Jane Monheit: Good. Really busy. I’m in Georgia right now, in Savannah. We’ve been touring a lot.

How much time do you usually spend in each place?

Well, it depends. If it’s a club, a couple days; if it’s a theater, usually one day. This is a festival, which is a weird situation because we’re playing a venue that’s been created just for the purpose of the festival. I meant to tell you, I’m so sorry I missed you at 54 Below. I was not in town and I couldn’t make it.

I’m playing the Iridium in New York May 8 and 9, but you’re probably not going be there then, either.

I might, actually. I’m not sure, but I’ll come if I’m in town.

But don’t tell me if you’re there, it’ll make me way too nervous. (laughs)

I was nervous when you were at the gig in L.A. Whenever there are other singers in the room you really want to sound good.

It’s funny, I don’t get nervous onstage when I’m acting. It kind of gives me fire and I very often think about the people I know in the house, but there’s something different about singing, in terms of confidence because I haven’t been doing it as steadily as acting. But you’ve been pretty steady just singing your little heart out for how long now?

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Lying on her back in the bathroom on the cool of the white marble tiles, she heard the summons again. Her husband tapped the horn of the car: one long, noisy beep followed by two shorter taps, as if in apology. She strained to close the zipper on a pair of jeans without pinching the soft flesh of her midsection. It was a task she found both onerous and humiliating, primarily since she had purchased the pair less than a month ago, having gone through the same depressing experience with every other pair that lay folded in her dresser. Another short beep to remind her (in case she had forgotten) that her husband and daughter were waiting in the idling car, but this really had been sprung on her, and there might be photos. She wanted to at least make an attempt at presentability. There weren’t many photos of the two of them anymore, not like the early days, before Charlotte was born. Now any photo seemed to be taken from their six-year-old daughter’s height — hardly a flattering angle: the upward tilt of Greta’s crooked smile, and the heavy lower lids of Phillip’s distracted and vaguely startled eyes, as though he didn’t quite expect to find himself there.

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