The Orange Line

She Always Put On makeup at the kitchen table, and she still used Fabulon, sent regularly from Budapest by her mother. Her supplies would eventually run out since Colgate-Palmolive had announced plans to close the factory in Dorog next year. When that happened, she would make do. She was not one of those Eastern Europeans who clung to relics of their preimmigrant lives—sleeping, as her one Hungarian acquaintance in Boston did, on a Communist-era bed with a crevasse in the middle, which allowed it to metamorphose into a sofa during the daytime—but she’d continued to use Fabulon because it agreed with her skin. She applied it sparingly: a dab of moisturizing cream on her cheeks and neck, a touch of lip gloss, a little mascara.

When she finished it was almost noon. For a while she’d struggled to maintain the schedule she adhered to when she had a family to look after, rising at six thirty to prepare breakfast: bacon, eggs, and big, fluffy Southern biscuits for Mason, who always took the 7:42 from Melrose Highlands; French toast, rice pudding, or fresh pastries for Annushka, who could easily have walked to school but would never have made it on time unless her mother drove her, so more often than not Kamilla did. Now she could sleep as long as she wanted. And she was finding that she wanted to sleep a lot.

When she stepped onto the porch, she saw a Mayflower truck backed into the driveway of the house across the street, both of her neighbors’ BMWs parked at the curb. Two brawny men were carrying out the largest flat-screen TV she’d ever seen, and right behind them came two more movers with an only slightly smaller version. Mason had once remarked that if he stood in just the right spot in his own living room, he could see a great close-up of Tom Brady from a distance of two hundred feet. At least one TV—sometimes two or three—was on over there at any hour of the day or night. No wonder they were getting divorced.

She’d originally planned to drive to meet Mason’s friend, but the weather forecast was terrible, and as this was a Friday, the traffic exiting the city in late afternoon was sure to be brutal. So she decided to park at Oak Grove and take the Orange Line to Back Bay. She didn’t really want to go, but for the past few months she hadn’t been able to find anything she really wanted to do. Novels failed to hold her attention; she dozed during movies. Lately, even Tokaj didn’t taste right.

At twenty till one, after a pot of room-service Starbucks, he checked his silenced phone and counted the missed calls: one from the main number at the Commercial Appeal—probably his editor—two from Diane, one from his daughter, and one from the sports information director at Boston College. Four voice mails. In the first, left about three hours ago, Diane said, “Nickie, something’s wrong with the car. I can’t get it to start.” In the second, about five minutes later, she said, “Never mind. I must have forgotten to put it in park before turning it off last night. Love you.” In the third, his daughter, a grad student at Vanderbilt, said, “Daddy, Mama’s pretty upset. She can’t get the car started.” In the fourth and final, left while he was in the shower, the BC SID launched his sportscaster voice: “Hello, Nick. Just wanted to make sure you got in OK, got your credentials and so on. Let me know if you need anything. Up until kickoff tomorrow, we’re here to please.”

He tried Diane, but his call went straight to voice mail, so he got dressed, stuck the phone in his pocket, and headed for the elevators.

He’d visited Boston only once before, in 1979, and his companion on that trip had been Mason Carlyle. Back then, just out of Ole Miss, they were traveling up the...