Girls' poker night : a novel

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Dissatisfied both with writing a "Single Girl on the Edge/Ledge/Verge" lifestyle column and with her boyfriend (whohas a name for his car and compulsively collects plasticbread ties), Ruby Capote sends her best columns and asix-pack of beer to the editor of The New York News andlands herself a new job in a new city.

In New York, Ruby undertakes the venerable tradition ofPoker Night—a way (as men have always known) to eat,drink, smoke, analyze, interrupt one another, share stories,and, most of all, raise the stakes. There's Skorka, model byprofession, homewrecker by vocation; Jenn, willing to crosscounty lines for true love; Danielle, recently divorced,seducer of at least one father/son combo in her quest to makeup for perceived "missed opportunities."

When Ruby falls for her boss, Michael, all bets areoff. He's a challenge. He's her editor. And he wants her tostop being quippy and clever and become the writer—andthe woman—he knows she can be. Adding to Ruby'suncertainty is his amazing yet ambiguous kiss in the eleva-tor, and the enjoy ably torturous impasse of he-loves-me,he-loves-me-not.

What happens when you realize that Mr. Right has hisown unresolved past? Where does that leave the futureyou envisioned? Ruby knows that happy endings aren't forcowards, and she hasn't lost hope that there are risks worthtaking. As smart as it is laugh-out-loud funny, Girls' PokerNight is a twenty-first-century His Girl Friday and a re-freshingly upbeat look at friendship, work, and love.

For their helpfulness and support, great thanks goto the following: Stephen Sherrill, Libby Moore,Ed Conard, Ted Grant, Mandy Stapf DanielMenaker, Lee Boudreaux, and David McCormick.

For their enthusiasm at a pivotal point, thanks to:Cara Stein, Keri Putnam, Colin Callendar, DianeKeaton, and Scott Winant

My gratitude also to the New York Society Libraryand the Writers Room, where part of this book waswritten.

Happy endings aren't for cowards. I've been alive for how manyyears, and I've just figured that one out.

I learned to be unfaithful from my parents. Not infidelity in theclassic sense —but I was always prepared for the unhappy ending,which made me less willing to work toward a happy one. I was un-faithful to the idea of a well-adjusted future.

My name is Ruby Capote. Ruby Capote. I am Ruby Capote.Capote. Capote. Ruby Kiley Capote. Have you ever written yourname, or seen it printed somewhere, and thought it looked unfa-miliar? Like maybe you spelled it wrong or something? It used tohappen to me all the time. But then again, I'm only the strangestperson I've ever met. So much for a positive image, you may bethinking. But the truth is I'm kind of happy with the way I turnedout. I mean, things could be worse. I could be boring. Or unhappy.Or, like, I don't know, Canadian or something.

the courage to go after the life you really want. That's what mademe do it—make one of those decisions —the kind that bends yourfuture in a whole new direction.

Every day the opportunity exists to change your life. But mostdays, the idea of having to change the big things in life just seemslike too much work. Should I lie on the couch and watch a movie,or should I confront my personal demons? You get the point.

Anyway, IVe done it. So I'm getting it down on paper, before thememory evaporates. Because that's what people do —they moveinto their new life and disassemble the old life in some ungratefulway and leave it out by the curb. Like it never served any purpose atall. Like self-preservation is some frivolous little thing.

I met Doug on the six-thirty p.m. Delta shuttle from New York toBoston. I was returning from an interview at the United NationsBuilding. My subject, the U.N. interpreter for Moldova, who isoriginally from Back Bay of all places, didn't have much to say. ButI guess interpreters don't . . . unless they're interpreting. Anyway,I'm on the shuttle, and this adorable guy is sitting next to me.And when he wolfed down his peanuts, I gave him mine. And thenwhen he finished those, the old lady next to me handed me hers,and I quickly, deftly, passed them off, like a baton in a relay race, toDoug. And the old lady and I smiled at each other, practically high-fived each other, as he ate the peanuts, like they were poisonousand we'd tricked him into ingesting them. It was cinematic, baby.He waited until we landed and we were safely at our gate and the

seat-belt sign had been turned off before introducing himself. Hiscautiousness was completely sexy to me. And during the walk fromthe gate to ground transportation, he asked me to join him for din-ner. That brings us to where I am now. Kind of. That—meetingDoug—happened a few years ago. And now I feel like a refrigeratorhas fallen on me and I'm pinned underneath it hoping to escapebut in the meantime my life is sprinting ahead of me, assuming I'llcatch up.

I really need to get out of Boston. I don't feel like this all of the time,but I feel like this too much of the time.

For a few years now, IVe been writing a humorous (their word,not mine) lifestyle column —single girl on the edge, ledge, vergekind of thing. I like it mainly because it's all about me. When myfriends get tired of listening to me, our readers get to read about me.A clear win-win—for who? Me! For the longest time I kept think-ing, Wow, someone is paying me to write this? I've hit the jackpot!Then, once the flattery wore off — admittedly, this took an embar-rassingly long while —I realized that the someone who was payingme to write the column was barely paying me at all.

So I made copies of some of my greatest hits and sent them,along with my resume, to The New York News. And here's the partthat tells you all you need to know about me: The next morning—literally, not figuratively, the next morning—I was disappointed thatI was not awakened by a phone call begging me to come to NewYork to take a job at the newspaper. I mean, the letter probably

hadn't even left the state of Massachusetts yet and already I was dis-appointed.

First, I know what you're thinking . . . since when does The NewYork News print humor? Exactly my point. They don't. This is thepart where I fill the great void. No one even needs to be fired inorder for me to start working there.

At work, I write my little column. And in my downtime, I read thewires to see if there's anything strange happening. I'm a nut forstories about women who have cysts removed that weigh in theneighborhood of a hundred pounds. I mean, how does a personavoid a doctor that long? Not to mention the finger-pointing andnot-so-kind stares of strangers? Or skydivers who mistake you for atarget?

One of my favorites was about a "fertility tea cozy" that miracu-lously made six women pregnant. It raised all sorts of questions, andanswered none of them. We put these stories in our paper when wehave a two- or three-inch hole to fill. They are an afterthought.They are my favorite part of the paper.

For a while I saved these articles in an old Hermes scarf box.Then I got worried that I'd die and someone would be cleaning outmy junk and find the box filled with odd stories and that wouldsomehow end up defining my life. So I threw them away. For awhile after that, I was a meticulous housekeeper, just in case."Dead but scrupulously clean" is not such a bad way to be remem-bered.

A week goes by and I don't hear anything from The New York News.I call, I am laughed at, and then am hung up on. Two weeks goby. I call again, and this time I leave a message for the news editor,a guy named Michael. He never calls me back. Three weeks pass, Icall, am put on hold for three complete recordings of "Don't BeCruel," and then get disconnected again.

Four weeks pass. I can't bear to be hung up on again, so I don'tcall. Then a fifth week passes and I don't call. I'm in temporary lovewith Doug again, so my ambition to leave Boston no longer exists.I know, I know. I'm terrible.

I wait six weeks. Six weeks! No response. I'm thinking the enve-lope is stuck in the mailbox. This strikes me as the only logical ex-planation. I believe it so much that I go down to the mailbox andtake a look for myself. And I take one of Doug's golf umbrellas incase I'm going to have to do some prodding. Of course, mailboxesare designed in a way that prevents you from seeing inside. Whatare they hiding in there anyway? I mean, besides my resume.

Not even a phone call to tell me that they hate me and mycolumns. How rude is that? I mean, couldn't they at least call andsay, "Look, we're sorry, we hate you, but at least you won't have towait by the phone for us to call you and tell you we hate you be-cause we've just told you." I could respect that. But it's as though Ijust tossed the envelope into the trash can . . .

I guess my fate is here in Boston. I guess that relatively clean air,traffic on Storrow Drive, and a visit from the tall ships every coupleof years is my destiny.

Doug and I will sit on folding lawn chairs on our porch anddrink beer from cans for the next thirty years. And I start to thinkthat's okay, because, hey, how much pressure could a life like thatinvolve? I mean, this—no response —is actually probably goodnews. I mean, this is it. I will sit back and enjoy the dead calm of mylife.

Of course Doug's not the reason I have to leave Boston, but he alsoisn't a reason to stay. I want love to transform me, and him, and turnus into a happy couple. But as the saying goes that somebody saidone time and then it became popular but no one knows who said itfirst—no dice. And that seems really sad to me. But I don't even ex-perience the sadness. I just think about other things . . . like pack-ing it all in and becoming a cake decorator. I think about moving toNew York. But mainly, running anywhere sounds good to me.

I had one foot out the door; all I needed was a push . . . that'swhen I looked in one of his kitchen drawers. That was it for me. Hisdirty little secret. You know those plastic squares with holes in themused to close bread bags? Well, he had like a couple hundred ofthem in his drawer. No exaggeration. I mean, where is he puttingall of this bread, that's what I want to know.

"I —I —might need them sometime," he said, and his face gotreally red, like he knew that I'd uncovered the secret tip of the psy-chotic iceberg. I was too horrified to stop talking.

even more unlikely that you'd ever need three hundred of them/' Isaid. "Can we throw some of them away?" This was, of course, onlya test.

"No!" he said, and he moved across the room quickly and tookthem from me, as though they were all his children and I was treat-ing them in some untender way. I mean, why couldn't I meet a nor-mal guy who hoarded porn magazines? I could yap endlessly abouthow the magazines give me a negative body image and so on. Butno, that would be too normal. Instead, I get Insane Pack Rat Man,saver of all things useless. What is missing in his life that can besoothed and replaced by plastic bread ties? Unfortunately, it doesn'teven seem like an interesting problem worth spending the time tofigure out.

With time, it only got worse. I won't soft-pedal it for you. Hold onto a doorway, tape up your windows, take a deep breath ... he hasa name for his car.

The Grape, he calls it. This was a discovery I found to be trulyhumiliating. It was a reddish-blue Porsche, which made it evenworse. This was not self-mocking. This car was the pride of hisexistence, the physical manifestation of his testosterone, and hecalled it the Grape!

This is how it worked. We'd be getting ready to drive somewhereand we'd be deciding which car to take, his or mine, and then he'dsay something definitive, like "Let's take the Grape." And I wouldfeel a murderous rage building inside of me. But I still thought Imight marry him. I mean, married people want to kill each other

all the time, right? The Grape? I mean that would piss you off, too,wouldn't it? It's like a person who says something they think is ter-ribly cute, but they think you didn't hear or appreciate their witti-cism, when in fact you didn't want to bring attention to its dimness.Then they repeat it and repeat it and repeat it—to a bludgeoning ef-fect. Well, that was the Grape.

By now you've guessed the truth, the obvious. So I'll just confess.Yes, he's amazing in bed. A gifted artist. I mean, really good. Seri-ously, the first time I slept with him, I thought, I could do this everynight or morning or afternoon until forever. It wasn't until a fullyear later that I started wondering about the water bed. What kindof guy buys a water bed? Not just thinks about buying one but ac-tually places the order and doesn't cancel it, and is home betweenthe hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to receive it. Better yet, who buys awater bed and then doesn't apologize for owning one?

Then, also after a year, I noticed the satin sheets. Satin. I mean,you go into a store, you can choose from a multitude of fabrics toease your carcass into each evening—and you choose baby-bluesatin?

Anyway, it's just not normal. You see, every great thing aboutDoug is offset by something completely embarrassing, something Iwould have to hide from my family, my friends, and my consciousmind forever. Ultimately, it just seems like too much work. I mean,I already have a full-time job.

I go over to Doug's house. As soon as I walk in the door, he says,"You're late."

"I told you when we first met, I don't observe daylight savingtime—so you see, I'm actually forty-five minutes early. Besides,you're still in your robe, or barely. Why do you wear a robe if youaren't going to close it? What is it with guys constantly wanting youto see them naked?" I say.

"This isn't really what we're doing on a Saturday night is it?" Isay. "I mean, I thought you'd at least be wearing clothes when I gothere."

"I'm sorry," he says. And he kisses me and lets his robe drop tothe floor. And then he slowly walks around the house naked, pre-tending not to notice that he is naked. He thinks this is great.

I don't answer him. I used to wrestle him to the ground and tryto clothe him and we'd laugh hysterically. But now I just sit downand look at my watch. Overall, though, something about me mustsuggest that I would indulge such behavior. Because Doug's not thefirst guy to do this. I used to baby-sit for a kid who did the samething. Every time I told him to get dressed, he'd howl with laughterand race around the house defiantly. And I'd pray his parentswouldn't come home in the middle of one of his fits. Can youimagine a girl ever doing this?

It's not like this most of the time. Most of the time, he's not des-perate for my attention. But I'm growing bored and dissatisfied andhe feels it and he's panicking. And I know this, but I can't make himfeel more secure. We both do this. We critique the relationship, butnever out loud. And when we're thinking of jumping ship on theother person, we are very quiet, because subconsciously we want

them to know something's up. We want them to be prepared, be-cause we feel so guilty for considering that this—we —might notwork.

Somewhere out there there must be a woman meant just forhim. And for too long I thought that woman might be me. And thatreally says more about what an unstable character I am than it saysabout his peculiarities.

Then one night, I don't know, this all stopped seeming so amus-ing and temporary. And I couldn't stop crying. And it started feelinglike my life was flying by and that I was being careless with the onething I always claimed to value —my time. I was afraid to go afterwhat I wanted, so I hung on to Doug and hoped that some morningI'd wake up happy and personally satisfied. But I couldn't sleep. Ijust couldn't. So waking up happy was out of the question. I had anidea. So I got up and started typing.

A little over a month ago —OK, eight long weeks ago —I sent youmy resume as well as some of my columns. I called to follow up andwas disconnected several times. This begs the question "Is it cheapphones you people have gone and purchased, or have you merelyhired an inadequate support staff?" As you might have guessed, I'mliving in fear that some great harm has befallen you. My only hope isthat you re OK . . . if you re not, how will you ever hire me?

Whether youve been kidnapped or simply haven t opened yourmail in several months is, frankly, none of my business. But I thought

I might make one last attempt at trying to get you to give me a job.I've enclosed a six-pack of beer and 30 of my columns, figuring youcould enjoy a beverage and read my clips at your own pace. And ifyou dont like them, well at least you got some free beer out of thedeal.

Then, get this —a week later I get a letter from the guy. I mean,what kind of nut responds to a letter like that?

Thanks for the beer. It was a rather clever idea on your part. Un-fortunately, due to postal jostling it exploded when opened by ouroffice cleaning woman, Flora. She's dead now. But thanks for the ges-ture just the same—it really was quite sweet of you. Though Florasfamily may disagree.

I am enjoying reading your columns. It's a bit like having a sub-scription to The Boston Globe. If you ever find yourself in New York,please phone in advance and stop by to introduce yourself. To answeryour question —cheap phones and an inadequate support staff.

I always read those articles about the scientists who are sendingthe signal of pi into the far reaches of the solar system. Because piis universal, if there is intelligent life out there, they will hear usand respond by clanging tin cans or something. I think they should

make a calendar featuring those guys. Sure, shirtless firemen aregreat, but the women and men trying to communicate with Mar-tians? Not wearing tops? I'd buy that calendar.

As silly and brief as it was, that letter meant everything to me. Itwas like I'd discovered life on Mars, and the Martians seemed tospeak not only my language but also my dialect. It was communi-cation from the world I wanted to live in. Even if I folded the letterup and tucked it away and never went to New York, it didn't matter.The letter was from the world I wanted to be in, and living in thatworld was someone who knew I breathed, and wrote.

Hope your work at the Trib, or whatever the hell it is, is goingsmoothly. I enjoyed this week's column. And your letter too. Funny—you writing because you want a job, me writing because I like both-ering you . . .

Then I went to New York for an interview. I arrived, I was toldthat Michael Hobbs had been detained at a Newspapers in Educa-tion conference. Instead, I met the publisher, the city editor, andtwo reporters. A week later I got a call from Human Resources of-fering me a job. I accepted. Bounced off the walls. The whole deal.And I waited for my new boss, Michael Hobbs, to call and con-gratulate me. But he didn't call me, so I didn't call him.

Anyway, being in New York will change my life instantly. I'mjust sure it will. The cabaret shows, the speakeasies, the excitementof Prohibition, the trolley cars. . .

It's Wednesday night. Poker night. We drink margaritas and smokecigarettes and talk about books and sex and jobs and men. Butmostly I let everyone else talk. And I listen.

I started this poker-game thing in college and haven't playedsince then. But when I landed in New York, it seemed like the per-fect time to recruit some old college friends and revive it. Time fora social life. Time to meet the new me. And so now the wholething's just a habit. Not like a gambling habit, I mean more like anassumed thing. It's just assumed we'll see each other every week.

I fold. I pass. I don't risk anything. Three of a kind? No, sorry, Iwon't bet big. Nope, because someone else could still easily pull offa better hand. Might as well just fold right now. Get out before I gettoo far in. I just want you to know that it's not lost on me. That Irealize this game is a metaphor for my life. My friends are different,though. They all seem okay with losing. They even enjoy it—therisk taking. Secretly, they must not like it, though, right? I mean,how could anyone enjoy that—losing? It must make them feel like,I don't know, great big losers.

No one likes losing. But I really don't like losing. And I haven'tfigured out why.

You should have seen our first game. We were all reading How toWin Millions Playing Poker and trying to play cards at the sametime. On the cover of the book was some short, greasy-looking guywith two women hanging on him. One was loosening his tie. Thewomen looked like twins, but you could tell they weren't really

twins. It's some subliminal thing, I think. Guys are supposed to pickup this book because subconsciously they want to sleep with twins.And this photograph makes them think that sleeping with twins is apossibility. The guy didn't look like he'd won millions playingpoker. He looked like he needed a shower and a job. But at least hehad a look. A self-definition. I am Ruby Capote—whoever she is.I'm too old to not know who I am.

I can tell you the facts, though. I'm twenty-seven dollars down.In nickels, it seems like a lot more. When you look at it in nickels,it seems significant. So I fold. I don't want to lose more preciousnickels. But of course it's not about the money.

I toss a few nickels into the pot. Skorka drinks tequila directlyfrom the bottle. It's the kind of thing you can do when you're amodel. When you're a model, drinking hard liquor out of a bottledoesn't seem depressing or like you might need to get yourself intoa program.

Danielle is chewing on a straw. She's checking her hand. Hereyes are darting around the table. She's trying to wear us down.

"Okay, so on Tuesday I'm out with Rick and guess what hap-pened?" she says. We always have to guess. That drives me nuts.

I don't know who Rick is. The only thing I know for sure is thatwhoever Rick is, he's either too young to be interesting or too oldfor her to have a future with. She's been divorced for a little more

than a year and is making up for lost time by saying yes towhomever asks. Of course, there is safety in numbers . . . you cannever really focus on one person if you surround yourself with themasses.

"You're sleeping with a boy?" Lily says. Lily doesn't sleep withanyone. We aren't allowed to ask why.

"He's not a boy. He's twenty-three. And I haven't slept with him.I mean almost, but not quite," Danielle says.

"Do we really want to hear a story about a twenty-three-year-oldman who can't get a real job?" Meg says.

"Yeah, that's so insecure," Skorka says, then she blows smokerings and stands up and starts slow-dancing by herself. Also some-thing only a model can pull off. I mean, if a regular person doesthat, it's just embarrassing. She's still holding her cards like a fan.

"You mean she's so insecure, not that's so insecure. You've beenin this country like what, a decade? Ever think about crackin' agrammar book?" Jenn says.

"Oh, fuck off. I'm pumping more money into this economy thanyou are. Who gives a fuck if I speak the language of the fuckinggreen moon mans?" Skorka says.

Everyone just looks at her, because clearly she's insane, and wewant to memorize this moment, because the details of this will beimportant during her long road to recovery from what appears to bea serious nervous breakdown. I mean, Anthony Quinn? Is the guyeven alive? I wonder if Meg will make ashtrays when she's in thehospital. Will there be a nurse who is especially mean to her? Iimagine a depressing road trip I'll take to visit her. And how they'llinsult me by taking my gift to her—a collapsible fire escapeladder—away from me, saying she might try and use the thing toflee their gentle care.

Doesn't anyone realize Megs having a fit! Let's tackle her and puta stick in her mouth so she doesn't choke on her tongue! I want toscream. But I don't. Because I find that saying what's on one's mindcan make one wildly unpopular. More important, I have no sticks.Though a pencil might do the trick. Or chopsticks. I've got somechopsticks in the kitchen drawer from ordering takeout. Why haveI saved them? For this moment? Is this what people mean whenthey say God works in mysterious ways? That reminds me. I oughtto throw away all of those packets of duck sauce. I'm never evergoing to use them. Maybe I'll send them to Doug. They'd be goodcompany for the bread ties.

"He's one of those people, you know, who everybody thinks isdead, but he's not," Meg says.

"Hello! —guess who walked into the bathroom while I was tak-ing a shower with Rick!" Danielle says.

"You guys are un-fucking-believable! Aren't you even slightly cu-rious?" Danielle says.

"Connie Chung! I'd fucking love it! Now that would be a greatfucking story," Skorka says.

Apparently, this is supposed to mean something. It's supposed tomake us gasp. Feel silly that we hadn't guessed. Forget what cardswe're holding in our hands.

"Alexander Forest! That guy I went to Aruba with last Christ-mas," Danielle says.

We weren't really in touch with Danielle last Christmas, andnone of us has ever heard of Alexander. I mean, we've never evenheard her mention his name. Not even once.

"I didn't sleep with Rick. Especially after I found out who his dadwas," she said.

"When I take the bath, I eat cheese popcorn directly out of thisbag," Skorka says. "I hold this bag by the corner and shake the pop-corn into my mouth."

"Nothing says 'I'm a refined young lady' quite like eating pop-corn directly out of the bag," Meg says.

"So then we walked around the park and I told him I couldn'tsee him anymore. He started crying," Danielle says, with too muchsatisfaction.

"That's sad. I thought this was supposed to be a funny story," Isay. They all just stare at me.

That made more sense. Shared DNA did not seem like some-thing that would hinder Danielle's hot pursuit of amore. A manwho drove an American car—well, that was something she'd reallyhave trouble rationalizing.

"Yeah. Anyway, so now I can't stop thinking about AnthonyQuinn walking in on me while I'm taking a shower. It's kind of, youknow, making me hot," Danielle says.

This week's column is about adult men who still live with their par-ents. I've just been to a woman's house who spoke lovingly of herson, Frankie, forty-two, who sleeps in the bunk beds he slept in asa boy.

While I'm there, there's a knock at the door. A neighbor is com-plaining that Frankie was seen, last night, stealing car stereos fromautomobiles belonging to several neighbors.

Frankie's mom is appalled. "My boy Frankie? Frankie's a goodboy. He don't steal from his own neighborhood."

There's something missing, right? The sad, fiery, confrontational,not to mention drawn out, ending to my relationship with Doug.You see, I took the job but didn't have the courage to break up withDoug—primarily because in the years we'd been dating he'd ac-cused me of plotting to move to New York and break up with him.Which of course I was; I just didn't want him to be right. So I didn'tbreak up with him. And that got him all optimistic, because hereally started believing we were going to get married, mainly be-cause when he'd say, "Do you think we're going to get married?" I'dsay, "Oh, definitely." I'm so bad like that. I mean, I can't help it. I

just hate letting people down. Besides, I knew he just wanted mebecause I was leaving.

Then, because I'm a coward, I started thinking I could alwayssend him a postcard telling him we were over. I know that soundsharsh. But I wasn't thinking it would be one of those cheap post-cards. No way. I mean, I'm breaking up with the guy. I was thinkingabout one of those booklet postcards—you know, the kind that un-folds and has about twenty lush pictures of various monuments andbuildings that decorate the landscape of the city you're in. Thatsupplies the old love with a library of picturesque locations he cantorture himself with when he's imagining where you might befalling in love, kissing playfully, or perhaps even groping lewdly,after too much wine at dinner, a new love, at the very moment therecipient is receiving the bad news.

I get in the elevator, hit the button for the seventeenth floor. It'scrowded, and it's slow. I'm anxious. Boston wasn't really that bad. Icould have made it work.

The longer the elevator takes, the more scared I become. Thiswas a huge mistake. I didn't even need a new job. I start to doubtmy choice of day-one clothes... it seemed like the perfect first-day-of-work outfit when I was in my apartment. Now I'm convinced Ilook like I'm trying too hard. Let's face it, reporters dress like slobs.Today, I look like I might be in pharmaceutical sales, a little toomatchy-matchy.

wearing seersucker pants. Seersucker—he's got to be management.I love those pants. They are so optimistic ... I smile. He smiles.

The first person I meet is the mail guy. He ricochets around thebuilding pushing a stainless-steel cart of disorganization. Just be-hind his ears are these unruly, flame-shaped tufts of rust-brownhair. Clown hair.

"Ruby. Ruby Capote," he says. "Sing-song, sing-song. I like namesthat sound like they're singing a song."

I don't have anything to say to that. I can't think of a single thingto say to that. Sing-song? Sing-song?

"La, la, la, la, sing-song," he says, then punctuates this with sev-eral thumb flicks of the bicycle bell on his pushcart. That shrill,whirring, metal-on-metal sound. It's a noise that can be bufferedoutside, can float away. Inside, it seems to boomerang off the wallsand climb into my ears over and over again.

"Carl. I deliver the mail," he says. "I've got some mail for you,"he says. He hands me a stack of mail. None of which is addressedto me.

"Jack. Wags. Good catch. Nice attention to detail. You're goingto do just swell, kiddo," he says, taking the stack of mail and tossingonto a nearby desk. Swell? Kiddo? "This is your mail." He hands mea few letters. Mail on my first day—it's a sign; I belong here.

He winds up, like he's holding a bowling ball, then brings it for-ward to release it down the alley . . . but instead it's his finger, andall this elaborate gesturing ends with a pointed finger. He's pointingat an empty desk. "There's your desk. Keys are in the drawer. Ask fora lot of stuff up front. Lamps. Extra chair. Because once you'vebeen here for a while and you haven't increased the circulation byfifty thousand, they won't give you anything. You'll wait weeks for abox of pencils. So get it now. Get extra everything. Tape. Staples.Erasers. A clock. Hanging files. Everything. And pens, get lots ofpens."

There were people working all around us, occasionally glancingup. But mainly they were slumped over, writing. They were all anewsprint gray. Clown Hair was the single living poppy, thriving inthe field of gray ash.

He starts to wheel away. Then remembers something. "That'sthe free box," he says, pointing to a double-walled box in front of mydesk. On the side of the box it says: free box in 96-point type.

"When you write a column, people send you lots of free stuff,which you get to keep, of course. It's just good manners to throw adecent CD or book in there a few times a week. Not just the cheapstuff like coffee mugs with Kiwanis Club logos on them —thatwould just be considered aggressive —or CDs no one's heard of. . . .If people don't see something decent in the box every now andthen, they will think you don't like to share."

It's day one, and I already know I'm going to be buying stuff withmy own money to put in the free box so people think I like to share.

I look down at my mail. There is a letter from the office man-ager. It's a menu of sorts. You check off the box next to an item ifyou'd like to have it . . . pens, pencils, folders, notebooks in threesizes, tape, stapler, Wite-Out, computer discs, extra laptop batter-ies, floor lamp, desk lamp, magnifying glass, extension cords, bul-letin boards, that kind of thing. I take Clown Hair's advice. I put acheck mark in each box. I load up.

And there's a letter from Michael. I can't rip it open, not in frontof all these people ignoring me. But I'm a junkie for his words. He'sgot the hooch and I want it bad. I, very casually, sit down. The chairclangs. It's the worst chair in the office. We always did that at TheReporter, gave the new guy the crappiest chair, because we knewthe publisher would buy him a new one if he complained about itthe first week. After that—forget it, buy your own chair, mutant. Icross my legs. The chair wails. People start to look. I save the letterfor later.

I read through today's newspaper. I decide to become a studentof it. I will know everything there is to know ... I notice a suspi-ciously large number of pages devoted to dog racing results and toomany ads for check-cashing establishments. I thought The NewYork News didn't do humor . . .

I can't concentrate. I go into the research library. There is a sicklythin woman sitting behind a desk. She does look like a cadaver. Iask the Cadaver to pull a file. She brings me the clips, and I sit and

read for a while. And she keeps asking if I need anything else, justto make conversation. I can't make eye contact with her, because Ithink she can read my mind.

"Hey, maybe we can have lunch sometime. I always wanted towrite. Maybe we can talk about that," she says.

"Yeah," I say. "That'd be good." But I don't want to have lunchwith the Cadaver. No one wants to have lunch with the Cadaver. Itdoesn't look like she ever has lunch. And part of me thinks it's sosad and so sweet that she's preparing an agenda for what we'll talkabout at an imaginary lunch that will never take place. I have thisurge to give her a makeover. I want to give her a life. I want to tellher to see a doctor, gain some weight, something. I mean, wake up.Don't you see it? But of course she does, and she doesn't, becausethat's the way we all are.

I'm walking back to my desk, and something makes me turnaround and go back to the library. Guilt, I guess. I'm pretty good atguilt.

The Cadaver has her head down on her desk. Like it's just toomuch work to sit upright.

"Great. That would be great!" she says. When I leave the room,I think she may turn a cartwheel. Sweat cotton candy. Levitate orsomething. But she probably just collapses back on the desk andconserves her energy.

At the coffee shop, she talks about how she used to be really fatand about her cats —and how they're really fat.

