The Apartment

Chapter 2

On the subway on the way to work the next day, Morgan saw a mention of Max’s restaurant on Page Six of the New York Post, and smiled to herself as she read it. The few lines devoted to it talked about the great food and atmosphere, and listed several of the actors, writers, dancers, and sports figures who hung out there. And of course, they always mentioned Greg. She read The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times every morning, after going to the gym religiously at six A.M., but she liked glancing through the Post and reading the gossip on Page Six for a little levity and spice, and she knew who must have given them the information about the restaurant. She called her brother as soon as she got off the train and was walking from the station to work. It was another hot day, and she was wearing a short black skirt, crisp white blouse, and high heels, and men noticed her as she walked past.

“Nice mention of the restaurant,” Morgan complimented him, when Oliver answered his cell. He had been in PR since graduating from Boston University with a degree in communications twelve years before, and was now a vice president at an important New York firm, and had several well-known clients, mostly in sports. But he liked Max and did him a favor whenever he could. One of his clients, a pitcher for the Yankees, was mentioned on Page Six that morning too. “That was nice of you to do.” She got along well with her brother. He was her only living relative, and they had been very close ever since their parents’ deaths when they were both still young.

Oliver and his partner had a nice apartment on the Upper East Side, and loved to tease her for living in Hell’s Kitchen, but they enjoyed visiting her at the loft, and liked her roommates a lot. Oliver had come out and told her he was gay after their parents’ deaths. He said he would never have dared while their father was alive. Their father had been a contractor, when he was working, and had been openly critical of gays, maybe because he suspected his son was. But Oliver was comfortable with who he was. At thirty-five, he and Greg, his partner, had been together for seven years.

Greg had had his own family issues. He was one of five boys, from a simple Catholic family in Quebec. Four of them were professional hockey players, and his father had been heartbroken when he told him he was gay. He said openly now that he had known he was gay all his life, since he was nine or ten. He just liked boys, and his father had eventually adjusted, although he was sad about it. Greg and Oliver genuinely loved each other, and Max enjoyed spending time with them too. Morgan and Max went skiing with Oliver and Greg sometimes, when Max could get away. He teased them about their dogs, which made Oliver groan. It was one of his few disagreements with Greg. They had two Yorkies and a teacup Chihuahua Greg was crazy about and dressed in tiny Rangers uniforms someone had made for them.

“For heaven’s sake, you weigh two hundred and sixty pounds and you’re a goalie. Can’t we get a decent-size dog, like a Lab or a golden retriever? They make us look so gay!” Oliver complained, and Greg laughed.

“We are!” he reminded Oliver, and grinned. Oliver groused about it good-naturedly and regularly threatened to get a Saint Bernard, but he loved the dogs too. And he and Greg never tried to hide what they were. Greg had been one of the biggest sports figures to admit openly that he was gay.

“Do you want to have dinner at the restaurant Saturday?” Morgan asked her brother as she got to her office building.

“I’ll check with Greg. He said something about a birthday party in Miami. If we’re in town, I’d love it. I’ll let you know.”

“Sounds good.” She blew him a kiss and hung up, and her thoughts turned instantly to work. She and George, her boss, had a meeting scheduled that morning with a new client who was looking to place a lot of money. George had been courting him for months. He had made some very profitable investments for one of the potential client’s friends, and Morgan had done her homework for the meeting, and had discussed George’s plans for him at length. She had contributed several additional suggestions that George liked and was planning to present too. They were a good team. And he always said she was a genius with numbers and could read a spreadsheet faster than their accountants and spot an error everyone else had missed.

George was a handsome, successful bachelor, but his relationship with Morgan had always been strictly business. He never played where he worked, which she respected about him. At thirty-nine, he was hotly pursued by every gold digger in New York, and some very nice women too, some of them with a great deal of money. They felt safe with George since he had his own. He had made a fortune in recent years, and Morgan respected him for that. He was brilliant at what he did, and deserved his success. She had learned a lot from him in the past three years. They never saw each other socially, but she enjoyed traveling with him. They went to some terrific places to see clients, or check on investments—Paris, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Dubai. Her work life was a dream.

She checked all her facts on her computer, organized the papers on her desk for the presentation, and made some calls, and the new client came in at ten. He was a well-known man in his fifties who had made a fortune in the high-tech dot-com boom, and was said to be a billionaire, and he was interested in everything George and Morgan had to say. George had suggested several additions to his portfolio, some of them high risk, which didn’t seem to faze the client, and George had incorporated Morgan’s suggestions, and even attributed them to her. He was always fair. She thanked him as soon as the client left, and George looked pleased. The client had been very receptive to everything they’d said.

