Good in Bed

FIFTEEN

I’d never had any luck with Hollywood. To me, the movie industry was lik e a guy you lusted after from across the high school cafeteria – so good-looking, so perfect, that you just knew he’d never notice you, and that if you asked him to sign your yearbook at graduation he’d stare at you blankly and grope for your name.

It was an unrequited love affair, but I’d never stopped trying. Every few months I’d importune agents with query letters asking if they were interested in my screenplay. I’d wind up with nothing to show for my troubles but a fistful of preprinted rejection postcards (“Dear aspiring writer,” they’d begin), or occasionally a semipersonal letter advising me that they were no longer handling unsolicited material, unknown writers, novice writers, unproduced writers, or whatever they were using as the derogatory term du jour.

Once, the year before I met Bruce, an agent did meet with me. The thing I remember most about our appointment was that during the entire ten minutes or so he granted me, he never once said my name, or removed his sunglasses.

“I read your screenplay,” he said, pushing it across the table toward me with his fingertips, as if it was too distasteful to risk full palm contact. “It was sweet.”

“Sweet’s not good?” I asked – the obvious conclusion one would draw from the expression on his face.

“Sweet is fine, for children’s books, or TGI Fridays on ABC. For movies, well… we’d prefer it if your heroine blew something up.” He tapped his pen across the title page. Star Struck, it read. Except he’d doodled little fangs coming out of the S’s, so they looked like snakes. “Also, I’ve got to tell you, there’s only one fat actress in Hollywood ”

“That’s not true!” I exploded, abandoning my strategy of smiling politely and keeping quiet, not sure what I was more offended by – his use of the term “fat actress,” or the notion that there was only one of them.

“One bankable fat actress,” he amended. “And really, the reason is, nobody wants to see movies about fat people. Movies are about escape!”

Well. “So… what do I do now?” I asked.

He shook his head, already pushing himself back from the table, already reaching for his cell phone and his valet parking stub. “I just can’t see getting involved with this project,” he had told me. “I’m sorry.” Another Los Angeles lie.

“We’re anthropologists,” I murmured to Nifkin, and to the baby, as we flew over what might have been Nebraska. I hadn’t brought any of my baby books with me, but I figured, if I couldn’t read, I could at least explain. “So just think of it as an adventure. And we’ll be home before you know it. Back in Philadelphia, where we’re appreciated.”

We – me, and Nifkin, and my belly, which had gotten to the point where I pretty much regarded it as a separate thing – were in first class. Actually, as best I could tell, we were first class. Maxi’d sent a limo to my apartment, which had whisked me the nine miles to the airport, where a block of four seats had been reserved in my name and nobody so much as batted an eyelash at the presence of a small and ter-rified rat terrier in a green plastic carrying case. We were currently airborne, at our cruising altitude of 30,000 feet, and I had my feet up on a pillow, a blanket spread over my legs, a chilled glass of Evian with a twist of lime in my hand, and a glossy assortment of fresh magazines fanned out on the seat beside me, beneath which Nifkin reposed.Cosmo, Glamour, Mademoiselle, Mirabella, Moxie. The brand-new April issue of Moxie.

I picked it up, hearing my heart start thumping, feeling the sick feeling in the pit of my belly, and the familiar cold sweat at the back of my neck.

I put it down. Why should I upset myself? I was happy, I was successful, I was flying to Hollywood first class to collect a bigger paycheck than he’d ever see in his life, not to mention the mandatory hob-nobbing with superstars.

I picked it up. Put it down. Picked it up again.

“Shit,” I muttered, to no one in particular, and flipped to “Good in Bed.”

“The Things She Left Behind,” I read.

“I don’t love her anymore,” the article began.

When I wake up in the morning, she isn’t the first thing that I think of – whether she’s here, and when I’ll see her, and when I can hold her again. I wake up and think about work, my new girlfriend, or, more likely, my family, and my mother, and how she’ll manage in the wake of my father’s recent death.

I can hear our song on the radio and not instantly punch up another station. I can see her byline and not feel like someone large and angry is stomping on top of my heart. I can go to the Tick Tock Diner, where we used to go for late-night omelets and fries, where we’d sit side by side in a booth and grin dopey grins at each other. I can sit in that same booth without remembering how she’d start off sitting across from me and then, halfway through, get up and plop herself down beside me. “I’m just being sociable,” she’d say, every time. “I’m paying you a visit. Hello, neighbor!” she’d say, and kiss me, and kiss me until the waitress with the blond bouffant and the coffee pot in each hand would stop and shake her head.

I have reclaimed the Tick Tock. Once it was our place, now it’s my place again. It’s right on my way home from work, and I like the spinach and feta omelet, and I can even order it sometimes without remembering how she’d bare her teeth at me in the parking lot, demanding to know whether she had spinach stuck between them.

It’s the little things that get me, every time.

Last night I was sweeping – my new girlfriend was coming over, and I wanted things to look nice – and I found a single kibble of dog food, wedged in a crack between the tiles.

I returned the obvious stuff, of course, the clothes and the jewelry, and I tossed out the rest. Her letters are boxed up in my closet, her picture’s banished to the basement. But how do you guard against a single kibble’s worth of her dog’s Purina Small Bites that’s somehow survived, undetected, for months, only to surface in your dustpan and send you reeling? How do people survive this?

Everyone has history, my girlfriend says, trying to soothe me. Everyone has baggage, everyone carries parts of their past around. She’s a kindergarten teacher, a student of sociology, a professional empath; she knows the right things to say. But it makes me furious to find C.’s cherry Chap Stick in my glove box, a single blue mitten in the pocket of my winter coat. Furious, too, over the things I can’t find: my tie-dye tank top and the Cheesasaurus Rex T-shirt I got for sending in three box tops from Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, because I know she’s got them and I’ll never get them back.

I think that when relationships end there should be Thing Amnesty Day. Not right away, when you’re both still raw and broken and aching and probably prone to ill-advised sex, but down the road, when you can still be civil, but before you’ve completed the process of turning your former beloved into just a memory.

Turning your former beloved into a memory, I thought sadly. So that’s what he’s doing. Except… well, turning a former lover into a memory is one thing, but turning a child into a minor distraction, into something you can’t even be bothered with… well, that was something else. Something infuriating. Ill-advised sex, indeed! What about the consequences of his little slip-up!

But for now, I hired a cleaning crew for my apartment. The floors, I told them, showing them the kibble I’d found, muttering dire predictions about bugs and mice and other assorted vermin. But really, I am haunted by memories.

I don’t love her anymore. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

Oof. I leaned back in the plush, double-wide leather-clad reclining seat and closed my eyes, feeling the most potent and horrible mixture of sadness and fury – and sudden, overwhelming hope – that for a minute I thought I’d throw up. He’d written this three months ago. That was how long magazines took to print things. Had he seen my letter? Did he know I was pregnant? And what was he feeling now?

“He still misses me,” I murmured, with my hand on my belly. So did that mean there was hope? I thought for a minute that maybe I’d mail him his Cheesasaurus Rex T-shirt, as a sign… as a peace offering. Then I remembered that the last thing I’d mailed him was news that I was having his baby, and he hadn’t even bothered to pick up the phone and ask me how I was.

“He doesn’t love me anymore,” I reminded myself. And I wondered how E. felt, reading this… E. the kindergarten teacher with her sweet talk of baggage and her small, soft hands. Did she wonder why he wrote about me, after all this time? Did she wonder why he still cared? Did he care, or was that just my wishful thinking? And if I called, what would he say?

I turned restlessly in my seat, flipping the pillow, then scrunching it against the window and leaning against it. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, the captain was announcing our descent into beautiful Los Angeles, where the sun was shining and the winds were from the southwest and where it was a perfect 80 degrees.

I got off the plane with my pockets full of little gifts the flight girls had pressed upon me, packets of Mint Milanos and foil-wrapped chocolates and complimentary eye masks and washcloths and socks. I had Nifkin’s carrier in one hand, my bag in the other. In the bag was a week’s worth of underwear, my Pregnancy Packable kit, minus the long skirt and tunic, which I was wearing, and a few fistfuls of assorted hygiene products that I’d thrust in at the last minute. A nightgown, some sneakers, my telephone book, my journal, and a dog-eared copy of Your Healthy Baby.

“How long will you be?” my mother had asked the night before I’d left. The boxes and bags of what I’d bought at the mall were still strewn in the hallway and kitchen, like fallen bodies. But the crib, I’d noticed, was put together perfectly. Dr. K. must have done it while I was on the phone with Maxi.

“Just a weekend. Maybe a few days longer.” I told her.

“You told this Maxi person about the baby, right?” she’d fretted.

“Yes, Mom, I told her.”

“And you’ll call, right?”

I rolled my eyes, told her yes, and walked Nifkin over to Sa-mantha’s, to give her the good news.

“Details!” she demanded, handing me a cup of tea and settling on her couch.

I told her what I knew: that I’d be selling my screenplay to the studio, that I’d need to find an agent, and that I’d be meeting some of the producers. I didn’t mention that Maxi had urged me to find a place to stay for a while, in case I wanted to be in California for the inevitable revisions and rewrites.

“That is completely unbelievable!” Samantha said, and hugged me. “Cannie, it’s just great!”

And it was great, I mused, as I trudged down the jetway with Nifkin’s case banging against my leg. “Airport,” I murmured to the baby. And there, at the gate, was April. I recognized her instantly from New York. Same knee-high black leather boots, only now her hair was drawn up into a ponytail at the top center of her head, and there was something strange happening between her nose and her chin. It took me a minute to figure out that she was smiling.

“Cannie!” she said, and waved and took my hand. “It’s such a pleasure to finally meet you!” She raked her eyes over me in the way that I’d remembered, lingering just a beat or two too long on my stomach, but her smile was firmly in place by the time her eyes met mine. “A towering talent,” she pronounced. “Loved the screenplay. Loved it, loved it. As soon as Maxi showed it to me, I told her two things. I said, Maxi, you are Josie Weiss, and I said, I cannot wait to meet the genius who created her.”

I thought briefly about telling her that we had, in fact, already met, and it had been the single worst reporting experience of that month, possibly the entire year. I wondered if she’d hear me if I whispered “hypocrite” to the baby. But then I decided, why rock the boat? Maybe she genuinely didn’t recognize me. I hadn’t looked pregnant the last time she’d seen me, any more than she’d been smiling.

April bent to peer into the carrying case. “And you must be little Nifty!” she cooed. Nifkin started growling. April appeared not to notice. “What a beautiful dog,” she said. I snorted back laughter, and Nifkin continued to growl so hard that his cage was vibrating. Nifkin has many fine qualities, but beauty is not among them.

“How was your flight?” April asked me, blinking rapidly and smiling still. I wondered if this was how she treated her famous clients. I wondered if I was a client already, if Maxi had gone ahead and signed a pact in blood, or whatever one did to acquire the services of someone like April.

“Fine. Very nice, really. I’ve never been in first class before.”

April linked her arm through mine like we were grade-school chums. Her forearm fit neatly below my right breast. I tried to ignore it. “Get used to it,” she advised me. “Your whole life’s about to change. Just sit back and enjoy the ride!”

April deposited me in a suite in the Beverly Wilshire, explaining that the studio was putting me up there for the night. Even if it was for one night only, I felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, if they’d gone with the indie-alterna ending, where the prostitute winds up pregnant and alone, with only her little dog for comfort.

The suite might very well be the one where they filmed Pretty Woman. It was big, and bright, and deluxe in every way. The walls were covered in gold and cream striped wallpaper, the floors were lined with ultra-plush beige carpeting, and the bathroom was a study in marble shot through with veins of gold. The bathroom was also, I noted, the size of my living room back home, with a bathtub big enough to accommodate a vigorous game of water polo, if I’d been so inclined.

“Fancy schmancy,” I noted for the baby, and opened a pair of French doors to find a bed that looked big as a tennis court, all done in crisp white sheets, topped with a fluffy pink and gold comforter. Everything was clean and new-smelling and so gorgeous I was almost afraid to touch it. There was also an elaborate bouquet waiting for me beside the bed. “Welcome!” read the card, from Maxi.

“Bouquet,” I informed the baby. “Very expensive, probably.” Nifkin had bounded out of his carrier and was busily making a sniffing tour of the suite. He glanced at me briefly, then rose up on his hind legs to dip his nose toward the toilet. Once that had passed muster, he scampered into the bedroom.

I got him settled on a pillow on the bed, and took a bath, and wrapped myself in the Wilshire robe. I called room service and ordered hot tea and strawberries and fresh pineapple, and liberated some Evian and a box of Choco Leibniz, king of all cookies, from the minibar, without even blanching at the $8 price tag, which was at least triple what the cookies would have cost in Philadelphia. Then I lay back on two of the six pillows that came with the bed and clapped my hands together, laughing. “I’m here!” I crowed, as Nifkin barked to keep me company. “I did it!”

Then I called every single person I could think of.

“If you eat at any of Wolfgang Puck’s restaurants, get the duck pizza,” counseled Andy, in full food-critic mode.

“Fax me anything before you sign it,” urged Samantha, and proceeded to spout five minutes’ worth of lawyer-ese before I calmed her down.

“Take notes!” said Betsy.

“Take pictures!” said my mother.

“You brought my head shots, right?” demanded Lucy.

I promised that I’d lobby for Lucy, take notes for future columns for Betsy and pictures for Mom, fax anything legal-looking to Samantha and eat duck pizza for Andy. Then I noticed the business card propped on one of the pillows, engraved with the words Maxi Ryder. Under her name was the single word Garth, a telephone number, and an address on Ventura Boulevard. “Be there at 7 o’clock. Drinks and amusements to follow,” it said.