"I think maybe cats are like goldfish, expanding to the size oftheir surroundings," she says. "As soon as I moved —they ballooned.Seriously, their combined weight is sixty-seven pounds."

Maybe they're eating your food, I think but don't say. And I real-ize she's funny, in some very genuine way. It's something I neverwould have guessed about her.

'The news editor would like to see you," she says, all official.She's got a steno pad. She's got an outfit. She's taking her job veryseriously.

She shows me to a paneled office. There are awards all over thewalls. And there is a plant that is half dead. It looks like every othernewspaper editor's office.

Seersucker walks in. He's carrying a bunch of folders. I make amental note to order some more ... in hopes that he will be theguy delivering them.

I stand up and extend a hand. "I'm Ruby Capote," I say. "This ismy first day. I'm just waiting ... for the editor."

We stand there and say nothing. He's Michael Hobbs. I get let-ters from this guy.

We're in the morning meeting. My first. Michael goes around theroom, reintroduces me to everyone. Then he asks everyone whatthey're working on.

When he gets to me, he glances up, then down, but doesn't keeplooking at me. Like he's way too busy to actually look at me duringthis meeting. He makes me uncomfortable. Or maybe I'm alwaysuncomfortable.

"I was planning to write about my weekly poker game —and thenutty high jinks that ensue," I say.

"Exactly," I say, looking at my hands. "Urn-there's a model; amom, Meg; Jenn, who has the worst job on the planet; and—youknow, some other friends."

I leave the part out about them all being deeply disturbed, be-cause I think people should draw their own conclusions, and there'sthe whole guilt-by-association thing I was hoping to avoid.

"A model," I say. "Skorka . . . she lives down the hall from me."And she likes married men. They always take their dirty socks homewith them when they leave, I think but don't say.

I kind of liked Doug's socks littering the floor. It made him seemlike he belonged in my apartment more than he actually did.

erage woman would want to hang out with a model. Who needs areminder of one's own shortcomings? Or maybe he's thinking thathe's made a mistake —he's hired the wrong person. I start to feelanxious. He should have hired a legal correspondent or a politicalwriter. They wouldn't write about. . . poker.

Then Larry, the city hall guy, says he's writing about payoffs atcity hall. I mean, haven't we read that story twice a week for the pasttwenty years? I mean, at this point wouldn't the story worth tellingbe about how payoffs at city hall are obsolete? How the place isbeing run like a well-oiled machine? Then he says, "And maybe I'llwrite about my weekly racquetball game." And his two boneheadedfriends, Mr. Arts and Mr. Entertainment, laugh.

Wags, our reporter at large, looks across the table at me andmakes a very small smile. A fuck-them smile. And Michael ignoresthe whole thing. Or genuinely doesn't notice it. Hard to say which.And I want the whole thing not to bother me at all. But it does. Ican't help it—it just does. I want to be like them. I want to be inse-cure about my job. They'd like me more. How lame is that?

Then, because I can't listen to one more pitch about a serieson subway crime or skateboarding kids and how they are a menaceto society—trust me, we did a sick amount of these exact samestories in Boston —I take the wedding ring tally. More than half ofthe people in the room are married. More than half of the peoplein the room are the most special person in the world to some-one. Except me, Larry, Michael, and the city editor, Fred. Fredsmells funny. I hope I don't smell funny. But if you smelled funny,would you know it? I doubt it. And Larry is, well, neither gay norstraight. Mainly, he seems to be randomly taking up space on theplanet. Michael is dating someone beautiful. I saw her photo in hisoffice, prominently displayed. And then there's me.

tentional for a newspaper guy. Seersucker! Please! But his letterswere single-guy letters. If that makes sense.

The meeting's over. But then Smelly Fred, who's, like, a millionyears old and remembers every word he's ever read, starts teeing offon all of us. Because, I guess, it's an opportunity to connect withother human beings.

"Whoa, people! People, we've received a nice letter from thefolks over at Xerox. They'd appreciate it if we didn't use their com-pany's name as a generic term for photocopy. And to motivate us,they've threatened to sue us if we don't comply."

Everyone starts snickering. Smelly Fred is a man who is in des-perate need of being taken seriously. But he doesn't quite knowwhere to begin.

"And, people," he says. "We've also heard from the lawyers atSony. When referring to the snooze button on one of their sevenmodels of alarm clocks, we are to use the words dream bar. People,it seems small and insignificant, I know. But this is where we setourselves apart from the other news organizations. With facts. Ac-curate facts."

"No shit, Fred, there's really something called a dream bar?"Wags says, trying to be nice.

"I don't. I wear the blue plaid shirt on even days, the khaki shirton odd days," Wags says.

"Stop spending your money on crack and get yourself some de-cent clothes, smart guy," Smelly Fred says. And then he smiles, be-cause he sees himself as a witty man and believes he just served upa good one. And so I smile too, because I want him to think he has

just, indeed, served up an ace. He's like me, I think. He wants to belike them, too. Or not like them but liked by them. On both of us,it's a loathsome quality. So I hide it.

Michael stops me. "Hey," he says. "Can you wait here?" I standand wait, and when everyone's left the conference room, he closesthe door.

"I don't know . . . fifteen inches for copy and whatever you needfor a head," I say.

"Let's say eighteen inches of copy," he says. "Write eighteen forthe first few months, then you'll have the flexibility to go shorterlater or go longer when you want to. If you start with fifteen, you'regoing to have to grovel to write longer later," he says.

"You mean . . . people are going to be comparing my inches totheir inches?" I ask.

I call Jenn at work to see if she wants to go out to dinner tonight.She's crying. She actually answers the phone crying. She's CarlBrennan's assistant. He's a serious media asshole.

"He's sitting on a plane, on a tarmac in Colorado. There areeighty-mile-an-hour winds, and the FAA is saying no planes can goout. And he's calling me every two minutes. Yelling, 'AM I FUCK-ING FLYING YET? AM I IN THE FUCKING SKY?' and then be-fore I have a chance to say anything, he hangs up. I mean, what amI supposed to do? I mean, he actually called and said, 'DID ITEVER OCCUR TO YOU TO GET ME A GODDAMN HELI-COPTER?' I wanted to say, 'Did it occur to you that you're agoddamn jackass?' Shit, it's him again. Hold on," she says.

Even though they are awful stories, I love hearing them. I imag-ine what the soul of Carl Brennan looks like, and I see a dark, tar-like soup with half-dead bugs gasping and drowning.

One time he pitched a fit because when he flew to Florida,for the specific purpose of having sex with a famous jeans-and-underpants designer, he got to the car-rental place in Miami and allthey had was a white Ford Mustang convertible. He only rentsblack and navy cars. He called Jenn and screamed and then hungup. Jenn called another car-rental company and arranged to have anavy convertible delivered to him within the hour. When shecalled him on his cell phone to tell him this, she could tell he wassmiling. He rarely smiled. But he couldn't resist being happy afterhe behaved horribly and it paid off.

"For now he's thrilled! He said, 'Sissy, until just moments ago,I was starting to think you had a bad case of dumb-ass,' " she says. Ican hear it in her voice —she's happy. Triumphant.

Doug is in town on business. We didn't really ever break up, but Ihaven't seen him in three months. So maybe we did break up. AndI guess this is ... a date? But I haven't been on a date in ages, so Idon't really even know if I can identify one. Maybe it's just dinnerand not a date at all. I make a note to ask Smelly Fred the definitionof date. Then I realize he'll just go on and on forever about it andbring it up every time I see him. For the next fifty years he'll tell meabout the origin of the word date. And I might end up having tostrike him with a blunt instrument and drag his body into the sup-ply closet. So I skip it.

Yesterday I asked Wags what I should wear for the ambiguousdining event. All he said was, "Not the big fucked-up blue pants."

"What big fucked-up blue pants?" I said. "I mean, if they weresuch big fucked-up blue pants, why didn't you mention it when Iwas wearing them?"

"It was too much fun watching you show up in them," he said. Ijust stared at him. "Wear a skirt," he said. "And that blue see-through blouse deal."

"You do," Wags said, winking in a Dean Martin kind of way thatseems very dumb and funny. And then I remember that they'reright, I do. So I go with a skirt and the see-through blouse. But Iwear a camisole with it, so I don't look completely desperate to beseen naked.

Doug meets me at the paper. When he walks into the newsroom, amillion heads turn. While employees of other papers are out solv-ing crimes, chasing injustices, and whatnot, the members of thisnews-gathering juggernaut pause to witness the mundane occur-rence that is my existence. I want to introduce Doug to Michael.And Michael looks at us when we're leaving, but he pretends notto. Can you believe it? He's, like, thirty-eight. I mean, shouldn't heact, I don't know, like he's thirty-eight? Wags knows I never date andso he gives me a thumbs-up sign. And I imagine that his thumb isthe size of one of those giant foam hands people wave at your moreprimal, violent sporting events. And I want to kill myself right there.And if I did kill myself, I bet some other paper would still get thescoop first.

"They're completely starved for entertainment. They have nopersonal life to speak of, they are a pack of voyeuristic men. Usgoing out is the biggest thing that's happened to them in a longtime, I guess," I said.

"I mean, with your boss. Pretending not to look. What was that?"he said. "Wasn't that guy your boss?" Human beings have a scaryknack for recognizing the competition.

"I don't know," I said. "I guess he was busy or something." I al-ways say "I don't know," and something about me must suggest thatindeed, I don't know. Because almost no one challenges my re-peated claims of ignorance. One time when I said "I don't know" toMichael, he said, "What is that a euphemism for anyway? You al-ways say that." That made me nervous, so I avoided him for a whileto give him time to forget what he'd discovered about me.

We sleep together. And it's really fun. But then sad. And I knowI can never sleep with him again. I mean, he was my motivation forleaving Boston. I needed to be away from him so much that I wentout and got this job. And the truth is I only slept with him becauseI was starting to feel ugly. Isn't that awful? Besides, there's some-thing about that cute face of his. I mean, it's just so nice andearnest. It makes me wish I were still in love with him. Have youever known anyone like that? Then I remember the Grape, thesatin sheets, the water bed, and those plastic things that close breadbags. But honestly, who really cares about that stuff?

The morning after the first night we slept together, Doug and Iboth craved Lucky Charms cereal. I thought that was a sign fromGod that we were meant to be together forever. Do you have anyidea how far away from normal you have to be to see a mutual crav-ing for Lucky Charms as a sign from God? I do, and it doesn't scareme nearly as much as it should. But I'm getting better. I'm realizingit means that neither of us has any regard for proper nutrition. Thatcraving sugar-addled cereal is probably not the commercial-gradeadhesive needed to hold a marriage together.

I know there's nothing between us now. I mean, with Doug Ipretty much showed up and was nice and entertaining and that was

it. And he didn't have the courage to ask for anything more becausehe knew I would have bolted. And I guess I just couldn't respecthim for letting me get away with it.

And I'm sad that this is the kind of person I am. I am a personwho will stay in a relationship for three years because I know thatthis relationship will never hurt me. I will park my love here be-cause here I will never experience great joy, but more important, Iwill never be devastated. The dissolving of this won't be painful atall. It will just be a formality. A formal ending to something thatbarely or never existed.

It's all about might. It might hurt. It might not work. It might beawful. I never think it might work. It might be good. It might be fun.

It's one-thirty in the morning. Jenn calls. She's just realized she's ona career path headed nowhere. It's particularly difficult when yourealize all of those cliches are true—you really do need health in-surance, a decent credit rating, a career path, something resem-bling love, or at least sex on a regular basis —at one-thirty in themorning, because there's nothing you can really do about it.

So she came over to my apartment, I made her an omelette, andthen opened up the foldout couch. Of all my friends, Jenn andSkorka seem to log the most time on my sofa bed. And they nevershow up with a suitcase or shampoo or pajamas or anything. Butboth of them always bring their own hair dryer. Let the world falldown around them, but damnit, their hair will be blown out. Thelinchpin of their sanity.

"I copied Brennan's Rolodex," she says, starting to smile. Shehands over a stack of papers. It's the ultimate Oscar-party guest list.

"Barbra Streisand?" I say. Everyone is here. "Donald Trump . . .Barbara Walters . . . Steve Martin . . . this is unbelievable," I say."This is going to keep us very busy. It's not even midnight on theWest Coast."

We dialed, and chatted exhaustively. By the end of the night, itwas clear that James L. Brooks is the coolest guy in the world andBarbara Walters's housekeeper runs a tight ship and isn't takingcrap from anybody. Oh, and Yoko Ono? Surprisingly nice, evenwhen awoken from a deep sleep.

The truth is I like it that Jenn and Skorka come over and stay. Itfeels like I have a family.

I'm at the paper. It seems like I'm always at the paper. It's one ofthose jobs that are really more of a lifestyle than a profession. And Idon't mean that in any kind of hip, cool way. I'm not listening toacid jazz, getting baked, and painting giant canvases. I mean, I haveto wait until everyone leaves the newsroom if I want to pull thatkind of stunt.

The ashtrays are overflowing with cigarette butts. Most of themare generic. Generic cigarettes? In public? Only a person with noself-esteem would do that. Or someone interested in committingslow-motion suicide in the most thrifty manner. I mean, really,

what kind of settlement are your loved ones going to get when theyinvariably sue the tobacco company for causing your death? Ageneric settlement, that's what kind. Don't your wife and kids de-serve better? I mean, how selfish can you be? That's probably whatkilled you—your stingy heart, not the no-frills butts.

Anyway, if the enormous ashtrays weren't enough of a trip backto the olden days, there are also Styrofoam coffee cups! I capitalizeStyrofoam, of course, because it is a trademark name. And by theway, who knew they even made Styrofoam anymore? Managementmust have saved a few bucks while scoring them illegally. Whocares if we're damaging the ozone? As long as our coffee is toastywarm.

Style. It's the kind of thing that's beaten into your consciousnesswhen you work for a newspaper. Associated Press style is our bible.And for the record, I don't capitalize bible, because I'm not refer-ring to the Bible. So climb off my back, eh? And there are choco-late bar wrappers. And a Nerf basketball that used to be brightorange but has turned brown because it is used as a sponge whencoffee gets spilled. And it's like this rule, no one ever throws any-thing away. It's an ego thing. The place has to be completely dis-gusting or we're not a serious news organization.

Sometimes, when I get here really early and no one's watchingme, I clean my phone with disinfectant. And I throw that Nerf ballinto the trash can, but it always ends up back on the desk. Thismakes me wonder if Sisyphus suffered from lower back pain. Musthave, right? Or maybe he wore one of those belts that weight lifterswear. That seems like it should be a cartoon in The New Yorker.

The city hall guy, Larry, sits across from me. He has this mug thathe's very proud of. Too proud. It has one of those terribly witty say-ings On it: I'VE USED UP ALL OF MY SICK DAYS —SO l'M CALLING INdead. He makes a point of drinking from it in a way that always al-

lows the hilarious message to be read at all times, not wanting torob anyone of infectious mirth. He really does think it's funny. Like,really funny. Not dumb funny. Sometimes I think the only thingthat will bring me true happiness is smashing that mug. What doyou suppose is wrong with me, anyway?

Michael calls me into his office and asks me if I can have coffeewith him. I say, Sure. Because even though I have tons of stuff todo, he's my boss —so what, I'm going to say no? And then I go intothe bathroom and put on lipstick, but not too much. Just enoughto make it look like I hadn't just put it on. You know?

Then I meet him out by the elevator, and we go to the coffeeshop on the corner. We sit at the pink Formica counter and weorder coffee, and I think it's really great. I'm really excited. A kidriding on a Ferris wheel that has no off switch. Bad coffee at thisjunky coffee shop ... I think maybe we're friends or something.That he's happy with my column. He's going to tell me how greatI'm doing. This is going to be excellent, I think. Ride the big badwave, Helen, I'm thinking. And I don't even know anyone namedHelen.

"I understand you've been coming to work early lately." That'sthe first thing he says.

"Yes, I have," I say, and I'm thinking, Cool, I'm like his protegeeand he's interested enough to notice, and express concern about,my workaholic tendencies. I wonder if he's noticed how nice myhands are. They are very nice, or so I'm told. He probably hasn't no-ticed. Despite working for a newspaper ... I don't know, he seemsto miss some pretty basic stuff. Like how great I am.

"Well, what I heard is that you've been coming to work twohours early, a few days a week," he says.

"That's just the way they are. They figure if you need forty-eighthours a week to do your job, then they need forty-eight hours aweek to do their job —and they want to get paid for the overtime."

"I don't need forty-eight hours to do my job," I say. In protest, Igrab a napkin and ferociously wipe off my lipstick. I am demented.Can you believe I put on lipstick to have coffee with this guy? Canyou believe this is the guy who wrote back to me? The guy whowrote those letters that made me feel like I belonged in New YorkCity? Of course, that was someone else. Someone who didn't knowme. Now he knows me. Besides, I've been logging a good sixty-fivehours a week—minimum.

Anyway, I couldn't tell him why I come to work early, either. It'sway too embarrassing. Hey, guess what, I can't write when a bunchof people are staring at me. If I had to dance naked in Times Squareat one of those awful places where everything smells like spilledbeer and they serve assorted lunch meats —just a hunch —I coulddo it. And I'm no dancer. Not even with clothes on at parties andsuch. Trust me on that one. But set me up at a desk and ask me towrite while people watch, well, sorry, there's just no way. I mean weall have our own definition of too personal

He stands up and pays for the coffee, and then he just leaves.And I think this is funny, kind of. Him leaving. Like he's trying tomake some point. And of course he is trying to make a point. But Ihaven't a clue what the point is. So I guess he didn't win that one.Anyway, I pretend not to notice he's gone. Maybe he's even lookingat me through the plate-glass window. Who knows? A big part of mewants to quit my job this instant. I don't want to give notice. Idon't want to walk back into that building. I want to be gone from

there in some clean and final and very permanent way. I want torun away and start over again. Because it's the one thing I excel at.

There are two college-age women, dressed exactly alike. One istelling the other how she is completely sick of people lying. Men al-ways lie, she says. She only knows one person who never lies—andthat's herself. The woman dressed just like her nods.

Can you believe that Christopher Columbus risked sailing offthe end of the world, and scurvy and stuff, and all these people cando to show their appreciation for having been born in the land ofthe free and the home of the brave is yap about how everyone liesand they don't? America is beautiful. I mean, each day is a newtable on which to roll the dice. Stop complaining and start rolling,people! Of course, this is the advice I give others. I cower in the cor-ner, never even touching the dice. Risks are for idiots. Risks are forpeople who make their own elaborate Halloween costumes andthen, get this, wear them in public! Risks are not cool. Not cine-matic, baby. I mean, no way, baby.

Then I hear these two guys talking. They are closing their brief-cases and getting ready to leave. Both are in their forties. And theone guy says to the other guy, "I'm going to go to the little boys'room one more time before we head out." Little boys' room. Thatone cheers me up beyond belief, so I go back to work.

I bring some coffee for the Cadaver. I put it on her desk. The soundof cup hitting desk wakes her.

"I need to not be clubbin' at four a.m.," she says. I'm not sure ifthis is a joke or not. "You look so serious."

"He looks at you all of the time," she says. "That's kind of nice,don't you think?"

I wait. I could ask who looks at me. But I don't. Has he beenlooking at me? I wouldn't know, since I've been busy not looking athim.

"It's because I'm in trouble. I've been working more than unionmaximum, and I haven't filed for overtime. It's pissing everybodyoff. I think he wants me to know that he knows how many hours I'veworked," I say.

"Yeah, I know all about that. But that's not why he's looking atyou," she says. "Does it bother you that he was married before?"

"I think it's good. Makes men more realistic about relationshipswhen they know they can actually fail," she says.

"Why do I get the feeling if I weren't here, you'd be having thisexact same conversation with yourself?" I say.

Wags is lingering near my desk. "Did you see New York magazine?'"It's on my desk, take it if you want," I say.

And I sit down at my desk and my phone keeps ringing, so finallyI answer it, and Michael says, "Hey, Ruby, listen, that didn't goquite the way it was supposed to."

"Don't tell me. Let me guess, I was supposed to pay for the cof-fee too?" I say in this really intentionally bored leave-me-alonevoice. Secretly, I think it's really great that he's calling. It means heknows he's a bonehead. A declaration of weakness, which is really adeclaration of strength. And then, he doesn't even identify himself.Like I'm supposed to know who it is. This is a power play. And ofcourse I always go for that.

I make him laugh. But he doesn't make me laugh. And at thismoment I think about how I really don't want this job anymore.Even though I've only had it for three months. Everyone here iscrazy. And crazy people don't treat you very well.

"Look, come to work whenever you want to, but if you're goingto work overtime, write in the conference room and then go to yourdesk for regular hours, okay?" he says.

Should I work with the lights out? Under a desk? I want to say.Instead, I say, "Thanks. And by the way, it's a real vote of confidencethat you don't think an entire building filled with reporters willcatch on to that one."

He starts laughing again, and I hang up on him right in the mid-dle of his laugh. I love making him laugh. Dance, my little puppet.It's a control thing. And I love hanging up on him. I find it gratify-ing. And I think maybe that's how he felt when he was leaving meat the coffee shop. Gratified. What can I say, these are the thoughtsthat seem to make the hands on the clock sweep more quickly.Okay, okay. I confess I am just terribly desperate for a diversion.

Why doesn't he tell them to grow up? Why doesn't he tell themmy schedule is none of their business? Do they think I'm a union

buster? Don't they get that if I file for overtime it will only be a mat-ter of time before The New York News realizes I'm not worth whatthey are paying me?

I open up New York magazine. In the paparazzi section there isa photograph of Michael and his beautiful girlfriend. She photo-graphs well. That's the thing about beautiful people. . . . They're agood-looking couple. And I wonder where the version of him in myage group is right now. And how I can meet him. Except, the onewho's my age should be nicer, and in general have a better person-ality.

Sometimes I think if he weren't involved with someone, maybeI could love someone like Michael. Or at least the version of himthat was writing to me. We were better as pen pals. I have a sudden,overwhelming understanding of why people write to inmates ondeath row . . . you need never fear the discomfort of an actual run-in at the office coffee machine.

Anyway, what I mean is, I could be attracted to him, but only ifhe were very single. I mean, if his girlfriend died in a horrible acci-dent or something and left him a widower, I couldn't fall for him.I'd worry he'd love her forever and cry whenever he opened thecloset and saw her dead dresses just hanging there, and I'd be likethe second-runner-up in love. And I'm way too insecure and com-petitive to sign up for that kind of nonsense.

I would, however, be happy to be his friend and take himcasseroles and stuff. And besides, even if he weren't involved, wewouldn't really fall in love. True love between us is not even a pos-sibility. He doesn't see me that way. He thinks I'm smart but daffy.And it's true —when I'm around him, anyway. And I don't see himthat way either. I can't really imagine kissing him. Then againmaybe that's just because he's got a lady friend, because that's notmy thing, you know. Also, I noticed that his ears are kind of large

and I'm not yet desperate enough to settle for a guy with a physicaltrait that is an alarming size in proportion to the rest of his body.

Then I notice the caption underneath their photo. It sayssplitsville! That's sensitive. It goes on to mention that his girl-friend has been seen around town with someone else ... a hand-some older actor.

Am I the dumbest person in the world? How did I not know this?And it must be true, because Diana, this lady who works in the addepartment, has been dressing up lately. Wearing cocktail attire towork. Stunts like that. She's unaware of, or unconcerned about, thewidely believed no-sequins-during-the-day theory. And she trailsMichael wherever he goes. And I'm thinking, Wow. I don't knowthis guy at all. But this woman in the ad department, she knowshim. She knew about this Splitsville! thing. I mean, she's an ad per-son, not a reporter. And she saw it coming.

Diana tells everyone she used to be a Rockette. That's embar-rassing enough. But she wasn't a Rockette. She was an exoticdancer. If you were going to bother to lie, wouldn't you tell peopleyou were an astronaut or something? I mean, why would you tellpeople you were a Rockette?

Wags walks back over. "Maybe that's why he's being such a hard-ass about the overtime," he says.

Doug and I dated for two years. In the beginning, during maybe thefirst year, there would be days when I thought I could marry him.Like, one time we were playing Frisbee and this dog came over andlooked as if he was going to bite my face off if I didn't give him theFrisbee —and Doug rescued me. I thought, yeah, maybe we couldget married. But how many dogs do you meet like that?

There is a crisis at work. A hostage situation. Things are tense.There is a ransom note on Larry's desk. Apparently, someone did theunthinkable. His mug, the i've used up all my sick days—so i'mcalling in dead mug has been pinched. Somewhere in the build-ing there is someone who hates that stupid mug as much as I do.

Unfortunately, I'm sure Larry thinks I'm the culprit. He wants tosee my scissors. Do I have any glue on my person, he wants to know.

Then Smelly Fred chimes in, "You should consider yourselflucky. Studies show that those who are the target of kidnappingtend to develop a greater appreciation for life."

For a few hours Larry mopes. Gives me hurt looks. The next dayhe shows up with a new stupid mug. This one says reporters do itwith sources. Now when he goes to get coffee he doesn't bringany for me. He really thinks I took it. I thought he was kidding . . .

I see Larry and the non-Rockette over by the coffeemaker.They're exchanging whispers. They stop talking when I am withinearshot.

I met the cutest human being in the world today. I can't even lookat him —it's like staring at the sun. I ran into him at the mailboxesin the lobby. He's my neighbor. He lives two floors above me, in thepenthouse. As opposed to across town, where most of my neighborslive.

I'll never forget his first words to me. He said, "Hey."Can you believe it? How cool is that? Then I start imagining allsorts of places where he could say "Hey" to me. At the supermarket:"Hey." At the dry cleaners: "Hey." Walking into my bedroom com-pletely naked: "Hey." Then, for some reason, I picture him naked,walking around a McDonald's, holding nothing but a tray, and say-ing, "Hey." And still, he's attractive. I think that's pretty much thelitmus test, isn't it? A crazy, naked wanderer, and still I must havehim. Then for some reason I picture him at McDonald's —fullyclothed this time —in a tirade because he's ordered a ShamrockShake and the counter help is kind of ambivalent and amused, say-

ing it's August and they have no Shamrock Shakes. But my neigh-bor? Still adorable!

In hopes of another chance run-in with him, I will check themail at the same time every day. Even when I no longer live here.

It's funny how the prospect of love is so much more interestingwhen you don't actually know the person you're fabricating a fan-tasy life with. I can't allow reality to get in my way.

We're walking toward Battery Park. The walk feels like work, be-cause whenever I ask Lily something, she rephrases the questionand redirects it to me.

"Same stuff. You know, I'm never going to have a normalrelationship —blah, blah, blah," she says.

"Of course I get it. I mean, my advice is to start out with a dys-functional relationship first. Purge yourself of all of your weirdquirks like going through his wallet while he's sleeping. I mean, useup all your nurtiness and psychosis on Mr. Wrong, because, trustme, he's using his wackiest shit on you too. But a normal guy'sgoing to hit the road if he sees you searching his hamper with aflashlight at three A.M. . . . you trust me on this one."

I know you seem to like Michael and you'll probably go to work forthe next hundred years and never do anything about it, and you'llavoid ever really dealing with it, but at least your heart knows whatit wants. I mean, even if you are incapable of accepting happiness.At least some part of you is working toward it."

"It's a compliment. Look at Skorka. She's nuts. But she's moder-ately happy," Lily says. "I mean, that's all I want, happiness in mod-eration. I don't even know where to start."

Jenn calls to tell me she can't go to Greenwich today to visit Meg.This is awful news. I have to approach the suburbs by myself. It's

not the suburbs I hate; it's that I actually like the suburbs—kind of.I mean, sure, you have to drive your car to get milk, but still, all inall a pretty lovely backdrop for life. And I'm so far away from livingin the suburbs. The planets would have to align perfectly, and eventhen I'm not sure I could do it. It takes confidence to move awayfrom the perceived center of the known universe.

Apparently, Jenn needs to get Carl Brennan's digestive situationin order once and for all. She has to go to his suite at the Four Sea-sons and watch house maintenance raise the head of his bed twoinches. Not the whole bed, just the head of the bed. So that he'llsleep on a slight slant, and his intestines will work better. He wantsJenn to double-check the measurement. He doesn't trust housemaintenance's ruler, he says.

I go to Greenwich to visit Meg. Alone. Come up for the day, shesaid. We, I, hadn't been to her house in at least a year. An embar-rassingly long amount of time considering she comes to my placeonce a week.

She made a wreath. She makes lunch. Blue cheese and mush-room in phyllo dough. She apologizes for the phyllo dough —itdidn't get quite as light as it was supposed to. She wonders why and

names about twenty things she might have done wrong to make itturn out this way.

"Promise me you'll never screw up this bad again, or I'll have tostay away for another year," I say.

We have a salad made with five different kinds of lettuce. Amelting-pot salad. But it wasn't lettuce from those bags of pre-cutmixed lettuce you buy. No way. She bought five different heads oflettuce and mixed them together. Actually, she grew three of theheads and bought two. And felt guilty about the two she bought.What must she think of my place? Every time she comes over, Istop at the gourmet grocers and buy pre-made stuff. And I thoughtthat was being thoughtful.

Meg is one of my oldest friends, and we are completely different.And every so often I think maybe there's not much point in ourbeing friends anymore. But then she'll do something amazing.She'll say something that proves she knows me, really knows me.And I'm so grateful for that. It feels so good to be known, and Iwonder if she ever wonders what the point of being friends with meis. I think maybe she's too nice to think the way I do.

