill the day she had seen herself in one of the pictures. It was a red carpet photo of her at the Golden Globes, and it probably looked as glamorous as the next one to the outside eye. But when she saw it all she could think of was the sweat that had been dripping down her back, the gross taste in her mouth from not eating for three days, the tape holding up her dress, her confusion at photographers barking her name, the smile pasted on her face. There had been nothing magical about it.

“What time is your flight?” the driver asked her.

Carmen looked up. “Uh. Five forty-five, I think?” She looked at her dead phone. The flight time was on the phone. The airline and terminal information was on the phone. She wondered what time it was. Damn, that was on the phone too. The phone company might as well have switched off her brain while they were at it.

“That might be tough,” he said.

“What?” Now that he mentioned it, it did seem as though the car hadn’t moved in a while. She looked out the window. She scooted up to look through the front windshield. “What’s going on?”

“There must be an accident. Nobody’s moving.”

She could see the Triboro Bridge in the distance, but there were about a million other cars between them and it. She heard sirens behind them, trying to get through. The lanes of the FDR were so packed, no cars could get over to make way for them. A blast of honking began.

At last she spotted an old-fashioned clock on the dashboard. It was almost five. “Can you get off this?” she asked.

The driver looked over his shoulder at her. He couldn’t get anywhere. It was too stupid a question to answer.

She tried to turn her phone on again, but it turned itself off. Was it the battery? Where could she charge it?

Another twenty minutes passed, and no one moved except two police cars and an ambulance that finally broke the sclerosis. “Shit,” Carmen said, as she did every couple of minutes. She stared at the phone in rising panic. What could she do? She couldn’t call the airline, she couldn’t call her manager, she couldn’t call the travel contact. What had anybody ever done before they had iPhones?

She read every page of People, including the weird ads in the back. At five forty-five she paused and raised her head to acknowledge officially missing her flight.

“What do you want to do?” the driver asked.

“I guess go to the airport,” she said. She felt like half a person without a phone to wield. “I’ll have to catch a later flight.”

The only saving grace was the fact that the official meeting wasn’t until Tuesday. She’d simply have to absorb the local culture at a slightly faster rate.

She read The New York Times and even the Financial Times, God help her. She didn’t get out of the car and into the airport until seven twenty. She went to the Delta counter and put herself at their mercy.

“Please just get me on the next flight to New Orleans,” she said.

The Delta woman seemed to push every button on her keyboard at least a hundred times. “The next flight I can get you on is Tuesday afternoon.”

“What?”

“I’m afraid so.” She pushed a few more buttons.

“It’s only Saturday. How can that be?”

She shrugged. “Can’t say.”

“Are you sure?”

She looked down at her screen again. Her name was Daisy and she had a very cheap dye job. Carmen could not afford to start hating her yet. “Sorry. Most of these are overbooked.”

“Can you check another airline for me?”

“Well, I can’t really.…”

“Please?” Carmen felt like she might vault over the desk and hijack the computer herself. She ached for some digital interaction.

“All right, let me look,” Daisy said. She looked, shook her head, looked, shook her head. Carmen hated the sound of her fingernails clacking on the keys. Why did somebody who typed on a keyboard for a living grow such farcically long nails?

“What?” Carmen finally exploded bossily.

Daisy picked up her phone. She mumbled a few things and nodded a few more times. Finally she looked at Carmen. “There’s some big music festival in New Orleans this weekend into next week. That seems to be what’s going on. Nobody’s got any seats until Tuesday.”

“Nobody?”

“Nobody.”

“What should I do?” Carmen wished she had somebody better than Daisy to throw her lot to.

Daisy seemed to wish she had somebody better than Carmen to assist. “Wait till Tuesday?”

“I can’t wait until Tuesday!” Carmen exploded. “I have a meeting on Tuesday! It is the biggest meeting of my entire career.”

Even Daisy was a human being. “You could drive.”

“I don’t have a car.”

“You could rent one.”

“I can’t drive for a million hours by myself!” She wasn’t even so sure she had a valid license. She drove about twice a year, when she went home to see her mom and David and Ryan.

Daisy gave her a look of maternal sympathy. Carmen realized you could turn almost anyone into a mother if you acted like enough of a baby. “Could you get a train?” Daisy asked.

“Is there a train to New Orleans?” Carmen had effectively forgotten the existence of trains. She used to like trains. She once took the sleeping train to see her father in South Carolina, and she’d found it pretty thrilling.

“Sure. There must be. It would take a while.”

“Can you look for me?”

“Can I?”

“Sure. On your computer.”

“You’d probably do better to call Amtrak.”

Would it help or hurt if Carmen started crying? “I don’t have a phone. It’s not working.”

Daisy looked around to see if there was danger of someone catching her engaging in a non-plane-related travel search. Carmen suddenly loved Daisy.

Daisy opened up the Internet browser on her computer and tapped a few things in. She raised her eyebrows. “Well, believe it or not, there’s a train leaving Penn Station at nine fifty-nine tonight that gets you into New Orleans at … five fifteen in the morning.”