“We’re in,” George said with a grin. He was smooth as silk, and Morgan loved watching him handle their clients. He had it down to a fine art.

She went back to her own office then, and the day flew by with meetings, and some research she had to do after their meeting that morning. She always did her homework and followed up meticulously. George knew that he could count on her, and she gave him the information at the end of the day.

She had a meeting with a stock analyst that evening for a drink. She wanted to discuss two new IPOs with him, and hear what he had to say. She had her doubts about one of them. Her dream was to have her own select group of clients one day. She wasn’t as aggressive a risk taker as George, but she had solid knowledge, used sound investment practices, and had six years of great experience since business school. She was well on her way, even if she never attained the stellar heights that George had achieved in his dazzling career, but who knew what could happen? She was on a definite career path. Her life was in a good place.

—

It was another stressful day for Claire, with arguments with Walter about the quantity of shoes they should produce for their spring line. He always wanted to play it safe, both with production quantity and design. She wished he would give her more leeway, but he never did. He never budged on anything. And Monique, the new French intern, irritated her all day. Claire felt like she was babysitting a petulant child and didn’t have time to entertain her. By the time she got back to the apartment, Claire was seriously aggravated, and wished she had the guts to quit. But she needed the money, and didn’t want to take a chance on being out of work while she looked, or risking the job she had if she started looking and Walter heard about it and fired her. He had her back to the wall, and all she wanted to do was design more exciting shoes.

As she dropped her keys onto the hall table, and glanced at her mail—all bills and ads, everything else came to her by e-mail or on Facebook—she noticed that Sasha was already home. She could see her lying on the couch, barefoot and in shorts, reading a magazine. Sasha glanced up at her and smiled, sipping a glass of wine, which meant she was off call, which was a relief for her. She hardly ever got time off, and Claire couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her read a magazine.

“They finally gave you a break?” She was happy for her.

“I’m not working this week,” Sasha said vaguely, sipping her wine.

“Not since yesterday. That’s hardly what I’d call a vacation.” Sasha laughed at her then and sat up on the couch. “I had a shit day,” Claire complained to her. “I may have to kill the little French girl, if I don’t kill Walter first. I’m beginning to have fantasies about it. I’m sick of designing shoes for women with no imagination and no taste.”

“Then quit,” Sasha said bluntly. “Fuck them. Why be miserable in your job?”

“Hello, remember me? I need the money. I’m not an heiress, and what if I’m out of work for six months? That could happen.” Claire looked worried as she said it.

“There’s always prostitution,” Sasha said, sounding flippant, and suddenly what she said didn’t seem like her. Sasha was always sensitive about Claire’s fears about her job and her future.

And then Claire took a closer look and narrowed her eyes as she stared hard at Sasha.

“Smile at me,” she said cryptically to the exquisite woman on the couch. Sasha had a natural beauty that nothing could dim, even uncombed hair and hospital scrubs.

“Why?” she said in response.

“Never mind why—smile at me.” Sasha did as she was told, and smiled broadly, showing off gorgeous, perfect teeth. She hadn’t even had braces. She’d been naturally flawless from birth. And Claire laughed the moment she smiled. “Jesus, you two ought to be forced to wear a sign, or get a tattoo on your foreheads with your name.” Only when they smiled could she detect the faintest dissimilarity in the twins. Although they looked the same, and were truly identical, there was an almost microscopic difference in their smiles. Claire had noticed it early on, but Valentina still fooled her a lot of the time, especially when she wanted to, which she did often. She was much more mischievous than her twin, and explained it by saying that Sasha was older, by three minutes, therefore more serious. Valentina considered herself the younger sister, and was lying on the couch drinking wine. “I thought you were Sasha,” Claire explained, but Valentina already knew that and looked amused. She loved fooling them. In some ways, she behaved like a naughty child, in contrast to her more responsible sister.

“Sasha said she’d be here by now, but she just called to say she got stuck at work. Some woman is delivering. I don’t know why she didn’t pick a better specialty, like plastic surgery.”