I am godmother to her son, Alex. He is thirteen months old, andis the most polite little man I've ever seen. He never grabs or criesor does anything but make you think he's adorable. It's like he's anengineered kid who gets paraded around in front of people who aredeciding whether or not to have kids, and when they meet him,they absolutely are convinced they must have kids. Then they go offand create their own little person completely unlike him. He mustenjoy a good laugh at that one.

"He has the best life in the world. I mean, he's got you as a mom,Anthony as a father. I mean, the kid hit the mother lode," I say.

"I golf all week long. I'm not really being paid to be a banker, I'mbeing paid to golf. But I knew Meg wanted some time alone withyou to talk about feminine products and hemlines," he says. Hekisses her on the cheek.

"He's gorgeous. You realize that, right? I mean, it's not just me. Imean, look at the guy," I say.

"Yeah, he's cute," she says, a little embarrassed about how wellher life turned out.

"So, seriously, you really made that wreath? You can tell me thetruth. I won't think less of you if you bought it," I say.

Sometimes I wonder if she's faking all of this. She must be. No-body has a life like this.

When I knew I'd be moving to New York, I did two things: alertedmy friends who live in New York and started getting shrinkreferrals —but not from any of my friends in New York, because it'sobvious that not a single one of them has been cured. With the pos-sible exception of Meg.

not here to take your call. If you would like to leave a message, pressthe ticktacktoe sign on your phone and leave your name and phonenumber."

Ticktacktoe sign? How could I ever unleash my free-floating,twisted demons on this woman?

"Why are you here?" Ella asks. She has a melodic, low, soothingvoice. Her voice is a massage. White noise.

She is wearing a black suit. A Hermes scarf. She's wearing herwedding and engagement rings on her right hand. Tricky. Tricky.She looks tired, and kind. I feel like I don't want to burden thiswoman.

"Well, I'm here because I'm at risk of not taking any risks," I say.Here's what I don't say. I don't say that I'm here because I'm afraidthat the worst thing that's ever happened to me is going to end upbeing the thing that shapes and defines the rest of my life. I don'tsay this, because I really do fear it. I fear it so much that I can't sayit. Not to her. I know, I know. I'm bluffing my shrink, and we don'teven have any cash riding on it—just my well-being.

"Oh God. If you were thinking I was going to be talking aboutsex, I'm going to be such a huge disappointment as a patient. I'mstill working on my head . . . you're going to be completely bored.Maybe we should skip this. You need a more interesting problem tosolve."

She doesn't say anything. I read the spines of the books on hershelves. She has the world's biggest collection of books with theword marriage in the title. She's also fond of enormous, hernia-inducing art books. She still doesn't say anything.

One night when I was seven, I made signs out of constructionpaper and posted them around our house. They advertised a show,starring me, to be held later in the evening on the grand stage of mybedroom. My pajamas were my costume—a green two-piece num-ber manufactured by the good folks at Carter's. And as an addedflair for the yahoos paying good money to see me, I planned to wavea metal noisemaker. My parents brought it home from a New Year'sEve party for me. Tickets to my show cost a quarter. A sellout crowdwould give me fifty cents—a sufficient amount to temporarily feedmy penny-candy habit. Sometimes at my shows, my dad would tossin an extra quarter, saying that Pretzels, our dog, had to pay too.And my brother, John, who is nine years older than me, was neverhome, so I never considered that he might buy a ticket.

My act consisted of me — ta-dah — jumping on my bed. I imag-ine this would make someone at least twenty or thirty dollars inTimes Square today, but again, I was seven, so it wasn't quite so in-teresting or exciting. I did, however, have the marketing strategydown. Had I merely jumped on my bed, I would have been yelledat. But by calling it a show, I was a performer. I was the talent. Andmy parents, mere mortals really, were unable to resist the magneticlure of live theater.

Anyway, the Capote matriarch and patriarch one-upped me thatnight by calling me into the study and telling me to sit down. Ap-parently, they had planned their own show. They even invited mybrother. They didn't have the flair for costumes and pageantry thatI did, but I forgave them that. They had drama. My mother handedme a fistful of tissues. A splendid bouquet. My father smoked hispipe. Cherry tobacco. A low-budget smoke machine. Very moody.Very savvy on their part.

So I assumed our dog Pretzels had been hit by a car, becausethat was the worst thing I could imagine. I started crying hysteri-cally. Our dog was always walking down the middle of the road

cheating death. He was an egotistical dog. And I always worriedthat one day that stupid dog would be called on it and wouldn't beable to move out of the way quick enough. They calmed me down,took a deep breath, and told us they were getting a divorce. I wasn'tsure what that was, so I waited for them to explain it and then Istarted the whole breakdown all over again.

"Can I borrow the car?" my brother said. No one answered him,so he took the keys and went to find some beer.

I sat, Indian-style, on the Oriental rug. I traced the patterns onthe rug with my eyes, and the lines blurred and moved the more Icried. It was a better-looking rug through tears, I thought. Smootherand softer. Maybe the rug weavers should cry and then start work-ing.

And my father reached for me and pulled me up onto his lapand hugged me, but not really. His body felt old and soft. Heseemed weak and sad, and blindsided. And with my head falling onhis shoulder, I could see into the hallway. I could see one of myposters announcing my performance hanging in the hallway. Thenotion that the show must go on did not occur to me. I desperatelywanted it to be the next day, or several years later than it was. Whatwould Shirley Temple do?

At breakfast the next morning they asked me, and they werequite serious, who I wanted to live with. I considered their questionfor a while.

"The Brady Bunch," I said, even though I wasn't too excitedabout having to share a bedroom with three goody-goodies whobrushed their hair without being told. Their parents kissed themgood night and pulled the covers up to their chins. What could theypossibly know about the real world?

My father stopped laughing. If he'd been faithful, this conversa-tion wouldn't be happening. That must have hit him just then. Andit's not even completely true. If he'd been faithful, the question ofwho I wanted to live with would not have been asked. Did it seemworth it? I wonder. Was this horrible morning worth it to them?

It was a trick question, of course, because there was no correctanswer. Besides, what kind of geniuses allow a child to decide whoshe wants to live with? I mean, they didn't even let me select whatclothes I'd wear. Why would they allow me to select which ape wasgoing to raise me?

I was in a cab on my way to work. I was on the verge of tears. Thisis why shrinks should work weekends. I can't be showing up to workpost-therapy, and weepy. Then this school bus pulled up next to thecab. And this little girl was staring at me and then she mouthed thewords You re pretty. And it cheered me up. How could I feel sorryfor myself? I mean, let's face it, she could have said my highlightsneeded to be touched up.

I tell that story to Michael and he laughs. And he looks at mekind of funny, like he's just realized something.

I am Ruby Capote, a woman who craves praise from her boss somuch that she practically has to beg him to tell her she's pretty.How insane is this? How did I get to be so nuts?

I stopped talking after my father left. Not for, like, a year or any-thing that interesting. For a few weeks maybe. I just didn't feel liketalking. Or it was the only thing left that I controlled.

That's when Mom decided to send me to the shrink. Had Iknown what a dreamboat Dr. Steve was going to be, I'd have shutup a long time ago. Once I met Dr. Steve, it seemed I couldn't stoptalking.

Dr. Steve —can you believe that, Dr. Steve? —had this boring-looking office, and when I asked him why, he said he hadn't real-ized it was a "boring" office, and thanked me for pointing it out. Healways had tons of candy and cookies in heavy glass bowls. At first,it was a lot like visiting my grandmother, except without all of thepink housecoats and canned iced tea with artificial lemon flavor.

"There's nothing here except a couch and chairs and somebooks," I said. "Where's the art and the flowers?"

At home we dressed up our dismal lives with colorful stuff, so Ithought everyone did.

"Different things matter to different people, Ruby. I like this of-fice. It suits me. Besides, it's not what's in here" —he motioned tothe walls of his office —"but what's in here" —he motioned to hishead and chest—"that matters most," he said.

Dork! It was sappy, in the way that the simplest truth can some-times be. He didn't care that it was sappy. And so I had no choicebut to fall deeply and completely in love with him. He was my neb-bish renegade of sap in a too-tough world.

My goal was to make him love me. So I cleaned underneath myfingernails. Wore Tootsie Roll-flavored lip gloss. And I wrote myname and his inside hearts on all my notebooks. And in my diary.Oh, life with my husband Dr. Steve would be grand. We'd eat noth-ing but cookies and candy at breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I'd makesome art to hang on those boring plain-white walls. And that worncorduroy couch that smelled of dog? We'd be replacing that.

One day I sat in his office swinging my feet. I wouldn't speak tohim. I don't remember why. I was getting bored with the sessions orsomething. Or I just didn't feel like talking. He wanted to knowwhy I wouldn't talk, and I said I was tired of having to do all of thework. I mean, a relationship is a two-way street. I'd heard mymother say that often enough.

"You're right. You have been doing all of the work. Why don'tyou assign me a task," he said.

I thought about it. Wondered what the catch was. I thoughtabout making him clean my room or do my homework. But thoseweren't good enough. Too functional. Then I reached into mybook bag and pulled out a deck of cards, took them out of the box,and threw them into the air. Fifty-two pickup.

There was a pause. And then he got down on his hands andknees and started collecting the cards. I was astonished. Giddy withpower. And then I felt guilty, terribly guilty, and completely awfulabout his willingness to please. So I got down on the floor andbegan helping him pick up the cards.

"No, don't, Ruby," he said. "You're right. You've been doing allthe work. I'll pick up the cards." I could smell his skin, I was thatclose to him. It smelled warm. Since that day on the floor of his of-fice, and until forever, he is the benchmark for what a man shouldsmell like.

We did the fifty-two pickup routine a few times, then I changedthe game. It was too easy for him. I was the one struggling. He was,after all, merely crawling around on the floor picking up playingcards. This time, I threw the cards in the air and told him his taskwas to not pick them up.

"Okay," he said. Only he said okay like he was saying "Oh-key"as in "Oh-key-dokey." I even liked that. It seemed backwoods to me.My backwoods boy who decided to go get himself more than hisfair share of book learnin'.

All week I smiled and felt powerful thinking of my cards lying onthe floor of his office. If I had to think about him all week, heshould have to think about me. Each time he sees the cards —under his feet, under the feet of sad housewives, under the feet ofrestless fathers —he would think of me. He would think about howmuch he loved me. He'd grudgingly listen to people yap, in theback of his head wondering what the most fascinating girl inthe world was doing.

The next week when I walked into his office, the cards were stillon the floor, just as they were when I'd left.

"No you didn't. You drew a map, and then you put the cardsback on the floor just before I got here," I said.

I pictured him sitting in his chair drawing a map of the cardsscattered across the floor. Did he do this when there was a no-show?Or did he stay late? I pictured him placing them back in their

proper place. I stood in the middle of his office staring at the cards,and I started to cry. And I was embarrassed, but I couldn't stop cry-ing. I just couldn't.

"I'm sorry, Ruby," he said. "I shouldn't have lied to you likethat." His hand was on my shoulder. How many tears do I have inme? A pint? A quart? I needed to pace myself, because if I stoppedcrying, he might take his hand away.

It's funny—I wasn't thinking about his lie, not at all. I was think-ing about how much he loved me. He must love me. I was com-pletely touched by his drawing the map, indulging me. Placing thecards back on the floor. My parents never would have done that.They never would have played along, even if it meant the world tome. I stopped making him jump through hoops after that. Beforethat day it was a crush, and suddenly in a split second I was im-mersed in the purest, truest love, because he lied to me, and thatreally made me trust him.

My brother came to New York today to shop. He still lives in Phila-delphia. They have stores there, too. But our parents used to bringus to New York to buy a special outfit for Christmas, for the prom,that kind of thing. And it's a habit he can't break. So here he is inNew York, in want of a decent suit.

"That's great!" I say. "Hey, that's really great. But I never met ashrink who wore a suit. Well, one, but I never went back to him, be-cause I felt he really wanted to be a lawyer."

"Oh, I just need a new suit. It's completely unrelated to the prac-tice," he says.

"It's not Beth. I'm not marrying Beth. Her name's Marley andshe's wonderful," he says.

"No, no. I met her over the phone. She called the hot line. Sheneeded someone to talk to, and I don't know, I guess I did too," hesays.

"Great, John. That's really great," I say, but I don't really mean it.Well, part of me does. I mean, how can I get excited about himmarrying a woman who calls a suicide hot line? Is he supposed torescue her forever? Or was that like a onetime thing? Or was that—his answering the phone —the only rescuing she needed? And whatabout him? Should he really be marrying our father? A female ver-sion of our depressed, out-in-left-field father?

We go to the 21 Club for lunch, because it's what we did withour parents. I don't even bother to ask him where he wants to go. Ijust know.

We eat steaks and drink red wine, and laugh because the waiterthinks we're a couple. But seriously, I'm way too normal to be hisdate.

Whenever anyone asks about our family, he quickly volunteersthat our father killed himself. I have a problem with that. Because Ithink, Oh my God, did he? Was he really so desperate to be away

from us? And I also think it's not true. I mean, he got drunk, he rana red light, and he hit another car. He didn't plan to die. A dapperman by nature, he would have worn a tuxedo if he were really try-ing to kill himself, I believe.

What if, while sitting at the bar, he suddenly thought of mymother—how much he loved her, loved us—and decided to racehome and tell her that, and that he was a changed man ready torededicate himself to family life? That's not what happened, either.In my heart I know that. But my point is, in my heart I don't thinkhe intentionally killed himself, either. I believe that on the night hedied, he was confused and careless and without any goal, the wayhe always was.

My brother believes it so much, though, that he went to work try-ing to rescue other people's parents and brothers and daughters atthe suicide-prevention center. He's going to save our father if it's thelast thing he does. I don't want to save him; I want to stop thinkingabout him. Stop pitying him, stop blaming my mother, and moveon. Moving to New York was supposed to make me forget all of that,but it hasn't. That's the thing about problems, I guess. You need tobuddy up with them, because they never hit the road on their own.

"Sorry about what?" I ask. He does this all the time. Every singletime we get together, he apologizes.

"Yeah, but things weren't that bad when I was six or seven. Momand Dad didn't dislike each other yet," he says.

We have different memories. Same house, same parents, differ-ent memories. I remember that my dad was the jovial drunk oneand my mom was quiet and industrious. I can't imagine them everbeing different from that, or that they ever had a childhood of their

own or a life before me. And for the first time it occurs to me thatmy arrival changed things. Maybe my mother had one foot out thedoor and then learned she was pregnant with me.

"What I remember is you smoking pot behind the garage," I say."And Mom and Dad were clueless."

But what I'm thinking is that I am grateful to my parents for giv-ing me this brother. I always think this when I see him. I thinkabout how lonely life would be without him. I figure we all comeinto the world alone, and there are a handful of people who knowus from our birth and throughout our entire life. And he's the one Iwill know the longest. I am completely lucky. I am the luckiest girlin the world. Right?

At our last meeting, I sat across from Dr. Steve. I looked at him. Iwondered if I'd have the courage to give him the note in my bookbag.

"This is a small town. That's true. But you'll be special whereveryou go," he said.

On my way out the door, I summoned my courage. I gave himthe note, a love letter that I'd written and rewritten at least forty

times. Perfecting my penmanship, secretly hoping the key to se-ducing an older man was perfectly crossed Ts. It didn't prompt a re-sponse. But when I got sad, I'd look forward to the day when therewould be a knock at the door and he'd announce he was there totake me away. For a while it worked as a mood elevator.

My exterior was this: I worked hard at being an angel. I read comicbooks, but never in front of my mother. She would have consideredit unladylike. In front of her I read Nancy Drew books only. At bed-time, when I could hear her moving down the hallway to check onme, I'd get on my knees and put my hands together and fake myprayers. And I wore a look that said I was really concentrating onwhat I had to say to God, whom I pictured as a muscular, medium-height, brown-haired man with square white teeth and a good jaw-line. I couldn't believe He went along with the whole thing. And Iwould open my eyes just a slit and watch my mother in her night-gown, standing in my doorway. She'd be smiling and looking at melike I was the sweetest thing on earth. I was thrilled at being able totrick her so completely, and hoped I wasn't as naive as she was.

I spent hours fantasizing about romance. I'd lie in bed and won-der what it would be like to spend a Saturday afternoon fullyclothed, perhaps even wearing a turtleneck, with a cute boy ly-ing on top of me. It made me nuts with excitement just thinkingabout it.

I went to college in Boston because it seemed like the thing to do atthe time. I made great friends. We all wore the same lipstick, SoftShell Pink by Clinique; borrowed one another's fisherman's-knitsweaters; and were raised by Waspy parents who had subscriptionsto Life magazine and would drive through a raging blizzard to playindoor tennis in February. But what struck me as most odd was theircommon goal of trying to hide the TV. Our parents all had expen-sive antique cabinets that hid the television from those who tookthe tour of the house before dinner parties. As if the devil box wereour greatest shame.

I majored in journalism. Wrote for the school newspaper and lit-erary arts magazine. And during my freshman year I fell for my po-etry professor.

His name was Grant, he wore black Converse high-tops, looseLevi's, and his hair was blond and flat and too long. I thought hewas a genius because his free-form verse occasionally appeared inThe New Yorker, so I slept with him as much as possible, hoping tobe impregnated with talent.

Once, in the spring, we had sex on the table in the English De-partment lounge, and when I was walking back to the dorm, I couldsmell smoke and old books in my hair. And in that instant, when Ismelled my hair, I knew I was outgrowing him. He'd be having sexon that table in that awful room for the next ten years. I, on theother hand, would have the opportunity to move on to other tables.

campus over the next couple of years, we'd smile and wave. But Ididn't feel a thing for him, and there was no difficult period of for-getting him or getting over him. Which made me wonder if I hadever loved him, or anyone else.

The year my father moved out, I was absent from school more daysthan the kid in my class who had cancer. I was afraid if I went awayfor a whole day, my mom might leave too.

The only thing I miss about Boston are the enormous grocerystores. On Sunday night, Doug and I would grocery shop. We'dturn it into an event. We'd each take our own cart so we wouldn'tfight over who got to push it.

Doug had a system. He put his items on the belt with thebar code up. He thought this expedited the checkout process, andutilized his time waiting in line. He thought the checkout girl,woman, whatever, appreciated this. He thought the guy behindhim appreciated this because his wait time would be diminishedby Doug's rigid bar-code-up approach. No dawdling. Milk eachsecond.

I could see him waiting for the praise . . . waiting for the check-out girl to notice, but of course she didn't. Waiting for the dolt be-

hind him to notice. He didn't. And I could see the veil of disap-pointment descend on him. He'd gone and organized his world sowell, and no one even noticed. Not even me, until I put somefrozen peas on the conveyor belt and he quickly turned the box sothat the bar code faced up, and gave me a look that said: Droppedthe ball on that one, didn'tcha?

"This is when you're supposed to read the tabloids," I said. "Thisis when you get to read those tiny horoscope books. Or the minia-ture cat books. Or look in the cart of the guy behind us and judgehim on his purchases. Let's make him feel really good about thepaper towels he's about to buy, and really bad about the make-your-own-taco kit." I tried to make people experience a roller coaster ofemotions just by viewing their cart and making ridiculous gestureswith my eyes.

They are staring. I can feel it. They pretend they aren't staring, butthen the pretending gets to them. They can't take it anymore.

But the six-year-old on the school bus thought I was pretty, Iwant to say, but don't.

So we play poker for, like, a half hour. But my hair is apparentlyso bad that no one can concentrate. It is a jackhammer on thebrain. So Meg goes to the drugstore and buys Clairol something orother. And I allow several drunk women to highlight my hair.There is a reason, I discover, that most hair stylists work solo. Myhair looks like five different people have worked on it. So Meg is dis-patched to the store again and this time she buys some brownhenna, to dull the brightness. And now I look pretty much like I didat the beginning of the evening. When everyone was so repulsed.But at least we got some funny Polaroids out of the deal.

I go to Wags's son's christening. All of my co-workers are here. Soit's Sunday, but it feels like Monday.

We're on his roof, overlooking the Hudson. There's a rabbi, apriest, and some microbrew beer.

The guys from the back shop hang out by the beer. The Cadaverstands in the corner, draped in a burial shroud and an enormousstraw hat, to protect her from the sun and being accidentallyembalmed —until she sees me. Then she lights up and hightails itover to my side.

"Yeah. Makes him kind of attractive, doesn't it?" I say. I mean it.Upon second inspection, he is attractive. I didn't look beyond therobe the first time.

I'm covered in sweat. I'm drinking beer with the Cadaver on aSunday morning, helping her decide if she should make sexual ad-vances toward a man of the cloth.

Michael appears. He's not breaking a sweat. He's talking. He'slaughing. He's having the greatest christening experience ever. He'sone egg shy of a dozen, all right. And then, every time I look at himand he looks at me, he quickly looks down, like he's got the world'smost interesting feet or something. Maybe he's going to fire me. Ijust hope he shows some decorum by not firing me here, in front ofthe guy working the beer tap.

"The rabbi's at the keg. Just walk over to get a beer with me, thenyou can go," the Cadaver says.

I walk over to the keg. The rabbi is tapping the perfect head-freebeer. The Cadaver leans against the keg, posing. I sort of want to seewhat happens next. Will he read her last rites? Do rabbis do that?

I say my good-byes and walk to the elevator door and hit the but-ton. And just then Michael is next to me.

"I have to be at another christening on a roof on the Upper WestSide at two," I say.

"Actually, I just made up that whole thing about a christening onthe Upper West Side because I wanted you to think my social lifewas glamorous—you know, an all-babies-and-God kind of deal. I'mgoing home. It's just around the corner," I say. "But thanks."

We walk five blocks to a garage so he can drive me three blockshome. . . . We pull up in front of my building, and he slams on thebrakes. I wonder if he's as shocked as I am that the air bag doesn'topen.

"Nice seeing you, too . . . on a . . . Sunday?" I say. We're speak-ing in code, but I don't understand the code.

I'm barely out the door when he speeds off, gunning it like he'stryin' lose the cops. Or maybe he just wants to get the hell awayfrom me. Or the terrible awkwardness. Or maybe they are the samething.

Danielle and I meet for lunch. We pass this store that sells disgust-ing underwear, and she has to go inside. She needs some disgustingunderwear.

underwear being the thinness of the thong part. She points tounderwear, saying, "That works." "That doesn't work."

"Life is long," she says. "Besides, when it's twenty-five bucks fora pair of underpants that you can't try on, you better be educated."

I tell Danielle I'm going next door to order lunch and that sheshould meet me there. She hands me some of her bags to carry, andI walk out. I'm in the restaurant, some lady catches her baby strolleron Danielle's bags, and they split open. On the ground is a mess oftangled underwear that she'd bought earlier in another store thatsells underpants that she couldn't pass without going inside ... aswell as two baby outfits. The Pilgrim within forces me to scrambleto conceal the underthings just as Danielle arrives, scoops up every-thing, and throws it into a shopping bag. She doesn't care that theworld has seen her awful taste in underpants. What freaks her out isthe baby clothes. She hides them quickly. I can tell by how pan-icked she looks that I'm not supposed to ask her about it. So I don't.It's times like this that I wish Skorka were here.

No sign of my neighbor, Tom, at the mailboxes. However, today hehad a yellow Post-it on his mailbox indicating UPS tried to make adelivery to Mr. Tom Whitman.

He's really cute in that insincere TV executive sort of way. Theywear dark suits, and give you the impression that someone toldthem that's what executives wear. But you can tell by the trendyhaircut that something's off. Not generally my type. Whatever that

is. Unfortunately, he's kind of a womanizer. I always see himpartially cropped out of photographs of young actresses at awardceremonies and such. And once, a men's magazine did a story onhim . . . saying he was the quintessential man's man, the last of hiskind. Which sounded kinda gay to me. He's the kind of guy youhope might be getting embarrassed about getting older and stillhaving that kind of reputation. Like Warren Beatty before he gotmarried. Only, hopefully, not that bad, because I read somewherethat men who have had a lot of sexual partners have a greater like-lihood of giving their partners cancer of the uterus. Swell, huh?They don't get the cancer, but they get to pass it along to you.

When I was little and The Wizard ofOz came on television, I'd sittoo close to the TV and will myself into that amazing place wherethe streets were made of gold bricks. And each year my fatherwould say the same thing when the Wicked Witch came on-screen.

"Don't ever wear green eye shadow. A gal I dated in high school,Ellen Previn, wore green eye shadow, and she looked just like thatwitch," he'd say.

Maybe it brought her one step closer to where she wanted to be.Maybe it transformed her. Maybe she wanted to look like a witch.To scare people off. This is all my father remembered about thisgirl —what she looked like.

Seventh Avenue to get a manicure, and Kay-Lee ropes me into apedicure too. I wear clear nail polish. Always have. I used to wearclear stuff on my toenails, too. But now when it comes to selectinga color for my toes, Kay-Lee never even asks me. She just reachesfor the metallic green. It was her idea in the first place, and shelikes it that she's converted me. And when she's finished paintingmy toenails green, I always start laughing at how hideous they look.But the point is, I like walking around knowing I have green toe-nails, because no one would peg me for a green nail polish kind ofperson. If there is a kind of person who wears it. And I think thereis. Anyway, I enjoy it. It's like a secret from the whole world.

Dr. Steve sent me a condolence card when my father died. Hishome address was handwritten in the corner. And I thought aboutriding by his house on my bike to get a look at the place, but Ididn't. I was saving that for a day when I absolutely needed it. In-stead, I read the card a million times. I slept with it under my pil-low for a while, and then when it got ripped, I taped it to the insidecover of my diary. And at night when I prayed, I also secretly hopedfor other tragedies to happen to our family—public tragedies thatmight be mentioned in the local paper and catch Dr. Steve's atten-tion and send him to the store to buy me another greeting card.

We played poker, but five minutes into it Jenn was on the verge oftears again. Her job sucks. Her personal life sucks. Everythingsucks.

I, the referee, blow an imaginary whistle to stop play. "I think shewas offering a list of complaints ... no money being one of them," Isay. I blow the imaginary whistle again, to signal continuation of play.

"Hang out in good restaurant. Guys are pigs. They always eatand drink. You'll meet some business guy," Skorka says.

"Good restaurant? I can't afford a good restaurant. And look atmy clothes. Besides, I don't want to pick someone up, I want tomeet someone normal," Jenn says.

Skorka is momentarily stumped, then: "Hang out in a foodcourt. You can afford a food court. You meet some nice food courtboy," Skorka says, smoking, twirling her hair, and dancing by her-self again.

"I'm honest. You don't like honest," Skorka says. "U.S. Open,they have nice food court. Flavored beers. Steak."

"I haven't met a guy in ten months and you suggest a two-weekwindow of opportunity next September? What kind of advice isthat?" Jenn says.

"Right, a smoker, perfect. He can die twenty-five years before meand stick me with a mortgage I can't afford," Jenn says.

"I don't need sex, I need . . . a . . . relationship —a regular guy, agood-enough job, just an okay life," she says.

"No, you like the hard life, that's why you work for the asshole,"Skorka says. "Before that, you worked for some other asshole. Youwant to hit the head against the wall."

Jenn stands up, picks up her coat, and leaves. We call after her.She won't come back. She's running now. She's running down thehall away from her horrible, no-good friends. Food court? I mean,can you blame her?

Danielle stays later than everyone else most of the time. She isafraid to be alone.

Her parents own —and before them it was her grandparents' —the largest mirror manufacturer on the East Coast. So she sells mir-rors to large hotel chains and wherever else people need to seethemselves. Or see themselves skinnier. They make those thinningmirrors for department stores, too.

"Or maybe my favorite part was when we checked him into his fifthrehab in less than a year. The whole thing was a huge mistake. AndI guess I just kept thinking, Well, there's always divorce."

"My story has nothing to do with marriage, Ruby. I married anadorable drug addict," she says. "It's not like it was a real marriage."

"You seem so . . . confident. That's what I don't get, I mean, hejust didn't seem . . . special enough," I say.

"Uh-huh, I remember the first time I saw him. He was paintingyour apartment, and he had a T-shirt on that said frisky. He lookedlike a kid," I say.

I ask too many questions sometimes. It's what happens when youwork for a newspaper. You think you have the right to know every-thing first. Or maybe I need answers and so I work for a newspaper.

"Well, he told me someone was stealing my energy, and if Ididn't make a move, soon they'd be stealing even more," Daniellesays.

"He called it. Two days after our first anniversary, I'm sitting atOne Central Park West with a client. He's about to buy $375,000worth of frosted beveled mirrors. It's a great contract. I was startingto feel like things were okay, that I was coming out of a rough year

but things were getting better. Anyway, I look outside and I seePaul. And he's cupping his hands against the glass looking for me,and then he sees me. And a few minutes later he's in the restaurant,and he walks up to our table, steals my purse, and runs out of therestaurant," she says.

"Yeah, and I'm sitting there in complete shock," she says. "And Ihave to decide to either tell the client that my soon-to-be ex has juststolen my purse or pretend I was mugged."

"Yeah. So I pretended I was mugged —mainly so I wouldn't haveto deal with the fact that I'd actually married a guy who would stealhis wife's purse for drug money," she says.

Clown Hair delivers my mail. I get lots of letters from concernedreaders. They want to help me fix my free-fall life. Or free-for-alllife. Either way, they want to fix it. Fix me. I appreciate their con-cern. I weed through the stack. I open the handwritten ones first;they're usually the nicest and most genuine.

I glance at an envelope. The man who works fifteen feet awayfrom me is writing to me —again.