“Drinks and amusements,” I murmured, and stretched out on the bed. I could smell the fresh flowers, and could hear the faint sound of cars buzzing from thirty-two floors below. Then I closed my eyes and didn’t wake up until it was 6:30. I splashed water on my face, scrambled into my shoes, and hurried out the door.

Garth turned out to be the Garth, hairdresser to the stars, although at first I thought the cab had dropped me off at an art gallery. It was an easy mistake to make. Garth’s salon lacked the typical trappings: the row of sinks, the stacks of thumbed-through magazines, the receptionist’s desk. In fact, there didn’t seem to be anyone at all inside the high-ceilinged room, decorated with a single chair, a single sink, and a single floor-to-ceiling antique mirror except… Garth.

I sat in the chair while the man who’d put the buttery chunks into Britney Spears’s tresses, who’d given Hillary her highlights and Jennifer Lopez henna, lifted and replaced sections of my hair, touching and scrutinizing it with the cool detachment of a scientist, and tried to explain myself.

“See, you’re not supposed to color your hair when you’re pregnant,” I began. “And I wasn’t expecting to get pregnant, so I’d just had my highlights done, and they’ve been growing out for six months and I know it looks terrible…”

“Who did this to you?” Garth asked mildly.

“Um, the pregnancy or the highlights?”

He smiled at me in the mirror and picked up another piece of my hair. “These weren’t done… here?” he asked delicately.

“Oh, no. In Philadelphia.” Blank look from Garth. “In Pennsylvania.” Truth was, I’d gotten it done at the beauty school on Bainbridge Street, and I thought they’d done a pretty good job, but from the look on his face I could tell that Garth would not agree.

“Oh, dear,” he breathed quietly. He took a comb, a little spritz-bottle of water. “Do you have any strong feelings about, um…” I could tell he was groping for the kindest word to describe what was happening on top of my head.

“I have lots of strong feelings, but none about my hair,” I told him. “Do with me what you will.”

It took him close to two hours: first cutting, then combing, then snipping the ends, then rinsing my head in a garnet-red solution he swore was completely natural, chemical free, derived from only the purest organic vegetables and absolutely guaranteed not to harm my unborn child.

“You’re a screenwriter?” Garth said once I’d been rinsed. He was holding my chin, tilting my head this way and that.

“Unproduced, so far.”

“Things are going to happen for you. You’ve got that aura.”

“Oh, that’s probably just the soap from the hotel.”

He leaned in close and started tweezing my eyebrows. “Don’t tear yourself down,” he told me. He smelled of some wonderful cologne, and, even inches from my face, his skin was flawless.

Once he’d shaped my brows to his satisfaction, he rinsed out my hair, blew it dry, and spent about half an hour applying different creams and powders to my face. “I don’t wear much makeup,” I protested. “Chap Stick and mascara. That’s pretty much it.”

“Don’t worry. This is going to be subtle.”

I had my doubts. He’d already brushed three different shades of shadow around my eyes, including one that looked practically violet. But when he whipped the cape off me and twirled me to face the mirror, I felt sorry for even thinking about doubting him. My skin was glowing. My cheeks were the color of a perfect, ripe apricot. My lips were full, a warm wine color, curling with a faint hint of amusement even though I wasn’t aware that I was smiling. And I didn’t notice the eyeshadow, just my eyes, which seemed much bigger, much more compelling. I looked like myself, only more so… like the best, most happy version of myself.

And my hair…

“This is the best haircut I’ve ever had,” I told him. I ran my fingers through it slowly. It had gone from a raggedy mouse-brown bob with a few haphazard highlights to a rich, shimmering tortoiseshell color, shot through with strands of gold and bronze and copper. He’d cut it short, the tendrils just brushing my cheeks, and let its natural wave remain in place, and he’d tucked it behind my ear on one side, giving me the look of a gamine. Sure, a pregnant gamine, but who was I to complain? “This may be the best haircut anyone’s ever had.”

The sound of applause came from the doorway. And there was Maxi, wearing a black slip dress with spaghetti straps and black sandals. She had diamond studs in her ears and a single diamond on a thin silver chain around her neck. The dress tied around her neck and left her back bare almost enough to display butt cleavage. I could see the tender buds of her shoulderblades, each marble-sized vertebra, the perfectly symmetrical sprinkling of freckles on her shoulders.

“Cannie! My God,” she said, studying first my hair, and then my belly. “You’re… wow.”

“Did you think I was kidding?” I said, and laughed at her awed expression.

She knelt down in front of me. “Can I…”

“Sure,” I said. She laid one hand flat on my belly, and, after a moment, the baby obligingly kicked.

“Ooh!” said Maxi, yanking her hand back as if she’d been burned.

“Don’t worry. You won’t hurt her. Or me.”

“So it’s a girl?” asked Garth.

“Nothing official. I just have a feeling,” I said.

Maxi, meanwhile, was circling me as if I were a piece of property she was thinking about buying. “What does Bruce have to say about this?” she inquired.

I shook my head. “Nothing, as far as I know. I haven’t heard from him.”

Maxi stopped circling and stared at me, her eyes wide. “Nothing? Still?”

“Not kidding,” I said.

“I could have him killed,” Maxi offered. “Or even just beaten up. I could send, say, half a dozen angry rugby players with baseball bats to break his legs…”

“Or his bong,” I suggested. “It’d probably hurt him worse.”

Maxi grinned. “Do you feel okay? Are you hungry? Or sleepy? Do you feel like going out, because if you don’t, that’s no problem at all”

I grinned at her, and tossed my fabulous hair. “Of course I want to go out! I’m in Hollywood! I’ve got makeup on! Let’s go!”

I offered Garth a credit card, but he shooed me away, telling me not to worry, it was all taken care of, and if I’d only promise to come back in six weeks to have my ends trimmed he’d consider that payment enough. I thanked him and thanked him until Maxi dragged me out the door. Her small silver car was pulled up to the curb. I got in carefully, aware of my shifting center of gravity… and aware that, next to Maxi, even with my fabulous new hair and gorgeous Garth-enhanced complexion, even in my semichic black matte tunic and skirt and not unhip black slides, I still felt like a dowdy dirigible. A gamine dirigible, at least, I thought, as Maxi zoomed across three lanes of honking cars and accelerated through a yellow light.

“I arranged for the doormen at the hotel to look in on Nifkin, in case we’re out late,” she shouted, as the warm night wind blew in our faces. “Also, I rented him a cabana.”

“Wow. Lucky Nifkin.”

It wasn’t until two traffic lights later that I thought to ask where we were going. Maxi perked up instantly. “The Star Bar! It’s one of my favorite places.”

“Is it a party?”

“Oh, it’s always a party there. Great sushi, too.”

I sighed. I couldn’t eat raw fish or drink alcohol. And even though I was excited to celebrate and see the stars, I knew it wouldn’t be long before the thing I wanted most was the bed in that big gorgeous hotel suite. I never liked late nights or loud parties much before I was pregnant, and I found myself liking them even less since. I’d stay for a little while, I told myself, and then plead pregnant lady exhaustion and make a break for home.

Maxi gave me the rundown on who might be there, as well as any pertinent back-story of which a newcomer such as myself should be aware. The famous actor and actress, married for seven years, I learned, were faking it. “He’s gay,” Maxi murmured, “and she’s been getting it on with her personal trainer for years.”

“How cliché!” I whispered back. Maxi laughed and leaned in closer. The ingenue, star of last summer’s second-biggest action picture, might offer me Ecstasy in the ladies’ room (“at least, she offered it to me,” said Maxi). The hip-hop princess who reportedly didn’t make a move without her Baptist, Bible-carrying mother was “a real wild one,” said Maxi. “Sleeps with boys, and girls, and both at the same time, while Maman’s off leading revivals in Virginia.” The fifty-ish director just got out of the Betty Ford Clinic; the fortysomething leading man had been diagnosed as a sex addict during his last stint at Hazelden; and the much-gossiped-about art-house director wasn’t actually a lesbian, although she was perfectly happy to feed the rumor mill. “Straight as an arrow,” said Maxi, sounding disgusted. “I think she’s even got a husband stashed in Michigan.”

“The horror!” I said. Maxi giggled, grabbing my arm. The elevator doors slid open, and two gorgeous guys wearing white shorts and white dress shirts swung open ten-foot-high glass doors, revealing a bar that looked like it was suspended in the night sky. Windows wrapped around the length of the room. There were dozens of small white-cloth-covered tables for two and for four, covered with dozens of flickering votive candles. The walls were hung with gossamer ivory curtains that billowed gently in the night breeze. The bar was backlit with blue neon, and the bartender was a six-foot-tall woman in a midnight-blue cat-suit, dispensing martinis with her face as gorgeous and still as a carved African mask. Maxi gave my arm a final squeeze, whispered, “I’ll be back in a jiff,” and darted off to air-kiss people I’d only seen in movies. I leaned against one of the pillars and tried not to stare.

There was the hip-hop princess, with tiny braids cascading from the crown of her head almost to her waist. There were the long-married superstars, looking for all the world like a devoted couple, and the non-lesbian art-house director, in a starched tuxedo shirt and a red bow tie. Dozens of waiters and waitresses zipped around. They all wore white – white pants, white shorts, white tank tops, and absolutely pristine white sneakers. It made the place look like the world’s most chic hospital, except the staff carried oversized martinis instead of bedpans, and everyone was beautiful. My hands itched for a pen and a notebook. I had no business being at a place like this, surrounded by people like these, unless I was taking notes for a future newspaper article in which I’d quite possibly be sarcastic. I didn’t belong here just as myself.

I walked to the windows, which overlooked a lit swimming pool in which nobody was swimming. There was a tiki bar with the requisite thatched roof and torches, thronged with people – all young, all gorgeous, most of them pierced and tattooed and looking like they were on their way to shoot a music video. Beyond that, smog, and Calvin Klein billboards, and the glittering lights of the city.

And there, with his back to the room, with a glass in his hand, staring off into the night, was… oh, God, was it? Yes. Adrian Stadt. I could recognize him from the shape of his shoulders, the set of his hips. Lord knows I’d spent enough time mooning over his pictures. His hair was cut short, and the back of his neck glimmered in the dim room.

Adrian wasn’t handsome in the classic rugged-leading-man mode, and he wasn’t one of the latest crop of androgynous pretty boys, either. He was more boy-next-door – medium height, regular features, unremarkable brown hair, and standard-issue brown eyes. What made him special, appearance-wise, was his smile – the sweet, crooked grin that exposed an ever-so-slightly chipped front tooth (he always told interviewers that he’d done it falling out of his treehouse at age nine). And those regular brown eyes could convey a thousand variations on bafflement, bewilderment, befuddlement – in short, all of the b words necessary to playing the lead in a romantic comedy. Taken by themselves, the pieces were nothing special, but put them together and you had a bona fide Hollywood hottie. At least, that’s what Moxie called him in the “Men We Crave!” issue.

I’d been thankfully immune to teenage crushes, had never papered my locker with pictures of New Edition or anything, but I had feelings for Adrian Stadt. Watching him on Saturday Night! as he cringed and whined his way through impressions of Kid Picked Last for Kickball Team or sang the faux-operatic “PTA Mother’s Lament,” I’d felt that if we’d known each other, we could have been friends… or more. Of course, judging from his popularity, millions of other women felt exactly the same way. But how many of them were standing in the Star Bar on a warm spring night in Los Angeles, with the object of their affection in front of them?

I shuffled back until I was leaning against a pillar, trying to hide so I could stare, uninterrupted, at Adrian Stadt’s back and trying to decide whether I’d call Lucy or Samantha first with the news. Things were going fine until a gaggle of skinny girls on stilettos surged into the room and planted themselves in front of, behind, and all around me. I felt like an elephant who’d blundered into a herd of sleek, fast, gorgeous antelope, and I couldn’t see an easy way to blunder my way back out.

“Hold this a sec?” the tallest, blondest, thinnest of the girls asked me, indicating her silvery pashmina shawl. I took the shawl, then stared at her, feeling my mouth gape open. It was Bettina Vance, lead singer of the chart-topping power punk band Screaming Ophelia – one of my late-night dancing favorites when I was in a bitter mood.

“I love your music,” I blurted, as Bettina snatched a martini.

She looked at me, bleary-eyed, and sighed. “If I had a nickel for every fat girl who said that to me…”

I felt as shocked as if she’d thrown ice water in my face. All this makeup, my great haircut, new clothes, all of my success, and all the Bettina Vances of the world would see was another fat girl, sitting alone in her room, listening to rock stars sing about lives they couldn’t even dream about, lives they would never know.

I felt the baby kick then, like a little fist rapping sternly at me from the inside, like a reminder. Suddenly, I thought, the hell with her. I thought, I’m someone, too.

“Why would you need donations? Aren’t you rich already?” I inquired. A few of the gazelles tittered. Bettina rolled her eyes at me. I reached into my purse and, thankfully, felt my fingers close around what I needed. “Here’s your nickel,” I said sweetly. “Maybe you can start saving for your next nose job.”

The titters turned to outright laughter. Bettina Vance was staring at me.

“Who are you?” she hissed.

A few answers occurred: A former fan? An angry fat girl? Your worst nightmare?

Instead, I went for the simple, understated, and, not coincidentally, true answer. “I’m a writer,” I said softly, forcing myself not to retreat or look away.