“Face-lifts sound even more disgusting than childbirth,” Claire said honestly, and poured herself a glass of the wine. Valentina had blithely opened one of their best bottles of white wine, although most of the time she preferred champagne. She was spoiled by the men she went out with, all of whom had vast amounts of money, and most of whom were twice her age, and dazzled by her. It was hard not to be, and she had all the habits of a spoiled brat, which Sasha didn’t. All the roommates loved Sasha, and put up with Valentina. Sometimes she was funny, but none of them would have wanted to live with her. Nor did Sasha. Valentina had driven her crazy while they were growing up, although they still had the close relationship typical of twins.

Valentina then wandered into Sasha’s bedroom and came out a few minutes later, wearing a very pretty skirt Claire hadn’t seen her roommate wear all year. Valentina helped herself to whatever she wanted, always, and never asked her sister’s permission.

“She’ll never have time to wear this,” Valentina said to Claire as she sat down and poured herself another glass of wine. “It looks better on me anyway. She’s losing weight from working too hard. Everything hangs on her.” Claire could detect no difference in their weight, or anything else about them, except the smile.

They chatted for a little while, and then Valentina went back to reading Vogue, and half an hour later Sasha walked in, and was surprised to see her sister wearing her skirt. “What are you doing wearing that?” She didn’t look happy about it, and Sasha seemed like she was in a hurry.

“You never wear it, I’ll just borrow it for a few days.” And then forget to give it back, Sasha thought to herself. Their father had sent it to her from one of his stores in Atlanta, it was by a well-known designer, and he knew she never had time to shop for clothes. Valentina had no problem buying clothes for herself, or taking what she wanted from her sister. And she got a lot of the clothes she modeled after the shoots.

“Dad sent it to me,” Sasha told her, as though that made the skirt meaningful to her. Valentina shrugged. She didn’t get along with their father and didn’t like his second wife and made no secret of it. “I’m going out,” Sasha said to her sister, as Valentina settled back onto the couch, wearing the borrowed skirt.

“Back to work?”

“I have a date,” Sasha said, embarrassed. “I forgot. He just called to remind me.”

“With who?” Valentina looked surprised, and so did Claire. Sasha hadn’t had a date in months.

“Some guy I met last month. I think he thought I was you. He acted like he knew me, and then I realized he had us confused.”

“And he still thinks so?” Valentina was amused, and Sasha annoyed.

“Of course not. I told him, but he asked me out anyway. He’s an actor, and he models underwear for Calvin Klein.”

“He must be cute,” she said, glancing at her sister.

“Yeah, kind of. I wasn’t going to go out with him, but he made a big fuss that I sounded like I’d forgotten, and I didn’t want to admit I had. He’s taking me to some art opening, and dinner afterward.” It didn’t sound like Sasha’s kind of date, which were usually with other doctors, people she met at medical conferences, or related to her work. An actor/model wasn’t her style, or even Valentina’s. “I said I’d meet him in half an hour.” And thinking about it, she was sorry Valentina had taken the skirt—she didn’t know what to wear.

“Wear something hot,” Valentina advised her, as Sasha disappeared into her room, pawed through the closet, and came up with a white cotton dress and threw it on the bed. Valentina came in a minute later and shook her head. “You’ll look like you’re going to the beach. There’s a black pencil skirt at the back of your closet, and a silver tube top. Wear that.” Sasha hesitated for a minute and then nodded. Valentina knew a lot more about fashion than she did. She jumped into the shower, and was dressed ten minutes later, her long blond hair still wet.

“Blow-dry your hair, put on makeup, and wear high heels,” her twin advised her, as Sasha headed back to the bathroom and emerged ten minutes later, and actually looked like she was going on a date, except that she couldn’t find heels in her closet. She walked into the living room barefoot, and Claire handed her a pair of high-heeled sandals. Conveniently, they wore the same size. Sasha looked terrific in the outfit her twin had chosen for her with her roommate’s shoes.

“Now you look hot!” Valentina said, smiling at her. Sasha suddenly looked like Valentina, but she could hardly walk in Claire’s towering high heels.

“Can’t I wear sandals? I think he was short anyway. I can’t remember.”

“No, you can’t,” Valentina and Claire said in unison, and five minutes later Sasha clattered down the stairs, feeling like a fraud and hoping she wouldn’t break her neck in the high heels. She felt like a poor imitation of her twin, which was what her date had probably wanted anyway, a date with Valentina, not with her. It had been the story of their early life. They were always trading places. Sasha wrote term papers and took exams for Valentina, and Valentina sometimes went on dates pretending to be Sasha.

Sasha hailed a cab on Tenth Avenue, and gave the driver the address of a gallery in Chelsea, where she was supposed to meet her date. She saw him as soon as she walked in, and he made a beeline for her.