Well that's . . . concise. We cannot time-travel back to when wewere still just exchanging letters. And I find myself insulted at thisattempt. What's it really say, that me in letters is better than me in

person? Me at a distance, reachable only by mail, is preferable tome fifteen feet away?

"Not cheese-making again," I say. "The dry cleaner made mesign a release before they'd attempt to clean my sweater."

"Well, there's this thing. You'll hate it. It's an eight-week deal.You don't have to go to all eight weeks, but I'm allowed to bring afriend to the first meeting. I mean, I'm going, I already signed up,and it cost eight hundred dollars, so I can't back out."

"It's kind of an empowerment thing. For women. Katie from theoffice suggested it. She said it really changed her life."

"Katie, the one who wears nylons with shorts in the summer?" Iask. "Katie, the one who wears makeup to the gym?"

"Yeah. Anyway, I don't know . . . maybe I shouldn't go. I mean,it's not like men have empowerment groups," she says.

As she says this, I'm thinking, Of course they do! What do youcall Monday Night Football? They fill stadiums with men cheeringfor men. Men loving men. Men paying men lots of money to playwith a little ball. It's a glorified love fest, with major sponsors andbeer bongs.

"You don't have any money, Jenn. So if you already paid theeight hundred dollars, you must have really wanted to go," I say.

she wouldn't go without me, and I knew she really wanted to go.And I needed a column.

"Oh, one thing I should tell you, in case you get there before me:When you're there, you have to address the other women as SisterGoddess," she says.

I know before I get there that this bring-a-friend thing is a totaltrap. It's a scam those vacation Bible schools use. Bring a friend, geta pack of Life Savers. Life Savers, of all things. The cult is hopingI'll have such a positive experience that they will be able to perma-nently induct me into the sisterhood. Either way, I said I'd go. SoI'm going.

Any event that begins with the words Sister Goddesses, gather'round7 has to be worth the investment of two hours on a Tuesdaynight.

I take a cab to the Upper East Side. York Avenue. I climb thefour flights to Sister Goddess Pam's studio apartment.

Everyone looked pretty normal. Jenn was there, sitting on thewindowsill. Staring at her feet. Chewing on her lip.

I bounded in, caught Jenn's attention, made an elaborate wave,and said, "Hey, Sister Goddess Jenn."

Sister Goddess Pam closes the front door. We're trapped. She in-vites us to gather 'round.' "Welcome to Sister Pam's School ofWomanly Graces," she says.

She tells us to join hands and form a circle. Sister Goddess Pamasks us to reveal to our fellow Sister Goddesses our "item of rid-dance." Item of what?

Everyone had props. One woman had a journal. One had anecklace. Another had a lock of hair. And so on. The item of rid-

dance, Sister Goddess Pam reminded us, represented what washolding us back, the thing we most needed to get out of our lives.

My head raced. If I'd actually been alerted to this earlier . . .what would I have brought? What something was it that weighedme down, made me so scared, desperate, confused, lonely that I'dattend a Sister Goddess seminar to unload the item? I had nothing.I hadn't done my homework, and everyone else in the class had.How could Jenn forget to tell me about something as important asmy item of riddance? I grabbed a piece of paper and franticallywrote three words on it, then folded the paper ten times so no onecould see it.

I had visions of us burning our items in a bonfire of churningflames that would suck down our insecurity or lack of indepen-dence or general free-floating fears and whisk them away.

Instead, we formed a single line and marched from Sister God-dess Pam's studio apartment down the hall to a closet that wasslightly larger than Sister Goddess Pam's studio. A large blue stickeron the door said did you remember to recycle?

One by one, we unloaded our baggage down the chute that leadsto the building's entrails, the whistling, clanking incinerator: SisterGoddess Jenn let a photo of Carl Brennan fall. Sister GoddessLinda (a nurse by day, a slam poet by night) tossed in her blackmakeup and black hair dye. Sister Goddess Tina, her birth controlpills. Sister Goddess Ruby, her white piece of paper. Sister GoddessSandy, a banker, threw in a man's shirt. Then she let out a howl oflaughter that couldn't be stifled. And somehow I couldn't help butthink she was burning some important evidence that could poten-tially convict her, and we were all witnesses.

We march back to Sister Goddess Pam's cramped dwelling.There, she instructs us to sit in a circle. She excuses herself andsprays some Glade air freshener near the litter box, then returns tojoin the circle.

"You are all here to reclaim something. Something has beentaken from you, and you want it back," she says. "But there is some-thing very powerful within you. Too powerful to be ignored, thatyou've always had. And you cannot, will not, be ashamed of it. Cananyone tell me what that is?" No one has a chance to answer.

I'm sitting next to the Wall Streeter, aka potential murderer, andattempting to squash my laugh. As I disguise it as a coughing fit, Irealize everyone else has been hypnotized by Sister Goddess Pam.She's got one talon on their brains, the other on their checkbooks.I begin to fear for my life.

"Sister Goddess Sandy, we'll start with you. If your vagina weredressed up in an outfit, what would that outfit look like?"

"A Knicks uniform," she says, without missing a beat. I think shemay have been to this class before. Or she's a ringer or something.Everyone claps.

"If your vagina were dressed in an outfit, what would that outfitlook like?" she asks.

"Are we talkin' about for, like, Halloween, or is this, like, every-day vagina clothes?" I ask.

"Sister Goddess Ruby isn't ready to share. And that's okay. We ac-cept Sister Goddess Ruby. Because we know it's fear that makes herso aggressive. So we won't ask her to leave. Let's move on to SisterGoddess Jenn. Sister Goddess Jenn . . ."

"Well, a cowboy hat and cowboy boots . . . and a leather vest.The kind with studs and fringes and stuff. And maybe chaps and abandanna, too. Oh, and a holster with some big guns. Loaded guns.Yeah, that's what it would wear," Sister Goddess Jenn says.

She is looking at me with great pleasure. Like she's accom-plished something. I don't think I've ever seen her look so self-assured. And I'm realizing something about my friend. With everypart of her being, she's really, really, really proud to be from Texas.

Sister Goddess Linda says her vagina would sport a DorothyHamill haircut, because her mom wouldn't let her get one oh solong ago when they were the rage. And her vagina would wear tightjeans and a ripped, "sexy" T-shirt. Go, Flashdancel

"Can I just say that this is one freaky masquerade party I don'twant to be invited to?" I say. I'm ignored.

Sister Goddess Kelly says her vagina would sport La Perla under-wear. Pink La Perla, she says. Sister Goddess Pam lets her get awaywith this, folks, saying her vagina would wear underpants. . .

"Can I add another thing to my you-know-what's outfit?" asksSister Goddess Jenn.

"Now, we're getting to know more about ourselves and eachother, aren't we?" says Sister Goddess Pam. "We're learning that theself we show to the world can be very different from the self weshow to ourselves. Now we're going to go around the room andshare some more. We're going to share what it is our vaginas wouldsay if they could speak . . ."

"Oh I'm sorry, Sister Goddess Pam, my vagina can't talk rightnow, because it's still trying to figure out what to wear," I say. "Ifonly I had a multitasking vagina."

"Look, I have to be honest, you guys are really creeping me out,"I say. And your vaginas apparently aren't capable of an originalthought, I think but don't say.

I wasn't so much asked to leave as I was told to leave. Though Iwas invited to return should I ever "desire a real relationship withthe most important person in the world, your true self."

If they were so eager to meet their true selves, why were theirvaginas in drag? Besides, no one seemed to get it. That it was an ex-ercise to make yourself see just how uncomfortable you are withyour own body. That the silliness of dressing one's vagina shouldput you at ease ultimately. But they all took it literally. They weregenuinely excited about the fashion-show aspect of it all.

I sit on the steps of a brownstone and wait for Jenn. An hour latershe bounds down the stairs. And we walk to the corner of Eighty-second Street and hail a cab.

By the way, I think but don't say, because I don't really want totalk about vaginas on a street corner, your vagina does wear clothes.Every day.

I don't know. See, because to me that seems like the worst sort oflost there is —a staged evening that makes you feel connected.Manufactured intimacy. When this class is over, there will be an-other class, another "connection." But there's no permanent gain.It's all just sort of dangled out there by someone else, and until youcan manufacture it for yourself, it can't exist without an end. Jennis dependent on the idea that there is something to learn, but thefocus never narrows.

I think about those letters from Michael. And I think about feel-ing connected and what's real and what's not and whether there's a

difference. It makes me sad. And then it makes me laugh. Becausesadness at any length is terrifying.

"I really can't/' she says. "You must have liked it in the begin-ning. You wrote something down as your item of riddance. I sawyou. What was it? What did you want out of your life?" she says.

"They're in his office. In his personal files," she says. "I filedthem. He'll never find 'em."

Doug and I have been sort of seeing each other occasionally. Aweekend here and there.

"Oh well. That's good, right? I didn't know you wanted to moveto New York," I say. Shouldn't I have known?

"You would be the reason for me to take the job," he says. "I'd beleaving Boston to be with you. You know, to try this."

"Doug, I'm not the right reason for you to move anywhere," I say.If he had any sense at all, he'd move farther away, not closer.

"Okay. Well, listen. I needed to hear that, Ruby," he says. "Look,at this point, there's no reason for us to see each other anymore,okay? I mean, there's no real point, is there? So let's just stop itnow, okay?"

"Uh-huh, okay," I say. I'm so relieved he finally had the courageto end it. And I hate it that I made him do it, and that I couldn't. Imean, he's just a guy trying to live his life. He'd be perfect for Jennif she weren't so much like me.

"Don't patronize me, Ruby," he says. And hangs up on me.I wasn't trying to be patronizing. I was serious.

Lily calls me and she's crying. And I want so desperately to reachout to her and make her feel better. I know how my brother feels.She's crying so hard she can't tell me what's wrong. I assume she'sdying of cancer. I wonder how long it will be before her hair fallsout and I think she needs a friend who is a better friend than me.Someone stronger. Someone . . . just better.

"Nothing. I mean, just listening is helping. Thanks, Ruby,youVe always been a great listener," she says. But I don't believeher, I guess because I'm not convinced that just listening wouldmake me feel better.

"I guess I'll answer the question the same way I've answered itthe last fifty times you've asked me. No," she says.

"I don't get it," she says. "What's the big deal about sex, seriously?I mean, what is the big deal?"

I'm afraid to answer the question. I'm afraid answering the ques-tion will only make her feel more alienated.

"When I see a movie and a guy and a woman are doing all sortsof crazy shit to be together, or to make a good impression or to staytogether ... I don't get it. I don't understand it. I mean, I don'tknow what they're talking about," she says.

"That's because most movies suck," I say. I'm terrible. When shedoes want to talk, I pretend she's talking about something otherthan what she is talking about.

"I'm sad for you . . . because I do know what they're talkingabout. And I wish you did too, in your way, whatever that way is."

"I don't know," I say. "Maybe the men and women in the moviesare symbols and you're viewing the symbols . . . too literally."

She stops talking. Tm not gay," she says."I didn't say you were gay," I say."I'm not gay," she says again.She's so gay.

"I need to tell you guys something," says Lily. She takes a largegulp from her margarita. "I think I'm bisexual."

"Yeah, whatever. So, you've been doing it with men and women?"says Danielle, kind of jealous. Kind of like her role as the oversexedone is in serious jeopardy. "I mean, sure, if I can have two dessertsinstead of one, I'll take them both, but it's a little greedy, don't youthink?"

We all sit there in silence, not quite sure what to say. ThenSkorka, very dramatically, buttons up her blouse all the way to herneck.

Jenn has given up on the guys in New York City, or at least until thefood court at the U.S. Open swings its doors open for business nextSeptember. Men as a group —they've managed to underwhelmher. So now she's wearing a bandanna around her neck and we'redriving to an upstate farming town.

One of those evening news magazines says there are some singlemen there —an inordinately large number of them. Jenn wanted toget a look at them herself but was worried that after the long drive,she'd take any single guy because of the hassle of the journey. I'm

along for the ride to exercise quality control —and, hopefully, get acolumn out it.

"I thought we were going to go get your farmer and put him in abag and bring him home with us," I say. "Like cutting down yourown Christmas tree. We might need some ether."

There is some kind of mixer tonight. And tomorrow there is abrunch. Then the boys go on the auction block.

We're staying at some motel that costs $29 a night, because theredon't seem to be any real hotels, with steam rooms and minibars.Or theme bars lined with businessmen you can look at and fan-tasize about what a life with them might be like and how theywouldn't be sitting at the bar if they knew you.

Instead, this place has really thin soap that doesn't even comewith a wrapper. It's like they cut it off a soap log or something. Andinstead of a glass shower door, there's this crappy shower stall witha curtain that sticks to you when you soap up your legs. And smallplastic bottles filled with cheap, watery shampoo. I love places likethis. They remind me of the real world, where people eat fried foodat lunch counters in Woolworth's and have their hair cut in themiddle of nowhere in someone's basement shop with a name likeWendy Ann's Dip 'N Clip.

We're at the mixer. A band is playing something awful. The gan-gling farmers are on the dance floor trying to look charming. Theirarms shoot above their head, making a Y, then they bend down, mak-ing an M, then sideways to make a C. Sweet Christ, the Village Peo-ple. We could have walked to one of fifty bars in my neighborhoodfor this, I thought. No matter how far you travel, people are nuts.

"Let's dance," Jenn says, as if her cynicism were an accessoryonly to be worn in Manhattan.

She smiles. We dance. And the more humiliated I feel, the moreI can't stop laughing. The laugh seems to be scaring off the farmers.Maybe, I think, this gives them an idea. Maybe they could makescarecrows that laugh to keep their crops safe. I don't say this outloud, because I worry that with ideas this good, they'll worship meas their new god and make me stay in Hubbardsville forever.

Michael started my column on page one today. It jumped to theArts and Entertainment section. And no one at work said anything.Nothing. But still, I was happy. I was going to send a copy to mymother. Then I decided not to. And I couldn't send a copy to Doug,because it was all about him—and a little about me. Besides, Ithink he's still not speaking to me.

At ten-thirty p.m. Michael calls me. He says he's sorry to botherme at home and do I have Wags's phone number. Wags, a guy he's

worked with for five years. He doesn't have his phone number.Good one. I give him the number.

"I could read you some random numbers out of the phonebook," I say. What is wrong with me? How did I get to be this way?

I have this huge smile on my face. But I act all businesslike, be-cause I'm a social freak.

"So you dumped two guys then?" he says. "Well then, we reallyare going to have to celebrate." I laugh.

Michael is a puzzle. But not really. I need a puzzle, or to thinkthat he is one, so that I cannot latch on to him, know him, and ul-timately be disappointed by what kind of guy he is.

At some point during my relationship with Doug I stopped pre-tending to be perfect and started acting like myself. A recipe fordisaster, if you ask me. But I have to tell you, it was liberating.

"Remember when you used to say 'I love you' first?" I say. "Imean, 'me too'? Me too, what?"

I don't know, and I'm sick of it. It's not like I want to spend mylife with him, but I'd like to want to spend my life with him. Insteadof fantasizing about marrying him, I fantasize about a clean end-ing. Where we're not fighting over who owns the stereo.

"Why can't you say it? I mean, how difficult is this? You're thirty-two years old," I say.

"I'm just not good at this stuff. I'm not good at expressing myself.You know that, babe," he says. "I don't even tell my family I lovethem."

He says it like it's some kind of badge of honor, and I'm not surewhy I'm making an issue out of it. I just am. But the truth is, I'm noteven in the mood for this conversation. And for it to go well, youneed to be in the mood. I think we're too lazy to be in love.

"That's great, but I'm not your family. You choose to be with me.You choose to love me," I say.

When I first met Jenn, we were in an employment agency fillingout job applications. It was just before the end of senior year in col-lege. I didn't have a pen; she gave me hers.

What I remembered was that she looked like she'd been crying.And so we talked while we were waiting to be interviewed, andwhen I came out of my interview, she was waiting for me.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon. We went to the campus bar,On the Rocks, and drank jug wine. Desperate people do desperatethings.

Her big puffy crying face was the result of her recently called offengagement, she explained.

On the way home from Hubbardsville, we listened to Willie Nel-son's "Stardust Memories." I couldn't help but be melancholy. Assilly as it was, our driving all the way upstate, there was somethingsweet about it too. Something sweet about Jenn saying she wantedsomeone special and he didn't live in the city and she was going tostart hunting for him.

I wondered what it would be like to pack up everything andmove to a simple place with really clean air and no jackhammers. Icould make real lemonade and cruise around in the air-conditionedJohn Deere.

"I guess," she said. "I got drunk one night, called him, beggedhim to meet me and have sex."

"He said his son was teething, his wife was making dinner, andhe really had to go, and thanks for calling," she said. "And I keptsaying, Tlease, it'll be like it used to be.' And I could tell he didn'twant to have to hang up on me. But he really wanted to get off thephone. I sent the fucking engagement ring back to him FedExthree-day supersaver instead of doing it in person, and he's too po-lite to hang up on me. That's why we could never be married—he'stoo fucking nice and normal. Can you believe he didn't just slamthe phone down when he heard my voice?"

"I know. He's so over me, he's probably completely okay abouthearing my voice. It doesn't send him into a tailspin," she says.

"Urn, okay," I say. And I spend the day in a complete panic. Iconsider not answering the door when he gets there. Then I won'tget nervous and make a fool of myself. Then he won't ever comeover again, and then it won't ruin my life when he leaves me, be-cause he can't leave me if he's not with me.

He gets there and the doorman says, "Michael's here to see you."And I say, "Check his I.D." And I can hear him laughing in thelobby and I think things might be okay. But of course they aren't.

He laughs, but it's not his regular laugh. It's a let's-fill-some-dead-air laugh. I sit down on the couch. He continues pacing.

"Okay," I say. I like this and I hate this. The entertaining part, Imean. It's like, why can't this thing between us, whatever it is —ifit's even anything—be more relaxing? That it's weird makes medread it rather than crave it.

I tell him a story about the time I was in Florida at the Miami air-port at midnight and my connecting flight was canceled and I had

to get a cab to take me to the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, ninety mileswest of where I was. And how I had to negotiate with this cabdriverfor what seemed like forever and how he only said yes when Istarted walking toward the Hertz sign. And then, before we wereeven out of the airport complex, he started trying to negotiate again.And I had to threaten to get out of the car. He locked all the doorswith a swift punch of a burton, and shut up. Then, fifteen minutesinto the trip, on the pitch-black Alligator Alley, the driver startedcomplaining about his upset stomach. And I thought he might pulloff to the side of the road, beat me to death, and toss my body intoa bush so he could go home and take a nap. So it was a huge reliefwhen he asked me if I could drive for a while. And of course I saidyes. I'd never driven a cab before.

So there I was driving this cab, and the large Cuban cabdriverwas lying in the backseat for about five minutes, but then he expe-rienced a miraculous recovery and just hung over the seat chattingmy ear off for the next hour and a half. He told me the Americanscan't make a decent cigar for shit. And I found myself having to de-fend our nation's inferior, or so I'm told, tobacco growers. Then hestarted the personal stuff. Telling me how he'd been showering at atruck stop at a cost of $2 a day because he left his girlfriend. Andhow there's just no way he's going back to her . . .

"Can you believe they charge two bucks for a shower? But Idon't care, I'm never going back to her," he said.

The truth was two bucks for a shower seemed quite fair to me.But this bullshit about not going back to his girlfriend. Well, was Ireally supposed to be quiet about that?

I listened for the sound of a switchblade and hoped my neckdidn't look ripe for slashing. Apparently, because I'm telling thisstory, it did not—my neck—look ripe for slashing.

Silence, then: "Yeah, maybe. But can you believe a shower coststwo bucks?" he said.

"You'll save fourteen bucks a week if you go back to her," I say,taking a huge leap in assuming he might indulge in seven showersa week. Either way, it seemed to resonate. I pulled over and hecalled his girlfriend.

Moments later, we arrived at the Ritz-Carlton. A man in a ridicu-lous hat and blue coat with gold buttons and ropes attached to itwho looked as if he'd wandered away from some halftime showopened the back door of the cab, and my new buddy climbed outand stretched his legs. The car idled and spat exhaust, and Iclimbed out, collected my belongings, and returned to my life.

It was strange, though. Him —Michael, not the cabdriver—beingin my apartment. He only stayed for an hour or so. And when heleft he kind of grabbed me and hugged me really tight. And it was asurprise that he hugged like that. Then he kissed my forehead andpractically jumped through the door—like in those cartoons whenpeople get frightened and run right through the door and you cansee their silhouette. That's how it was with him. And I liked that hewas nervous. That I was someone to be nervous about. At the sametime, I knew something awful about myself—I knew that I neededhim and that I would be absolutely crushed when this all endedand he went away.

The next morning, he called me on his way to work. I'm so gratefulhe called. And I hate this about myself, too. And I'm so cool thatnot only do I not act grateful, I act almost uninterested.

"Even though it was completely strange and uncomfortable, itwas really nice to see you last night," he says. "I was just thinkingabout it this morning. I was thinking, Hey, that was really nice, see-ing her outside of work. And that was a great story. I loved that story.And then I dreamed about you, and I thought that was really great,you showing up in my dreams like that. Unexpected, you know. Sothanks for doing that. For showing up."

This isn't going to work. I mean, it's just too weird. We're tooweird. We can't even get comfortable around each other. I try toimagine waking up next to him and kissing him without brushingmy teeth first. There's just no way. Maybe it would be easier just tohave casual sex and balance the caring part by volunteering at ananimal shelter or something.

At first we all hated Skorka because she was too gorgeous, then itturns out there are like 8 million other reasons to hate her. But theyare the same reasons to really like her, too. She does everything Idon't have the nerve to do. She's out there living really aggressively.

If you're wearing something she likes, she'll say, all pouty—and,excuse me, but I can't really do the accent—"I love that shuurt. Ilove eat! Eat's so guut! Sooo guut! Geeve it to me? I haff to haveeat." It's a veiled threat, all right, and so I've learned to never wearanything I like too much when I'm around her.

She has this kind of bad reputation that I never really under-stood. Like, what could she have possibly done that was so terrible?Then she told me.

"I was fucking this married guy and I called his wife and told herI was fucking her husband. I mean, I know I broke the rules, but atsome point I figured, What the fuck, he broke the rules too. Be-sides, he makes me feel great some of the time, but he makes mefeel like shit most of the time. So fuck him, let him feel like shit fora change," she said.

"Me too. Sorry. I was just wondering why you do it," I said."You're gorgeous. You're smart. Why don't you just meet someonesingle? Or don't meet anyone and stay home."

But what I was really thinking about was her boyfriend's preg-nant wife. And how she was really the one who felt the most likeshit when she got Skorka's call at four a.m. Imagine the horror ofever getting a call from someone named Skorka. Second, imaginegetting a call from Skorka the tall, blond, pissed-off foreigner. Ofcourse, on the phone you wouldn't know she's tall or that she'sblond, but you'd know that she's a pissed-off foreigner. Anyway,then imagine getting a call from Skorka and her telling you she'shaving sex with your husband. And you have morning sickness andall you really want is dry toast and a thoughtful, honest husband. Inthat order.

It's Monday. I don't leave my desk all day, but I still manage to feelseveral days behind at work. I skip lunch. I reheat some old blackcoffee. My stomach starts to hurt, and I have some ginger ale. I lookup at the clock and it's ten p.m.

I pack up my stuff, put on my coat, and get into the elevator. Thedoors close. And then fly open.

We both lean against the back wall of the elevator and stare atthe digital display of floor numbers.

He moves toward me, and we kiss, and he's holding my face withboth hands, and then he moves his arms around me, hugging me,and we're kissing these amazing kisses, right there in our elevator.The elevator our co-workers use each day. We're going to hell forthis. And I touch his coat, and I know I won't forget it. It feels new.We get to the first floor. The doors open. We walk out. He headsleft. I go right.

He's one of those guys, you know, who women go nuts for. It's likehis mother ignored him and now he has to make all women lovehim or something.

He asks me to go out for coffee. I don't put on lipstick. We go tothe place with the pink counter. He acts normal. Like a regular guy,not a boss.

"You are just the absolute cutest boy in the world!" I want to saybut don't. He'd go weird on me and get all distant, like he did whenI first got here. Besides, I'm sure I'm about to be told to start report-ing my overtime hours so I can get paid.

We talk about old movies. He gives me a paperback biography ofPowell and Pressburger that he'd mentioned one time. He says torent I Know Where Ym Going. I've already seen it—twice. At first, Ipretend I haven't. I let him think he's introduced me to it. But thenI can't. It seems too deceitful. And when I tell him, he looks a littledisappointed. And then not disappointed at all. "The Red Shoes?"

he says. "Seen it," I say. "Peeping Tom?" "Creepy," I say. "The Lifeand Death of Colonel what's his name?" "Blimp. One of my fa-vorites," I say.

I see the two guys with briefcases, the one who said little hoysroom. I think about telling him the story, but don't. What if Mi-chael says little hoys room? That would ruin it for me, like satinsheets and a water bed, so I don't say anything.

We didn't meet for coffee to talk about movies or to be together.We were having coffee so I could be told, without actually beingtold, that this is how it would be. We would never mention the kiss.We will pretend it never happened. Instead, we will talk aboutmovies and condiments and all sorts of other things that don't mat-ter at all.

Skorka's father died when she was four. At least, that's what hermother told her. Apparently, he left when Skorka was three, and fora full year the only question Skorka asked was "Where's my daddy?""Dead," it seems, was a quicker, cleaner, easier answer than "Play-ing bass guitar in a garage band." And for a long time things wentalong smoothly, and Skorka settled into being a fatherless girl. Shecould imagine her father in heaven. There, he played basketball,sang songs. He did the things in heaven that he did in life. And thatmade it hard to believe he really was dead. But still, she convincedherself of the truth. He was dead, and he was never coming back.

"Then, a few months after we moved to States, I was fifteen,we're at the grocery store and I see him on the cover of Rolling

Stone" Skorka said. "I thought he was dead, and there he is onfucking cover of Rolling Stone.'7

"She said — urn, oh, she says 'Rock 'n' roll is powerful med-sin/ "Skorka said.

"Fuckin' call 'er," Skorka said. "She wouldn't even let me buythe magazine. I had to go back and steal it."

I'm missing Doug a little. Or not really Doug. I mean, I'm just miss-ing having someone to talk to about my day. Someone to lie next to.Or someone to be quiet around. Or someone to fantasize about get-ting away from. And at the same time I'm mad at myself for notmissing him more. I mean, he was part of my life for over two yearsand I barely miss him. What does that say about me? I mean, it saysI wasted two years of my life on an average relationship because it'sall I had the courage to go for. Then I try not think about it, becauseit depresses me that I'm like that.

She picks me up in a convertible. We drive too fast to the Hamp-tons. We're laughing hysterically on the way there, because she'stelling me these really silly stories and we're listening to the soundtrack from Grease because it's the only CD in the car. And so we'resinging really loud, until we get pulled over by the cops.

We get frisked on Main Street in East Hampton. Seriously, thecops tell us to get out of the car and to lean up against it with ourhands raised. They frisk us, and it kind of tickles. And I laugh a lit-tle and am told this is no laughing matter. It's on the way to the po-lice station that I learn Skorka "borrowed" the car from MarriedMan about a month ago, without asking. He reported it stolen. Sonow we're in a cell.

Do you have any idea how important pretty is when you're in ajail cell in the Hamptons? Very. They let Skorka make four calls be-fore I am allowed to make one. It didn't matter. I didn't have any-one to call. So I just checked my messages. There was one fromMichael, asking if I could call him at home. Weird. And there wasa message from Ursus Books saying a book I'd ordered had come in.

Married Man told the cops it was all a mistake and that Skorkahad his permission to use the car. Unfortunately, they had alreadytowed it from the scene.

After we get sprung, we pick up a rental, go to Nick & Toni's, andhave about a hundred gin and tonics. And this slick TV producerguy comes up to us and says, "Is it my turn to frisk you?" like wehadn't heard that all night long. Then he asks which one of us feelslike kissing him. Never one to say no to life, Skorka is making outwith the guy on the porch at Nick & Toni's and I'm sitting in arental car in the parking lot wondering what Michael wanted whenhe called.

The weekend could not be over soon enough for me. I mean, itseemed like forever. Then, on our way home, Skorka is kind of gig-gling in this very guilty way.

"Did he know we were staying there?" I say, always happy to askthe stupid question.

"Not exactly," she says. "Can you imagine if he and that wife ofhis had shown up?"

We didn't talk after that. And I don't think we'll talk for a while.I mean, grand larceny is one thing, but breaking and entering andusing someone else's shampoo and stuff, well, that's a whole otherpsychotic story. I mean, I agreed to go to the Hamptons, not to be-come someone's accomplice.

When I got home I was incredibly relieved, until the next day,when the whole stupid story was retold on Page Six in the Post.

Skorka called. "Isn't it hilarious?" People who enjoy that kind ofattention aren't normal.

"Oh yeah. My boss, the publisher—they all think it's hilarious.And even more hilarious that another paper is writing about mebeing in jail . . ."

"Whatever. I mean, really, who gives a fuck what your bossthinks? I mean, he's just a guy. I'm going to go buy a bunch ofcopies. Want me to get some for you?" she said.

"I have to go now. Good-bye," I said. And hung up. It was not agratifying hang up. It was a completely pissed off hang up.

Danielle and I are at O'Neil's in SoHo. It's the stock pond whereshe meets her potential dates. They are all old and rich. As if thetwo traits are a package deal. These men strike the balance with theother set she dates—young, jobless, and fond of the bottle.