Bettina glared at me for what felt like an unbelievably long time. Then she snatched her shawl out of my hands and stalked off, taking her gaggle of size zeros with her. I leaned back against the pillar, shaking, and ran one hand over my belly. “Bitch,” I whispered to the baby. One of the men who’d been hanging at the edge of the crowd smiled at me, then walked away before his face could really register. In the instant it took me to figure out who he was, Maxi was back at my side.

“What was that all about?” she asked.

“Adrian Stadt,” I managed.

“Didn’t I tell you he was here?” asked Maxi impatiently. “Jesus, what’s with Bettina?”

“Never mind Bettina,” I burbled. “Adrian Stadt just smiled at me! Do you know him?”

“A little bit,” she said. “Do you?”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “He’s in my bowling league back in Philadelphia.”

Maxi looked puzzled. “Isn’t he from New York?”

“Kidding,” I told her. “Of course I don’t know him! But I’m a major fan.” I paused, debating whether to tell Maxi that Adrian Stadt had basically inspired my screenplay. Just as Josie Weiss was me, Avery Trace was Adrian, only with a different name, and without the annoying penchant for dating supermodels. Before I’d decided what to say, she connected the dots. “You know, he’d be a perfect Avery,” she murmured. “We should talk to him.”

She headed toward the window. I froze. She turned around.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t just walk up to him and start talking.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m…” I tried to think of a nice way to say, “in a completely different league than handsome, famous movie stars.” I arrived at “… pregnant.”

“I think,” said Maxi, “that pregnant people are still allowed to converse with nonpregnant people.”

I hung my head. “I’m shy.”

“Oh, you are not shy. You’re a reporter, for heaven’s sake!”

She had a point. It was true that, in my working life, I could, and have, routinely just walked up to people far more powerful or influen-tial or better-looking than me. But not Adrian Stadt. Not the guy I’d allowed myself a one-hundred-page daydream about. What if he didn’t like me? Or what if, in person, I didn’t like him? Wouldn’t it be better to just preserve the fantasy?

Maxi shifted from foot to foot. “Cannie…”

“I’m better on the phone,” I finally muttered. Maxi sighed, charmingly, the way she did everything. “Wait here,” she said, and hurried to the bar. When she came back there was a cell phone in her hand.

“Oh, no,” I said when I saw it. “I had bad luck with that phone.”

“It’s a different phone,” said Maxi, squinting at the numbers she’d drawn on her hand with what looked like lipliner. “Smaller. Lighter. More expensive.” The phone started ringing. She handed it to me. Across the room, in front of the room-length windows, Adrian Stadt flipped his own phone open. I could see his lips moving, reflected in the glass.

“Hello?”

“Don’t jump,” I said. It was the first thing I could think of. As I spoke, I moved so I was standing behind a pillar draped in white silk, hidden from his view, but in a spot where I could still see his reflection in the window. “Don’t jump,” I said again. “Nothing could be that bad.”

He gave a short, rueful laugh. “You don’t know,” he said.

“Sure I do,” I said, with the phone in a death grip in my suddenly sweaty hand. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I was talking – flirting, even! – with Adrian Stadt. “You’re young, you’re handsome, you’re talented…”

“Flatterer,” he said. He had a wonderful voice, low and warm. I wondered why he always spoke in that weird whiny singsong in his movies, if he really sounded like this.

“But it’s true! You are. And you’re in this wonderful place, and it’s a beautiful night. You can see the stars.”

Another bitter burst of laughter. “Stars,” he sneered. “Like I’d want to.”

“Not those stars,” I said. “Look out the window,” I told him. I watched his eyes as he did what I said. “Look up.” He tilted his head. “See that bright star, just off to your right?”

Adrian squinted. “I can’t see anything. Pollution,” he explained. He turned from the window, scanning the crowd. “Where are you?”

I ducked even farther behind my pillar. When I swallowed, I could hear my throat click.

“Or at least tell me who you are.”

“A friend.”

“Are you in this room?”

“Maybe.”

His voice took on a faint, teasing edge. “Can I see you?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m shy,” I said. “And wouldn’t you like to get to know me better this way?”

He smiled. I could see his lips curving in the window. “How do I know you’re real?” he asked.

“You don’t,” I said. “I could be a figment of your imagination.”

He turned around swiftly, and for a second I felt his eyes on me. I dropped the phone, picked it up, clicked it off, and handed it back to Maxi, all in one motion that I would like to think was smooth, but probably wasn’t.

Instantly, the phone started ringing. Maxi flipped it open. “Hello?”

I could hear Adrian’s voice. “Figment? Figment, is that you?”

“Hold, please,” Maxi said crisply, and handed the phone back to me. I slipped back behind my pillar.

“Star 69 is the bane of human existence in the nineties,” I began. “Whatever happened to anonymity?”

“Anonymity,” he repeated slowly, as if it was the first time he’d said the word.

“Just think,” I continued, “of the generations of pubescent boys who are never going to be able to make hang-up calls to the girls they’ve got crushes on. Think of how they’ll be stunted.”

“You’re funny,” he said.

“It’s a defense mechanism,” I replied.

“So can I see you?”

I held the phone as tightly as I could and didn’t answer.

“I’m going to keep calling until you let me see you.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because you sound very nice. Can’t I buy you a drink?”

“I don’t drink,” I said.

“Don’t you ever get thirsty?” he asked, and I laughed in spite of myself.

“Let me see you,” he said.

I sighed, straightened my tunic, cast a quick glance around to make sure Bettina Vance was elsewhere, then walked up behind him and tapped him on his shoulder. “Hey,” I said, hoping that he’d get the full impact of my hair and makeup before getting to my belly. “Hi.”

He turned, slowly. In person, he was adorable. Taller than I’d imagined, and so cute, so sweet looking. And drunk. Very, very drunk.

He smiled at me. I picked up my phone. He grabbed my wrist. “No,” he said, “face-to-face.”

I turned the telephone off.

He was so handsome up close. On the screen he looked cute, not gorgeous, but in the flesh he was amazing, with beautiful brown eyes, and…

“You’re pregnant,” he blurted.

Okay, not precisely a news flash, but it was something.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m pregnant. I’m Cannie.”

“Cannie,” he repeated. “Where’s your, um…” And he waved one arm in the air in a vague way that I took to mean “baby’s father.”

“I’m here by myself,” I said, deciding to let it go at that.“Actually, I’m here with Maxi Ryder.”

“I’m here alone,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard me. “I’m always alone.”

“Now, I know that isn’t true,” I said. “I happen to be aware that you are dating a German medical student named Inga.”

“Greta,” he murmured. “We broke up. You’ve got some memory.”

I shrugged and tried to look modest. “I’m a fan,” I said. I was trying to figure out whether it would be completely tacky to ask for his autograph, when Adrian grabbed my hand.

“I have an idea,” he said. “Do you want to go outside?”

“Outside?” Did I want to go outside with Adrian Stadt? Did the Pope wear a big hat? I nodded so hard I was worried I’d give myself whiplash, and darted off into the halter-topped, miniskirted masses in search of Maxi. I located her at last in the crush by the bar. “Listen,” I said, “I’m going outside with Adrian Stadt for a minute.”

“Oh, you are, are you?” she said archly.

“It’s not like that.”

“Oh, no?”

“He seems kind of… lonely.”

“Hmph. Well, remember, he is an actor.” She thought about it. “Well, actually, a comedian who makes movies.”

“We’re just going for a walk,” I said, feeling desperate not to upset or offend her, but even more desperate to get back to Adrian.

“Whatever,” she said airily. She scribbled her number on a napkin and held out her hand for the cell phone. “Give me a call from wherever you are.”

I handed her the phone, tucked the number into my purse, and rolled my eyes. “Oh, right. I’ll be off seducing him. It’ll be very romantic. We’ll be snuggling on the couch, and I’ll kiss him, and he’ll tell me he adores me, and then my unborn child will kick him in the ribs.”

Maxi stopped looking sulky.

“And then I’ll film the whole thing, and sell the rights to Fox, and they’ll turn it into a special. World’s Kinkiest Threesomes.”

Maxi laughed. “Okay. Just be careful.”

I kissed her on the cheek and, unbelievably, found that Adrian Stadt was still waiting. I smiled at him, and he led me to the elevator, down and out the door, where we found ourselves standing in front of what looked like a highway. No benches, no grass, not even a lowly bus shelter, or a sidewalk to stroll on.

“Huh,” I said.

Adrian, meanwhile, was looking even more tipsy than he had in the Star Bar. The fresh air didn’t seem to be having the sobering effect I was hoping for. He grabbed at my hand, managing to get my wrist instead, and pulled me close to him… well, as close as my belly would allow.

“Kiss me,” he said, and I laughed out loud at the absurdity of it. Kiss me! Like a line from a movie! I was looking over his shoulder for the inevitable bright lights and milling extras and director ready to yell “Cut!” when Adrian took his thumb and traced it along my cheek, then down over my lips. It was a move that I was pretty sure I’d seen him perform on screen, but I found that I didn’t much care. “Cannie,” he whispered. Just hearing him say my name was making me throb in places I hadn’t expected to feel anything until the baby came. “Kiss me.” He brought his lips down to mine, and I tilted my face up, and my body away, as his hand curved behind my neck and held my head like it was something precious. Oh, so sweet a kiss, I thought, and then his lips were back on mine, harder, his hand more insistent, as the traf-fic rushed by us and I felt myself melting, forgetting my resolve, my history, my name.

“Come with me,” he offered, raining kisses on my cheeks, my lips, my eyelids.

“I’m staying at a hotel…,” I murmured weakly, realizing as soon as the words were out of my mouth that it sounded like the cheapest come-on ever. And what was going on here, anyhow? Could he really be that lonely? Did he have a thing for pregnant women? Was this perhaps his idea of a joke? “Do you want to maybe…” I tried to think quickly. If I were in Philadelphia, if I were standing on a street being groped by the ultimate object of my desire who was very very drunk, what would I suggest? But, of course, I couldn’t think of a thing. Nothing in my life had even come close. “Go to a bar?” I finally offered. “A diner, maybe?”

Adrian reached into his pocket and produced what I figured must be a valet ticket. “How about a ride?” he said.

“Can we…” I thought quickly. “Can we go to see the beach? It’s such a beautiful night” Which was not exactly true. It was an extremely smoggy night, but at least it was warm, and there was a breeze.

Adrian rocked back and forth on his feet and gave me a sweet, slightly dopey grin. “Sounds like a plan,” he said.

First, though, there was the not inconsequential matter of getting him to surrender the keys.

“Ooh, a convertible,” I cooed when a small red car arrived at the curb. “I’ve never driven one.” I shot him my most coy and charming glance. “Could I drive it?” He handed over the keys without a word, then sat beside me quietly, not saying much except to tell me where I should turn.

When I glanced over he had his hand pressed to his forehead.

“Headache?” I asked. He nodded with his eyes shut. “Beer before liquor?”

He winced. “Ecstasy before vodka, actually,” he said.

Oof. I guessed if I was going to stay in Hollywood, I’d have to get used to people casually confessing to recreational drug use. “You don’t look ecstatic,” I ventured.

He yawned. “Maybe I’ll ask for a refund,” he said, and glanced at me sideways. “So, you’re, um… when are you…”

“I’m due on June fifteenth,” I said.

“So your, um, husband’s back in…”

I decided to end the game of fill-in-the-blank. “I’m from Philadel-phia, and I don’t have a husband. Or a boyfriend.”

“Oh!” said Adrian, sounding like he felt himself to be on firmer ground. “So, your partner’s back there?”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “No partner, either. Just your classic single unwed mother.” I gave him the briefest bare-bones outline of the story: me and Bruce, our breakup and twenty-minute-long reconciliation, the pregnancy, the screenplay, and my flight to California a scant twelve hours ago.

Adrian nodded, but didn’t ask any questions, and I couldn’t look at him to read his face. I just kept driving. Finally, after a series of twists and turns I knew I couldn’t hope to remember, let alone repeat on my own, we found ourselves parked on a bluff overlooking the ocean. And in spite of the smog, it was magnificent: the smell of salt water, the rhythmic sound of the waves on the shore, the feel of all that water, all that power and motion, so close to us…

I turned toward Adrian. “Isn’t this great?” I asked. He didn’t answer. “Adrian?”

No movement. I leaned toward him slowly, like a big-game hunter approaching a lion. He didn’t stir. I edged closer still. “Adrian?” I whispered. No murmured endearments, no inquiries as to the subject of my screenplay, or the nature of my life in Philadelphia. Instead, I heard snoring. Adrian Stadt had fallen asleep.

I couldn’t help but laugh at myself. It was a classic Cannie Shapiro moment: out on the beach with a gorgeous movie star, with the wind whipping the waves and the moonlight gleaming on the water and a million stars in the sky, and he’s passed out.

Meanwhile, I was stranded. And getting cold, too, with the wind blowing off the water. I looked in the car in vain for a blanket or a stray sweatshirt. Nothing doing. It was four in the morning, according to the glowing green hands of my watch. I decided I’d give him half an hour, and if he didn’t wake up and start moving I’d… well, I’d figure something out.

I turned the engine on so I’d have heat, and music from the Chris Isaak CD he had in the CD player. Then I sat back, wishing I’d worn a jacket, keeping one eye on Adrian, who was snoring to beat the band, the other on my watch. It was… well, pathetic, really, but also a little bit funny. My big trip to Hollywood, I thought ruefully. My romance. Maybe I was the kind of girl who deserved to be mocked in magazines, I thought… then I shook my head. I knew how to take care of myself. I knew how to write. And I had one of the things that I wanted most in the world – I’d sold my screenplay. I’d have money, comfort, some measure of fame. And I was in Hollywood! With a movie star!