“Wow! You look amazing.” He had his cell phone in his hand and snapped a picture of her before she could stop him.

“Why did you do that?” Sasha felt out of place and ill at ease.

“I put everything I do on Instagram,” Ryan Phillips said to her. The thought of it made her uncomfortable, and she followed him into the crowded gallery, where he seemed to know everyone.

Ryan was a handsome man about her age, and as women crowded around him, Sasha felt naked in the top her sister had told her to wear. It just wasn’t her, and it was awkward being out of hospital scrubs. A number of men talked to her, and Ryan was attentive, but she still thought she looked like a poor imitation of Valentina, and she was exhausted by the time they left the gallery and took a cab to a restaurant in SoHo, which was mobbed and noisy, and everyone knew him there too. Conversation was nearly impossible once they were seated at the table, and he took another picture of her on his cell phone, which unnerved her even more. She wondered if he was letting people think he was on a date with famous supermodel Valentina, and not with her twin. She felt like an imposter with him, but had told herself it would do her good to get out for a change. No one had asked her on a date in months, and she was guilty about not making the effort to meet new people and go out. But now that she was here, it was all too strange. He was a good-looking guy, but they had nothing in common, and she doubted he would ask her out again.

“So what do you do?” he asked her, shouting over the din of the noisy restaurant after they had ordered. She noticed that his muscles rippled under the black T-shirt he was wearing with black jeans. He was in fantastic shape, and it was easy to guess he worked out every day.

“I’m a doctor,” she shouted back, “an obstetrician.” He looked stunned by her response.

“I thought you were a model, like your sister.” She shook her head with a broad grin.

“No, I’m an OB/GYN resident at NYU hospital. I deliver babies.” What she told him left him momentarily speechless, and then he nodded.

“I guess that’s cool.” He had no idea what she did for a living when he asked her on a date. He just liked the way she looked, and had lusted after Valentina for months. Sasha didn’t say it, but Ryan was too young and too poor for her sister, who only dated very rich, much older men. Ryan was no match for her. “Do you like being a doctor?” He didn’t know what to say to her.

“Very much. Do you like being an actor?”

“Yeah, I’m up for a part in a movie in L.A. I’m waiting to hear. I auditioned for it last week. I’ve had a few parts on daytime soaps, and the Calvin Klein ads have been great.” She nodded, and as their dinner arrived and the noise level rose around them, they were spared further conversation until they were back on the street. He put an arm around her when they left the restaurant, with an expectant look. “Do you want to come to my place? It’s a few blocks from here.” The geography wasn’t an issue, but she didn’t know him, and it was obvious that he expected to sleep with her in exchange for dinner. And handsome as he was, having sex with a stranger didn’t appeal to her.

“I have to be at work at six tomorrow morning. I should get home,” she said, not knowing what else to say. Are you kidding? would have seemed rude, and she didn’t want to sound like a prude.

“Yeah, right. We’ll have to do this again sometime,” he said, sounding unconvincing. She could tell that he thought that if she wasn’t going to sleep with him, there wasn’t much point in seeing her again. He put her in a cab five minutes later and waved as it drove her away. She was feeling dazed, the evening had been noisy, boring, and unfulfilling, and she knew nothing more about him than she had when they met, except that he was being considered for a part in a movie in L.A. And she got the feeling that the object of dates like it, with men like him, was not to get to know each other, but just to get out, dress up, share a meal, network at the gallery party, and if possible get laid. Almost none of it appealed to her, and was so superficial that it made watching game shows on TV seem more intimate. She felt like she had wasted the entire evening, and her feet hurt from the ridiculously high heels she’d borrowed from Claire. None of it seemed worth it. And it felt humiliating and stupid to have participated at all.

She heard sirens in the distance as the cab approached her street, and she saw half a dozen fire trucks and a chief’s car, parked helter-skelter, and several policemen blocking traffic from entering the street. The cabdriver stopped, looked at what was happening, and turned to tell her that he couldn’t drive into her street.

“It’s okay,” she told him as she paid him and gave him a decent tip. “I can walk in from here.” Although as she got out of the cab, she felt a tingle of fear race up her spine. There were fire engines and police cars, an ambulance, and two paramedic trucks jamming the entrance to the street, and a policeman stopped her as soon as she tried to walk in.