Some guy in a cowboy hat, who is apparently partial to large,shapeless turquoise jewelry, starts talking to her and she looks athim like she loves him. And I don't get it.

"Do you ever think that maybe you're a person who needs to en-hance every experience?" I say. "You can't start an exercise pro-gram, you have to run a marathon. You can't just smoke, you haveto smoke and drink. You can't marry a regular guy, you have tomarry a drug addict. What's so terrible about average? I mean,imagine what that guy over there spends each month on jewelrycleaner alone," I said.

"It's not funny," she said. "If they're too young, they haven'tworked their shit out. If they're too old . . . well, at least they appre-ciate someone like me."

I understand this, and at the same time find it offensive. And Iwonder if it's actually offensive or if she's being very smart andthoughtful. I mean, if she knows what she wants, she has a betterchance of getting it. A better shot at happiness.

Would it be more offensive if she gave false hope to a guy know-ing she couldn't ever marry him or love him?

guys by their looks," she said. "Limp dick, saggy balls, that's yourfear, right?" she added. "With all of the creams and medicinal lo-tions and such on the market today? Trust me, not a problem."

"Anyway, I hadn't even gotten there. I was thinking about liverspots, and would you be tempted to look at the spots like connectthe dots and —I don't know," I said.

"One guy I was with hadn't had sex in so long he had cobwebson his balls," Danielle says. Then she put her right hand up, as iftaking an oath. "True story. Scared the hell out of me."

"Excuse me," said a geezer who was standing nearby listening tothe entire conversation. "Can I buy you ladies a drink?"

He returned with drinks and introduced himself as William Fur-ther III. The whole number after the name is always an amusing de-tail.

"Sure. You're welcome. So what do you say, is it time to checkme for cobwebs yet?" William Further III said.

I'm in Michael's office. For a moment I wonder what he'd look likein a cowboy hat. I'm really anxious, because he's been bugging melately. But it feels like a trick in a way. He never tells me thecolumns are good, yet occasionally they must be or he wouldn't edit

them. He wouldn't have started it on page one that time. . . . Butalso, it's like a threat. Like, it had better be good or else. ThankGod. I mean, really, thank you, God, for forcing pens and paperinto people's hands and having them send letters to the paper, say-ing they love the column. I mean it, God. Seriously, consider thisan IOU.

Anyway, we're going over my column and he's laughing prettyhard. And that makes me feel really good. Except that I'm tired ofbeing his entertainment. You know? And anyway, of course he hasto go and ruin it.

"I wish you could ... I don't know," he says. And he looks at melike he's got something important to say.

"You know, really do it. Really pull something out of yourself.Something that you'll reread ten years from now and say, 'Hey, I didit,' " he says.

"It wasn't criticism. It's just that. . . this is all very honest. I justthought if you wrote about something more personal, but in thisstyle —it would be, you know, it would be great," he says.

I can't take this. I can't take criticism from this person. It's tooimportant what he thinks of me. I want to write what he wants meto write. But I can't. Because I don't have anything to say about my-self.

And speaking of funny, his ears just keep getting funnier. They'rehilarious ears. I want to tell him how hilarious. I mean, somethingabout them doesn't look right to me. And the more I look at them,the stranger they become.

"It was just a suggestion. You know you can write about whateveryou want," he says. "I want you to write about whatever you want. Imean, I'm not establishing boundaries here."

"Okay, I'll start. I knew my marriage was over. . . when I was ata dinner party," he says.

"My wife, my ex-wife, was sitting across from me. And she was —is —a beautiful woman. And I looked around the table, and everyother woman at that table was so much happier than my wife. Thisis not an indictment of her," he says.

"Right, because everyone knows your wife's happiness is your re-sponsibility. I mean, she's just some girl, right? She can't possiblyknow herself well enough to choose a life that makes her happy . . ."I say.

"What?" he says. And he's looking at me now. Like I've hurt hisfeelings or something. And I feel like I'm going to start crying. Hisears aren't even really that funny-looking. They were just the firstthing I saw when I was trying not to look at his eyes a long time ago.So he's probably completely confused. I want to be invisible. I vownever to be so defensive about criticism again. Never. Not ever.

But what I really want is for him to say, "Great column." Then Ican concentrate on a different area of my life. If I nail this, I canmove on.

I go to the reference library and ask the Cadaver to save all issuesof Editor & Publisher for me so I can start looking for a job.

Then I kick around in the back shop and watch all the guys taketheir heart medication. They say a toast and all pop the multi-colored cocktail of pills that keep their valves clean. Those pillswork like Drano or something, and that can't be good. I mean, inthe long run.

I go back to Michael's office. I knock on the door. I am going toapologize. I have to. I mean, he's trying to help me.

I open the door and the non-Rockette is sitting down, sobbingthis terrible sob. Michael looks up. He looks guilty. Did he kiss heron the elevator, too?

"Sorry," I say, and close the door. I can't get the picture out of myhead —her crying. And I think, What if I were her? What if he is thebest guy she's ever met and he wants nothing to do with her? Butthat could never be me, because I'd never take a chance. And thenI think, Oh my God, the non-Rockette is more evolved than I am.Then that makes me think that I don't have a clue what really mat-ters.

Inexplicably, I get something I don't deserve. His forgiveness feelslike a small miracle.

"Hey, I was going to call you last night. But I didn't get out ofhere until very late and I thought maybe you—wouldn't be alone.And boy would my face be red," he says.

I am completely embarrassed, and loving it. And I am sure he'smaking fun of me. And I still have that picture of the non-Rockettein my head. What happened there? And when I think about hercrying, I'm mad that he's calling me. I mean, clean up your life orsomething.

"Sorry, I was just wondering, you know, what the Ruby Capoteplan was, you know?" he says.

"Except that you're nothing like everyone else. That's the thing,isn't it? I mean, that's what screws things up," he says.

We've stopped playing cards. Instead, we're all just sitting around.Danielle and Skorka start talking about what they want, what theyneed. Meg chimes in. Then Jenn. And Lily. And I'd like to join inthis conversation, but I don't know what I want or need. I focus ona poker chip. It's pink. If I look at it long enough, it might tell myfuture. This is what I'm really thinking.

"Why do you always get to do that? Sit back and listen, but younever say anything about yourself. I mean, it's unbalanced, don'tyou think?" Jenn says.

My plan is to sit here and take it. And then it will be over with,and I can find myself a new set of friends. But this, my demeanor,has served them well too. They're forgetting that, aren't they? I ama confessional open twenty-four hours a day. Literally, these womenhave had no problem calling me at four a.m. to talk about a guythey loved who didn't love them or a mother who drove them nutsor an unrelenting boss. And I felt needed. At four a.m., at noon —itdidn't matter; it made me feel needed. Of course, I was interestedin them, their problems. But I also liked having a function. But atthis point, I'm tired of hearing the same old problems. I'm donewith being the sounding board for their warped lives.

"Hey, freako, don't overreact. We just trying to help you," Skorkasaid. Then she started blowing smoke rings. Giant smoke rings.Big, floating zeros. Am I a big, floating zero? I mean, is that whatshe's trying to say?

How ironic. Skorka the perfectly beautiful was trying to help me.I mean, she was the one who landed me in a jail cell, was she not?Has she actually forgotten that already? Has she forgotten thatwhen she mopes, I indulge her by giving her whatever she wants?Do material gifts no longer buy friendship? Is this what I'm sup-posed to take away from this whole mess?

I can't speak. I am physically unable. I can't fight. I can't defendor explain myself. I thought these were my friends. I thought Ididn't have to work at keeping these people as friends. I thoughtthey'd always be my friends. But nothing is ever straightforward.And there's no such thing as forever. No matter how well you kidyourself. The truth is, you don't know anyone.

"Let's play cards," Meg said. My eyes were starting to tear up,and I couldn't wait for my so-called friends to leave. I was trying to

stare at something so I wouldn't cry. My eyes landed on Meg's wed-ding band. Or where is used to be. The poster girl for domestic blisssaw me see it, or not see it, or see it missing. Whatever. She knew Iknew. And I didn't say a word. Because I was like that—good atkeeping secrets. Good at not betraying. Unlike my weaselly friendswho pounce on me at the drop of a hat. I wouldn't wish this groupof nosy, turncoat scoundrels on anyone.

And just where was Meg's ring? Why don't we grill her on thatone instead of interrogating moil All I did was make dip and openmy front door. She's gone and shed her marital metal.

Morning meeting. Larry is writing a story about the mayor and mis-directed moneys. Once again, surprise. But this story actually getsbetter. Larry has received a phone call from a pants manufacturerin Los Angeles. The mayor buys special pants from the West Coast,but, get this, he insists that his size 40 waist is a size 32. So the fac-tory has agreed to sew in labels that say the size 40 pants are 32. Andthey charge him, uh, the taxpayers, extra for the bogus sizing.

One guess on what we're calling the big story. If you guessedPantsgate, then you are quite correct. Pantsgate! How would youlike to be the mayor today? Politically busted, embarrassed, andsitting on an ass the size of a minivan? His poor family, that's all Ican think about. Imagine being this guy's wife or, worse, his kids.Parents are embarrassing enough without pulling stunts like this.Pantsgate! Oh, good Lord!

Lily calls. She hasn't given up on me as a human being. This is wel-come news. She has a pre-crying jag voice. She needs advice. I amthe perfect person to ask for advice, or an opinion. I have a head fullof ideas about improving one's life that, unfortunately, I lack thefearlessness to implement.

"What am I going to do? What am I going to do? I can't be a les-bian. I mean, I just can't be," Lily says.

"Well, there is this place I went one time. But I didn't have thenerve to go inside. But everyone looked like they were having fun.It's called Henrietta's. It's around the corner from you, on Hudson,"she says.

"You stood outside and watched people? Are you trying to breakmy heart? I mean, I'm just picturing you standing outside in therain, without an umbrella, staring at your future and refusing to goafter it. You didn't even mention rain, I just came up with that part.I mean, it's practically—"

We meet at ten. And my friend Lily, the one men have beenlooking through for the past ten years? Well, she's suddenly theprom queen at the all-girl prom. Women are swarming her. Andshe isn't quite sure what to do.

A woman asks her to dance. Lily tells her in this silly "oops" kindof way that her dance card is full. She uses those exact words."Sorry, my dance card is full."

She is so happy and at home, and I think, Hey, maybe I'm a les-bian. I mean, maybe that's what's missing from my life. Maybe thatis the secret key to my happiness. And then, as if my mind is beingread, as if it's fate, this woman walks up to me and asks me if I'd liketo dance.

And I've never felt more distant from the world. I can't quite ex-plain it. I'm not in love with anyone. And this —dating women —isn't for me either. And in a way I'm disappointed, because for thosefew minutes when I thought I had the elixir for happiness, I wasreally, well, happy.

"No thanks. I'm here with a friend," I say. And the woman walksaway, and later I see her in the corner whispering to someone whokind of looks like me. Maybe she thinks it is me and that I'vechanged my mind.

I sit at the bar and watch Lily's amazing metamorphosis. I'mafraid to leave, afraid that if she glances over and sees that I'm nothere, she'll panic and feel lost. Like the kids you see at the play-

ground who can only enjoy themselves if they know their mothersare nearby on a bench watching them. They don't need to pay at-tention to them; they only need to know they're there.

At the same time that I'm happy for Lily, I feel this overwhelm-ing melancholy. Like the suburbs, this isn't for me. But the world isfilled with things to want and not want—so how is it that I still can'tput my finger on what I do want?

"No," I say. "But you can't just dance with pretty girls, Lily. Lookat that plain girl over there. She's been standing alone all night. Askher to dance."

"Don't say that," Lily says. She's smiling. She likes being a per-son who only dances with pretty girls.

At two a.m., I leave without saying good-bye. At six-thirty a.m.,my phone rings. My answering machine kindly gets it.

"Oh my God! I kissed a woman last night! Oh my God! You haveto call me!" she said.

All those years of her asking me, "Yeah, but what's so great aboutguys?" and well, now, she's finding out—sort of. I mean, with girls.

She later told me she didn't have the courage to admit she was alesbian right off the bat, so she thought she'd soft-pedal the an-nouncement by calling herself a bisexual.

"I think that's what confused everyone. Straight. Gay. Fine.Bi . . . that somehow screams 'I really can't commit,' you know?"

It's Valentine's Day, and I'm in his office. And there is this horriblearrangement of red and pink roses on his desk. And in the center ofthe flowers is this big plastic heart and in gold letters it says happyvalentine's day. It's funeralesque.

"That's —convincing," I say. It has to be from the non-Rockette.It screams, "I was robbed. I should have been a Rockette."

"Don't you see? This is it, this is what I'm talking about," he says."You can't tell me something. You don't know where to begin."

I think it's completely wonderful that he sees my flaws so easilyand has no problem hammering on and on about them.

"Okay, here's something no one knows about me —my toenailsare painted a unique color. There," I say. "Guess. Guess what color.I'll bet you can't guess."

I'm dying. I mean, I asked him to guess what color nail polish Ihad on my toes. I mean, what if he thinks that's like an invitation tosee my naked feet? What if he thinks I'm asking him to sleep withme? I mean, this is probably the sort of thing I could get fired for.

"Whoa. Looks like our little firecracker is heating things up, eh?Ten bucks says it's red," says Smelly Fred.

Michael's phone rings. I go back to the newsroom and makesome changes to my column.

Last Valentine's Day, I walked into Doug's house. And he handedme this thing. It was a giant, sweating plastic coconut filled with apina colada.

I took a moment to enjoy his Hawaiian-style swimming trunksand the swipe of pastel-blue zinc oxide on his nose.

Then I realized, yes, that is steel drum music beating its way outof the speakers. And I was being steered into a new mood.

Once, when we were really in love, before the Grape, the waterbed, and all the rest of it started to drive me nuts, we were in somuch love that we ran to a travel agent and agreed to have our bod-ies belted into a huge hunk of jet and propelled to the island ofNevis. While there, we slept late. We lay in hammocks. We swam.I watched him play tennis. And when he asked if I thought the prowas any good, he could count on me to say things like "That insanegesturing of his —was that a serve?"

Then, at night, we'd swim in the ocean. And his fingers wouldtouch me and my skin felt like a scuba suit of nerve endings.

Last Valentine's Day, we downed half of the drinks, and when hetouched me, it kind of itched.

On this Valentine's Day, I work late. Some lady calls the news-room and says her horoscope —printed in our paper—said to buy alottery ticket. Well, that was yesterday and she didn't win the lottery.So now she wants us—the newspaper—to reimburse her for thedollar she spent. I write down her address and I put a dollar bill inan envelope and I send it to her. If I didn't, she would just keep call-

ing. Besides, she'd been working pretty hard on that phone call, soI figured she deserved the dollar.

When I leave, Michael is on the phone. I wave. He waves back,over those stupid flowers.

The gym is empty except for the guy who's always vacuumingthe place. I work out and consider for a moment that it is my des-tiny to marry the vacuum guy and that God arranged for us to bothbe in the gym tonight. But he doesn't speak English, and he's manyinches shorter than me, so maybe not.

I get home. I watch one of those made-for-TV movies. They al-ways feature the bizarre and vindictive story of a woman, aged eigh-teen to forty-five, gone bonkers. The insane woman of the week inthis case drives her car through a plate-glass window and into theliving room of her ex-husband and his new wife. As a culture we aredoomed, but, hey, have a happy Valentine's Day!

As I watch, I am eating some of those candy conversation hearts.I read the message, then eat the heart. I get to one that says, overboy. I don't get it. What does this mean? Is this, like, it's over?Or, like, gay slang? Then I see a faint L and realize it says loverboy. And I feel like a complete jerk for thinking it might be gay-related. Thank God no one was here to witness me in my darkestmoment. They've updated these hearts. They say fax me. page me.I hate it that they've updated these things. I liked it better when theysaid groovy, and dig me.

It's eleven o'clock at night. The phone rings. It's probably mymother. The machine gets it.

I listen to the message twice. Okay, three times. And once in themorning before leaving for work.

Forgetting is a strange phenomenon. I completely forgot aboutDaniel. So he didn't exist. And the part of me that knew him disap-peared too. Once I remembered him, though, there was this home-coming and I was reintroduced to a part of myself.

Throughout high school I devoted a lot of time to wonderingwhat my husband's name would be. Did James sound right? OrDavid? Or Trent? I believed that when my mind stumbled uponthe right name, I'd know, in some conclusively psychic way, that I'dhit the right one. For a long time Daniel sounded right to me. So,throughout my senior year in high school, I dated someone namedDaniel.

He was a dark-haired football player, who planned to go to col-lege and then to medical school. His father was a dentist and had anoffice attached to their house.

On weekends we'd work on our homework in his dad's officeand do whip-its with the bottomless tank of laughing gas. Thenwe'd lie in the white-leather reclining dental chair and make out,listening to Pink Floyd. And I loved it all: the white walls, theposters with cartoon molars threatening that you'd better brush andfloss or else, the light-headedness, Daniel's perfect teeth, and, mostof all, the weight of him on top of me. And the safety of knowingwe'd never really have sex, since his parents were next door.

One afternoon I desperately wanted him to rip my shirt off, but Iknew I couldn't say that. Besides, what would I wear home? A paperbib? More important, I was a girl, so I understood I was supposed to

wait for him to make his move. But he didn't make a move, becauseI'd done such a good job training him. Too good a job. I breathedheavily in his ear, hoping he'd get the hint. It sounded vaguely likean asthma attack. Finally, I just kept arching my back until he un-buttoned my shirt and started touching me and kissing my chest.Soon, his shirt was on the floor too. And I could feel his hot chestagainst my skin, like an electric blanket, and I thought I was justgoing to die from how great it felt.

I wondered if he'd tell his friends about it, so I asked him. He gotquiet and then confessed that his friends were of the impressionwe'd already slept together, so reporting that he took my shirt offwould be disappointing news. I considered sleeping with him justso he wouldn't have to lie to his friends. Then I wised up.

"Okay, that sounds refreshing," she says. She looks at the waiter."A Long Island iced tea."

We look at the menu. She shows me a new bracelet the man sheis married to bought for her. She tells me about the dinner-theatershow she'll be seeing tomorrow night.

"Well, I don't, because, you know, it's like eating dinner with thetelevision on. You know how I hate that," she says.

"A singin' neighbor . . . sounds like a nightmare," I say. "It's amistake to be nice to neighbors, because then you get roped intothings like dinner theater."

"Her husband plows our driveway whenever it snows. He's beendoing it for twelve years," she says.

I start to look at the menu. "What am I going to have?" she asks,not even picking up the menu.

"I'll have swordfish, and she'll have the You-the-man twenty-two-ounce rib eye," I say.

In the beginning, my friends liked it when I wrote about them.They were flattered. Now they say it's exploitative. They say Ishould get some courage and write about me. They're starting tosound a lot like Michael. Stop visiting the same well, they say. I'dwrite about me, except that it would put everyone to sleep. Espe-cially me.

The game is tense. I fold even more often than usual, because Ijust can't concentrate. I haven't spoken to anyone except Lily allweek. That never happens. I guess everyone is busy— or something.Let the hunt for new friends begin. I could always hang out withWags and his wife, Marta. Or the Cadaver. Smelly Fred. Michael.Or, I don't know, my neighbor. I mean, if I'm lucky.

Skorka is staring at me and making me really uncomfortable.She wants me to look at her, but I'm not going to.

"Oh, look who's quiet again. Do you bug room so can consultaudiotapes when you go to write about us?" she says, and starts talk-ing into a bowl of salsa, then to the poker chips. "Or when you'restaring at space, is that when you're memory this shit?" Skorka says."I mean, who the fuck are you —Emma?"

Emma was well-intentioned. I don't mind being compared toEmma. I'm impressed that Skorka knows who Emma is. But I'mpretty sure she doesn't know, which leads me to a disturbing after-thought. She may be thinking of an actual person she knows namedEmma. . . . This may be an insult.

Skorka has always been an angry person —she just never gotangry at me before. I hate it. I really hate it. Finally I look at her andsmile. Screw her. What do I care what she thinks? Go sleep withone of your married guys, Skorka. Go ruin a whole family's life.

This makes me instantly and completely nervous. The poor lit-tle veins in my forehead—Jimmy, Chad, and Sven, I like to callthem —are swelling and jumping and confused. Something "good"is code for something "real." Like an adventure or an activity. It'sgot nothing to do with losing more nickels.

"I came out—what else can I possibly do that will shock or sur-prise?" Lily says.

"I hate this idea," I say. "Let's stop playing poker. It's not thatmuch fun anyway."

"Look at it this way, Ruby. If you really hate the idea, you mightreally need it. It might be therapeutic," Meg says.

As always, Skorka gets her way. We all agree to do something dar-ing, take a chance, and, like, exist in some really big, loud way orsomething. Where do I even begin with something like this? I haveone week.

Everyone leaves, and no one acts normal. Meg is the last one toleave. And she says she needs to talk to me. She says she's leavingher husband. Anthony. Adorable, buff Anthony. I'll take him! Wecan switch lives. Then I decide it would be practically incestuous.Besides, he might expect me to make a wreath.

"I'm so sorry," I say. And I don't really know what else to say, be-cause I don't know what level of grilling, in this situation, is con-sidered okay.

She wants me to keep talking, I can tell. She wants me to guesswhat the deal is. Again, I hate guessing. "Is he seeing someoneelse?" I say.

"In all of my free time? Ruby, it's not like that. It's not dramatic.It's like, I don't know, we're just not making each other happy. Hegets home from work every night and watches TV."

"Sinner!" I say. People sincerely seem to think television is theapocalypse. Here's an idea: If you don't like television, don't buyone.

Her marriage . . . the only one I admire ... it sounds ... a littleoff. But really, did she think every day was a buffet of frolicking andmerry-making? Of course I couldn't say that. What kind of friendwould I be if I said what I meant? Besides, I've never been married.And most of the marriages I've seen—well, they look pretty bad.Meg and Anthony were the exception to the rule, the couple youpointed to when you needed an example of a good marriage. Andshe was stealing that from me.

Did I have the right to say anything? Did I have the right to ad-vise? You can work it out. Patch the tire, sister. Marriage is a strug-gle. Take the good with the bad. Or were there things she hadn'ttold me? Things that would lead me to think, definitively, that herleaving him was the right thing? I could only think of one thing tosay.

"What does he watch? I'm not much of a television person, butit's mostly crap, right?" I say.

"Who gives a fuck what he's watching? That's not the point. Thepoint is, he's watching TV. He never used to watch TV," she said.

"I don't mind the Discovery Channel. I saw this thing oncewhere they showed Marine reconnaissance training. Talk about abite in the ass. They make these guys swim with their hands cuffedbehind their backs and their ankles bound. Then, if they haven't

drowned or quit, they stick fifty-pound packs on their backs andmake them run ten miles —and they time it. Then — "

I stop talking. She doesn't care about Marine reconnaissancetraining. I mean, I've basically defended her husband's newlyformed bad habit of watching television. What's wrong with me?

"I'm sorry, but, I don't know, can't you talk to him? Go to acounselor or something before you quit your marriage? I mean, ifyou're going to break this thing down into kindling, can't you do itslowly, in case you change your mind?"

And then I figured I'd said the wrong thing, or said enough, so Ijust stopped talking.

"So, why did you and Doug break up? You seemed like the per-fect couple," she said.

"I don't know. He was completely unromantic," I said. "Oh wait.Maybe I was the unromantic one. I can't really remember."

"When we made dinner at home? He'd come to the table naked.He said it meant he was comfortable around me. Like it was actu-ally some kind of compliment that I'd misread."

"Oh," Meg said. She at least tried not to laugh. I'll bet Anthonywore pants to the table most nights. A nice, handsome, smart guywho is willing to wear pants? Is it my imagination or is Meg startingto seem really picky?

I tell the funny parts. I leave out the stuff that's actually impor-tant. Oh, and I started thinking maybe I was in love with someoneelse. Which means anyone I might date may seem completely im-perfect by comparison. But other than that. . . And as I'm talking, Iremember something. I had this very same conversation with Megabout two years ago.

This irritates her. Because I'm not taking her marriage difficul-ties seriously—I'm attempting to use her hormones as a scapegoat.She decides she's had enough, and leaves.

In my head, I replayed nice things Michael had said to me overthe past however many months. Sometimes, to mix it up, I'd givehim a Spanish accent. Sometimes French. I picked up the phone.

"Hey there, you," I say. I carry the phone over to the couch andlie down. "You won't believe what we're betting on now. No morenickels."

"Listen, I'm kind of in the middle of something, can I talk to youtomorrow?" Michael says.

I am humiliated. It was completely clear to me he didn't wantme calling him at home but was too polite to say so. So I avoidedhim for a few days, didn't look him in the eye, that sort of thing. Andhe never, thank God, mentioned my call. But if he had, that wouldhave been it for me. If he'd sought me out the next day and askedme why I'd called, I would have confessed everything.

Instead, I'm just supposed to wait for him, right? Wait for the guyto make his move —or not. Where is the risk in that?

"My biggest fear . . . well, there's a lot of competition for that title.But I'd say my biggest fear is that this thing with Michael is about

sex. That this is really just sexual attraction and nothing more. Andfine, you know. Because that can be fun too. But if I'm worried it'sall about sex, I guess what I'm really worried about is that for me itonly partially has to do with sex, and for him it has everything to dowith sex. That for me it's about caring for him, so why risk givinginto that just to have him leave me."

"And so for an attractive man, who has other women attracted tohim, what would be his interest in pursuing you only to have asexual relationship . . . when conceivably he could have sex withanother woman, other women?" she says.

"Well, perhaps it's more interesting to have sex with someone ifyou have to work harder to be able to have the sex," I say.

"The conquest. The thrill of the hunt. So he's plotting to get youinto bed, and then leave you. Because you said he was what . . .smart, sweet, nice, and apparently also vindictive and cunning andmanipulative," she says.

"Well, yes, there's that too," she says. "Let's write off fifty percentof the population as being too mysterious to hold accountable fortheir actions."

It works. He goes away for a while. I start to think about othermen. I don't want him to come to my apartment again. I don't wanthim to be aloof on the phone. And it's working. My escape plan isworking. Then a week goes by and I start to miss him. I start to missit that he's not calling me and asking me to meet him for coffee. Imust win him back.

"I just don't have the time to edit today, Ruby," he said. "Fredwill do it. You'll be fine."

Suspicious. People who have very little time seldom have thetime to deliver the news that they have no time. Then again, I kindof put him on the spot.

"Did I do something wrong? Tell me what I've done," I said. Tilfix it." Could I sound any more desperate?

"I suspect youVe done what you always do. You invite peopleinto your life, and when they show up, you are ungracious and re-moved," he said. "Not everything can be fixed."

"Hey, you invited yourself over to my apartment," I said. This isthe first thing that came to mind, just so you know what you're deal-ing with.

This really makes him mad. "I didn't mean invite LITERALLY!"His door is opened when he yells this. The newsroom stops news-ing. Everyone stares. I think I might cry, but know that I can't.

It's so embarrassing to be called on the truth. You know? But it'sso much worse than that, and it's so sad in such a permanent way.This same movie will rerun over and over for my entire life, and inthe end it will be my life.

The sick part is that I do feel some small victory: I've driven himover the edge. Look at his eyes. Those eyes are in pain. His eyesmake me feel alone. And I always will be.

weak. He's looking at me intently, like he's going to kiss me, or likeI might have something on my face.

Here's the part where I'm supposed to say, "Yes, I do want some-thing to happen." I want to grab him and hug him and move intohis house and make it look less like a divorced guy lives there.

What, precisely, is wrong with me? Anyone else would haveseized the moment. They would have said where and when. Theywould have gone for it.

I move away from him and pour two cups of coffee. I won't lookat him. I hand him a cup of coffee.

He kind of smiles a confused smile and walks away. I want torewind time and try it again. But I know myself well enough toknow that rewinding time would only give me another opportunityto do the same thing again, and again, and again.

I'm lying on my couch, staring at the peeling paint on the ceiling.I'm willing the paint to fall. But it doesn't. The phone rings. I don'twant to answer the phone, I'm worried I will miss the paint falling.

"No. I have a proposition/' Michael says.Tm listening," I say."It's a good one," he says."Let's hear it," I say.

"Okay," he says. "You. Me. Forty-eight hours alone together."Alone together? I consider this. I know it will never actually hap-pen. So I see no harm in accepting."Okay," I say.

"No," I say. Oh God, I'm going out there to have sex with himand it hasn't even occurred to me until now.

The Hamptons jitney is full, so I'm standing on Third Avenue witha suitcase. Everyone else had canvas bags. I have a black Hartmann

suitcase with wheels. They looked like they are going to the beach.I look like I'm going to a Biggest Fucking Suitcase contest.

I call Skorka. What's the next best way to get there besides steal-ing her married boyfriend's car?

"I can't afford a helicopter. Besides, doesn't it seem extremelyovereager?" I say. "Maybe the Blue Angels could escort me?"

There's something called the Beauty Bus? According to Skorka,it stops at the jitney stop every two hours. One should be pulling upin twenty minutes.

I'm staring at my suitcase. The thing is a moose. I momentarilyconsider leaving it there on the curb, pretending it's not mine.Then in my peripheral vision I detect something, through the bullrun of traffic, heading up Third Avenue. I can see her. My blushingchariot. A large, cartoon-pink bus. Pink mud flaps. And, as an at-tempt at glamour, silver swooping lettering on the side of the vesselthat says beauty bus. I look both ways, pull my straw hat down overmy face, and climb on board.