I glanced to my right. Said movie star was still not moving. I leaned closer. He was breathing harshly, and his forehead was covered in sweat.

“Adrian?” I whispered. Nothing. “Adrian?” I said in a normal voice. I didn’t see as much as an eyelid twitch. I bent over and shook his shoulders lightly. Nothing happened. When I let him go he flopped bonelessly back into the bucket seat. Now I was getting worried.

I slipped one hand into his pocket, trying not to think of the potential tabloid headlines (“Saturday Night! Star Molested by Wannabe Screenwriter!”) and found his cell phone. After a little fumbling, I produced a dial tone. Great. So now what?

Then it hit me. I reached into my purse and pulled Dr. K’s business card out of my wallet. He’d told us in one Fat Class session that he didn’t sleep much, and was usually in the office by 7 A.M., and it was later than that on the East Coast by now.

I held my breath and punched his numbers. “Hello?” said his deep voice.

“Hey, Dr. K. It’s Cannie Shapiro.”

“Cannie!” he said, sounding happy to hear from me, and not at all alarmed by the fact that I was calling long-distance in what was, for me, the wee hours of the morning. “How was your trip?”

“Just fine,” I said. “Well, so far so good. Except now I seem to have a problem.”

“Tell me,” he said.

“Well, I, um…” I paused, thinking. “I made a new friend,” I said.

“That’s good,” he said encouragingly.

“And we’re at the beach, in his car, and he’s kind of passed out, and I can’t get him to wake up.”

“That’s bad,” he said.

“Yeah,” I agreed, “and it’s not even the worst date I’ve been on. So normally I’d just let him sleep, except he told me before he’d been drinking and also taking Ecstasy…”

I paused, and heard nothing. “It’s not what you think,” I said weakly, even though I had no real idea what he was thinking, except that it was probably some combination of my name and words like “flaky.”

“So he’s passed out?” asked Dr. K.

“Well, yeah. Basically.” I sighed. “And I thought I was being fairly amusing.”

“But he’s breathing?”

“Breathing, but sweating,” I elaborated. “And not waking up.”

“Touch his face, and tell me how his skin feels.”

I did. “Hot,” I reported. “Sweaty.”

“Better than cool and clammy. We don’t want that,” he told me. “Try this. I want you to make a fist…”

“Done,” I reported.

“Now rub your knuckles along his sternum. His breastbone. Do it pretty hard… we’re trying to see if he reacts.”

I leaned over and did as he instructed, pressing hard. Adrian flinched and said a word that might have been “mother.” I re-settled myself in my seat and told Dr. K. what had happened.

“Very good,” he said. “I think your gentleman caller is going to be just fine. But I think you should do two things.”

“Go ahead,” I said, tucking the phone under my chin and turning back to Adrian.

“First, turn him on his side, so in case he does vomit, he won’t be in danger of aspirating any.”

I nudged Adrian until he was semi-sideways. “Done,” I said.

“The other thing is just to stay with him,” he said. “Check on him every half hour or so. If he turns cool or starts shaking, or if his pulse becomes irregular, I’d dial 911. Otherwise, he should be fine in the morning. He might feel nauseous, or achy,” he cautioned, “but there won’t be any permanent damage done.”

“Great,” I said, cringing inwardly as I imagined what the morning would be like, when Adrian woke up with the mother of all hangovers and found himself beside me.

“You might want to take a washcloth, dip it in cool water, wring it out, and put it on his forehead,” said the doctor. “That is, if you’re feeling merciful.”

I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. “Thank you,” I said. “Really. Thanks a lot.”

“I hope things improve,” he said cheerfully. “But it sounds like you’ve got this situation in hand. Will you call me and let me know how it turns out?”

“Absolutely. Thank you again,” I said.

“Take care of yourself, Cannie,” he said. “Call if you need anything else.”

We hung up, and I considered. Washcloth? I looked in the glove compartment and found only a car lease agreement, a few CD jewel boxes, and two pens. I looked in my own purse: lipstick that Garth had given me, wallet, keys, address book, a panty liner that What to Expect When You’re Expecting told me to carry.

I looked at Adrian. I looked at the panty liner. I figured that what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him, so I got out of the car, made my way carefully to the water, dipped the panty liner, walked back up, and laid it tenderly upon his forehead, trying not to giggle while I did it.

Adrian opened his eyes. “You’re so sweet,” he slurred.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty!” I said. “You’re awake! I was getting worried…”

Adrian appeared not to hear me. “I bet you’ll be a terrific mother,” he said, and closed his eyes again.

I smiled, settling myself back in my seat. A terrific mother. It was the first time I’d really thought about it – the actual act of mothering. I’d thought about giving birth, sure, about the logistics of caring for a newborn, too. But I’d never given much consideration to what kind of mother I, Cannie Shapiro, age almost twenty-nine, would be.

I cupped my hands around my belly as Adrian snored softly beside me. A good mother, I thought, bemused. But what kind? Would I be one of those cool mothers that all the kids in the neighborhood liked, the ones who served sweetened fruit punch and cookies instead of skim milk and fruit, who wore jeans and funky shoes and could actually talk to her kids, instead of just lecture them? Would I be funny? Would I be the kind of mom they’d want to be the room mother, or show up on Career Day? Or would I be one of those worried mothers, always hovering by the door, waiting for my child to come home, always running after it, clutching a sweater, a raincoat, a handful of tissues?

You’ll be you, said a voice in my head. My own mother’s voice. I recognized it instantly. I would be me. I had no other choice. And that wouldn’t be so bad. I’d done all right by Nifkin, I reasoned. That was something.

I leaned my head against Adrian’s shoulder, figuring that he wouldn’t mind. And that was when I thought of something else.

I plucked his phone out of my purse, then dug out the napkin with Maxi’s number, and held my breath until I heard her bright, British, “Hello.”

“Hey, Maxi,” I whispered.

“Cannie!” she cried. “Where are you?”

“On the beach,” I said. “I’m not sure exactly where, but…”

“You’re with Adrian?” she asked.

“Yes,” I whispered. “And he’s kind of passed out.”

Maxi started laughing… and in spite of myself, I started laughing, too. “So help me out. What’s the etiquette here? Do I stay? Do I go? Do I, like, leave him a note?”

“Where are you, exactly?” asked Maxi.

I looked around for a sign, for a light, for something. “I remember the last street we were on was Del Rio Way,” I said. “And we’re right on a bluff, maybe twenty-five yards over the water”

“I know where that is,” Maxi said. “At least, I think I do. It’s where he shot the love scene for Estella’s Eyes.”

“Great,” I said, trying to remember whether anyone had passed out during that particular scene. “So what should I do?”

“I’m going to give you directions to my house,” she told me. “I’ll be waiting.”

Maxi’s directions were perfect, and in twenty minutes’ time we were pulling into the driveway of a small, gray-shingled house on the beach. It was the kind of place I might have picked out, given my druthers, and probably several million dollars.

Maxi herself was waiting in the kitchen. She’d swapped her dress and updo for a pair of black leggings, a T-shirt, and pigtails, which would have looked ridiculous on 99.9 percent of the female population, but looked adorable on her. “Is he still passed out?”

“Come see,” I whispered. We walked back to the car where Adrian still lay in the passenger’s seat, his mouth gaping open, his eyes sealed shut, and my panty liner still perched on his forehead.

Maxi burst out laughing. “What is that?”

“It was the best I could do,” I said defensively.

Still giggling, Maxi grabbed a copy of Variety from what I took to be her recycling bin, rolled it up, and poked Adrian in the arm. Nothing. She moved the magazine lower and poked him in the belly. No response.

“Huh,” said Maxi. “Well, I don’t think he’s dying, but maybe we should bring him inside.”

Slowly and carefully, with much grunting and giggling, we maneuvered Adrian out of the car and onto Maxi’s living room couch – a gorgeous white leather construction that I very much hoped Adrian would not defile.

“We should turn him on his side, in case he throws up…” I suggested, and stared at Adrian. “Do you really think he’s okay?” I asked. “He was taking Ecstasy…”

“He’ll probably be fine,” she said dismissively. “But maybe we should stay with him.” She peered at me. “You must be exhausted.”

“You, too,” I said. “I’m sorry about this…”

“Cannie, don’t worry! You’re doing a good deed!”

She looked at Adrian, then at me. “Slumber party?” she asked.

“Sounds like a plan,” I said.

While Maxi went off, presumably to gather bedding material, I took off Adrian’s shoes, then socks. I slid his belt out of its loops, unbuttoned his shirt, pulled off the panty liner and replaced it with a dishtowel I’d found in the kitchen.

Then while Maxi piled blankets and pillows on the floor, I washed the makeup off my face, struggled into a Maxi-provided T-shirt, and thought of what I could do to make myself useful.

There was a fireplace in the center of the living room – a perfect-looking, pristine fireplace with a stack of birch logs in the grate in its center. And I knew how to make fires. This was good.

I couldn’t find newspaper, so I tore pages of Variety, twisted them into pretzels, put them underneath the wood, checked to make sure the flue was open, checked to make sure that the wood was actual wood, and not some decorator’s ceramic critique of wood, then lit a match from the matchbook I’d grabbed at the Star Bar, in hopes of proving to Samantha and Andy and Lucy that I’d actually been there. The paper flared, then the logs started burning, and I rocked back on my heels, satisfied.

“Wow,” said Maxi, snuggling into her pile of blankets, turning her face toward the fire’s glow. “How’d you learn to do that?”

“My mother taught me,” I said. She looked at me expectantly, so I told the story… to Maxi, and, I thought, to my baby, too, of how we’d all go fishing on Cape Cod, and how my mother would build a fire to keep us warm… how we’d sit in a circle – my father, my sister, my brother, and me – roasting marshmallows and watching my mother standing in the water, tossing the silvery filament of line out into the gray-black water, with her shorts rolled up and her legs strong and tanned and solid.

“Good times,” Maxi repeated, rolling over and falling asleep. I lay there for a while, my eyes wide open in the darkness, listening to her deep, quiet breaths and Adrian’s snoring.

Well, here you are, I told myself. The fire was dying down to embers. I could smell the smoke on my hands and in my hair, and I could hear the waves moving on the shore, and see the sky lightening from black to gray. Here you are, I thought. You Are Here. I cupped my hands around my belly. The baby turned, swimming in her sleep, executing what felt like a backflip. Her, I thought. A girl, for sure.

I sent out a good-night prayer to Nifkin, who I figured would be fine for one night on his own in a luxury hotel. Then I closed my eyes and conjured my mother’s face over those Cape Cod fires, so happy and at peace. And, feeling happy and at peace myself, I finally fell asleep.

SIXTEEN

When I woke up it was 10:30 in the morning. The fire was out. So were Ad rian and Maxi.

As quietly as I could I made my way to the second floor. Polished hardwood floors, modern maple shelves and dressers, mostly empty. I wondered how Maxi felt, inhabiting and abandoning a series of houses, like a caterpillar casting aside its cocoon. I wondered if it bothered her at all. I knew it would bother me.

The bathroom brimmed with all manner of plush towels and fancy soaps and shampoos in sample-sized bottles. I took a long, hot shower, brushed my teeth with one of the brand-new, still-wrapped toothbrushes I found in the medicine cabinet, then got dressed in the T-shirt and clean pajama bottoms I’d found in one of the dresser drawers. I was sure I’d need a blow dryer and possibly an assistant to even attempt to replicate what Garth had done to my hair the night before, but I didn’t see either one nearby. So I pulled back sections of my hair, pinning them with the bobby pins, cementing the whole thing with a dime-sized dollop of some rich and delicious-smelling French styling potion. At least that’s what I hoped it was. At my father’s insistence, I’d taken Latin in high school. Useful for acing the SATs, not any good for those mornings after when you found yourself unexpectedly having to translate the names of movie star’s toiletries.

When I came back downstairs Maxi was still asleep, curled like an adorable kitten on top of a pile of blankets. But where Adrian had slumbered, there was only a single sheet of notepaper.

I picked it up. “Dear Cassie,” it began, and I snorted laughter. Well, I thought, at least he was close. And I’d certainly been called worse. “Thank you very much for taking care of me last night. I know that we don’t know each other well…”

And here I snorted again. Don’t know each other well! We’d barely exchanged five sentences before he’d passed out!

“… but I know that you’re a kind person. I know you’ll be a wonderful mother. I’m sorry I had to leave in such a hurry, and that I won’t get to see you again any time soon. I’m off to location, in Toronto, this morning. So I hope you’ll enjoy this while you’re in California.”

This? What was this? I unfolded the note completely, and a silver key fell into what remained of my lap. A car key. “The lease is up next month,” Adrian had written on the back of the piece of paper, along with the name and address of a Santa Monica car dealership. “Drop it off when you’re ready to go home. And enjoy!”

I got slowly to my feet, walked to the window, and held my breath as I raised the blinds. Sure enough, there was the little red car. I looked from the key in my hand to the car in the driveway, and pinched myself, waiting to wake up and find that this was all a dream… that I was still asleep in my bed in Philadelphia, with a pile of pregnancy planning books on my beside table and Nifkin curled on the pillow next to my head.

Maxi yawned, rose gracefully off the floor, and came to stand at the window beside me. “What’s going on?” she asked.

I showed her the car, and the key, and the note. “I feel like I’m dreaming,” I said.

