One Like and She Panicked

Ethan Marsh, 34, has run the tea house on a commercial street for eight years. He speaks little, remembers who drank what, and keeps his hands busy with a pot when a room turns ugly. His wife Vivian is a senior executive at Northstar Media. On a Wednesday, during Walter Boyd's third infusion at 205 degrees, she makes a small public gesture of rejection toward a man she has never bothered to understand, and Ethan answers it in public in a way that makes the gesture real. What follows is not a divorce: divorce is the easy exit and both of them know it. It is six days of two people still in love, locked into public positions neither can retreat from without losing face, while a commercial street of regulars, a returning classmate with fund money, a loyal friend who is honest only when it is expensive, a landlord who has drunk at the same table for six years, and a lawyer who bills by the hour all take their seats and watch. The question is how much of it was performance, and who started performing first.