“Tomorrow morning?”

“Monday morning.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No.” Daisy made an understanding face. “You’d make your meeting.”

Carmen considered. She’d do her local absorption at warp speed. What choice did she have?

“It’s almost eight now. You probably ought to get going,” Daisy counseled.

“Okay. You’re right. Well, thanks.”

“Good luck to you,” Daisy said sincerely.

Carmen looked over her shoulder several times as she left the terminal. She found it strangely difficult to say goodbye to Daisy, and she wondered if maybe this meant she was lonely.

Lena walked along the river. Over the last few days, she’d taken many walks along the river. It was freezing, but she didn’t feel it. It might have been hailing. The river might have leapt out of its banks and taken her under and she might not have noticed it.

What would she do? What would he do? No, no, no. What would she do? (What would he do?)

Stop! That wasn’t what she got to decide. She only got to decide what she did. This was a version of the prisoner’s dilemma: a lover’s dilemma. She had to do what she was going to do regardless of what he was going to do. She had to do the right thing.

She thought back to something Effie had told her once long ago when it came to taking a risk on Kostos. You have to have some faith, Effie had said.

But Effie hadn’t meant faith in Kostos, Lena realized. Not faith that Kostos would be there to meet her and throw his arms around her and want her more than anyone else. Effie meant faith in herself. Faith that even if he didn’t come, she would be all right. She had to have faith not just in trying, but in failing. Was she strong enough to fail? Was she strong enough not to?

“I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you can make this phone work in the next ten minutes,” Carmen thundered at the pimply young man in the phone store two blocks from Penn Station.

“We close in five minutes, ma’am,” the pimply young man answered.

Carmen glared at him. Where was the ambition? Where was the greed? This country was going down the tubes if this kid was any indication. “I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you can make it work in the next five minutes,” she said slowly.

He looked scared of her. He was no Daisy. His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I could try.”

“Please try.” Was she going to have to tell him about being on TV? She didn’t want to, but that sometimes worked on guys like him.

He turned her phone on. He pushed a couple of buttons and then the home key. “I don’t see anything wrong with it,” he said.

“Are you serious?”

He pointed it at her. She snatched it from him.

“You don’t have to pay me the hundred bucks,” he said magnanimously.

“Thanks,” she snapped, walking out the door.

She managed to buy her train ticket on her credit card without incident. There were no roomettes available, she discovered, but there was a car called the dinette where she could eat.

She passed by the newsstand and looked at the fashion magazines. She didn’t need them. Her phone was working, she’d be fine. She could read the script, she could make calls. She could write emails and plan her wedding. She could play that game where you landed the airplanes. With a functioning phone in her hand she felt her confidence slowly returning.

She got on the train with time to spare. She put her head back and closed her eyes. It was hard to believe she’d had all these reversals without telling Jones about any of them. He was always the one she complained to first. He understood her bumbling and faltering. He seemed to expect it.

Carmen felt happy to have two seats to herself on the dark train. She was happy that there was no one in the seats directly across from her or behind her. If she could keep her phone charged then maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

She dozed a little until Newark, when the train stopped and more people got on. She put her big purse on the seat next to her. She watched a trickle of people come down the aisle, most of them, thankfully, passing her by. Finally a small group straggled up next to her. It was a man with a small boy and a baby. He was eyeing the seats directly across the aisle from her. Please don’t sit there, she thought. She overheard the man talking in Spanish to his son.

Her heart sank as they settled in. She listened to the boy chirp excitedly to his father. Oh, God. How long before the baby woke up and started screaming? She wondered if she could get her seat reassigned. This was really the last thing she needed.

Eight days remained before the fateful meeting was meant to take place, five days before Lena was meant to open Tibby’s last letter, and there was something Lena was doing, hour after hour, day after day, and it didn’t feel right. She’d done it in her studio apartment and she’d done it alone and with far too much ease. It was the grueling habit she meant to overturn, and yet she had no choice but to do more of it: it was waiting.

But what else could she do? She felt unusually fitful, jumpy, and impulsive, yet she was stuck in a holding pattern and didn’t know what to do other than fret and fret and fret and wait.

Many times she thought of reading back over the twenty precious letters Kostos had written, but something stopped her. I don’t want to turn those into memories, like everything else with him. She didn’t want them enshrined as further exhibits in the Lena and Kostos memorial museum. Maybe they would end up there, but she wanted them to stay real for at least a while longer.

She stared at Tibby’s sealed envelope and had the strangest idea. What if she opened it right now? What if she didn’t wait?

Could I just do that?

She felt a weird gonging in her head. She ripped the envelope open so fast she almost shredded the letter inside.