“Least he could do,” said Maxi. “He’s just lucky you didn’t go through his pockets and take pictures of him naked.”

I gave her a wide-eyed innocent look. “Was I not supposed to do that?”

Maxi grinned at me. “Sit tight,” she said. “I’m going to fetch your dog, and then we’ll plan your conquest of Hollywood.”

I’d expected Maxi’s cupboards to be bare, except maybe for the foods I thought that starlets subsisted on – Altoids, fizzy water, perhaps some spelt or brewer’s yeast or whatever the diet gurus had decreed they should be eating.

But Maxi’s shelves were stocked with all the basics, from chicken broth to flour and sugar and spices, and the refrigerator had fresh-looking apples and oranges, milk and juice, butter and cream cheese.

Quiche, I decided, and fruit salad. I was slicing kiwis and strawberries when Maxi returned. She’d changed into a pair of black pedal-pushers and a cherry-red cap-sleeved T-shirt, with big black sunglasses and what I took to be fake ruby barrettes in her hair, and Nifkin was sporting a patent-leather red collar studded with the same jewels, and a matching red leash. They both looked very grand. I served Maxi and then, in the absence of kibble, gave Nifkin a small portion of quiche.

“This is so beautiful,” I said, admiring the sun glinting on the water, the fresh breeze stirring the air.

“You should stay for a while,” Maxi suggested.

I shook my head. “I need to wrap things up and head back…,” I began, and then stopped. Really, why did I have to hurry back? Work could wait – I still had vacation time stored up. Missing a few prebaby classes wouldn’t be the end of the world. A room with a view of the ocean was enticing, especially given Philadelphia’s fitful, slushy spring. And Maxi was reading my mind.

“It’ll be great! You can write, I’ll go to work, we can have dinner parties, and fires. Nifkin can hang out… I’ll set up a stock portfolio for you…”

I wanted to jump up and down with the joy of it, but I wasn’t sure the baby would approve. It would be incredible out here. I could wade in the surf. Nifkin could chase seagulls. Maxi and I could cook. There had to be strings attached. I just couldn’t figure out which ones, or where. And on that morning, with the sun shining and the waves rolling in, it seemed easier to let this wonderful adventure unfold than to spend much more time trying.

Things happened very quickly after that.

Maxi drove me to a skyscraper with bluish-silver glass walls and a trendy eatery on the bottom level. “I’m taking you to meet my agent,” she explained, punching the button for the seventh floor.

I racked my brain for appropriate questions. “Is she… does she handle writers?” I asked. “Is she good?”

“Yes, and very,” said Maxi, marching me down the hall. She rapped sharply on an open door and stuck her head inside.

“That’s bullshit!” said a woman’s voice, floating out into the hallway. “Terence, that’s absolute crap. This is the project you’re looking for, and he’s absolutely going to have it done by next week…”

I peered over Maxi’s shoulder, expecting the voice to belong to a chain-smoking dame with platinum hair and possibly shoulder pads, with an unfiltered cigarette in one hand and a cup of black coffee in the other… a female version of the reptilian sunglassed guy who’d told me there were no fat actresses in Hollywood. Instead, perched behind the giant slab of a desk was a strawberry-blond pixie with creamy skin and freckles. She wore a pale-green jumper and a lace-scalloped lilac-colored T-shirt and a pair of Keds on her child-sized feet. Her hair was gathered into a haphazard bun with a pale blue scrunchy. She looked as if she were maybe twelve years old.

“That’s Violet,” Maxi said proudly.

“Bull-SHIT!” said Violet again. I fought down the urge to put my hands on my belly where I imagined the baby’s ears would be.

“What do you think?” Maxi whispered.

“She’s… um,” I said. “She looks like Pippi Longstocking! Is she old enough to be using language like that?”

Maxi cracked up. “Don’t worry,” she said. “She might look like a Girl Scout, but she’s plenty tough.”

With a valedictory “Bullshit,” Violet hung up the phone, got to her feet, and extended her hand. “Cannie. A pleasure,” she said, sounding like a regular person, not like a fire-breathing dragon who’d been channeling Andrew Dice Clay just moments before. “I really enjoyed your screenplay. Do you know what I liked best about it?”

“The curse words?” I ventured.

Violet laughed. “No, no,” she said. “I loved that your lead character had such faith in herself. So many romantic comedies, it seems, the female lead has to be rescued somehow… by love, or by money, or a fairy godmother. I loved that Josie just rescued herself, and believed in herself the whole time.”

Wow. I’d never thought about it quite that way. To me, Josie’s story was wish fulfillment, pure and simple – the story of what could happen if one of the stars I interviewed in New York ever looked at me and saw more than a potential puff piece in plus-size female form.

“Women are going to fucking love this movie,” Violet predicted.

“I’m so glad you think so,” I said.

Violet nodded, yanked the scrunchy out of her hair, ran her fingers through it, and gathered her curls into a marginally neater version of the same bun. “We’ll talk more later,” she said, gathering a legal pad, a fistful of pens, a copy of my screenplay, and what looked like a copy of a contract. “For now, let’s make you some money.”

In the end it turned out that little Violet was an ace negotiator. Maybe it was just that the sound of that brassy voice and nonstop stream of obscenities coming out of her adorable little person was so jarring that the trio of young guys in sharp suits wound up staring more than they did contesting her assertion that my script was worth it. In the end the amount of money they gave me – one chunk to be delivered within five days of signing, the other to be handed over the day filming began, a third chunk for “first look” at whatever I wrote next – was pretty unbelievable. Maxi hugged me, and Violet hugged both of us. “Now go out there and make me proud,” she said, before traipsing back to her office, looking for all the world like a fourth-grader coming in from afternoon recess.

By five o’clock that afternoon I was sitting back on Maxi’s deck with a bowl of chilled grapes in my lap and a flute of nonalcoholic sparkling grape juice in my hand, feeling the most incredibly sweet relief. Now I could buy whatever house I wanted, or hire a nanny, even take a whole year off of work when the baby came. And whatever rewriting I had to do, it wouldn’t be as bad as facing Gabby, and her nonstop stream criticism, both of the to-the-face and behind-the-back variety. It couldn’t be as bad as straining over the seventh draft of my letter to Bruce. Those things were work. This would just be play.

I talked for hours that afternoon, screaming out the joyous news to my mother, to Lucy and Josh, to Andy and Samantha, to assorted relatives and colleagues, to anyone I could think of who’d share in my happiness. Then I called Dr. K. at his office.

“It’s Cannie,” I said. “I just want you to know that everything’s fine.”

“Your friend’s feeling better?”

“Much better,” I said, and explained it – how Adrian had recovered, how I’d decided to stay at Maxi’s, how tiny little Violet had gotten me all of this money.

“It’s going to be a great movie,” Dr. K. said.

“I can’t even believe it,” I said, for perhaps the thirtieth time that afternoon. “It doesn’t even feel real.”

“Well, just enjoy it,” he said. “It sounds like you’re off to a wonderful start.”

Maxi watched the whole thing bemusedly, and threw a tennis ball for Nifkin until he collapsed, panting, next to a pile of seaweed.

“Who’s that one?” she asked, and I explained.

“He’s… well, he was my doctor, when I was trying to lose weight, before I got pregnant. Now he’s a friend, I guess. I called him last night to ask him about Adrian.”

“It sounds like you like him,” she said, waggling her eyebrows, Groucho Marx style. “Does he make house calls?”

I have no idea,” I said. “He’s very nice. Very tall.” “Tall’s good,” said Maxi. “So what now?” “Dinner?” I suggested.

“Oh, that’s right,” said Maxi. “I forgot that you’re multitalented. You can write, and cook, too!”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I said. “Let me see what else is in the fridge.”

Maxi smiled. “I’ve got a better idea of something we should do first,” she said.

The guard at the front of the jewelry store nodded at me and Maxi, and swung the heavy glass door open wide.

“What are we doing here?” I whispered.

“Buying you a treat,” said Maxi. “And you don’t have to whisper.”

“What are you, my sugar daddy?” I scoffed.

“Oh, no,” Maxi said very seriously. “You’re going to buy something for yourself.”

I gaped at her. “What? Why? Shouldn’t you be encouraging me to save? I’ve got a baby on the way”

“Of course you’re going to save,” said Maxi, sounding eminently sensible. “But my mother always told me that every woman should have one beautiful, perfect thing that she bought for herself… and you, my dear, are now in a position to do just that.”

I took a deep breath, like I was about to dive into deep water, rather than just walk through a jewelry store. The room was full of glass cases, at the level of what used to be my waist, and each case was full of a treasure trove of ornaments, all arranged artfully on pads of black and dove-gray velvet. There were emerald rings, sapphire rings, slender bands of platinum set with diamonds. There were dangling amber earrings and topaz brooches, bracelets of silver mesh so fine I could barely make out the links, and cuffs of hammered gold. There were glittering charm bracelets bearing tiny ballet slippers and miniature car keys… sterling silver earrings in the shape of plump Valentine hearts… interlocked bands of pink and yellow gold… glittering pins shaped like ladybugs and sea horses… diamond tennis bracelets of the kind that Bruce’s mother had worn I stopped walking and leaned against a counter, feeling more than a little bit overwhelmed.

A saleswoman in a neat navy suit appeared behind it as quickly as if she’d been teleported over. “What can I show you?” she asked warmly. I pointed tentatively at smallest pair of diamond earrings that I saw. “Those, please,” I asked.

Maxi peered over my shoulder. “Not those,” she scoffed. “Cannie, they’re tiny!”

“Shouldn’t something on my body be tiny?” I asked.

Maxi looked at me, puzzled. “Why?”

“Because…” I said. My voice trailed off.

Maxi grabbed my hand. “You know what?” she said. “I think you look fine. I think you look wonderful. You look happy… and healthy… and, and pregnant…”

“Don’t forget that,” I said, laughing.

The saleswoman, meanwhile, was unfolding a piece of black velvet and laying earrings out on top of the case – the itsy-bitsy pair I’d requested first, then another pair about twice as large. The diamonds were each about the size of a SunMaid raisin, I thought, and cupped them in my hand, watching them sparkle, flashing blue and violet.

“They’re gorgeous,” I said softly, and lifted them up to my ears.

“They suit you,” said the saleswoman.

“We’ll take them,” Maxi said, sounding very certain. “And don’t bother wrapping them. She’ll wear them home.”

Later, in the car, with my new earrings sending spangled rainbows against the roof whenever the sunlight flashed through them, I tried to thank her – for taking me in, for buying my screenplay, for making me believe in a future where I deserved such things. But Maxi just brushed it off. “You deserve nice things,” she said kindly. “It shouldn’t come as a surprise, Cannie.”

I took a deep breath. Friend, I whispered to the baby. To Maxi, I said, “I’m going to make you the best dinner you’ve ever had.”

“I don’t understand this,” said my mother, who was checking in with her daily afternoon phone call/interrogation session. “And I’ve got five minutes to figure it out.”

“Five minutes?” I tucked the phone closer to my chest and squinted at my toes, trying to decide whether it was possible to survive in Hollywood with badly chipped toenail polish, or if I’d be fined by the pedicure police. “Why are you in such a hurry?”

“Preseason softball,” my mother said briskly. “We’re scrimmaging the Lavender Menace.”

“Are they any good?”

“They were last year. But you’re changing the subject. Now, you’re living with Maxi…,” my mother began, her voice trailing off hopefully. Or at least I thought that’s what I detected.

“We’re just friends, Ma,” I said. “The platonic kind.”

She sighed. “It’s not too late, you know.”

I rolled my eyes. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“So what are you doing?”

“I’m having fun,” I said. “I’m having a great time.” I barely knew where to start. I’d been in California for almost three weeks, and every day, it seemed, Maxi and I went on some adventure, some little trip in Adrian’s red convertible, which felt more and more like an enchanted chariot, or a magic carpet, every day. Last night after dinner we’d walked all the way to Santa Monica Pier, and bought greasy, salty-sweet french fries and frozen pink lemonade, which we’d eaten while dangling our feet in the water. The day before we’d gone to a farmer’s market downtown, where we’d filled a backpack with raspberries and baby carrots and white peaches, which Maxi distributed to her fellow cast members (except for her costar because, she reasoned, he’d see the peaches as an invitation to make Bellinis – “and I don’t want to be the one responsible for his falling off the wagon this time”).

There were things in California that I still hadn’t gotten used to – the uniform beauty of the women, for one, the way every other person I saw in the coffee bars or gourmet grocery stores looked vaguely familiar, like they’d played the girlfriend or the second banana’s buddy on some quickly cancelled sitcom from 1996. And the car culture of the place astonished me – everyone drove everywhere, so there weren’t any sidewalks or bicycle lanes, just endless traffic jams, smog as thick as marmalade, valet parking everywhere – even, unbelievably, at one of the beaches we’d visited. “I have now, officially, seen everything,” I told Maxi. “No, you haven’t,” she’d replied. “On the Third Street Promenade there’s a dachshund dressed up in a sequined leotard that’s part of a juggling act. Once you’ve seen that, you’ve seen everything.”

“Are you working at all?” asked my mother, who didn’t sound impressed with tales of juggling dachshunds and white peaches.

“Every day,” I told her, which was true. In between adventures, and outings, I was spending at least three hours a day on the deck with my laptop. Violet had sent me a script so larded with notes it was practically unreadable. “DO NOT PANIC,” she’d written in lavender-colored ink on the title page. “Purple notes are mine, red notes are from a reader the studio hired, black from the guy who may or may not wind up directing this – and most of what he says is bullshit, I think. Take everything with a grain of salt, they are SUGGESTIONS ONLY!” I was gradually working through the thicket of scribbled marginalia, cross-outs, arrows, and Post-it addenda.