I'm handed a menu. I take a seat in an extra wide, first-class-all-the-way chair. I cram my el grande bag under the seat in front ofme. Look at all this leg room! Giants welcome!

As I'm about to fasten my seat belt, I notice a control wand formy chair. My chair vibrates. I'm a young woman in my prime, I'mgoing to see the man I'm insane about, and my chair vibrates!

I open my menu. A manicure and brow shaping are included inthe bus fare. As well as complimentary champagne. I can pay extraand get a pedicure, waxing, massage, haircut, or hair coloring.

With the manicure over, there's time to kill. That's where thecomplimentary champagne comes in. I make a conscious effort notto look at the label —I don't want to know what kind of champagne

they serve on buses. The woman next to me is sparing no expense.She has foils in her hair. She's getting a manicure, pedicure, haircolor, shoulder massage . . . the works. We're barely out of Manhat-tan and already she's hoping they brought enough champagne forthe ride. I'm inspired by her. She says yes to life. She is a doer. Theworld smiles on her, or at least she thinks it does. And that's whatmatters.

Yes, sure, I'll take the eyebrow shaping. What is eyebrow shap-ing? Well, I'm told, it's when we tweeze or wax your eyebrows intoa shape more complimentary to the shape of your face. Soundsgood to me. I don't think I need this, but maybe I don't know whatI need. I recline in my chair. Did I mention my Beauty Bus chairreclines? Warm wax is applied to my brow area, in small strokes.Then the wax lady places what looks like a fabric strip on my eye-brow and —bam!—we hit a pothole. And—bam!—she pulls thestrip, and suddenly I'm missing a sliver of my eyebrow. A smallcolony of hair unintentionally wiped out. Extinct. I spend the re-mainder of the trip staring into a tiny mirror. How did this happen?How did I lose part of an eyebrow?

The team of beauticians feels bad about the pothole thing. Theyblame the Democrats and a lack of funding for the New York infra-structure. They offer me an olive branch—free leg waxing. Thighsincluded. Okay, they'll throw in a bikini wax. No thanks. I try to

read, but I can't. I'm consumed by my missing tuft-o-brow. It's aforeshadowing of the entire weekend . . .

I can see the Candy Kitchen, where I am to de-bus. And I'mabout to start crying, but I realize I'm overreacting. Because I tendto overreact when Michael is involved. Like a guy's going to noticean incomplete eyebrow.

I hang my head as I get off the bus. I can see him, though. Helooks so cute standing there, all casual. We meet each other half-way. He hugs me, then tilts my head up to kiss me.

His house is near the ocean. In a field. It reminds me of home in away. When we get to the house, he smiles, but mainly he looksaway from me. And gives me a tour and turns lights off and on.

We are awkward, like complete and total strangers who have justhad sex and don't know what to say. It's doubly strange, becausewe're not strangers and we haven't had sex.

We're in the store wandering down aisles looking at stuff that no-body needs. He picks up a ten-pound bag of birdseed. So I pick upa twenty-pound bag. Then he picks up a thirty-pound bag. So I pickup a fifty-pound bag. He drops a fifty-pound bag on top of anotherfifty-pound bag, and begins lifting. A clerk on the loudspeaker tellsus to stop screwing around or to leave.

We're at Allison by the Beach. The lighting is right for somethingdramatic to happen. And it does. The guy next to us proposes to hisgirlfriend. She's half his age. She's kind of slutty-looking. And shestarts crying a Miss America Pageant cry. Michael and I avert oureyes.

"Bet I can," he says. And he does. He's awesome. And we, themental midgets, have momentarily, victoriously, stolen the atten-tion of the entire restaurant away from the soon-to-be-weds. Some-times life is too easy.

When we walk to the parking lot, the valet leaves to hunt downthe car. Michael leans over and hugs me, pulls me toward him.Then he kisses me. Then the headlights of his car are shiningon us.

"Because when I made that joke about seeing you out of yourbathing suit, you seemed so . . . serious," he says.

We drive past potato fields, and it's cool. And the flower standsstill have flowers in plastic jugs waiting for homes. And everythingseems nearly perfect.

We get home and we climb into his bed. His sheets are white. Ilike white sheets.

Things get easy between us. And that's when he starts being hon-est. And of course that can't be good.

We stay in on Saturday night. He's so cute I can't stand it. I can feelheat when I'm standing near him. Literally, like he might be someextremely valuable natural energy resource that's gone untapped.

On the floor in the living room are a down-filled blanketand some pillows. In the center is a tray, with a sake pitcher andsake cups. There are place cards. One that says you and one thatsays me.

We sit down on the blanket. And there is a glass bowl filled withfolded pieces of paper.

He lifts a piece of paper, unfolds it, and reads it. "Name of yourideal slutty celebrity mate . . . um, Ruby Capote."

"So what, you've been sleeping with Elizabeth Dole so long thatMary Tyler Moore seems. . . nasty?"

"Okay, um . . . slutty mate . . . Patricia Arquette. I don't eventhink she's slutty. She just looks, I don't know, affectionate but. . .inventive. How about you?"

"Exactly," I say. Oh my God. I think he might actually be jealousof Lenny Kravitz at this moment—either that or I'm really scaringhim. Already.

"Harriet saw a shrink, Nancy Drew wore skirts and matchingjackets. . . she was, like sixteen or something. That's just weird, likea kid in my ninth-grade class who wore suits to school. What, ado-lescence isn't uncomfortable enough? He has to wear a suit? Likehe was destined to be a Bible salesman or something. I don't know,maybe she just dressed that way on TV. I never really got into thebooks. . . . Her family was too stable, except for the dead mom part.Of course, she had that housekeeper, the symbolic mom, so we allknew she was going to be fine," I say.

He unfolds another piece of paper: "Best gift you've ever re-ceived?" He thinks. His eyes light up.

"Oh, it was so amazing," Michael says. "One Easter, when I wasabout five, I got up first and I went into the living room to get myEaster basket and inside it was this sugar egg that had a hole cut inthe side. And when I looked inside, there was this scene with tiny

"So I go running down the hall to my parents' bedroom, becauseI'm dying to show them this egg, and I slip on a throw rug and theegg flies in the air and smashes on the floor. I got one look at nir-vana. But it was amazing."

"My sister's convinced that I broke the egg because I witnessedthe primal scene when I ran into my parents' room."

"Right, but that egg was really amazing," he says. "What aboutyou—what was the best gift you ever got?"

"Urn. I was about six, and my father gave me a Woody Wood-pecker watch. The face of it was this really cool, lush cartoon forest.And instead of a second hand, Woody pecked away at a tree —incessantly. And the band was red, wet-look faux leather with aheart cut out on each side. It couldn't have been tackier, and Iloved it."

He unfolds another piece of paper. Even I cringed when I wrotethis one. So much so that I had to write it, rip it up, and rewrite itwhen he went to the bathroom just moments ago.

I laugh hysterically at this. It's not that funny—it's the sake. "Youshould see your face!"

He tackles me. It's one of those awkward things where we are sounaccustomed to being with each other that we require drasticmeasures and abrupt movements. Like we're pretending there's anearthquake so we can fall closer to each other without seemingovereager. And we fall back onto the pillows. I see his face, so close

to mine, and it seems so . . . normal. Whereas, a few weeks ago, hisface so close would have seemed . . . impossible.

We fell asleep on the floor, or passed out. Alcohol, the corner-stone to any new relationship. At three a.m. we moved to the bed.

At four a.m. I brushed my teeth and sneaked back into bed. Andthere was Michael.

It's five a.m. and he is inside me and he's moving and then hesays, so quietly, in my ear, "Oh, sweetie. Oh —sweetie."

We're on Route 27, in ten mph traffic. I want to turn around and goback to his house. I have a feeling we've left something there.

Just past the Cider Mill, there's a guy on the side of the roadholding a white bedsheet. He looks like he's been up all night. Writ-ten on the sheet with Magic Marker is: I v you maryann! In hugeletters. It's such a bad idea. Completely the wrong way to sincerelyexpress your love or apology to anyone, ever. This is a guy who pro-poses marriage on a large screen, at the Super Bowl. He doesn'tlove Maryann, he loves stunts.

"What on earth could he have done that makes standing on theside of the road with a sign seem like the right course of action totake?" I say.

"Did he cheat on her?" I say. "Does he need to humiliate him-self so they're even?"

What if Maryann takes the back roads home? What if she neversees that sheet? How long will he stand there?

People always get weird after they have sex. Especially after theyhave sex for the first time. They get closer, and so they have to dosomething to separate themselves again. . . . They cancel dates,they get sick so they have an actual excuse to cancel a date, theydon't return phone calls, they return phone calls when they knowthe other person won't be there to talk to them, they have sex withyour best friend—that kind of thing. I know people get weird aftersex; my fear is that I might get weirder than most.

I called in sick. I've never called in sick once in my entire profes-sional life. Never ever. Not once. But, folks, I slept with my boss.Does is really matter that I love him? I mean, either way, this istaboo. Let me repeat: I slept with my boss. By ten-thirty, I felt soguilty that I went to work.

"Hey, you recovered!" he says, all smiles. From the fever that ishis lovemaking? From being pinned underneath him for thirty glo-rious minutes? Oh my God, now everyone in the office knows we'resleeping together. Why not just announce it over the loudspeaker?

Larry walks in. "I need the Beckerman file. The two most recentarticles," he says.

"No. It's—this is personal —I really like him. I'm not going totalk about his body parts is, I guess, what I'm saying."

I give her a look that suggests I don't know who Joe is. And evenif I did know Joe, especially if I knew Joe, I wouldn't want to hearthis information.

"That guy from the deli," she says. She starts looking through mykitchen cabinets. She pulls out a box of cereal and starts emptyingit into her mouth. Then she lets out a howl of laughter.

"Okay, okay nut guy from deli, Joe's my stepbrother." She startslaughing again. "My side hurts. I kill me!"

"Yeah, that was not goot one, 'cause you know I don't have step-brother," she says.

After that weekend with Michael, part of me expected to go home,go to sleep, wake up, go to work. Business as usual. Because we'dbeen dodging this thing—whatever this thing was —since before weeven met. Somewhere in the not so dark recesses of my mind I be-lieved that the excitement surrounding the avoidance could never

really live up to itself if a, urn, let's call it a situation, ever occurredbetween us. We'd watered it all down with anticipation. Robbedourselves of whatever the prize was supposed to be.

But it all changed. Everything was different. We almost seemlike a regular, normal couple. When we're in bed, I want to climbinside of him, and even that would not be close enough. Becausethere is this unnamed thing we share, this deep need. And I don'tmean sex—at least I don't mean just sex. When he kisses my neckor rolls on top of me, I think, There, right there. Don't move. Andthen he does, and I think, There, right there. And there is no rightthere —it's all right. Everywhere. Anywhere. Or maybe it's just thatI haven't had sex in a very long time. Maybe I always feel this wayat first. But I don't think that's it at all. I think it's Michael.

"How about this weekend instead?" I say. "My friends plannedsomething for tonight... a while ago."

It's my birthday. So instead of playing poker, I'm instructed toput on one of several bridesmaids' dresses I own and meet everyoneat a bar on Twenty-third Street. If you wear a bridesmaid dress, youdrink free. The only surprise on this, my birthday, is how cheap myfriends are. They can't buy drinks? We have to don costumes andget them free? I am assured that everyone else will be wearingbridesmaids' dresses too. I know them too well to believe this. So I

insist that Danielle and Meg meet me at my apartment first... so Ican get a look at their dresses.

I've been in five weddings. I have five really unbecoming dresses.Two pink, one lavender, one yellow, and one powder-blue. There'sa floor-length gown, a handkerchief hem, and three that fall slightlybelow the knee. All in all, a taffeta extravaganza.

The most insulting part about being in a wedding is when themother of the bride tells you she tried to select a dress that thebridesmaids can wear again. It's so passive-aggressive, because youcan't disagree or you'll offend her, yet she's just offended you bysuggesting you'd ever be delusional enough to wear that dressagain.

"I hate surprises," I say. "It's my birthday, I don't want to walkaround like this. Can't we just have a quiet dinner somewhere? Orplay cards?"

"Okay," I say. She hands me an envelope. I open it. It's a gift cer-tificate for a reading by Psychic Randy.

We get out of a cab, and it's so much worse than I could haveimagined. I see Smelly Fred walking into the bar. This can onlymean one thing.

"Hey," I hear Michael say. "Happy birthday." He kisses mycheek. This is going to be the worst night of my life.

I introduce Michael to Danielle and Meg. Apparently, Meg andMichael have already spoken on the phone.

We walk inside. They're all there. Mom. Michael. Smelly Fred.Wags. The non-Rockette. Larry. My brother's wife-to-be, Marley.And some friends from college who I didn't like enough to everbother looking up when I first moved here.

Well, as least they didn't completely lie to me. Jenn and Lily arewearing bridesmaid dresses, blue eye shadow, and blush with glitterand drinking something pink and tropical-looking. Skorka is wear-ing a blue leather tube top and white leather pants and red stiletto-heeled sandals. They're all using cigarette holders and smokingrainbow-colored cigarettes. They are divine.

"Birthday guuurrrlll —drink!" Skorka commands. She hands mea shot glass with something yellow in it. Is Skorka my only truefriend? I drink the shot.

"What the fuck is that?" Skorka says. I turn to look at the door.The Cadaver walks in, draped in hot-pink silk moire, a pillbox hat,white panty hose, and a matching wrist corsage.

Skorka walks up to the bar, orders a zombie. I hear the bartendersay drinks are only free for those in bridesmaid dresses.

"Like anyone wants a fucking model to be her bridesmaid. Giveme a drink," she says.

The Cadaver walks toward me as if walking down the aisle, keep-ing time. Smiling. I expect her to sprinkle rose petals as she walks.

I've slept with him three times. I'm still not entirely comfortablehaving him see me naked. But I have to tell you, I'm even more un-comfortable having him see me in this dress.

My mother is playing pool with Smelly Fred. My mother playspool? My brother is talking to Larry. The non-Rockette and Dan-ielle are talking about who knows what. Marley is taking photos,immortalizing me at my humiliating best.

I hear Jenn and Skorka arguing. Apparently, Jenn is upset thatSkorka bought me a massage table.

"All I'm saying is that you always pull stuff like that. Why didn'tyou tell me you were getting her a massage table? It's so over-the-top. I bought her a goddamn candle. I look like an idiot. You wantme to look like an idiot," Jenn says.

"So put your name on card . . . you can clean my apartment towork off your share," Skorka says, smiling.

As Michael and I leave, I see Larry and the Cadaver walkingtoward Lexington. Are they holding hands? Or is it the way the lightfell?

"I didn't know he —I knew he died. I didn't know he killed him-self," Michael says.

Happy birthday to me ... be prepared when all of your worldscollide. Make sure you have rainbow-colored cigarettes, ice cream-colored dresses, and potent fruity drinks. You'll need them all.

We're at my place. We take two hits of Advil each and drink somewater. Then I ask him to rip my dress off.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," I say. "This way I reallywon't have to wear it again."

Michael unzips the back a little, gets a good grip on the seamsrunning down the zipper, and rips as hard as he can. The dress fliesoff me.

We're lying in bed and my head is on his chest and I can hear hisheart. I'm worried it will stop beating while my head is right nextto it.

It's from a lingerie store. Never a good sign. Men don't get it. Idon't want Michael to buy me something raunchy. It'll make methink—I don't know. It will just be bad.

I think it's going to be something awful, I don't say. I think I'mgoing to be embarrassed.

"Ruby, why would I get you something embarrassing?" he asks."Why would I do that to you?"

"I don't know," I say. Once, a guy I was on the verge of sleepingwith bought me a strapless leather dress. A leather dress! I feel likea jerk. I open the box. It's a pair of white Egyptian-cotton pajamas.White-on-white stripes. I love them. So I feel like an even biggerjerk.

What? He thinks I said I love him. Which I do. But I didn't saythat. But there's no way I'd tell him that—that he'd misheard me.He loves me too.

"Oh my God, you're serious? You guys finally did it? I was justkidding. That was a joke," she said. "I can't believe you fell for that."

"They just do. I lost two pounds after being with Larry. Thatcan't be good, right?"

"Right," I say. "But are you talking about losing two pounds orthe fact that you keep such an eagle eye on the situation that youcan actually tell when you've lost two pounds?"

"Is that what you always do? No wonder things have been weirdbetween you and Michael," she says. "You have to stop searchingfor the root of all evil."

I find myself looking forward to our first fight. Even maybe prompt-ing it. Maybe I'll get to punctuate my disgust in some very dramaticway ... a public slap. Mainly, I want to know if we will survive anargument. Or maybe confirm that we won't.

I went to his house last night and I felt this wave of nausea. AndI couldn't quite explain what it was, but there was this absoluterecognition that I was really there. And we were really there, to-gether, on purpose, not by some random accident. And when I saythere, I just mean being in the same room together.

He touched my hair. And I was unable to not move my head intohis hand. Like he was wearing a mitten made of magnets and myhead was a sheet of metal. I worry.

We stare at each other for a while. This staring thing causesme more anxiety than the reasons I'm seeing a therapist. Staringdoesn't seem to make her uncomfortable —how can that be?

anything to say to her, I quote the fabulous Rev. Al Green. So, outof the blue, I get to say disjointed things like: "With love comes re-sponsibility." She just stares.

I could have said: "Left my home in Georgia, headed for theFrisco bay . . ." But she might have caught on.

"I worry a lot," I say. "I worry that he's going to leave me. And Iworry that his girlfriend will come back to him. I worry that he'll getkilled in a car accident. I worry that he'll get bored with me. I justworry."

"I've never been worried about a guy leaving me, though. I've al-ways chosen guys who won't leave me," I say. "I know, I know—thathasn't worked either."

"This is all good, Ruby," she says. "It's good to want someone andadmit to wanting him."

"You are," she says. "You set yourself up for happiness or you setyourself up for sadness. Either way, it's your doing."

We're on the phone and we're talking and we're being so queer andmushy that you pray the FBI isn't doing its usual wire taps on aver-age people, because you'd never want to see a printed transcript ofthis phone conversation. Because it would be humiliating both incontent and lack of originality. And that rolls into one of thosepainfully premature but informative conversations.

"Can I ask you something? You got kind of, I don't know, whenwe were answering those questions . . . you were funny about kids.Is it that you don't want kids? Or, well, I know it's none of my busi-ness," I say.

"Yeah, we were playing that game, answering questions, and thequestion was . . . Children? . . . and you said, well, you didn't sayanything—you just looked horrified," I say.

"Sure," I say. Now, of course, I feel like a total jackass. It wasn'tsupposed to be some deep conversation about kids. It was just sup-posed to be fun, not torture. Now he thinks I want to have his ba-bies.

"Before I answer that question, shouldn't you brief me on whattopics are off-limits?" I say, adding a fake laugh to keep it light.

And so here it is, the moment we've all been waiting for. Theweirdness. The first official awkward beat in our relationship.

He thinks I want to marry him now. He thinks I want to have hiskid. He's simultaneously flattered and freaked. I know exactly whathe's thinking. He's gone.

But I know from the sound of his voice that this isn't a goodthing. He's not looking forward to coming over.

He sits up. He holds my hand. "There's something I want you toknow about me. I think there's something that you should know . . .as a person who cares about me . . . it's just something you shouldknow," he says.

"Please don't do that, Ruby," he says. "This is hard ... I don'tknow how to say this."

I stop. He's serious. I want time to freeze. I don't want complica-tions, or reality. I want him to stop talking and kiss me or some-thing. I kiss him. He kisses me. We lie on the couch and kiss, thenwe move to the floor and kiss. Then we are shirtless and kissing.And then, well, we're naked and kissing. And I memorize his face,

above mine. I just memorize it to have it there in my head. We fallasleep on the floor. When I wake up, there is a blanket over me. Mi-chael is cooking.

He shakes his head. I wrap the blanket around myself and gointo the kitchen. I hug him from behind. His body fits mine.

"Hey, Ruby, we still need to talk. So I'm just going to go aheadwith this," he says.

"At the time, I was living with my girlfriend, Amanda. She was inher second year of med school," he says. "And while we were to-gether, she got pregnant."

"I'd already accepted a job in New York. We were planning toseparate anyway, since I was leaving Washington —and I guess Ithought with her in school and everything ... I guess I thought—Idon't know what I thought. But she got pregnant. And she had thebaby."

A kid? He has a kid? People have kids all the time —lots of themdon't get married. It's not ideal. I wouldn't encourage it. But. . .

"You scared the hell out of me," I say. "I thought it was going tobe something really awful. Don't ever do that to me again."

"I'm going to take a shower," I say. I start to cry on the way to theshower. I don't know why. Because he's not perfect? I hope he'sgone when I get out of the shower. But he's not. He's setting thetable. He has a daughter, and he's here, in my apartment, settingthe table.

I know that this is a half-told story. I can take the truth, but onlyin small increments. I brace myself.

"You need to hear all of this," he says. "We can't kiss when youdon't feel like listening. You can't run to the shower when realitygets to be too much," he says, getting angry.

"Ruby. I've never met my . . . daughter. I don't know what shelooks like. I don't know anything about her," he says. "I'm not a fa-ther, I'm a guy who has a kid he's never seen."

She sits and waits. I focus on her size 7 shoes, resting on the blackleather Eames ottoman, that one they all have. I wait out the clock,because I know that nothing I say in this room will make me feelbetter. It will just seem more true.

"Look, it seems serious," she says in a let's-cut-the-bullshit kindof way. She and my mother wear the same perfume. But I don'tknow the name of it.

I don't want to cry. I don't want her to motion toward the tissuebox. I take a deep breath. I just have to say it. Because right now, it'sstill not real.

"I realize people have kids and don't get married. Fine. Thingshappen. But the thing is... I don't know. I just, I don't know," I say.

I stop talking. I remember one time she said she wanted to showme something. We went into a back room, through another door inher office. It was a kitchen, overlooking a courtyard. She pointedout the window to a tree and whispered, "Look." There was a nest,and birds were hatching. Spindly necks and transparent skin. I al-ways wondered what was back there, through the door. It was just akitchen. I thought it would be the mighty Oz.

"The thing is, he's never seen her. He doesn't know her. Whatkind of guy has a kid and never sees her? What kind of person doesthat? I just, I don't know," I say.

A person like my father, I think but don't say. Because it willmean too much to her.

Was there a refrigerator in that kitchen? A table? I can't remem-ber, because I was concentrating so completely on the fact that shewas taking me back to that room to show me those birds. What didthat mean? I'm out there floating.

"Exactly," I say. The why is too late. Because I'm already think-ing that people get what they want, even when they don't knowwhat they want.

"What's there to say? This —isn't a good idea," I say. "I don't wantto do this anymore."

"You're breaking this off," he says. "And we're not going to talkabout it? And you think that's a good idea? I'm not going to acceptthat. If you want to have an adult conversation about this and thenbreak up, fine. But until we've had a discussion, we've not brokenup," he says.

"What? You can't do that. You can't not accept the breakup.That's not an option. That's not—you don't get to do that," I say.

I have two things that belonged to my father: a gold pocket watchthat belonged to his father—and, before that, to his grandfather—and I have a flag, the one that was folded over his coffin at his fu-neral. I keep them in a box that's taped shut, that's been movedfrom apartment to apartment but never opened. It's been nearlytwenty years, and I still can't stand the idea of looking at that watch.

"I might know you too well to get involved in this one," she says."I know what you want me to say."

"You want me to tell you he's horrible, that he can't be trusted,and that you can't possibly even consider having this person in yourlife," she says. It's uncanny. She's a witch or something.

"See, I feel the same way," I say. "There's no decision. I mean,this is just the way it is."

"Why? Because you made up some fantasy that he was per-fect . . . and he's not?" Danielle says. "If he were a real jackass, hewouldn't ever have told you."

"Is it really so bad? What he did? I know it's not nice, it's not po-litically correct. But are you going to ruin your happiness over it?"Danielle says.

"He finds his kit and has a relationship wit her or you wun't seehim. Blackmail," Skorka says.

"Instead of extorting cash, you're extorting responsible behav-ior," Danielle says.

"Would you really want a father that way? One that was forced tosay he was your father? So his girlfriend would stop busting hisballs?" Meg says.

Blind isn't even the word. I can't believe I didn't realize thissooner! Skorka isn't dating married men after all. She's stealing fa-thers. Every married man she dates has children.

"What happened when your parents fought?" she asks."I don't know. They never fought," I say."They never fought?" she says.

"We learn a lot from silences," she says. "But we also learn a lotfrom your jokes."

"It must be very scary ... to think that every fight will lead to abreakdown in an important relationship," she says.

I've always avoided fights. I make jokes instead. I tell peoplewhat they want to hear in order to avoid a confrontation. I pretendto want things I don't want, and I pretend not to want things I dowant. No one gets hurt. Except me. The lines are so crossed andblurred at this point that I don't know what I want. I just know Iwant it to be easy.

I went home for my brother's wedding. I stayed with my motherand her third husband. His name is Joe and he is fond of airplanes.So much so that he builds model airplanes and strategically placesthem all over the house. It gives the place a booby-trapped look. Noone is more shocked than I that my mother puts up with his hobby.

The ceremony was brief. The reception was loud. The bridewore white. The groom wore navy. But, mostly, my brother lookedvery happy. And his bride seemed winsome, and in love. I give it sixmonths.

My brother wore my father's cufflinks. The ones my father woreat his wedding to my mother. Those cufflinks make my brother feelclose to my father. I worry that those cuff links will curse his mar-riage.

I was pumping gas into my mother's car when I saw him. It'sfunny how the past walks into the future. No invitations. No noth-ing.

Dr. Steve and I went out for coffee and it was too surreal: thepresent-tense me meeting the present-tense him. And it was alsokind of nice.

"One week your mother called and said you wouldn't be seeingme anymore," he said. "That's what happened. It was good of her tobring you as long as she did."

For much of my existence I'd counted my association with Dr.Steve as one of the highlights, or saving graces, of my life . . . and ittotaled all of eight or nine hours?

"Yes, I think that was when we were starting to realize that myproblems were all my mother's fault and she couldn't justify payinggood money to hear that kind of insight," I said.

said it. Over the years, it's occurred to me that the whole thingmight even be a fantasy. A conjured caring person, so necessary formy emotional well-being that it was 100 percent made up.

"Mmm. Sure. I'd never do that now," he said, sounding like sucha guy, it was amazing.

"Why not? Why wouldn't you?" I said. Why did I persist? Why isthis still important?

"I don't know. When you came to see me, I was just starting out.Excited about my work and what it all meant. And I guess I wasmore willing to experiment or something. I was willing to try thingsand see if they'd work. My parents divorced when I was young, too,so I guess I believed I had some insight into your experience," hesaid.

"Well, too bad for you then. Because I think those playing cardssaved my life," I said.

"Well, we never sent you to any psychiatrist," she said. "That'swhat people do when they have a midlife crisis, see a psychiatrist.It's not for little girls."

"And, sweetie —it wasn't your father's idea to leave," she says. "Itold him to leave."

"We thought it would be better that way. We thought youwouldn't blame me if you thought he wanted to leave," she says.

The false reality is crucial for the other surprises to unfold as theydo. See, if you tell the truth from the start, you don't get to layer therevelations over years and then decades. You miss all the ongoingentertainment that the slow torture can provide.

How does she do it? How does she look forward to that? Howdoes she not immediately start worrying that one baby is bound tobe shortchanged while she's caring for the other one? How is sheable to not start feeling guilty already? And because I have a splitpersonality, I can easily understand how she does it. She mustsometimes look at her life and think there is more love in her smallcorner of the world than there is in the entire world —and theremight be.

"Okay, you were right," she says. "It was hormones. You called it.Are you happy?"

"Nothing," I say. "I had a job interview today . . . feature writingfor a magazine."

"Ruby, you can't quit your job because of this. There aren'tenough newspapers and magazines left for you to keep startingover," she says.

"I sort of feel like someone's knocked the wind out of me, I guess,"I say. "Like an I-told-you-so kind of thing coming from my subcon-scious. If that makes sense. Every time I think about it, you know, Ifeel sick. I feel like I'm incapable of making a right choice. Michaelthinks I should forgive him."

"He doesn't require your forgiveness —that's between him andhis kid," she says. "You need to decide if you can forgive yourself."

lated to you . . . and your inclination is to accept him and hisfailings/' she says. "You must feel guilt about this."

"I don't feel guilty. And I have no intention of having a relation-ship with him. Guilt? See, I didn't leave my child. And I'm not theone who went and died, either," I say.

A while ago I took a stack of old copies oiGranta and The Paris Re-view to work. The Cadaver said she wanted to write short stories,and I thought she might like them.

Then today I go into the research library and the Cadaver ispractically vibrating. She holds out a letter and says for me to readit. It's from an editor at Granta.

I read the letter, and it says thanks for submitting your short story;unfortunately it's not right for us. Am I missing something?

It was just the saddest thing, and it absolutely broke my heart.But maybe it shouldn't have. Maybe the letter made her feel like awriter. Maybe in that way it was a very valuable letter. A letter thatmade her feel connected to the world she wanted to live in. Ishould have related to it; instead it just seemed sad. Perspective, Iguess, is everything.

I see it in the closet. I look at it a few times. I take it out of the closetand put it on a chair in the living room. I act like it's a houseguest.I offer the box some tea: a spot of tea. It's Sunday night. I'm in myapartment talking to a cardboard box. I don't want to open it. I don'twant to risk feeling anything.