“You can’t go in there, miss. Several of the buildings are on fire. It’s too dangerous. You’ll have to wait here.” He indicated a police line she couldn’t cross, and she craned her neck to see which buildings were on fire. The hub of activity appeared to be in the middle of the block, where men were running. Firefighters wearing heavy packs, helmets, and face masks were lumbering down the block at full speed. She could see ladders going up the front of two buildings, and then realized how close their building was to the fire. Her heart started to pound as she watched, wondering where her roommates were. They were all supposed to be home that night, and she wondered if they were on the other side of Thirty-ninth Street, waiting on Tenth Avenue, and took out her cell phone to call them and check. As she did, she could see that Engine 34, housed only a block away from them, had sent two trucks to the scene.

Sasha watched the frenetic activity up and down the street, and now she could see flames coming from both buildings. And there were firemen on the roof to make holes in it with axes to let out some of the heat, while others shot water into the blaze. The smoke emerging from the buildings was inky black, which she knew meant the fire was still raging. Once under control, the smoke would be white, but it wasn’t yet.

“Holy shit!” Sasha said, sounding shocked and nervous when Claire answered her phone. “What happened? Why didn’t one of you call me?”

“There was nothing you could do. We didn’t want to spoil your date. We’ve been out here since half an hour after you left. It started in one building, and set fire to the one next to it about an hour ago. They can’t seem to get it under control.”

“Shit, and we’re only two buildings away. Where are you guys?”

“On Tenth. Morgan went to Max’s to get us some bottles of water. You can feel the heat all the way down here.” And the smoke was heavy in the air. As Sasha watched, she could see two firemen with face masks come down the ladders carrying people wrapped in blankets. One of them wasn’t moving, and the other was an old woman, who looked terrified as the firefighter made his way down the ladder with her. It was obvious, watching the smoke billowing from the building, that by now there must have been very little left intact inside. And what wasn’t being devoured by the fire was being drowned with the high-powered blasts of water being hosed into the building. It looked like they could lose the apartment, but for some reason the fire headed west instead of toward her, and another building on the far side of them caught fire as everyone stood watching. She felt guilty that she was relieved when she saw it head away from their building, though sorry for the people who lived on their other side, in the building that exploded into flames.

“This is getting really ugly,” Sasha said sadly. “They just brought an old lady out, put a mask on her, and put her in an ambulance, and now they’re bringing out two more.”

“Are you going to help?” Claire asked her, as Sasha watched them with wide eyes.

“They don’t need me, unless one of those old ladies is having a baby. They’ve got three trucks of paramedics who know what to do better than I do.” Two of the ambulances had just gone screaming past her with their sirens on.

She and Claire continued talking for the next hour, neither of them wanting to leave where they were standing and miss something important that might happen. And then finally, an hour later, the first sign of white smoke came through the holes in the three roofs and out the windows of the buildings. The fire was getting under control. And the ambulances had raced past her several times. Sasha had lost count how many, and she had noticed somberly two gurneys with lifeless forms on them, and blankets covering the bodies, and she had seen a firefighter carried to an ambulance when another firefighter had dragged him out of the building, injured. Trucks and engines had come from all over the city.

It was two in the morning by the time the frenzy started to die down, but firemen were coming out of all three buildings carrying bodies. Sasha overheard among the police talking around her that seven people had succumbed so far, five were injured, and the fireman she’d seen carried out. She talked to Claire again then, and Morgan and Abby were with her. Morgan suggested they meet at Max’s restaurant, half a block from where they were standing, at the other end of the street. Their building was no longer at risk, but they’d been told it would be another hour or two before they would be allowed back into their home. Sasha was sure it would reek of smoke when they did. But they could easily have lost it that night if the wind had changed direction, and she thought about the people who had died, as she walked around the block to meet the others on Tenth Avenue. They were quiet on their way to Max’s. He had closed half an hour before, and was counting the money while the kitchen staff and bus boys were cleaning up. Max had come out to see what was happening a couple of times, and brought them more water, and then had gone back to work. It was a busy night.

“That was quite a blaze,” he commented as they arrived, all four of them looking tired, and Sasha still teetering on Claire’s high heels. The others were all wearing T-shirts, shorts, and flats and looked as though they’d dressed in haste.

“Seven people died,” Sasha said sadly. “I think they were mostly old people, from smoke inhalation.” They didn’t know any of them personally, but all of the residents of the loft recognized some of their neighbors by sight and waved at them occasionally. It was tragic to think of how their lives had ended. It was one of the risks of very old buildings. One of the firemen had told Morgan it started as an electrical fire, in a building that hadn’t been renovated like theirs, and since it was rent-controlled, it had some of the original tenants in it.