“So when are you coming home?” my mother asked. I bit my lip. I still didn’t know, and I’d have to make up my mind – and soon. My thirtieth week was quickly approaching. After that, I’d either have to find a doctor in Los Angeles and have the baby here, or find a way to get home that didn’t involve an airplane.

“Well, please let me know your plans,” my mother said. “I’d be delighted to give you a ride home from the airport, and maybe even look at my grandchild before his or her first birthday…”

“Ma…”

“Just a motherly reminder!” she said, and hung up.

I got to my feet and walked down to the sand, Nifkin bouncing at my heels, hoping he’d get to chase his tennis ball into the waves.

I knew that I’d have to figure it out eventually, but things were going so well that it was hard to think of anything but the next perfect, sunny day, the next delicious meal, the next shopping trip or picnic or walk on the beach under the starry sky. Aside from the occasional memory of Bruce and our happier times together, and absent the uncertainty of not knowing what would happen next in my life, my time at the beach house was basic unmitigated bliss.

“You should stay here,” Maxi would say. I never said yes, but I never said no, either. I tried to figure it out the way I’d once investigated my brides, turning the question over and over in my mind: Could this life fit me? Could I really live this way?

I thought about it at night, when my work was done and the food was cooking, and Nifkin and I would stroll along the water’s edge. “Stay or go?” I’d ask, waiting for an answer – from the dog, from the baby, from the God who had failed to instruct me back in November. But no answer came – just the waves and, eventually, the starlit night.

On my third Saturday morning in California Maxi walked into the guest bedroom, flinging open the curtains and snapping her fingers at Nifkin, who darted to her side, ears pricked up alertly, like the world’s smallest guard dog. “Up and at ’em!” she said, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “We’re going to the gym!”

I struggled to sit up. “Gym?” I asked. She was dressed for it, I saw. Her auburn curls were drawn up into a high ponytail, and she was wearing a form-fitting black unitard, bright white socks, and pristine white sneakers.

“Don’t worry,” Maxi told me. “Nothing too exerting.” She sat on the side of my bed and pointed at a schedule from someplace called the Inner Light Education Center. “See… here?”

“Self-actualization, meditation, and visualization,” read the course description.

“To be followed by masturbation?” I asked.

Maxi gave me an evil look. “Don’t knock it,” she said. “This stuff really works.”

I went to the dresser and started searching for appropriate self-actualization wear. I figured I’d tag along, and use the meditation session to see if I couldn’t come up with a plausible bit of dialogue between Josie, the heroine of my screenplay, and her soon-to-be-ex boyfriend. Or I’d contemplate my future, and what I’d do with it. Self-actualization and visualization sounded like New Age foolishness to me, but at least it wouldn’t be a waste of my time.

The Inner Light Education Center was a low-slung white wood building perched on top of a hill. There were wide glass windows, and a deck lined with sea grass and pots of impatiens. There was, thankfully, no valet parking.

“You’re really going to like this,” said Maxi, as we made our way to the door. I’d wriggled into Maxi’s oversized T-shirt, which was becoming less oversized by the day, plus a pair of leggings and sneakers, and the obligatory baseball cap and shades – the one part of her look I’d been able to adapt for myself.

“You know, in Philadelphia this place would be a cheesesteak stand,” I grumbled.

We entered a large, airy room with mirrors on the walls, a piano in one corner, and the smell of sweat and, faintly, sandalwood incense. Maxi and I found spots near the back, and when Maxi went to fetch us folding foam mats, I checked out the crowd. There was a pack of supermodel-looking stunners in the front, but also a few older women – one with actual undyed gray hair – and a guy with a long, flowing white beard and a T-shirt reading “I Got the Crabs at Jimmy’s Crab Shack.” Definitely a long way from the Star Bar, I thought happily, as the instructor walked through the door.

“Let’s all get to our feet,” she said, bending to put a compact disc into the player.

I stared, and blinked, for there, in front of me, was a bona fide Larger Woman… in a shiny electric-blue leotard and black tights, no less. She was maybe ten years older than me, with a deep tan, and brown hair that fell halfway down her back, held off her wide, unlined face with a band that matched her leotard. Her body reminded me of those little fertility dolls that archeologists dug out of ruins – sloping breasts, wide hips, unapologetic curves. She had pink lipstick and a tiny diamond stud in her nose, and she looked… comfortable. Confident. Happy with herself. I stared at her, unable to help myself, wondering if I’d ever looked that happy, and whether I could ever learn how, and how I’d look with a nose-piercing.

“I’m Abigail,” she announced. Abigail! I thought. My top female-baby name contender! This had to be a sign. Of what, I wasn’t sure, but definitely something good. “And this is self-actualization, meditation, and visualization. If you’re in the wrong place, please leave now.” Nobody did. Abigail smiled at us and hit a button on the stereo. The sound of flutes and soft drumming filled the room. “We’re going to start off with some stretching and deep breathing, and then we’re going to do what’s called a guided meditation. You’ll all sit in whatever position you find comfortable, and you’ll close your eyes, and I’m going to guide you through imagining different situations, different possibilities. Shall we begin?”

Maxi smiled at me. I smiled back. “Okay?” she whispered, and I nodded, and before I knew it I was sitting cross-legged on a cushioned mat on the floor, with my eyes closed and the flutes and drums ringing faintly in my ears.

“Imagine a safe place,” Abigail began. Her voice was low and soothing. “Don’t try to choose it. Just close your eyes and see what comes.”

I thought for sure I’d see Maxi’s deck, or maybe her kitchen. But what I saw as Abigail repeated “safe place,” was my bed… my bed at home. The blue comforter, the brightly colored pillows, Nifkin perched on top like a small furry hood ornament, blinking at me. I could tell by the slant of the light through the blinds that it was evening, when I’d come home from work. Time to walk the dog, time to call Samantha to see when she wanted to head to the gym, time to flip through my mail and hang up my clothes and settle in for the night And suddenly I was swept up in a wave of such wretched homesickness, such longing for my city, my apartment, my bed, that I felt faint.

I struggled to my feet. My head was full of pictures of the city – the coffee shop on the corner, where Samantha and I shared iced cap-pucinos and confidences and horror stories about men… the Reading Terminal in the morning, full of the smell of fresh flowers and cinnamon buns… Independence Mall on my way home from work, the wide green lawns crammed with tourists craning for a glimpse of the Liberty Bell, the dogwood trees full of pink blossoms… Penn’s Landing on a Saturday, with Nifkin straining at his leash, trying to catch the seagulls who skimmed and dipped low over the water. My street, my apartment, my friends, my job… “Home,” I whispered, to the baby – to myself. And I whispered “bathroom,” to Maxi, and made my way outside.

I stood in the sunshine, breathing deeply. A minute later I felt a tap on my shoulder. Abigail was standing there with a glass of water in her hand.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded. “I just started feeling a little… well, homesick, I guess,” I explained.

Abigail nodded thoughtfully. “Home,” she said, and I nodded. “Well, that’s good. If home’s your safe place, that’s a wonderful thing.”

“How do you…” I couldn’t find the words for what I wanted to ask her. How do you find happiness in a body like yours… like mine? How do you find the courage to follow anything anywhere if you don’t feel like you fit in the world?

Abigail smiled at me. “I grew up,” she said, in response to the question I hadn’t asked. “I learned things. You will, too.”

“Cannie?”

Maxi was squinting at me in the sunlight, looking concerned. I waved at her. Abigail nodded at both of us. “Good luck,” she said, and walked back inside, hips churning, breasts wobbling, proud and unashamed. I stared after her, wishing I could whisper role model to the baby.

“What was that about?” asked Maxi. “Are you okay? You didn’t come back, I thought you were giving birth in the stall or something…”

“No,” I said. “No baby yet. I’m fine.”

We drove back home, Maxi chattering excitedly about how she’d visualized herself winning an Oscar and tastefully, graciously, and very emphatically denouncing every single one of her rotten ex-boyfriends from the podium. “I almost started laughing when I visualized the look on Kevin’s face!” she crowed, and shot me a glance at the next red light. “What’d you see, Cannie?”

I didn’t want to answer her… didn’t want to hurt her feelings by telling her that I thought my happiness lay approximately three thousand miles from the beach house and the California coastline, and from Maxi herself. “Home,” I said softly.

“Well, we’ll be there soon enough,” Maxi said.

“Can-nie,” Samantha wailed on the phone the next morning, sounded decidedly unlawyerly. “This is ridiculous! I insist that you come back. Things are happening. I broke up with the yoga instructor and you weren’t even here to hear about it”

“So tell me,” I urged her, staving off a pang of guilt.

“Never mind,” Sam said airily. “I’m sure whatever I’m enduring isn’t as interesting as your movie-star friends and their breakups…”

“Now, Sam,” I said, “you know that isn’t true. You’re my absolute best friend, and I want to hear all about the evil yoga guy…”

“Never mind that,” said Sam. “I’d rather talk about you. What’s the deal? Are you, like, on permanent vacation? Are you going to stay there forever?”

“Not forever,” I said. “I just… I’m not sure what I’m doing, really.” And I was desperate, at that moment, not to have to talk about it anymore.

“I miss you,” Sam said plaintively. “I even miss your weird little dog.”

“I won’t be gone forever,” I said. It was the only thing I knew for sure was true.

“Okay, subject change,” said Samantha. “Guess who called me? That hunky doctor we ran into on Kelly Drive.”

“Dr. K!” I said, feeling a sudden rush of happiness at his name, along with a twinge of guilt that I hadn’t called him since the day I’d signed with Violet. “How’d he get your number?”

Samantha’s voice turned chilly. “Evidently,” she said, “and despite my explicit request, you once again listed me as your emergency contact when you filled out some kind of form for him.”

This was a point of some contention. I always listed Samantha as my emergency contact when I went on bike trips. Samantha had been less than delighted to learn this.

“Honestly, Cannie, why don’t you just list your mother?” she asked now, reiterating the complaint she’d made many times before.

“Because I’m worried that Tanya would answer the phone and have my body buried at sea,” I said.

“Anyhow, he called because he wanted to know how things were going, and if I had your address; I guess he wants to send you something.”

“Great!” I said, wondering what it was.

“So when are you coming home?” Sam asked again.

“Soon,” I told her, relenting.

“Promise?” she demanded.

I laid my hands on my belly. “I promise,” I said, to both of them.

The next afternoon, the mailbox yielded a box from Mailboxes amp; More on Walnut Street, Philadelphia.

I carried it out onto the deck and opened it. The first thing I saw was a postcard with a picture of a small, wide-eyed, anxious-looking Nifkin-esque dog on the front. I turned it over. “Dear Cannie,” it read. “Samantha tells me you’ll be in Los Angeles for a while, and I thought you might like something to read. (They do read out there, right?) I’ve enclosed your books, and a few things to remind you of home. Feel free to call me if you want to say hello.” It was signed “Peter Krushelevansky (from the University of Philadelphia).” Under the signature was a postscript: “Samantha also tells me that Nifkin’s gone West Coast, so I’ve sent a little something for him, too.”

Inside the box I found a postcard of the Liberty Bell, and one of Independence Hall. There was a small tin of dark chocolate-covered pretzels from the Reading Terminal, and a single, slightly squashed Tastykake. At the bottom of the box my fingers encountered something round and heavy, wrapped in layers and layers of the Philadelphia Examiner (“Gabbing with Gabby,” I noted, was devoted to Angela Lansbury’s latest made-for-TV movie). Inside I found a shallow ceramic pet food bowl. The letter N was emblazoned on the inside, painted bright red and outlined in yellow. And around the outside of the bowl were a series of portraits of Nifkin, each accurate right down to his sneer and his spots. There was Nifkin running, Nifkin sitting, Nifkin on the floor devouring a rawhide bone. I laughed delightedly. “Nifkin!” I said, and Nifkin barked and came running.

I set the bowl down for Nifkin to sniff. Then I called Dr. K…

“Suzie Lightning!” he said, by way of greeting.

“Who?” I said. “Huh?”

“It’s from a Warren Zevon song,” he said.

“Huh,” I said. The only Warren Zevon song I knew was the one about lawyers, guns, and money.

“It’s about a girl who… travels a lot,” he said.

“Sounds interesting,” I said, making a mental note to look up the lyrics. “I’m calling to thank you for my presents. They’re wonderful.”

“You’re welcome,” he told me. “I’m glad you like them.”

“Did you paint Nifkin from memory? It’s amazing. You should have been an artist.”

“I dabble,” he acknowledged, sounding so much like Dr. Evil, of Austin Powers fame, that I burst out laughing. “Actually, your friend Samantha lent me some pictures,” he explained. “But I didn’t use them much. Your dog has a very distinctive look.”

“You’re too kind,” I said truthfully.

“They opened up a paint-your-own-pottery studio around the corner from campus,” he explained. “I did it there. It was some kid’s fifth birthday party, so there were eight five-year-olds painting coffee mugs, and me.”

I grinned, picturing it – tall, deep-voiced Dr. K. folded into a chair, painting Nifkin as the little kids gawked.

“So how are things going out there?”

I gave him the condensed version, telling him about shopping with Maxi – the cooking I’d been doing, the farmer’s market I’d found. I described the little house on the beach. I told him that California felt both wonderful and unreal. I told him that I was walking every morning and working every day and how Nifkin had learned to retrieve his tennis ball from the surf.