I cut the tape. Then I take a shower. I unpack the box. Then Imake dinner. I unwrap the contents, and then I just sit cross-leggedon the floor, holding the watch and staring at it. I open it and closeit. I wind it. It works. This was my father's pocket watch, I think.And the watch reminds me that I did have a father, for a while.

Tonight we will bet nickels, not tales of personal risk. My friends arebeing kind. Giving me a break. They don't want to celebrate theirsuccesses when I've gone and fallen in and out of love in ten days.

Besides, tonight is special. It's a secret. Or not a secret. A sur-prise. I'm not supposed to tell anyone. We deal the cards. We sipmargaritas.

Danielle's been married once but engaged five times. Some ofher engagements lasted longer than her marriage.

Danielle opens the door and lets herself in. She's carrying ablanket, with a baby wrapped in it.

Danielle is someone's mother . . . William and Danielle. Theyhave won the lottery, I'm thinking. It's the largest jackpot in historyand there are two lucky winners. They will share the whole en-chanting thing.

"He's so, so beautiful," Lily says. "Why would anyone give himaway? How could anyone give him away?"

William's feet kick in the air, punctuating Lily's words. Heyawns. And falls asleep. He's eight days old and he's already hadenough excitement for a lifetime. We bore him. I can't remembera time in my life when I was comfortable enough to fall asleep infront of a group of strangers.

There is no stopping the world from turning. I keep meaning toget to the gym, but I don't. I keep meaning to clean out my closets,but I never find the time. Danielle decides she wants a baby and —boom!—she contacts an adoption agency and waits her turn. Therewards are great when you take chances.

"Okay," I say. It's happened! She's going to convey some personalinformation! I live for this stuff.

Hold the phone. She has a son, and she's admitting to it? Or isshe? Or perhaps this is a fake son to prove some point?

"Well, he wasn't potty-trained," she continues. "And he was sup-posed to start nursery school the following spring. But he needed tobe potty-trained or they wouldn't permit him to start school. Now, Iwas feeling all sorts of stress about this. What are we going to do ifhe's not potty-trained? They won't let him in school. What if hegoes to school without being potty-trained, and they ask him toleave?"

"Uh-huh," I say. Oh my God, she's pushed a baby stroller in herlife. She's heated bottles. She made Halloween costumes. Onestory—so many invitations to her life.

"But the reality was, he didn't need to go to nursery school. Hecould stay home, and we could have someone stay with him athome. So he didn't really need to be potty-trained by the spring,"she says.

Oh good God, do I really need to hear this? I mean, when Elladecides to share, she don't monkey around.

"That's right, it's your pooh. And you can put it where you want,either in your diaper or in the toilet. It's up to you. And he took his

arms and threw them around me and hugged me and said, 'I loveyou, Mommy/ " she says, with great pride and amusement. And arather hearty laugh. Her feet shake with glee at the memory.

Yes, please, pepper this disclosure with a pinch of withholding. Iwas starting to miss it.

We sit there in silence. Nothing in particular comes to mindother than there was too much detail in her story for her to be lying.Then I can't help but focus intently on the thread at the end of mysleeve. If I pull, the whole jacket might unravel. I might be un-dressed. And what is therapy if not undressing. I momentarily con-sider telling her this thought and realize she lives for this kind ofdetail, so I don't tell her.

"Ruby, the point of the story was that this is your shit—you cando whatever you want with it. But at some point you're going tohave to deal with it or you won't move forward in the world."

Let the record reflect that I absolutely did not ask what the storymeant. I asked her why she told me the story. Which proves that shewas right all along—she is no good at listening and talking.

And then I just start crying. I try to stop, but I can't. And it's sostrange. Because, in a way, I'm not crying about myself. And in away I am.

She motions to the box of tissues next to me. Alas, she's gottenme to use those tissues. This must feel like a very sweet victory toher.

"I was just thinking," I say. "I was picturing you sitting in your liv-ing room. I was picturing you watching your baby, with his puffypillow cheeks and his trust. And I can see you breaking down andcrying kind of uncontrollably. There's nothing wrong exactly,you're thinking. Except there is something very wrong, becauseyou're realizing every day that you'll never know this little boy whenhe is an old man. It simply isn't possible. And you mourn for hisfuture that you won't see. Because you would like to sit and havecoffee with him when he is old, because you know you'd really,really like him. And there would be a gesture, a very simple gesture,that he might make that would uncork an absolute time capsuleof your life. Reminding you of a day twenty or thirty years ago that,if not for the gesture, would never have been revisited. If that makessense. And I think this is what all parents must think, yet I'm cer-tain mine never thought this. And it all just seems so —sad. That'sall."

"I'm sorry if all of this upsets you or if it's too much for you. ButI'm thirty-eight years old . . ." He stops talking. He shuffles somepapers. "I need to get it right."

The thing is, while I'm sitting here, I'm desperately trying totune out. I don't want to repair this. Because now I know that I was

right. I know that he means too much to me. I know that I can't gothrough this twice.

"This thing between you and me, this isn't a game to me, it'snever been. I was nuts about you before I even met you," he says.

"I know," I say. "Me too, but the thing is . . . never mind." Thething is, I genuinely care about you. But I don't trust you . . .

I'm holding him up to a standard that no one can actually liveup to. See, according to me, he's not supposed to have a past. At thesame time, any reasonable person knows that most men don't havechildren out of wedlock and ignore them. Good people don't dothat. But it doesn't even have anything to do with him. It's easierthis way, because when he fails all the tests, I won't be disappointed,because they were set up in a way to ensure that he would fail. And,in turn, I would not be disappointed by the outcome.

"So if you had some idealization of who I was and now I'm notthat guy because you realize I'm flawed ... I understand. But thisis who I am. As someone who loves me, you should want to knowwho I am," he says. "There are mistakes that we make when we'reyoung that can't be fixed when we're older. And so we live withthem."

Maybe he could just introduce me to his admirable qualities,like people do when they first start dating.

I know what it is now, that thing about him. I was never quitesure how to describe it, but Michael has this ability to face what hefears, to risk losing, in hopes of winning. To me it would feel likewalking on glass; to him it is getting on with life. The sacrifice ofself, for a better self.

"I've given this a lot of thought," Michael says. "And I think weshould be friends. Have dinner occasionally. If six months fromnow we want to try this again, maybe we can. Maybe you'll see

things differently and maybe you won't. But I'd like to be able tocall you, see you once in a while —if you think that would be okay."

I call and ask for a special session with Ella. I've never done this be-fore, because she might mistakenly think I need her.

Doug is in town. We meet at the Four Seasons for lunch. He looksgreat. Don't worry, I won't sleep with him.

"Well, nothing's new, really. I feel like I've just settled in, eventhough I've been here a year. It's kind of nice, you know, that thecity seems familiar now. The dry cleaner knows my name —that'sgood. He literally knows what I like to wear on Friday and Saturdaynights, so he delivers it by Thursday." Which, sadly, means heknows more about me than Doug did. Of course it's not exactlytrue. Doug knew a lot about me. If he had known what clothing Iwore and when, it would have frightened me.

"Work's going well. I sold my place and just put in a bid on aplace in Back Bay," he says.

There is something so civil about this lunch. I had sex in thisman's kitchen and now we're eating salads together 240 miles southof his kitchen. It's kind of depressing, but I'm not sure why.

"Wow! That's great," I say. He works fast. I'll give him that. "Con-gratulations. When's the big day?"

"Who is she?" I ask. But I already know the answer. I don't knowher name, but she lived in his old neighborhood. And I know whoshe is because one time when Doug was at work and I was homealone, she stopped over. It was Halloween, and she left a card in hismailbox for him. A Halloween card! Could there be a holiday lessdeserving of a greeting card? It's the kind of thing women in lovedo—buy cards for every stupid occasion.

"Her name is Lisbeth," he says. "And she's wonderful." He goeson to list her amazing qualities. And she does sound great. If shewere a car, I'd buy her.

"She lives in the neighborhood," he says. "Maybe you sawher. . . she has a dalmation."

vited to the wedding. But I don't. Because I know he'll say yes andthen not invite me. Because that's what I would do.

Doug had a stone wall in front of his house. He built it with themoney he got when he returned the engagement ring he bought forthe girlfriend before me. Nell. First, before he could cash in thering and build the stone wall, he had to find the ring. Nell was agreat help. She told Doug the ring was somewhere in his front yard.Can you believe that? They broke up. He asked for the ring. And inthe middle of the night, she drove by and tossed the ring out of hersunroof and onto his lawn. I mean, what's that? He had to invite asquadron of those retirees over—you know: the ones who swag-ger around the beach with metal detectors—to help him combhis yard.

"That's so symbolic, it's almost beautiful," I said when he toldme this. "I mean, it's nearly cinematic, baby."

"What do you mean?" he said. He's sweet and caring, but he's astockbroker and never thinks of his life in terms of metaphors. Idon't get that. And it's precisely why we couldn't be in love, not forreal. I mean, partly why. And it's what made me doubt he reallyloved me. How could he, if I didn't love him?

"You and your girlfriend break up and you use the ring money,the symbolic thing that binds you, to put up a freakin' stone wall infront of your house —i.e., to keep people away, to prevent a bond —and you don't see the metaphor?" I said. "You're kidding, right? Imean, you just don't feel like talking about it, right? But you see it."

"You overthink things," he said. "You make it seem more signifi-cant than it is."

"That's not it," I said, and I started to float away in my head. AndI knew that would mean trouble down the line. But he did the rightthing, just then. He smiled, and hip-checked me into an inkberrybush.

I caught my balance. "Yeah, but still, you have to admit I'mright. I mean, a stone wall?" I said. "Besides, I assume you couldpay for the stone wall with money from your savings account, butfor some reason you feel the need to tell me it was paid for by themoney once used for an engagement ring. You want me to knowthis. You want me to know what I'm in for— or up against. And I ap-preciate that. I mean, if I'm going to be scaling walls, I'll need somerope and the proper footwear."

He was quiet for a long time. I knew it was a mistake. I can getcarried away sometimes. But please. Was I really supposed to pre-tend I didn't see what I saw? Wouldn't he have gotten a false im-pression of me? And didn't I also want him to know what he was infor?

"If you'd gotten a bigger ring, you could have had a moat putaround your house, with live gators and stuff," I said.

"Ah, hindsight," he said, and then he laughed. "I didn't eventhink about a moat."

That all happened on our first date. Can you believe he askedme out again? Well, the joke's on you then, because he didn't. I hadto chase him for a while. And it was an uninspired chase at that, be-cause I knew I could have him if I wanted him. And then when Iwent through the motions and won him over, I was secretly madthat I had to chase him, because I'd never had to do that. It's thewarped truth. I mean, sort of.

I go into the research room. The Cadaver is sitting behind her desk.She's meditating. Communicating with the devil or whatever it isshe likes to do.

"Right," I say. I feel a loan request coming on. I will only loanfriends up to $500. Okay, $1,000 if they're desperate. Beyond that,they need to talk to a bank.

Her eyes are filled with tears. Oh God. She's dying. Okay, I'llloan her $1,500. She's not just skinny—she's really sick. If sheneeds more, I can offer to organize a fund-raiser. I should haveforced her to see a doctor. Walked her there myself if I had to. Whatis wrong with me? She needs help. Responsible people owe it to ir-responsible people to take care of them. I don't think I can forgivemyself for this. Two thousand. That's where I stand firm.

She hands me an envelope. It has my name on it. It looksvaguely familiar. The postmark indicates it's nearly a year old.

"It's yours," she says. "I stole it from you. The day you startedworking here. Before I knew you."

Tm kidding. Stop crying. Why are you crying? Who cares? It's aletter. Why are you crying?" I ask. It's preemptive. She's crying so Ican't really get mad at her. I assumed Clown Hair took the letter, orMichael. I imagined him walking by my desk, seeing the letter, andacting on an overwhelming urge to take everything back.

"I don't know. Attention?" I say. "Or you want to be close tosomeone so you steal something that's theirs so you can be closerto them. I used to steal stuff from my parents all the time," I say.

"All the time," I lie. It seems I'm often pretending to have stolenthings, to make other people feel okay. But I've only ever stolenonce.

When I was five, we were at a flower shop, my mother and I. AndI saw a bleeding heart plant, the kind with those cascading redheart-shaped flowers that seem to defy nature. I wanted it so badly,to put those hearts in my pocket and take them home. When mymother wasn't looking, I ripped a flower off the plant and put it inmy pocket. And when we got out to the car, my mother asked me toshow her what I'd put in my pocket. I showed her. And she sent meback into the store with five dollars. I was to pay the woman at thecounter, and apologize for being a thief.

I marched back in there. And I immediately started crying. Theold lady at the counter pitied me. I showed her the crushed bleed-ing heart from my pocket. And said I was sorry I had taken it andthat it was very beautiful. I handed her the five dollars and headedfor the door. She stopped me, though. She gave me a tissue, a lolli-pop, and the money. And I left the store humiliated, confused, and

five dollars richer. And I knew that this crime thing was not onlylucrative —it was so exhilarating it could actually be addictive. Andso I never stole again, because I worried I'd never ever stop.

I sit at my desk. I stare at the envelope. I think about not openingit. I think about just throwing it away. I'm not a strong enough per-son to throw it away. So I open it.

He walks across my thoughts. Uninvited, and all of the time. Wewere never really friends, and we never will be. And I'm wonderinghow long it will take my ego to recover from his "let's be friends"speech! Have dinner occasionally?

I've never picked anyone up. I don't know how to pick up guys. Iusually just camouflage myself as this wonderful person and letthem come to me. It's easier that way.

I can just hear Jenn saying: "You think you're going to meet anamazing guy in your apartment?"

"Ruby, I had to go to goddamn Hubbardsville to meet Hank,"she'd say. "No one, NO ONE, is going to knock on your door andsweep you off your feet."

So imagine my surprise when there is a knock at the door. It'sTom. The neighbor. He's here to give me some mail that was inad-vertently put in his mailbox. After all those years of tipping themailman —despite the letters from the post office telling us thatcarriers can't accept tips at Christmastime (talk about your bossaggressively screwing you). So the next thing you know, we'relaughing and drinking wine and it looks like one of those cheesychampagne ads where people start staring into each other's eyes.Then he's like, "Come see my apartment."

He's, I don't know, forty. So Tom is in the shower now, and I'mlying on his bed counting the tiles on the ceiling. It's one of thosedepressing drop ceilings. The tiles aren't actually tiles but more likethick cardboard painted white, with English-muffin nooks andcrannies. As soon as I looked up at it, he apologized for it. It's beingripped out, he said. Anyway, I'm counting the tiles. I keep losingtrack as soon as I get to 108 or 109. I look at a tile and I can't re-member if I've counted it or not. They are, after all, identical. Icould take the easy way out. I could count the number of tiles thatmake up the width and then count the number of tiles that makeup the length and then multiply them. But what's that? I mean, Iget an answer, but so what? Who really cares how many tiles are upthere? It doesn't eat up any time or get me as frustrated as I'm goingto need to be.

The anesthetic wine is wearing off. I don't even know this guy, soI'm not quite sure why I'm in his bed. And when he gets out of theshower, wet and bounding toward me, I start my campaign to avoidsex without being the rejecter. It goes like this:

"Do you think I'm fat?" I say, hoping a few extra pounds mightfreak him out or that evidence of insecurity will make me less at-tractive.

Of course you do. I'm naked in your bed and you didn't evenhave to really talk me into it.

"This doesn't bother you?" I squeeze the flesh around my stom-ach. It bothers me.

"You're not fat. You're not even close to fat," Tom says. "CanI make you feel good, Ruby Capote?" Oh God, I think. I nevershould have told him my real name.

Mr. Drop Ceiling is not as nice as he seems, though, and I'membarrassed to even admit this, but soon after he told me I wasn'tfat, which I'm not, he tried to write on me with Magic Markers. To,you know, get me in the mood. Or something. He says he has a sur-prise for me and then he takes out the Magic Markers —Crayolapastels —and is about to start writing who knows what on my nakedskin. I mean, I've never written on any of my houseguests.

Anyway, I just couldn't get over how lame it was. We hadn't evenhad sex and already he was so bored with my nakedness that heneeded to decorate it with graffiti.

Not to obsess, but what's even worse is that it, the whole MagicMarker thing, doesn't even seem like an original idea. It seems likeone of those things he might have read in a book about giving theladies what they want. Be inventive, it must have said. Try writingon their naked bodies with Magic Markers. I couldn't even meet anoriginal sex freak. No, that would be too easy. I have to find a de-rivative sex freak. How could I introduce this guy to my friends witha straight face? How could this guy ever be the father of my chil-dren? There's just no possible way. Then again, maybe that was hispoint. I got my stuff and left. And then looked at the apartment list-ings in the Times. If I moved out of the building by the end of theday, I'd probably never run into him again.

I know what my future can't be. Who I can't be with. I can't lovethy neighbor. I can't love thy Doug.

"Kinda makes me wish I'd never said all that stuff about reveal-ing yourself. . ." he says.

"No. I'm mad at me. See —I guess I made certain assumptionsabout you. And those assumptions were apparently wrong," he says.

"Right. And I just—I just assumed that you were, I didn't know,your heart was. . . unavailable," he says.

"You didn't think the column was funny?" I ask. "It was supposedto be funny," I say. "Besides, as my friend, I thought you'd be happythat I was getting on with things."

Tonight is the night! The night I dreaded but now look forwardto. It's relaxing being so prepared for life. They didn't want to betnickels. They wanted to bet self-improvement. Well, here I am —improved. I hope I lose, just so I can tell my brave tale of risk andreward! All cards on the table . . . worst hand goes first. That's Lily.

She's deeply in love with a woman named Rita, who works as aproducer on an afternoon talk show and whose heart was brokenduring an eight-year relationship with a famous female tennis player.Lily met Rita that first night at Henrietta's.

Lily tells us all about their walks around New York City—inmatching sweat suits. And how they talk about gardening and bird-watching. They are boring suburban retirees.

"You're moving in with the first girl you've kissed?" I say. "Is thata good idea?"

I think this means we have to buy them a gift. I love buying gifts.It's so hopeful.

Jenn is next. She and Hubbardsville Hank have agreed to seeeach other every other weekend and see how things go. So far sogood. They've decided not to see other people. He let her drive histractor.

It's difficult to tell if she's drunk or truly opposed to their com-mitment to each other. Or simply doesn't like tractors.

Danielle's turn. She had a date with someone who is her ownage. He's not rich, not poor. He has a job! And he has no obviousaddictions. We all know it won't work, but we applaud her for try-ing.

"I'm having twins," Meg says. This isn't really an active decisionto better her life —more of a happy coincidence. Everyone exceptSkorka congratulates her.

Then it was my turn. I couldn't wait! I'd bounced back from hav-ing my heart ripped out in a rather remarkable fashion, I thought. Itold them about Tom, the drop ceiling, and how I have to wear veilswhen entering and exiting the building. I saved the part about theMagic Markers for last.

When I stop talking, there's an awkward silence. Apparently,everyone already knew this. They actually do read my column.

"Are you kidding? I'm the only one who had a surprise story. Icould have guessed everyone else's so-called risks," I say.

"We read the paper," Lily says. "We had a discussion on thephone about this whole thing after we read it."

"Well, you're kinda crazy about him ... I thought that wholecrush on the neighbor guy was, I don't know, kind of a joke. I didn'tthink you were serious about that," Meg says.

"I just can't believe you," Danielle says. "You're better than that.Than him. Your neighbor. . . kinda gets around."

"I thought we were going to get here and you were going to tellus how you talked to Michael and that you were moving towardsome kind of resolution," Lily says.

Danielle can't be quiet anymore: "Look, I don't care who Lily'sfucking—men, women, mice, whatever—either way, you know it'sgonna be a boring story. Sorry, Lil, you're repressed. I mean, youknow that, right? But, Ruby! What the fuck is up with you! You tellus about getting naked with some guy who wants to write on youwith Magic Markers. I mean, what the fuck is that? That guy Tom?That guy's a total pig. I mean, I know at least two people who havebeen with him —he's a total slut! I saw him coming out of an apart-ment two doors down from you on my way in here."

"Hey thanks, Dan. Thanks, Skorka. I didn't feel terrible enough.Thank you for that," I say.

"Anyway, gave Married Man ulti-may-tem. Leave da wife or stopcalling," she says. "He has two wicks to decide."

Skorka looks at Michael. Her eyes move up and down his body.She turns to me and mouths the words still fuckable. "Know what Imean?" she says.

"I told the sitter I'd be home by ten, so I'm just going to take off,Ruby," Danielle says.

"I didn't mean to interrupt. I just. . . maybe I could talk to Rubyfor a few minutes and then I'll leave," Michael says.

"Lily, stay," Skorka says. "I have all certs of questions you can an-swer while they talking."

Everyone leaves. Except Skorka. Who says she'll clean up.Skorka never cleans up. I know I'll need to clean up her "cleanup."

"I've been thinking about all of this. And I was thinking that Inever said that I was sorry. I'm sorry about how things happened,"Michael says.

"I should have said something before we got involved. And Ithought about doing that, but I guess it seemed premature, andafter the weekend in the Hamptons, it seemed too late. There'snever really a good time for bad news," Michael says.

It's not entirely true. I wouldn't love him as much if I hadn't sleptwith him. I know this. I could forget him more easily without thatpart. I just don't want to be sad about this anymore.

"I was out of line about the column. Maybe you could give me alittle time to get over you, that's all," he says.

"You had the rug cleaned," I say. It's pink and blue and white andbeige, and maybe some yellow.

There is a knock at the door. Our sacred time has been inter-rupted. This annoys her. She jumps up, apologizes, and reaches forthe handle. She cracks the door open a few inches.

"Oh, I completely forgot," she says. She turns back to me again."I completely forgot they were delivering my new chair today. Leaveit in the hallway, can you?"

"Have 'em bring it in, set it up," I say. This is so amazing. I get tosee the new chair first! I'll be its maiden voyage.

"I want to see it. Don't you want to see it?" I say. I'm more ex-cited about the new chair than she is. "Unless you feel guilty forgetting yourself a new chair."

"Yeah, that's what I figured, but wouldn't that be cool, havingyour shrink's old chair in your apartment? Oh, sorry, I mean thera-pist," I say.

It's Wednesday night. Everyone cancels. No one is really in themood for a repeat of last week. No one says that—they all just haveother things to do. I'm relieved. But every so often I think I hear thedoorbell and I happily open the door. And no one's there.

I shuffle the cards. I deal. I turn my cards over. Arrange them ina fan. Four of a kind. I've never had four of a kind in my entire life.I quit while I'm ahead.

I hop onto the Stairmaster. When I hit the top level of Pike's Peak,the woman on the Stairmaster next to me feels the need to confess.

I want people to like me, even neurotic strangers, so her thinkingI was funny, well, that cemented the deal for me. We were friendsfor the next one hundred calories burned.

"A year ago my husband, Ronald, told me if I didn't lose someweight, he was going to have an affair. I cried myself to sleep, andthe next morning I came here. I've lost fifty-two pounds."

This woman is rail-thin. She's, like, a size 6. But big-boned. Godwanted her to be a size 10. And she looks a little sick to me. Andwho wouldn't be, married to a swell dude like Ronald. And I'mwondering if there is a polite way to tell someone they are marriedto a cretin.

"Oh no, I'm still with Ronald," she says. "It's a Liz Taylor andRichard Burton kind of thing."

"No they weren't," I say. "They were both kind of bizarre, andhad no choice but to find each other." She thinks I'm joking, butI'm not. Elizabeth Taylor did too good of a job in Who's Afraid ofVirginia Woolf? She's been to the dark side . . .

"I heard that when she worked on movies, she expected a gifteach and every day of the production," I say.

"She expects diamonds. She's a smart one. If I expected dia-monds, I wouldn't be where I am," she says.

"Don't you see—your life is better than Elizabeth Taylor's," I say.But of course I'd chosen to say this to the one person on the planetwhose life probably is worse than Liz's life.

story about the woman at the gym. He says he doesn't blameRonald —he wouldn't want to sleep with a fat person either. Mybrother is a gentle, nice, and tolerant man, so this surprises me.

"Well, that would be a deal breaker for me," he says. Since whendoes he use words like deal breaker? "Besides, she's clearly trying tokill herself."

I walk by Michael's office. He waves me in. I can look at him nowwithout wanting to cry, so things are getting better.

I obey. I walk into the room a little too quickly and end up nextto him as he closes the door. We're nearly touching, we're standingso close.

There are boxes on his desk. A bunch of his stuff has beenpacked up. He was going to move and not tell me. If I hadn'twalked by just then . . . he'd have gone invisible on me.

"I have some good news," he says. "Got a promotion. It hap-pened a few weeks ago, but I was supposed to keep quiet until it wasofficial."

I walk into the reference library. I am on the verge of tears. And theCadaver looks at me and smiles. She has shark teeth.

I forget why I came in here. Oh yeah, to escape. But what I seeis that everyone keeps changing, evolving, except for me. I lackcourage. Not the kind of courage it takes to rescue a person froma burning building. Not adrenaline courage. But everyday cour-age, the kind that, once it's added up, day after day, equals a happylife.

Then I see it sitting on her desk, stuffed with pens and pencils —that stupid mug of Larry's that was kidnapped that time.

For the most part, Michael stopped talking to me after I wroteabout my neighbor trying to write on me with Magic Marker. Theconversation in my apartment was the last personal conversationwe had. It's true I didn't actually mention the near-sex act in thecolumn. But he obviously knew that disrobing was involved. Iwanted him to know. I can admit this now, although while I waswriting it, I was purely focusing on the perceived humor.

I can admit that I was getting shaken by the idea of me and himand that I had to tell the whole of New York, our mutual co-workers, and Michael about the Magic Marker-wielding neighbor.This would stop Michael in his tracks. Yet even when I was writingit, some part of me felt regret. But I didn't exactly understand the re-gret. I knew that I would, in part, gain relief, and at the same timecrush myself. I'm pretending he's busy with his new job, which heis. I'm pretending he's too busy to even talk to me. Because he's nottalking to me.

"Okay," I say. I don't know what the hell he's talking about, but Iknow all will be revealed in good time.

"That sounds like something an English professor at a smallNew England liberal arts college, with no practical working experi-ence, might feed you," he says. "Instead of donating money to youralma mater, you might demand a refund. At least a partial one. I'dbe happy to sign an affidavit testifying that indeed you were re-leased into the professional world with not a clue as to what consti-tutes acceptable news structure, never mind AP style."

He gives me a horrified look implying, I know, that United PressInternational is to beta what Associated Press is to VHS. UPI is themetric system, the cutting edge that would sweep the nation —except that it never did. But who knew that in college?

"Yes," I say. "Guess so. I love you, Fred. I love you because whenI walk away from a conversation with you, I have no confusionabout how you feel. Thanks for that, Fred," I say.

"Oh, you do make me smile, on occasion," Fred says. "But news-papers ... we do not take time to construct with care —is that whatyou're saying? Quite the opposite is true. We take great care to bethrifty and concise with our words. Our work is disposable. Or is

it? So disposable that our industry has created a habit. People nowbuy a newspaper every day. They don't buy books every day, dothey? Because people stumble onto a writer they like and they keepreading that writer. But with newspapers, you need to remaingeneric ... to retain readers."

"Except for the columnists, of course. Columns are different.They are personalities, aren't they, Ruby?" he says. "The jewels inthe crown."

"I don't know," I say. "Why are you hassling me? Can't you talklike a regular person?"

He's giving me a headache. Thank God I don't actually, techni-cally, have to work with this person. It makes it easier to be nice tohim, and in general, put up with him.

"Maybe another time. I actually need to go over my columnwith Michael," I say. "Rain check?"

Fred looks at me. He pities me. My hope is that this is a onetimething, a very busy week for Michael. But I knew at once that what Ihad just witnessed was Fred's victory lap. He would get to undressmy words.

People have begun throwing paper coffee cups and gum wrappersinto the free box. It's now more of a trash can than a free box. I muststop this!

I buy sixty Hershey bars and put them in the free box. They stopthrowing trash in the box. Until the last candy bar is gone.

We walk to the place with the pink counters. Smelly Fred is yap-ping on and on about how a lot is two words, but how most peoplethink it's one word. It's the number-one offense of my so-called edu-cated co-workers, he tells me.

"Okay, so a lot is two words. I get it. I don't think I've made thatmistake," I say.

Fred is an excellent editor. He really is. It's because he enjoysbeing right all the time. But he doesn't urge me to try harder; heurges me to be a better speller. He never tells me to work on con-tent or weave in more jokes. He doesn't insist that I correct thetenses —he does it. I get to work at seven a.m., and I'm out the doorby three o'clock.

I go to the gym. I've always wanted to try kickboxing. So I trykickboxing. And realize there's no real reason I need to try kick-boxing again.

I read all those books I always wanted to read, or reread. TenderIs the Night. Music for Chameleons. Oh, What a Paradise It Seems.The Easter Parade. Post Office. Cheri. Mrs. Bridge. Angels on Toast.West with the Night. And I feel full. Until I finish a book. Then Ifeel a certain desperation to start a new one. To have company.

I'm interviewing Midge. She has a massive doll collection. Themore I talk to her, the less I want to write this story.

I don't want to tell our readers that Midge's dolls have their ownbedroom in her house. I don't want anyone to know that Midge hasseveral dolls that cost more than $500. I don't want the world toknow Midge is insane. I want to protect Midge.

If Midge had any sense, she wouldn't have allowed me into herhome. She must not read my column; she must not know what I doto people.

