“Dude!” I say, and he laughs. “You haven’t even tried to kiss her yet, and yet you think it’s going to work to write her a note asking her to marry you? See? I do not understand males!”

Oops. I hope he’s not going to wonder how I know he hasn’t kissed her yet. But it doesn’t even cross his mind to wonder.

“Trust me, it’s going to work out,” he says. “She’ll think it over, and she’ll remember all the good times we used to have years ago, and she’ll think of the future . . . and then by the time I show up there ready to kiss her, she’ll say yes.”

After that, I can see there’s hardly any argument I have that’s going to hold any appeal for William Sullivan, so I sit down at the table, and he tells me to write that she is beautiful and kind and that when he is out with her in the world, he can’t stop smiling. He wants me to tell her that he lives for the times he drives to see her, and for that moment when she opens the door. And that when she was sick, he was also sick—sick with worry—which is why when he showed up at the hospital, he maybe told too many jokes when he should have listened.

Then he leans across the table with his eyes dancing. “Say that I’m peanut butter and she’s jelly,” he says. “And that she’ll never have to go to the hospital alone again.”

“Really?”

“Okay, now say she’s the bees in my knees and the cats in my pajamas.”

I write it down, smiling. “This is starting to sound a little sketchy, but okay.”

On the speaker by the cash register, Frank Sinatra starts singing “All of Me,” and William Sullivan makes me write, “So I am asking now for your hand in marriage. Please make me the happiest man in the world and marry me. With love and sincerity, William Sullivan.”

“Both names, really?” I say.

“Both names. When your name is William, you have to be specific.” He is smiling, ear to ear. “Write William Sullivan if you please.”

“Okay, dude. Done!” I write it down and hand it to him to look over. He reads it very solemnly, and clears his throat a few times, says it’s fine.

“I kind of like it when you call me dude,” he says. And then fear seizes him again and he says, “I hope this works. And now if you’d kindly address it to Lola Dunleavy. Here, let me get the exact address out of my pocket.”

And that’s when I have to tell him the truth—that I know Lola and love her already. “She’s my neighbor,” I say, and his face breaks open in a smile when I tell him I see his car when he comes to pick her up.

“Do you think I have a shot?” he says.

“You always have a shot,” I tell him. “Of course! Of course!”

I tell him that, in fact, Lola is going to be at my house on Thanksgiving for dinner, and we come up with a plan. We decide that the flowers should be delivered on Thanksgiving morning, and if she accepts him, then he’ll come over to my house, too. If it’s no, he’ll go back home, eat his turkey dinner in a diner somewhere.

We smile at each other, and then I come out from behind the counter and hug him. He’s a bit reserved at first, and I say, “Dude, you can hug me. We wrote a love letter together, and that means I’m on your team,” and then he gets into the hug.

It’s raining outside, and he leaves Best Buds looking like he’s one umbrella away from performing “Singing in the Rain” right out there on Bedford Avenue.

THIRTY-SIX

MARNIE

So I do a spell for Sammy.

It’s not a big one. But it feels big to me. I clip off some rosemary and basil from the plants on Blix’s windowsill, and grind the leaves with a mortar and pestle I find under the sink. Then, when I’m in Best Buds the next time, I collect some petals of wild pansies (for love) and some hibiscus blossoms (for fidelity), and I mix everything up together.

The spell book didn’t tell me any words to say, but Sammy says we have to say something. So, at his insistence, we close our eyes and hold hands and say some magic-sounding words, calling on the forces of love and forgiveness and happiness for everyone. He makes me laugh when he shouts, “Hocus-pocus!”

Best of all, he and I sit together while he practices his flute and I sew a little pocket out of red silk. (Red for passion.) He’ll put that in his mother’s purse and have her carry it to the concert, I tell him.

“But what about my dad? We need him to be in the spell, too,” he points out.

So then I grind up more flowers and leaves and sew them in another red pocket, and Sammy says he’ll put that in his dad’s car.

We do a high five.

“But the most important thing is what you’re doing,” I say. “Right? The flute, and the love you beam right over to them.”

The school auditorium is packed with parents and grandparents, all buzzing around and smiling and waving. There’s an excited hum about the place. Jessica saved me a seat right next to hers, and I get there to find her waving and smiling and motioning me over.

Her cheeks are bright pink, and she looks beautiful, with her long hair in loose, shiny curls. Andrew will melt when he sees her. “Look at this program! It turns out that he’s not only playing the flute,” she says, “but he’s also reading a poem. A poem he wrote! He didn’t tell me that, the little scamp. Oh my God, I may have to be carried out of here.” She starts fanning herself with the program.

“That’s actually wonderfully cool,” I say. “You look beautiful, by the way. I think you should relax if you possibly can, because all this is going to be fine.”

Jessica is smiling. “It would be more cool if I’d gotten to see the poem first.”

“Hmm. Maybe not.”

I turn the program over and over in my hands. And even though the spell book told me that you have to do a spell and then release it and not worry, I can’t help it. I keep craning my head around to watch people entering. And finally, finally there’s Andrew arriving, dipping his head just so, humbly standing at the back while he scans the auditorium, and you can just see he’s marinating in his own little sauce of nerves. I see the moment when he spots Jessica—his eyebrows go up—and he starts to head our way.

She says to me, “Don’t let him sit next to me. Is there a woman with him? No, don’t look at him! Is he with someone?”

“It’s hard to look and not look at the same time, but no, I do not believe he has a woman with him.”

“Okay, then. Still, let’s hope he sits somewhere else.”

“He’s not going to sit somewhere else. In fact, he’s almost over here. Smile and be calm.”

When he gets to us—smiling and wearing his usual guilty-but-hopeful expression—I slide over so that he can have the seat next to Jessica. She gives me a look that might be gratitude or it might be hatred: right now those looks are the same.

May you be blessed and bold, I think to him as hard as I can and surround him with white light. May you stop looking so guilty.

He glances down at his program. He fidgets, tells me how he played the flute as a kid, and says he never could have played it in public. He says his kid is braver than almost anyone he knows.

I’m about to ask him if he will come to Thanksgiving dinner, but then the curtain opens, and a teacher gets up and says this is a sacred space when children are performing things they’ve practiced so hard, and he personally will come out into the audience and confiscate any cell phone that happens to ring, and the audience laughs nervously, and then he adds that he will also smash it to pieces, and we all laugh even harder when a man yells out from the audience, “Please! I’m begging you! Take mine!”

Then the music begins and kids tumble out onto the stage, jumping all around, singing songs. Some perform cartwheels and some leapfrog over big beanbag pillows. And they sing about freedom and happiness, and I can’t concentrate on the words because I’m suddenly smiling so hard that my ears aren’t working anymore. The whole stage is a blur of colors and radiance.

When Sammy comes out and does a series of cartwheels across the stage, I sneak a peek at Jessica and see that she is no longer in this hot, hard auditorium; she’s gone someplace else, and Andrew is right there with her. They are smiling at each other! I say this to Blix, who might not hear me, being dead and all.

There are choruses and dances and the bright, shining faces of kids. A group of boys reenacts “Who’s on First.” A girl does an improbable series of handsprings all across the stage to thunderous applause.

And near the end of the show, when the moment comes that Sammy edges over to the front of the stage, I think we are all going to die there. The spotlight beams on him, and oh, he’s such a little boy standing there in the yellow pool of light, so sturdy and yet so vulnerable. He starts out in a wavery voice: “The day my dad moved out I ate a plate of eggs . . .”