My dearest Lena,
I know I’ve made a blunt and probably unwelcome maneuver to wrest control of your life from you. And I know that you’ll know that, misguided as it may be, it’s out of love.
You don’t have time, Len. That is the most bitter and the most beautiful piece of advice I can offer. If you don’t have what you want now, you don’t have what you want.
I know you’ve always hated an either-or decision. You always want to choose Option C, as you call it, the third way, which too often, my sweet Lenny, means no way at all. And here I am demanding A or B.
I’ll be honest and tell you I want you to choose A. I feel like I understand 
Kostos. I don’t think he’s forgotten you. I think he’s waiting too. He’s holding back, because he knows if he comes to you he’ll scare you off. And if he comes to you, there will always be doubt. You have to come half the way. I didn’t think anybody could comprehend you and love you as well as we Septembers do, Lenny, but Kostos impresses me.
If you choose B, I promise to leave you alone, not to haunt you with further letters or demands. I promise I’ll leave Kostos alone too. (And really, what choice do I have?) There will be no doubt or disappointment from me wherever I am. You can free yourself of that notion. Because you will have chosen your path and not put it off any longer, and that’s all I really want.
Maybe you think you’ll be entitled to more happiness later by forgoing all of it now, but it doesn’t work that way. Happiness takes as much practice as unhappiness does. It’s by living that you live more. By waiting you wait more. Every waiting day makes your life a little less. Every lonely day makes you a little smaller. Every day you put off your life makes you less capable of living it. Sorry to pontificate, my 
friend, but my body is giving out and that’s where my head is today.
(I admit to a secret wish that you’ll open this letter before the date on the back.)
Live for me, my friend Lenny, because I can’t anymore, and God, how I wish I could.

Two things happened over the next hour that made Carmen want to wrench open her window and jump off the train to her doom.

First was the crying. Just when Carmen had reclined her chair as far as it would go, gotten herself a pillow and a blanket from Coach Attendant Kevin, as his name tag said, and closed her eyes to rest, it started. First it was little barks a few seconds apart. They got closer and closer together until they turned into full-on crying.

You’ve got to be kidding, she thought. She cast a narrow-eyed look at the man, presumably the baby’s father. Now that she thought of it, where was the mother of this group? Had she come on with them? Maybe she was in the bathroom and when she got back she could make the baby be quiet.

The second thing was the phone. Once Carmen was awake on account of the crying and there seemed no hope of going to sleep, on account of the crying, she grabbed her phone. But when she tried to wake it up it stayed black. It’s all right, don’t panic, she counseled herself. It was a slightly temperamental phone, was all. She held down the home button for a while. Still black. Okay, it was the charge. She unwound the charger and thankfully found an outlet. She plugged it in and waited. Sometimes this could take a minute or two. She knew the stubborn biorhythms of these phones better than the ones of her own body.

At last it lived. The little waiting circle spun and then the screen lit up. And when she saw the icon on the screen, the fear began, like the beat of a slow drum against the horror-movie sound track of the screaming baby.

There glowed the dreaded icon that instructed you to plug your phone into your iTunes mother ship or you were screwed. Well, she had no iTunes to plug into. The mother ship was sitting in the living room of her loft, giant-screened and cutting-edge and of no help to anyone. This daughter-phone was not so independent as she liked to pretend.

Carmen turned it off and turned it on again with no feeling of hope whatsoever. Same icon.

“Shit,” Carmen muttered. She would have felt guilty about cursing near children, but they were the ones who should have felt guilty. “Shit,” she said again. Her mind raced for possible solutions. Whom could she whine to? Whom could she bribe? Whom could she charm?

No one. She was down to zeroes and ones, and they really didn’t care about her. She loved her phone, but her phone did not love her back.She thought of Tibby with a feeling of pique. Some gift this was. And then she felt horrified. How could she be irritated at Tibby, who was dead?

She realized she was sweating. Her heart was pounding. She couldn’t call anyone! She couldn’t text anyone! She couldn’t read the script! She needed desperately to call Jones and tell him she couldn’t call him.

She looked up at the ceiling. She looked out at the darkness, at the billows of dark steamy pollution, at the grim lights of industrial New Jersey or Delaware or wherever she was. She couldn’t spend thirty-two more hours on this train with no one to talk to and nothing to do. She couldn’t.

You can’t kill yourself over a phone, a sane voice in her head pointed out. Oh, yes, you can, a less sane voice answered.

She laid her head back on her pillow and tried to breathe deeply. She tried to steady her heart. Every little trick she had for self-comfort hit a wall. Call her mother? No. Check the weather? No. Update her Facebook status? No. Google her rivals? No. Find her horoscope? No.

Like a drug addict, she felt the itches and the tremors that made her want to claw her own skin. Like a drug addict, she found herself grasping at any fix no matter how self-destructive: she could get off in Baltimore and buy a new phone—who cared if she missed her meeting! She could offer a thousand dollars to anyone on the train who would sell her theirs! Better, she could steal one! Who cared that it wouldn’t have her mail or her contacts? Who cared that the only numbers she knew by heart were Lena’s, Bee’s, and Tibby’s?

Like a drug addict, Carmen felt waves of nausea and despair throughout the night. She might have seen hallucinations of spiders, she wasn’t sure.

At some point in her misery, she realized that the baby had gone quiet and the mother still hadn’t come back.