Dr. K. made interested noises, asked pertinent follow-up questions, and proceeded directly to the big one. “So when are you coming home?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m on leave right now, and I’m still fine-tuning a few things with the screenplay.”

“So… will you give birth out there?”

“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I don’t think so.”

“Good,” was all he said. “We should have breakfast again when you come back.”

“Sure,” I said, feeling a pang for Sam’s Morning Glory. There was no place like it out here. “That would be great.” I heard Maxi’s car in the garage. “Hey, I’ve kind of got to run…”

“No problem,” he said. “Call me any time.”

I hung up the phone smiling. I wondered how old he was, really. I wondered if he liked me as more than a patient, as more than just another one of the big girls shuttling in and out of his office, each with her own tale of heartache. And I decided that I’d like to see him again.

The next morning Maxi proposed another trip.

“I still can’t believe that you have a plastic surgeon,” I grumbled, heaving myself into the low-slung little car, thinking that only in this city, at this moment in time, would a twenty-seven-year-old actress with perfect features keep a plastic surgeon on retainer.

“Necessary evil,” Maxi said crisply, powering past several lesser vehicles and zooming into the fast lane.

The surgeon’s office was a study in gray and mauve, all cool marble floors and glossy walls and even glossier receptionists. Maxi pulled off her oversized sunglasses and had a quiet talk with the woman behind the desk while I strolled, examining the poster-sized photographs of the doctors that lined the wall, wondering which one would have the pleasure of plumping up Maxi’s lips and erasing the invisible lines around her eyes. Dr. Fisher was a Ken doll-looking blond. Dr. Rhodes was a brunette with arched eyebrows who looked about my age, but probably wasn’t. Dr. Tasker was the jovial Santa Claus of the bunch – minus, of course, the roly-poly cheeks and double chin. And Dr. Shapiro…

I stood there, frozen, staring up at the larger-than-life picture of my father. He was thinner, and he’d shaved off his beard, but it was unquestionably him.

Maxi strolled over, her heels clicking on the floor. When she saw the look on my face, she grabbed my elbow and led me to a chair. “Cannie, what is it? Is it the baby?”

I tottered back to the wall on legs that felt like lengths of ossified wood, and pointed. “That’s my dad.”

Maxi stared at the picture, then at me. “You didn’t know he was out here?” she asked. I shook my head.

“What should we do?”

I nodded toward the door and started walking as fast as I could. “Leave.”

“So that’s what’s become of him,” I said. Maxi and Nifkin and I were out on the deck, drinking raspberry iced tea. “Liposuction in L.A.” I worked my tongue around it, trying the concept on for size. “Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, doesn’t it?”

Maxi looked away. I felt sorry for her. She’d never seen me this upset, and she didn’t have any idea of how to help me. And I didn’t know what to tell her.

“Sit tight,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’m going to go for a walk.”

I walked down by the water, passed the rollerbladers in bikinis, the volleyball games, the screaming, Popsicle-sticky kids. I passed the vendors on stilts, the piercing parlors, and the four-pairs-for-ten-dollars sock vendors, and the dreadlocked teenagers sitting on park benches, playing their guitars, and homeless people in layers and layers of clothes, splayed like corpses underneath the palm trees.

As I walked I tried to lay things out in front of me, to organize them, like they were pictures at an exhibition, framed and hung on a gallery wall.

I pictured my family as it had once been – the five of us on the lawn at Rosh Hashanah, posing in our best clothes: my father with his beard neatly trimmed and his hands on my shoulder; me with my hair twisted back in barrettes, the barest buds of breasts pushing at the front of my sweater, both of us smiling.

I pictured us all five years later: my father gone; me, fat and sullen and scared; my mother, frantic; my brother, miserable; and Lucy with her Mohawk and her piercings and late-night telephone callers.

More pictures: my college graduation. My mother and Tanya, their arms around each other’s shoulders, at their softball league championship game. Josh, six feet tall and thin and solemn, carving a turkey at Thanksgiving. Years of holidays, the four of us arrayed around the dining room table, my mother at the head and my brother opposite her, various boyfriends and girlfriends showing up, fading out, all of us trying hard to look like there was nothing missing there.

I moved on. There I was, standing proudly in front of my first apartment, holding a copy of my first newspaper story, pointing at the headline “Budget Debate Postponed.” Me and my first boyfriend. Me and my college sweetheart. Me and Bruce in the ocean, laughing at the camera, squinting in the sun. Bruce at a Grateful Dead concert, in a hackey-sack circle, one foot extending in mid-kick, a beer in his hand and his hair flowing loose over his shoulders. Then I made myself step back and move on.

I stood and let the ocean cool my feet and felt… nothing. Or maybe it was the end of love that I was feeling, the cool empty place that’s left inside you where all that heat and pain and passion used to be, the slick of wet sand after the tide finally rolls back out.

Okay, I thought. Here you are. You Are Here. And you move forward because that’s the way it works; that’s the only place you can go. You keep going until it stops hurting, or until you find new things to hurt you worse, I guess. And that is the human condition, all of us lurching along in our own private miseries, because that’s the way it is. Because, I guess, God didn’t give us any choice. You grow up, I remembered Abigail telling me. You learn.

Maxi was sitting on the deck where I’d left her, waiting.

“We need to go shopping,” I said.

She rose quickly to her feet. “Where?” she asked. “For what?”

I laughed, and heard the tears inside of it, and wondered if she could hear them, too. “I need to buy myself a wedding ring.”

SEVENTEEN

The receptionist at my father’s office didn’t seem at all perturbed at the long pause before I told her why I was calling.

I had a scar, I finally explained, and I wanted Dr. Shapiro to have a look at it. I gave Maxi’s cell phone number as my own and gave Lois Lane as my name, and the receptionist didn’t sound the least bit curious. She just gave me a ten A.M. appointment for Friday and warned me that the traffic could be brutal.

So on Friday morning I started out early. My hair was freshly trimmed (Garth had obliged, even though it had only been four weeks, not six). And on my left hand I wore not only the plain gold band I’d imagined but a diamond of such breathtaking enormity, such improbable size, that I could barely keep my eyes on the road.

Maxi had brought it home from the set, promising that no one would miss it, and that it would be just the thing to announce to my father in general and the world at large that I’d arrived.

“But let me ask you,” she began that morning, over buttermilk waffles and peach and ginger tea. “Why do you want your father to think you’re married?”

I stood up and opened the curtains, looking out at the water. “I don’t know, really. I don’t even know if I’ll wear the rings when I go see him.”

“You must have thought about it,” said Maxi. “You think about everything.”

I looked at the rings on my fingers. “I guess it’s that he said nobody would ever love me, that nobody would ever want me. And I feel like if I see him, and I’m pregnant and I’m not married… it’ll be like he was right.”

Maxi looked at me as if this were the saddest thing she’d ever heard. “But you know that’s not true, right?” she asked. “You know how many people love you.”

I drew a shaky breath. “Oh, sure,” I said. “It’s just… with this… it’s hard to be reasonable.” I looked at her. “It’s family, you know? Who was ever reasonable about family? I just… I want to know why he did what he did. I want to at least be able to ask the question.”

“He might not have answers,” Maxi told me. “Or, if he does, they might not be the ones you want to hear.”

“I just want to hear something,” I said raggedly. “I just feel like… I mean, you only get two parents, and my mom’s…” I gave a vague, general wave of my hand to indicate lesbianism and an inappropriate life partner. My finger flashed in the sunlight. “I just feel like I have to try.”

The nurse who led me into the cubicle had breasts as symmetrical and rounded as twin halved cantaloupes. She handed me a plush terrycloth robe and a clipboard full of forms to fill out. “Doctor will be with you shortly,” she said, clicking on a high-powered light and shining it on my face, where I’d invented a scar. “Huh,” she said, scrutinizing the scar. “That hardly looks like anything.”

“It’s deep, though,” I said. “I can see it in pictures. It shows up there.”

She nodded as if this made perfect sense to her and backed out of the room.

I sat on a beige armchair, making up lies to put on the forms and wishing that I had a scar – some physical sign to show the world – to show him – what I’d been through, and what I’d survived. Twenty minutes later, there was a brisk knock at the door, and my father walked in.

“So what brings you here today, Ms. Lane?” he asked, his eyes on my chart. I sat quietly, saying nothing. After a moment, he looked up. There was an irritated expression on his face, a stop-wasting-my-time look that I recognized from my childhood. He stared at me for a minute with nothing registering on his face but more annoyance. Then he saw.

“Cannie?”

I nodded. “Hello.”

“My God, what…” My father, a man with an insult for every occasion, was for once gratifyingly speechless. “What are you doing here?”

“I made an appointment,” I said.

He winced, took off his glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose – another pose I’d remembered well. It usually presaged a temper tantrum, anger of some sort.

“You just disappeared,” I said. He started shaking his head and opened his mouth, but I wasn’t about to let him start without saying my piece. “None of us knew where you were. How could you do that? How could you just walk out on all of us like that?” He said nothing… just stared at me – through me – as if I were any hysterical patient, shrieking that her thighs still felt lumpy or her left nipple was higher than her right one. “Don’t you care about us? Don’t you have a heart? Or is that a stupid question to ask someone who sucks cellulite out of thighs for a living?”

My father glared at me. “You don’t need to be condescending.”

“No, what I needed was a father,” I said. I hadn’t realized how angry, how furious at him I was until I’d seen him, standing there in his crisp white doctor’s coat, his manicured fingernails, his tan, and his heavy gold watch.

He sighed, as if the conversation bored him; as if I bored him, too. “Why are you here?”

“I didn’t come here looking for you, if that’s what you’re asking. A friend of mine had an appointment, and I came with her. I saw your picture,” I continued. “Not very smart, you know? For someone trying to stay undercover”

“I’m not trying to stay undercover,” he said irascibly. “That’s nonsense. Did your mother tell you that?”

“Then how come none of us know where you are?”

“You wouldn’t have cared if you did,” he muttered, picking up the clipboard he’d come in with.

I was so flabbergasted, he actually had his hand on the doorknob before I could think of what to say. “Are you crazy? Of course we would have cared. You’re our father”

He put his glasses back on. I could see his eyes behind them, a weak, watery brown. “And you’re all grown up now. All of you are.”

“You think just because we’re older it doesn’t matter what you did to us? You think needing your parents in your life is something you outgrow, like training wheels or a high chair?”

He raised himself up to his full five feet, eight and a half inches, and gathered the cloak of authority, of Doctor-ness, around him as palpably as if he’d been pulling on a heavy winter coat. “I think,” he said, speaking slowly and precisely, “that lots of people are disappointed by the lives that they wind up with.”

“And that’s what you want to be to us? A disappointment?”

He sighed. “I can’t help you, Cannie. I don’t know what you want, but I can tell you this – I’ve got nothing to give you. Any of you.”

“We don’t want your money”

He looked at me almost kindly. “I’m not talking about money.”

“Why?” I asked him. My voice was cracking. “Why have kids and leave them? That’s the part I don’t understand. What did we do…” I gulped. “What did any of us do that was so awful that you never wanted to see us again?” I knew, even as I was saying the words, even as I was thinking them, that it was ridiculous. I knew that no child could be that bad, that wrong, that ugly, could be anything to cause a parent to leave. I knew that it was no fault of ours. We weren’t to blame, I thought to myself. I could let it go; I could set the burden down, I could be free.

Except, of course, that knowing something in your head is different than feeling it in your heart. And I knew at that moment that Maxi had been right. Whatever my father could say, whatever answer he could provide, whatever excuse he could muster, it wouldn’t be right. And it wouldn’t ever be enough.

I stared at him. I waited for him to ask me something, to ask what had become of me: Where did I live, and what did I do, and whom had I decided to spend my life with? Instead he looked at me again, shook his head once, and turned toward the door.

“Hey!” I said.

He turned to look at me, and my throat closed up. What did I want to tell him? Nothing. I wanted him to ask me things: how are you, who are you, what’s happened to you, who have you become. I stared at him, and he said nothing – just walked away.

I couldn’t help myself. I reached for him, for some sign, for something, as he was walking out the door. I felt my fingertips graze the back of that crisp white coat. He never stopped walking. He never even slowed down.

When I came back, I put the rings in their little velvet box. I washed the makeup off my face and the gel out of my hair. Then I called Samantha.

“You won’t believe it,” I began.

“Probably not,” she said. “So tell me.”

And I did. “He didn’t ask me a single question,” I told her at the end. “He didn’t want to know what I was doing out here, or what I was doing with my life. I don’t even think he noticed I was pregnant. He just didn’t care.”

Samantha sighed. “That’s awful. I can’t even imagine how you must feel.”

“I feel…” I said. I looked out at the water, then up at the sky. “I feel like I’m ready to come home.”

Maxi nodded when I told her, sadly, but didn’t ask me to stay.

“You’re done with the screenplay?” she asked.

“I’ve been done for a few days,” I told her. She surveyed the bed, where I’d laid my things out – my clothes and books, the teddy bear I’d bought for the baby one afternoon in Santa Monica.

“I wish we could have done more,” she said with a sigh.

“We did plenty,” I said, and hugged her. “And we’ll talk… and e-mail… and you’ll visit when the baby comes”

Maxi’s eyes lit up. “Aunt Maxi,” she proclaimed. “You’ll have to have it call me Aunt Maxi. And I’m going to spoil it rotten!”

I smiled to myself, imagining Maxi treating little Max or Abby like a two-legged Nifkin, dressing the baby in outfits she’d picked out to match her own. “You’re going to be a fabulous aunt,” I said.