They shared a bottle of wine at Max’s, and finally at three-thirty, they were allowed to go back to their apartment. The building reeked of smoke, and they opened all the windows when they got home, and turned on their air-conditioning units for ventilation, but they assumed correctly that it would take days or longer for the smell of smoke to dissipate. The buildings only two doors away were still smoldering, and firemen were hosing them down both inside and out. None of the possessions inside would remain.

“Boy, that was close,” Morgan said as she sat down on the couch with Max. “We could have lost everything.” In their haste, they had taken nothing with them, except Abby, who had grabbed her laptop with her novel on it. And Claire had stuck some photographs of her parents into her purse. The rest had seemed unimportant, but they would have hated losing their home. They had installed smoke detectors in the loft years before, and had never had a fire in the neighborhood come as close as that. It was an eerie, depressing feeling, especially knowing people had died.

It was five in the morning before they all went to bed, and just before they did, Claire turned to Sasha.

“By the way, how was your date?” Sasha had already forgotten all about it, in the excitement of the fire.

“Ridiculous,” she answered. “A total waste of time. I’d rather stay home with all of you, or work, or sleep,” Sasha said with a yawn. “He was pretty to look at, but there was nothing to say.”

“There are some good ones out there,” Morgan reminded her, as Sasha looked skeptical and Claire shook her head.

“I think you got the last good one left,” Claire commented, referring to Max with a smile, as he went to get ready for bed and let the girls discuss the date.

“What do you expect from an underwear model, for chrissake?” Morgan said to Sasha.

“He kept taking pictures of me to send to his Instagram followers,” Sasha said. “He probably told them he was out with Valentina.” Morgan and Claire suspected that was probably true. He wasn’t likely to be impressed by Sasha’s medical school credentials, and claiming he was out with Valentina would blow the minds of all his friends. Morgan groaned at the description of his sending Instagrams to his followers from their date.

“At least you tried,” Morgan commended her as Sasha turned to Claire.

“And how the hell do you walk in those shoes? I was afraid I’d fall and break a hip.”

“You can’t go on a date in clogs or Crocs,” Claire pointed out to her, and they laughed.

“Why not? I did with the last guy I went out with. He was a resident in orthopedics. We went out after work in scrubs, and we had a fairly decent time, until he admitted that he was engaged, but he wasn’t sure if he was going to go through with it, so he was checking other people out to see how he really felt about his fiancée.”

“Nice,” Morgan commented.

“I guess I didn’t do it for him. I hear he got married over the Fourth of July. She’s an ICU nurse, and he thought maybe he should be with a doctor. Maybe they’re all crazy. Thank God I don’t have time to date. I don’t know why I bothered tonight.” Except to keep her hand in, and she thought she should. Her sister always said she had no life. And Valentina wasn’t wrong, but Sasha didn’t mind.

“Two bad dates are not an excuse to live like a nun. And you have no excuse,” Morgan said to Claire. “You guys can’t stay alone forever. It takes some effort to find the right guy.”

“And then what? You get married and hate each other for the rest of your life?” Claire said in a negative tone. Her parents didn’t hate each other, but in her opinion, her father had ruined her mother’s life. And her mother had let him, which was even worse.

“It doesn’t always turn out that way,” Morgan insisted, although it had for her parents, who never should have gotten married in the first place. But her own generation was more careful, and a lot more cautious about who they married and why. Or they just lived together, which made more sense to her. Their parents’ reasons for getting married no longer applied. Giving up lives, careers, and cities for a man seemed like a bad idea to all of them, and led to miserable lives like those of Claire’s and Morgan’s parents.

“Well, I think I’ll give the dating thing a rest for a while,” Sasha said with relief.

“You haven’t exactly been knocking yourself out in that department,” Morgan chided her. “You can’t give up after one boring date. That’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s ridiculous going out with guys you don’t have anything in common with.” But Sasha was too tired to think about it now. She said goodnight to her roommates, and headed for her bedroom to lie down. She had to be at work at six A.M. to deliver babies. Her life was much too real to be bothered with men like Ryan, and she didn’t need dinner that badly. As she lay down and closed her eyes for a minute, he slipped totally from her mind into oblivion, where he belonged. It had been a long night, and it had been frightening for those at risk of losing their homes, and tragic for those who had died, all of which made her date seem utterly inconsequential. She fell into a deep sleep, grateful for even half an hour, and particularly so that their home was safe.