All the while, Midge, an older woman who smells like dust, istelling me about her 190-year-old house. And I start to wonder ifmaybe she hasn't lived here the whole 190 years. Certainly thedoilies must be at least that old.

Why collect anything at all? I think maybe so you can have at-tention but not have the attention directly on yourself. You get tochat with people about whatever you squirrel away . . . but younever actually have to talk about yourself.

Midge stops talking. I think maybe she read my mind. Or maybeshe's still pondering Bettina's listening skills, perhaps comparingthem to my listening skills. Midge's eyes roll back in her head,crazed doll's eyes. I ask her if she can speak. There is no response.Cute parlor trick, I'm thinking. Now wake up!

She's breathing. I touch her hand. Her skin is like cellophane. Ican see right through it. See her veins, her foggy bones. It's like anaquarium inside her hand. I expect to see goldfish swim by. I moveclose to her ear and tell her, in a quiet voice, that I'll be right back.

I call 911. They're on their way, I tell her. Please be okay, I say.Everything will be fine, I tell her. She collapses. And I'm imagininga conversation we'll have when she wakes up. I'll say, "How rude,inviting me into your house and then dying like that." And we'lllaugh like a couple of practical jokers. Instead, I panic for whatseems like five minutes, but it must have been less. I move her tothe floor. I give her mouth-to-mouth.

I breathe life into her lungs and she wakes up, like she was justfaking the whole dying thing. Just trying to be entertaining. I thinkmy heart might stop beating. I really do. Because I am so light-headed, and I am completely terrified.

The paramedics walk through the door and take over. I run tothe bathroom and throw up, and there are tears streaming down myface. Her red lipstick is smeared faintly on my lips and a little on mycheek, in an almost passionate way. I cry harder, intensely, for

about twenty seconds. Was I the only person to sit in her livingroom this week, or this month? How scared she must be, dying andthen coming back to life only to see the face of a strange newspaperperson. I think about how I don't want to die in my living room infront of a stranger. I don't want some healthy young woman hover-ing over my old body, showing me who I used to be. I know exactlywhat I don't want but very little about what I do want.

Three days later, Midge died in the hospital, for good this time.She got to say good-bye to her family.

I didn't know quite what to make of it. Her heart couldn't takethe excitement of the interview? There really is a number systemand hers was up? Or today seemed just as good as any to say good-bye; enough's enough. Mostly, I was dazed.

I sat on a bench in midtown for an hour. I didn't want to move. Ididn't want to go home, and I didn't want to go to work.

I walked toward my office. Went into the building. Got on theelevator. And sat down at my desk. I tried to stare at something so Iwouldn't cry. It didn't work. Everything got blurry.

"If I were a superhero, this issue of abandonment would be the onlything that could hurt me. You know, suspend my powers. Renderme silly-human-in-flashy-tights," I say.

"If Michael were a superhero ..." I say indignantly. "Are you ab-solutely sure you're accredited?"

I start eyeing the couch. I never lie on the couch, because I thinkshe might be making peace signs behind my head, flipping me off,or browsing through a PBS catalog. So I sit across from her, to keepher honest. And even now that I trust her, I still sit across from her.It makes me feel equal.

"I don't love him. I really don't. I'm psychologically wired to lovehim. That's not love, that's pathology," I say.

"Would you like to come back in an hour?" she says. Her nextappointment is waiting.

Of course, at work it was different. Having a death under your beltmeans something. Everyone laughed and said, "Wow, dying twicein one week, that's impressive." And they acted like I was somehowlucky to see Midge collapse. Like being there to report on life'sgrandest event made me a better reporter. Like it was something I'dearned or survived, not just some coincidence.

seemed spectacular to me. Or does she have one of those lives thatjust don't look good on paper? Are we using the right criteria tojudge her time here? Two kids. A husband who died eleven yearsbefore her. No Rotary Club membership. No garden club. No ju-nior college. No distinguished-achievement awards.

The simplest things are always missing from obituaries. Was shehappy? Was she nice? Depressed? Filled with regret? A spendthrift?Was her true passion ice dancing? Did she have a kind heart? Whatwas the absolute best day of her life? Did she accomplish nothingmore than amassing the doll collection? Or maybe that's enough,a lot more than most people accomplish. At least it's more thanClown Hair will accomplish.

I sit across from her for forty-seven excruciating minutes. I sob offand on. But in general I'm just there. Taking up space. I don't uttera single word. I don't say, "How are you?" before I sit down. I didthat for the longest time, and finally she said, "Assume I'm fine. Youdon't need to worry about how I am." I wasn't worried. I was justasking. I was just filling the silence, because silence makes me anx-ious. Even now, I fill the gaps of silence by crying.At minute fifty, she says, "Well, our time is up."I collect my stuff and stand up. "No talking the entire time . . .that's gotta be some kinda record," I say. I don't even care what I'msaying; I just feel bad about not talking and then just leaving with-out saying a word.

When I get home from work, I open a bottle of wine. I pour a glass.I take a sip. I lie on the couch and start crying.

The phone rings. I can't answer the phone crying. What if it'shim? Then again, what if it's Meg? What if there is an opportunityfor lower long distance calling rates, if only I am willing to answerthe phone?

"Ruby, this is Ella Gallagher calling," she says. As opposed towriting? Of course she's calling! You don't need to tell me you'recalling! She's catching me off guard.

"I'm not still upset. I mean, this is not actually a continuation ofthis morning's tear fest, this is more of an encore kind of thing . . ."I start crying again, so hard that I have to cover the phone. Mybody's convulsing. Why did I answer the phone?

"I know, Ruby, I just, well, would you like to talk?" she asks. Ihear home sounds. She's calling me from her home. This makesme feel really guilty. I should have just talked today. Why didn't Ijust talk when I was sitting across from her?

There are forty-five boxes of butter, to be exact. They take up70 percent of her fridge.

"Mmm. For real? I knew when I was five years old. Mrs. Jackson,my kindergarten teacher, had the most amazing legs. I rememberjust looking at her and being so — excited." She paused to watch myreaction. "I know what you're thinking . . . you're thinking, howcould I be so dishonest with everyone, right? I mean, I was basicallypretending to be someone else. ... I guess I should have had theguts to tell you," she says.

"That long ago? I thought you just. . . figured it out recently," Isay. "I mean, you dated guys and stuff. . . . Were you, you know . . .I don't know. I mean, why were you dating guys —or hooking upwith guys?"

"This will sound strange . . . because it sounds strange to me,and for the longest time it didn't sound strange at all. I thought I'ddie with this secret. I actually thought I'd die never admitting thatI'm gay. I thought even if I had to get married, I would. But I wouldnever tell a soul the truth," she says.

"Yeah, it was sad. But you know, everyone has been so greatabout this. I mean, if my parents hadn't been so—accepting, andtrust me this was hard, because everyone cares what the neighborsthink where I'm from. And you guys have all been great. I'm sureit's more difficult when there's no support, but right now I'm justhappy. Can you imagine what it's taken for my parents to deal withthis. . . and then invite us to come stay with them for the weekend?I just feel so lucky. I'm so impressed with them."

"I don't know. Nothing, really," I say. "You're such an ass-kicker,"I say. I'm really proud of her. I almost cry thinking how I am soproud of her. But I don't, because I wouldn't really be crying abouther anyway.

This week's column was simply your best effort ever. The womanwho had the heart attack . . . what seemed most thought-provokingabout it is that you ye had an experience that not many people willhave, based purely on random circumstances. I really believe that ex-periences, good or bad, that can only be singularly experienced arethe building blocks of life. Or is that Root Beer?

I go to Bloomingdale's to buy a lesbians-shacking-up gift. I look at thelist. Mainly, it's stuff people don't use. A large electric food processor.A small electric food processor. A small manual food chopper. A fullset of everyday plates. A full set of china. Chargers for underneaththe full set of china. A silver gravy boat. Everyday flatware. Sterlingflatware. Linen napkins. Linen tablecloths. Crystal martini glasses.I've never seen Lily drink a martini. Never—not once. Crystal de-canters. She doesn't know anything about wine, either. Whitetowels. White robes. A robe is a suitable thing to register for? No way.

I spot a saleswoman. Her name tag says my goal is your happi-ness! Her name is Estelle. Estelle's goal is my happiness. This isvery good news.

"My friends registered for a bunch of gifts, and I was wonderingif you could tell me what the most popular gift on the list is, andthen I'll just buy that," I say.

"Really? A gravy boat? I don't know . . . how often would you usesomething like that? Twice a year? Thanksgiving and Christmas,right? I'm looking for a gift they'll use every day," I say.

"I can't get them robes. . . how long does a robe last? Two years?Three? I want something permanent, something representative oftheir bond," I say.

"I didn't come here to get jerked around, Estelle. I came here toget a gift. Your goal is my happiness. So far you're pretty far south ofyour goal," I say in my sweetest voice.

Everything in Rita and Lily's apartment is very . . . girlie. Frilly stuffeverywhere. It looks like a gift shop.

"Thanks!" Lily says. Rita rubs Lily's shoulders. Rita's always rub-bing Lily's shoulders. I hand over the gift.

"Here, I bought you a gift for taking that very important step inany relationship . . . living with someone." It was supposed to soundmore sincere than it did. No energy left.

"Oh, they must have screwed it up at the store. ... I didn't evennotice," I say.

Lily and Rita tear into the gift. "What is it? What is it?" Rita issaying. She's practically hyperventilating.

"No way! You got the gravy boat! That's hysterical! This reg-istering thing is a hoot! Can you believe you just make a listof stuff and people actually buy it? We're taking all the giftsback, getting the cash, and buying a top-of-the-line treadmill," shesays.

We're all planning to win tonight. No more getting off track. Nomore losing our concentration. When I look around the table I seefear, and I find it kind of reassuring. When we were betting nickels,they weren't afraid to lose. Now, though, it's different. Their privacyis at stake. Their vulnerability is visible. Of course, there's an exhi-bitionist in every crowd . . .

"You sleep with some guy who writes on you with Magic Mark-ers and you're judging me?" she says.

"I didn't sleep with him!" I say. And I didn't let him write on me,either. These people do not listen!

"You met her last week and you already have naked pictures ofher?" I say. "How does that happen?"

Rita! Gravy boat Rita! Rita with the matching sweat suits andknowledge of cardinals and sparrows and such.

They're getting sidetracked. This is the perfect opportunity forme. ... I will feign disinterest for the rest of the night. I will pounce.I will win.

"He called me into his office today. He couldn't get a computergame to work, so he asked me what kind of fucknut I was," Jenn says."I lost it. I knocked everything off his desk ... I really went nuts."

"No. Close. And he just smiles this strange smile and says, 'Nowyou know how I feel each and every day.' He gave me a raise. Atwenty-five percent raise," she says.

"He called me at home —eleven times —asking me to comeback. Then he called and left me a message saying I was a whore,"Jenn says.

"Of course," Meg says. We all listen to Jenn's message from CarlBrennan. Jenn starts laughing, until it turns into crying.

Apparently, Carl Brennan's evil is contagious. Jenn called housemaintenance at the Four Seasons and authorized them to takethe wooden blocks out from under the head of his bed, and putthem under the foot of the bed. Then she had his cell phone shutoff. And canceled all his credit cards. And erased his computerRolodex.

She says she probably won't use him as a reference now. Butshe got an enormous bouquet of flowers from the two assistants inL.A. who thanked Jenn for doing everything they would have likedto do.

All the while we're still playing cards. All the while I'm justwatching, waiting. Then it happens. Three of a kind. Meg's out.

Lily's out. Jenn's out. It's me, Danielle, and Skorka. I raise three dol-lars. Yes, thirteen dollars in the pot. I reveal my cards.

"Read 'em, suckers!" I say. "Oh-so-cinematic, baby. That's right,push your nickels on over here, ladies. Three of a kind . . . looks likea big winner to me."

Skorka lays down her cards. She has no hand to speak of.She should have been out long ago. Danielle, on the other hand,looks guilty. Mighty guilty. She lays her hand on the table. Fullhouse.

I smile. Because when I thought that I had won for those fewseconds, winning felt great.

I'm sitting across from Ella. But I'm not really here. I'm time-traveling. I'm remembering a day when I was six years old and I sawmy mother staring out the living room window. She was always star-ing out the living room window, like the front yard was a giantmovie screen or something. Anyway, I knew not to bother her. Buton this day I was bored and feeling lucky, so I said something. I tooka chance. I was optimistic.

It was late afternoon, and she was wearing a skirt and a sleevelessshirt. It's what she wore every day in the spring, so I called it her uni-

form. But not to her face. And on her too-thin wrist she was wear-ing a gold charm bracelet, the one that made noise when shemoved. And she was drinking a glass of wine, which for her was un-common and made her look even more lost. A character from a TVshow stumbling into another TV show, inexplicably.

"No," she said, still staring. "No, honey, I'm waiting ... for youand your brother to grow up —so I can leave your father."

For a long time my mother was a very sad woman. And I couldn'tcheer her up. But I was just stupid enough to believe that Icould.

I disappeared on that day, or maybe I was always invisible, but Ijust accepted it on that day. And because our house was a place thatrewarded invisible children, I made my bed so no one else wouldhave to. And I never talked, and I stayed out of the way, and grewup believing that my brother and I, specifically our youth, pre-vented our mother from being happy. From being able to live herlife away from my father.

The phone rings. The machine gets it. "Hi, Ruby, this is Ella Gal-lagher calling. And I've given this some thought, and if you'd like tohave my old chair, you are more than welcome to have it. It's justbeen sitting in storage."

room and decided she'd unload her chair on me now. Now, when Idon't need the chair as reassurance of my goodness.

If she'd said yes I could have the chair from the get-go, it wouldbe fun to have the chair, and a good story. But her first impulse wasto say no. The world is made up of people who say yes or no. I ama person who says no. But from now on I'm saying yes —just forpractice.

Everyone's always concentrating on first love. No one seems to caremuch about second love. Or third. Or fourth love. First love, that'sthe one that's always celebrated and documented like it never hap-pened before to anyone, anywhere. It's like the firstborn: You take amillion photographs of the kid, and then the other ones come alongand it's like you can't be bothered to take the lens cap off.

It's a refining process, though, falling in love. What didn't workthe first time won't work the second time. Or the third. But infourth love there will probably be aspects of first and second.

When you run into the later loves, that's when things get scary.I mean, it's at that point you've got a potential keeper on yourhands. And to me that means: Run for your life; it could be finallove.

First or fifth —or in the case of Danielle, hundredth —love. Nomatter what number it is, the pursuit of love is like agreeing toclimb on a giant slingshot and be thrust forward, at full speed, with

only a blurry target in sight and millions of miles of flight. And mosttimes it's all a mirage. The blurry target? It's a brick wall. Or a wallthat really loves you, but also keeps urging you to change.

So why thrust? Because there is nothing quite like the hope of anew and improved self, and the fantasy it allows you. More thanany lottery ticket. When I'm really serious about making this lovething work, I start the bargaining. Maybe we all do. I gather up myvices —sugar, buying houseplants and then never watering them,cynicism —and promise to abstain from all three in exchange for anew, more optimistic perspective. A life that works.

The Cadaver is in my apartment, digging through boxes. I amdoing the unthinkable. I am giving away some old books. I cannotstand to give away books. But I want more books, and to make roomfor more books, I have to get rid of some books. I know the Cadaverwill take care of them.

Instead of taking books, she keeps saying, "Oh, this must havebeen a mistake. You can't give this one away."

"Don't show them to me —just take them. I feel guilty enough asit is," I say. They are whimpering, scared kittens being separated.

"I've always kind of wondered what the deal is with Diana in ad-vertising," I say.

"She had a baby when she was seventeen —gave it up for adop-tion. Now she's trying to find it," the Cadaver says.

"I listen to her phone calls," the Cadaver says. "Read her mail.That kind of stuff."

She's the absolute best reporter in the building, and she's work-ing as a clerk in the clip library. That's not just good reporting; that'sreally disturbed.

"The paper has some kind of database for parents and childrenwho are separated. Michael started it a few years ago. I guess shethinks he gives a crap," the Cadaver says.

"The I've-used-up-all-of-my-sick-days-so-I'm-calling-in-dead mug,"he says, getting testy.

"I found my mug, in the free box. Ruby, why didn't you just tellme you took it?" Larry says. "Just apologize, and we'll forget allabout it."

What!? The free box! "You're right—I'm—sorry—I'm sorry fortaking your mug," I say.

"I can't believe you put the mug in the free box," I say. "Whydidn't you just throw it away?"

"You have no idea how much he likes that mug. He'd talk aboutit sometimes, like it was a dog that died or something," she says.

"He always thought it was you. Besides, I didn't want him tothink I was psycho," she says.

I have good days. And bad days. Today is a really bad day. I don'tknow what to do. So I call Psychic Randy. We arrange to meet.

His office is in a brick building, on Great Jones. I'm going to apsychic, but at least I can pretend it's for the purpose of work. A col-umn. Social science.

A male receptionist who's had too many dates with a plasticsurgeon greets me. He's wearing a skirt. He was probably very beau-tiful at some point, before all of the tightening. I fork over my giftcertificate.

"Randy is almost ready for you," says the receptionist. "You'regoing to have a fabulous day, I can tell."

"You just looked like you could use a little pick-me-up," he says.He hands me a glass of water. He sits next to me. He crosses his legsat the knee and starts swinging the top leg. Then he, very sweetly,squeezes my knee. "It's going to be okay, whatever it is."

Randy emerges. He's chubby, and short and balding. He's wear-ing a lot of rings. And his shirt is unbuttoned to just above hispaunch.

"Follow me, hon," says Randy. I follow. As we walk down a longhallway, he turns to me and says: "Tell me he's not a hot little fuck."

"Thirty-two years," he says. "What's hot Johnny see in chubbyJewish Randy? —that's what you're thinking, right? Me too, hon! Iask myself that every day. But that man loves me. And, hon, you canhave that kind of lovin' too," Randy says.

I don't think I want that kind of lovin'. "Thirty-two years?" I say."Wow. Congratulations."

The world is sweet, kinda whether you like it or not. How is itthat Randy, who probably struggled with all sorts of challenges inhis life—being a gay, overweight, Jewish, hair-free psychic beingjust part of it—retained his compassion? Magnify his compassion?How can he be nice to the world that must have rejected him? Oris this the sales pitch that gets me to refer other friends to him?

"Me too," I say. I should have gone to a bar, not a psychic. Whatwas I thinking?

"Shhh . . ." he says. "She thinks I'm talking to her . . . no . . .yes. . . well, just tell me what you see."

Isn't he supposed to tell me I'll be lucky in love? Successful inmy professional endeavors? Offer me some lucky numbers? Sageadvice?

He dramatically draws in his breath in genuine horror. "Oh, sosad," he says. He appears to be on the verge of tears. Wow, Randy isgood! This is a soap-opera-quality performance at least. He actuallywipes a few tears from his eyes.

"Where?" I say. "Go where?" I know where. It just struck me.Why didn't I go? I don't know what to say ... I was developing mytalent for avoiding difficult situations?

"I didn't remember/' I say. "How I could I forget that I didn't go tomy father's funeral?"

It's quiet. How did I forget that? Or not forget that, but not thinkthat was weird? How did I not wonder about that before?

I'm sitting there thinking. And I start to cry. And I guess the onegood thing about all this therapy is that I've cried so much, I'm nolonger embarrassed to cry. At least I guess that's good.

I start thinking about this story I saw on 60 Minutes. It was aboutthe effects on black boys of losing a father. The boys are more likelyto die young or go to prison than those boys who do have fathers. Ialways wonder why they never bothered to say what happens to girlswho don't have fathers—black or white. Maybe it's less dramatic.Girls turn inward, boys turn outward. Boys wreak havoc on theworld, girls sabotage themselves. How much harm can there be inthat?

It's late. Close to ten o'clock, we're both still working. Every once ina while, I look up and see him sitting in his office. I wonder howlong we'll be this far apart. When will I move to a new office, a newjob, into the rest of my life?

"Yeah, I know. I didn't know what else to say first," I say. "Can Iask you something?"

"Why didn't you ever go after her? And get to know her? I mean,how could you just let her go?" I say.

"Well, for a long time, I was just satisfied feeling guilty about it.I was single. I was working a lot. I think I figured that as long as I feltbad, I must not be a horrible person. If I had a conscience, I wasokay," he says.

I know what he means. I felt bad about the way I treated Doug,which meant I must be a good and caring person ... to feel so bad.

"But about four years after I'd been in New York, I decided, Idon't know, it was just wrong. I'd gotten married and my marriagewas ending after only two years. My life was chaotic. I figured her

life must be even more chaotic. I guess I thought it wasn't too lateto do the right thing. So I spent a year trying to find Amanda andKate. And I found them. She and Kate live in Virginia now. So Iwent to see Amanda. And I told her I thought I needed to find a wayto be involved with Kate," he says.

"Well, a lot happened in the four years since I'd left. Amandahad gotten married," he says. "Kate was almost four by this time.We talked about it, and ultimately Amanda felt that bringing meinto Kate's life at that time would be too disruptive for her. She wasright, of course. It would have made me feel better, but I'm sure itwouldn't have been the best thing for Kate," he says.

"I suggested we meet when she was eight," he says. "And by thenKate knew that I existed and that I wanted to meet her, but shewasn't interested in meeting me. A few years after that, I started aregistry that allows children and parents to get information abouteach other even if they don't want direct contact," he says. "I sub-mit as much information as I can. I think all I can do is wait."

"She's almost fifteen. ... At some point she might be curiousabout me," he says. "Or I hope she will be."

"I don't know. For a while I think I needed to keep it in a closet,hidden, so I could hang on to the tragedy a little longer. Then Iguess I needed it to feel close to Dad. I guess I don't need it any-more," I say.

Have you ever looked at a random set of events as a pile of events?A collection of behavior? I have. And I feel ungrateful. So I writeabout it. All of it. I write twenty-six pages and then knock it down tothree pages. Then to eighteen inches —because if I write fewer thaneighteen, someone might steal my inches.

And when I hand Smelly Fred the copy, he reads it and thenlooks at me and says, "Wow, when you decide to tell the truth, youdon't split infinitives or bombard me with run-on sentences or evenstart and end sentences with prepositions —oh, sweetheart, embar-rassed has two r's."

"Thanks," I say. "And I had to start several sentences with Andjust to keep you busy."

"No, he can read it when everyone else does," I say. Because ifhe even lets my fingers near a keyboard, I'll take it all back.

I don't even get mad at Fred for calling me sweetheart or a fire-cracker. I think I'm getting better. Firecracker?

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." Anai's Ninwrote that, not me. I think she was right—happy endings are not forcowards.

You don't need to know any of this. But the things I don't reveal arethe things I hold closest and fear losing the most. I work overtimekeeping them veiled and camouflaged. You don't need to know that Iwalk around all day fearing the things that make me happy, and thatI have been doing that for my entire life.

You don't need to know that I sometimes sleep with a chair proppedagainst the door—because I've seen too many movies about singlewomen at home alone. And that I'm actually embarrassed in front ofmyself as I start dragging the chair toward the door.

You don't need to know that I run away from my problems. I pack upand move. I get out of Dodge before I care too much, before I risk toomuch.

You don't need to know that I'm the world's worst poker player. I feeltoo bad about lying and losing.

You don't need to know that growing up has come late to me. I'm thelast one at the party. But at least I've shown up.

You don't need to know that I have the greatest brother, named John.That my mother is happily remarried. Or that my father died when Iwas 8. You don't need to know that I'm actually shy, which is why Iwrite.

You don't need to know that when someone confides in me, I feelneeded. Unless I don't like what I'm being told. Then I give up onyou. No matter how you might have changed. No matter how repen-tant you are. No matter how much loss you feel. No matter how muchlike me you are. Because I don't stick around long enough to listen towhat needs to be said. What I need is something to hold against you.Because if I don't have that, I will be crushed when you go away.

If you've been reading this column for the past year, you know alot about my life, but you don't know anything about me. Because Iwasn't showing up here, either.

I don't know who you are or what you look like (except for a readerknown to me only as "Louie from Crown Heights," who was kindenough to send some "art" photos of himself), but thanks for reading.Because if you weren't reading, I wouldn't be writing.

You don't need to know about the time I was sitting a few feet awayfrom him and he said, "Shhh . . . quiet." And I said, "What?" And hesaid, UI can hear your heart murmur from over here. Turn it down anotch, would ya?"

You don't need to know about the note he left me. How it was un-folded on my chair, waiting for me late one night. It said, "Ruby,stopped by to see you. Waited 20 minutes. I'm a sleepy boy. Good-night, Michael." You don't need to know that I kept that stupid note

in the pocket of my backpack for a month. And every so often I'd takeit out and look at it and study the way he wrote my name. To see if itmeant something. To see if there were clues about us.

You don't need to know that Ym telling myself to stay when I feel likeleaving. Because leaving is easy, and staying takes work. But in themidst of the work, I might lose some of my fear.

You dont need to know that up until I met him, my life's goal wasself-preservation. And that when I met him, self-preservation feltgenuinely lonely.

When you run into love and it seems like some psychedelic mystery,look at it again, and again, and keep looking at it until you realizethe only mystery is how you've gotten by so long without it.

You really, really don't need to know about the kiss on the elevator(unless you're a co-worker, because you might want to start taking thestairs). But it was nice, and his coat felt new. And when I think aboutthat—I'm filled with regret for not telling him everything he didn'tneed to know but should have known.

"I can't believe you finally gave that guy a break," Jenn says. "Ican't believe you didn't tell me about this. It's awesome, SisterGoddess Ruby! What did he say?"

The non-Rockette comes up to me and has these tears in her eyes,and I start to worry that she's going to stab me in the neck with apen or something. Instead she says, "That was wonderful."

Then she gathers a line of our co-workers and they all do a splen-did kick line across the newsroom. Or maybe I just imagine thatpart.

This is how it worked. He stayed in his office all morning. He readmy column; he thought about what he should do. And for a whileI thought, Okay, he's really not interested in me. At the same time,I was relieved at having expressed myself—finally. I mean, I finallydid it. And it was so scary. But it's done. I didn't say "I don't know"for a change.

"Hey, do you want to go out for coffee?" he says. These are thefirst words he's said directly to me in a few weeks.

We're at that place with the pink counter. And he says it. He says,"I had this dream about you early this morning. And by the way Ihate it when people tell me their dreams. It's like, yeah, yeah, whocares? But this one is kind of haunting me. I had a dream that youand I were at a party at work. You know, just an office party or some-thing. And I was standing next to this buffet table and I was talkingto you. And I kissed you. And it was great. And then you just-disappeared. And I kept looking for you and asking people whereyou were, and if they'd seen you. But I couldn't find you. You weregone. And I don't know if it means anything to you, but I know ex-actly what it means to me."

Oh my God, I spilled my guts to the entire city of New York forhis benefit—okay, and mine too —and he didn't read my column?

You can't start over. There's no such thing as starting over. There'sonly history. And right now you're making tomorrow's history, so goout and do something that will be fun to remember.

It's six o'clock. I walk into Michael's office. It looks exactly likehis old office, except for the new dead plant.

We walk to the elevator. I remember seersucker. The kiss. Wewalk inside. The doors close.

We walk out of the building. Holding hands, we take a left andwalk toward Madison.

We're not heading toward my apartment, and we're not headingtoward the place with the tables outside. I don't have a clue wherewe're going. But I keep walking anyway.

jill A. davis was a writer for Late Show withDavid Letterman. She has also written severalnetwork pilots, screenplays, and short stories. Be-fore moving to New York City, she wrote a humorcolumn for a small metropolitan newspaper.

This book was set in Electra, a typeface designedfor Linotype by W. A. Dwiggins, the renownedtype designer (1880-1956). Electra is a fluid type-face, avoiding the contrasts of thick and thinstrokes that are prevalent in most modern type-faces.

Jill A. Davis was a writer forLate Show with David Letterman,where she received five Emmynominations. She has also writtenseveral network pilots, screen-plays, and short stories. Beforemoving to New York City, shewrote a humor column for a smallmetropolitan newspaper.

Join our fiction newsletter by sending a blank e-mail to:join-rht-fiction@list.randomhouse.com or visit www.atrandom.com

'Jill Davis's Girls' Poker Night is every man's worst nightmare—a candid look athow the other half thinks and feels. Ruby Capote is a smart, neurotic, maddeningheroine against whom very few male poker players would stand a chance. I certainlyhope this is fiction." —Jay McInerney, author of

'Jill Davis has the voice of your very best friend—funny, irreverent, gossipy, deli-ciously nasty but always compassionate. Just pour yourself a drink, sit back, andlisten to her rant hilariously about her journey to romance and maturity."

'Funny, fast-moving, and disarmingly honest, Girls' Poker Night, to use a Hollywoodconstruct, is an American Bridget Jones meets Sex and the City, with a soulfulsmidgen of Bright Lights, Big City." —M ark O'Donnell, author of

'Ruby Capote, the sparkling jewel at the center of Jill A. Davis's brilliant debut, iswise, witty, and achingly vulnerable in the tradition of the fabulous dames of screw-ball comedy. I loved her and you will too!" —A drianaTrigiani, author of

"Jill Davis captures exactly what it feels like to be a single woman on the verge offalling in love; what it feels like to risk everything and cross the line from distrustto trust, from not believing to believing. Girls' Poker Night is funny, sad, and full ofperfect little truths. It's one of those rare books that you read and think, I know thatwoman. She's me." —Laura Zigman, author of