She insisted on driving me to the airport, helping me check my luggage, waiting with me at the gate even though everyone from the flight attendants on down were staring at her like she was the rarest exhibit in the zoo.

“This is going to wind up on Inside Edition,” I warned her, giggling and crying a little bit as we hugged each other for the eighteenth time. Maxi kissed my cheek, then bent down and gave my belly a little wave.

“You’ve got your ticket?” she asked me.

I nodded.

“Got milk money?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, smiling, knowing how true it was.

“Then you’re good to go,” she said.

I nodded, and sniffled, and hugged her tight. “You’re a wonderful friend,” I told her. “You’re the greatest.”

“Be careful,” she replied. “Travel safe. Call me as soon as you get there.”

I nodded, saying nothing, because I didn’t trust myself to speak, and turned away from her, toward the walkway, the plane, and home.

First class was more crowded this time than it had been on my way out. A guy about my age and exactly my height, with curly blond hair and bright blue eyes, took the seat next to me as I was struggling to get the seat belt (much tighter this time) around myself. We nodded politely at each other. Then he pulled out a sheaf of important-looking legal documents with “Confidential” stamped all over them, and I pulled out my Entertainment Weekly. He shot a sidelong glance at my reading matter and sighed.

“Jealous?” I asked. He smiled, nodded, and pulled a roll of candy from his pocket.

“Would you like a Mento?” he asked.

“Is that really the singular?” I replied, taking one. He gazed at the roll of Mentos, then looked at me and shrugged. “You know,” he said, “that’s a good question.”

I reclined the seat. He was kind of cute, I mused, and clearly had a good job, or at least the paperwork to make it look like he had a good job. That was what I needed – just a regular guy with a good job, a guy who lived in Philadelphia and read books and adored me. I snuck another look at Mr. Mento and contemplated giving him my card… and then I pulled myself up short, hearing my mother’s voice and Samantha’s voice converging in my head in one loud, desperate shriek: Are you crazy?

Maybe in another lifetime, I decided, pulling the blanket up under my chin. But this one would work out okay. Maybe my father was never going to be my father again, maybe my mother would stay yoked to the Dread Lesbian Tanya forever. Maybe my sister would always be unstable, and maybe my brother would never learn how to smile. But I could still find good in the world. I could still find beauty. And someday, I told myself, before I fell asleep, maybe I’d even find someone else to love. “Love,” I whispered to the baby. And then I closed my eyes.

If you wish for something hard enough, the fairy tales teach us, you can get it in the end. But it’s hardly ever the way you thought it would be, and the endings aren’t always happy ones. For months, I had been wishing for Bruce, dreaming of Bruce, conjuring a memory of his face and holding it in front of me as I fell asleep, even when I tried not to. In the end, it was almost like I’d wished him into being, that I’d dreamed so hard and so often that he couldn’t help but appear before me.

It happened just the way Samantha had said it would. “You’ll see him again,” she’d told me that morning months ago when I told her that I was expecting. “I’ve seen enough soap operas to guarantee it.”

I got off the plane, yawning to clear my clogged-up ears, and there, in the waiting area directly across from me, beneath a sign that read “Tampa/St. Pete’s” was Bruce. I felt my heart lift, thinking that he’d come for me, that, somehow, he’d come for me, until I saw that he was with some girl I’d never seen before. Short, pale, her hair in a pageboy. Light blue jeans, a pale yellow Oxford shirt tucked in. Nondescript, fade-into-the-woodwork clothes, medium features and a medium frame. Nothing remarkable about her at all except for her thick unruly eyebrows. My replacement, I presumed.

I froze in place, paralyzed by the horrible coincidence, the outrageous misfortune of this. But if it was going to happen, this would be the place – the giant, soulless Newark International Airport, where travelers from New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia converged in search of transatlantic flights and/or cheap domestic airfare.

For about five seconds I stood stock-still and prayed that they wouldn’t see me. I tried to edge off to the side of the lounge, to skirt the entire area, thinking that there had to be some way to duck onto the escalator, grab my bags, and escape. But then Bruce’s eyes locked on mine, and I knew it was too late.

He bent down, whispering something to the girl, who turned her head away before I could get a good look. Then he crossed the concourse, walking right toward me, wearing a red T-shirt that I’d snuggled up against a hundred times and blue shorts that I remembered seeing him put on, and pull off, just as often. I sent up a quick prayer of thanks for Garth’s haircut, for my tan, for my diamond earrings, and endured a sudden spasm of misery that I wasn’t still wearing that grand and gaudy diamond ring. It was completely superficial, I knew, but I hoped I looked good. As good as somebody seven and a half months pregnant could look after a six-hour plane trip, at least.

And then Bruce was right in front of me, looking pale and solemn.

“Hey, Cannie,” he said. His eyes fell to my midsection as if it were magnetized. “So you…”

“That’s right,” I said coolly. “I’m pregnant.” I stood up straight and tightened my grip on Nifkin’s case. Nifkin, of course, had smelled Bruce and was in the midst of trying to leap out and greet him. I could hear his tail thumping as he whined.

Bruce raised his eyes to the computerized board over the doorway I’d just passed through. “You’re coming from L.A.?” he asked, showing that his reading abilities had not diminished during our time apart.

I gave another curt nod, hoping he couldn’t tell how badly my knees were shaking. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Vacation,” he said. “We’re going to Florida for the weekend.”

We, I thought bitterly, staring at him. He looked just the same. A little thinner, maybe, with a few more strands of gray in his ponytail, but still, same old Bruce, right down to his smell, to his smile, and the half-laced doodled-on basketball sneakers. “How nice for you,” I said.

Bruce didn’t take the bait. “So were you in L.A. for work?”

“I had some meetings on the coast,” I said. I have always wanted to say that to someone.

“The Examiner sent you to California?” he asked.

“No, I had meetings about my screenplay,” I said.

“You sold your screenplay?” He seemed genuinely happy for me. “Cannie, that’s great!”

I said nothing, glaring at him. Of all the things I needed from him – love, support, money, the bare acknowledgment that I existed, that our baby existed, and that any of it mattered to him, his congratulations felt exceedingly paltry.

“I… I’m sorry,” he finally managed. And with that I was furious. How rotten of him, I thought, showing up at an airport to take Little Miss Pageboy on vacation, mouthing his pathetic apology, as if it could undo the months of silence, the worry I’d gone through, the anguish of missing him and figuring out how to provide for a baby on my own. And I was furious, too, for his complacency. He didn’t care – not about me, not about the baby. He’d never called, never asked, never cared. Just left me – left us – all alone. Who did this remind me of?

I knew, at that moment, that my anger wasn’t really for him. It was for my father, of course, the Original Abandoner, the author of all of my insecurities and fears. But my father was three thousand miles away from me, with his back eternally turned. If I could only step back and look at it clearly, I’d see that Bruce was just some guy, like a thousand other guys, right down to the pot and the ponytail and the half-intended slipshod lazy life, right down to the dissertation he’d never finish, the bookshelves he’d never build, and the bathtub he’d never clean. Guys like Bruce were as common as white cotton socks sold in six-packs at the Wal-Mart, if not as clean, and all I’d have to do to acquire another one would be to show up at a Phish concert and smile.

But Bruce, as opposed to my father, was right here… and he was far from innocent. After all, hadn’t he left me, too?

I set Nifkin down and turned to face Bruce, feeling all of my fury – years of it – curl in my chest and rise to my throat. “You’re sorry?” I spat.

He took a step backward. “I am sorry,” he said, and his voice was so sad it sounded like he was being ripped open from the inside. “I know I should have called you, but… I just…”

I narrowed my eyes. He dropped his hands. “It was just too much,” he whispered. “With my father and all.”

I rolled my eyes to show what I thought of that excuse, and to make it clear that he and I would not be exchanging tender reminiscences of Bernard Guberman, or anything else, anytime soon.

“I know how strong you are,” he told me. “I knew you’d be okay.”

“Well, I have to be, don’t I, Bruce? You didn’t leave me much of a choice.”

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said again, looking even more wretched. “I… I hope you’ll be happy.”

“I can feel those good wishes radiating right off you,” I retorted. “Oh, wait. My mistake. That’s just pot smoke.” It felt as if a part of me had detached from my body, floated up to the ceiling, and was watching this scene unfold in terror… and in great sadness. Cannie, oh, Cannie, a little voice mourned, this isn’t who you’re angry at.

“And you know what?” I asked him. “I’m sorry about your father. He was a man. You, you’re nothing but a boy with big feet and facial hair. And you’re never going to be anything else. You’ll never be more than a third-rate writer at a second-rate magazine, and God help you when you can’t peddle any more memories of what we had together.”

The girlfriend sidled up to his side and laced her fingers through his. I just kept talking. “You’ll never be as good as me, and you’re always going to know that I was the best you ever had.”

The girlfriend attempted to say something, but I wasn’t going to stop.

“You’re always going to be some big goofy guy with a bunch of tapes in cardboard shoeboxes. The guy with the rolling papers. The guy with the Grateful Dead bootleg. Good old Bruce. Except that shtick gets tired after sophomore year. It gets old, the same way that you’re getting old. It’s unimproved, just like your writing. And you know what else?” I stepped right up to him, so we were practically toe to toe. “You’re never going to finish that dissertation. And you’re always going to live in New Jersey.”

Bruce stood there, stunned. His mouth was literally gaping open. It wasn’t a good look, emphasizing as it did his weak chin, and the network of wrinkles around his eyes.

The girlfriend looked up at me.

“Leave us alone,” she said in a little squeaky voice. My new Manolo Blahnik slides gave me an extra three inches and I felt Amazonian, powerful, untroubled by this little wisp of a thing who barely cleared my shoulders. I gave her my very best shut-up-and-let-the-‌smart-people-talk look, the one I’d perfected over the years on my siblings. I wondered if she’d ever heard of tweezers. Sure, she could probably be looking at me and wondering whether I’d ever heard of Slim-Fast… or of birth control, for that matter. I found that I didn’t much care.

“I don’t think I was actually saying anything to you,” I said, and dredged up a line from the Take Back the Night March, circa 1989. “I don’t believe in blaming the victim.”

That snapped Bruce back to reality. He tightened his grip on her hand. “Leave her alone,” he said.

“Oh, Jesus.” I sighed. “Like I’m the one doing anything to either one of you. For your information,” I told the girlfriend, “I wrote him exactly one letter when I found out I was pregnant. One letter. And I won’t do it again. I’ve got plenty of money, and a better job than he does, in case he neglected to mention that when he gave you our history, and I’m going to do just fine. I hope the two of you are very happy together.” I picked up Nifkin, tossed my great hair, and breezed past a security guard. “I’d search his luggage,” I said, loud enough for Bruce to hear, “he’s probably holding.”

And then, still being pregnant, I went to the bathroom to pee.

My knees felt like water, my cheeks were hot. Hah, I thought. Hah!

I stood, flushed, and opened the cubicle door. And there was the new girlfriend, her arms crossed against her meager chest.

“Yes?” I inquired politely. “You have a comment?”

Her mouth twisted. She had, I noticed, a bit of an overbite.

“You think you’re so smart,” she said. “He never really loved you. He told me he didn’t.” Her voice was getting higher. Squeak, squeak, squeak. She sounded like a little stuffed animal, the kind that bleated when you squeezed it.

“Whereas you,” I said, “are obviously the real love of his life.” I knew, deep in my heart, in my good heart, that whatever quarrel I had, it wasn’t with her. But it was as if I couldn’t help myself.

Her lip curled, literally curled, like Nifkin’s when we played with his fluffy toys.

“Why don’t you leave us alone?” she hissed.

“Leave you alone?” I repeated. “Leave you alone? See, this is the theme you keep coming back to, and I don’t understand it. I’m not doing anything to either one of you. I live in Philadelphia, for heaven’s sake”

And then I saw it. Something in her face, and I knew what it was.

“He’s still talking about me, right?” I asked.

She opened her mouth to say something. I decided I didn’t want to stay around and hear it. I was suddenly enormously tired. I ached for sleep, for home, for my bed.

“He doesn’t,” she began.

“I don’t have time for this,” I told her, cutting her off. “I’ve got a life.” I tried to walk past her, but she was standing right by the sink, not giving me the room to pass.

“Move,” I said shortly.

“No,” she said. “No, you listen to me!” She put her hands on my shoulders, trying to get me to hold still, shoving me slightly. One minute I was up, trying to get past her, and the next minute my foot slipped on a puddle of water. My ankle buckled, turning underneath me. And I fell sideways, slamming my belly into the hard edge of the sink.

Bright pain flared, and I was lying on my back, lying on the floor, my ankle twisted at an angle I knew couldn’t mean anything good, and she was standing above me, panting like an animal, her cheeks flushed hectic red.

I sat up, putting both palms flat on the floor, and grabbed for the sink, when I felt a sudden tearing cramp. When I looked down and saw that I was bleeding. Not a lot, but… well, blood is not something you want to see anywhere below the belt when you’re only halfway through month seven.

Somehow I yanked myself to my feet. My ankle hurt so badly I felt sick, and I could feel blood trickling down my leg.

I stared at her. She stared back, following my gaze down to where the blood was falling in thick drips. Then she clapped one hand over her mouth, turned, and ran.

Things were starting to go fuzzy around the edges, and waves of pain were making their way through my belly. I’d read about this. I knew what it meant, and I knew that it was too early, that I was in trouble. “Help,” I tried to say, but there was no one there to hear. “Help…,” I said again, and then the world went gray, then black.