‘I love that you want me not carrying debt.’

     He signed the lease and explained she needn’t contribute to a security deposit. This time she insisted on not breaking a contract and moved in with him on January 1, 1989. After a warm weather surge, the temperature plummeted and they stayed in, Bruce busy with homework and Clare determined to write what he called her ‘little stories’. She again easily took to domestic life, loved hearing him unlock the door, hang up his coat, and noisily throw backpack towards desk. Entering the kitchen where she’d set up a tiny writing area, he began talking like he’d just left the room and now resumed the conversation. Dog-tired and only occasionally crabby, always pulling her into a hug where she’d stand on his stockinged feet, he’d admire her petiteness and pretty, pretty hair. He constantly turned the embrace into an opportunity to look down her shirt and she bluntly called him on it: ‘You do it all the time.’

     ‘It’s my favorite part of you.’

     ‘You’ve been sleeping with girls since age fifteen so I think it’s a weird, junior high obsession.’

     ‘It’s because I’m looking at your heart,’ he said, hands still on the prize, actually feeling for the beat like a good doctor, ‘truly your loveliest attribute.’

‘I’d be the happiest person on earth if you always looked at me like that,’ he said one night.

‘Like this?’ she emulated Sara’s coquettish expression continually on view for men in the office.

‘Don’t be a killjoy.’

‘There I go again, picking on your friends.’

‘Sara? Not technically a pal,’ he said modestly.

‘Another on the chain – when?’

‘If you tell Jeremy,’ he warned, ‘we’ll all be embarrassed. Griffin’s family had a huge get-together after his and Jeremy’s college graduation and she hit on me in the kitchen. ONE kiss, and I went outside.’

Disappointed at such mild dirt, Clare said the Aspen years were pretty tame, considering the proximity of private planes and massive shopping sprees. ‘Phil had many great-looking friends but I wouldn’t have…’

‘You’re a good girl,’ he said absently. ‘How much did you smoke?’

‘Never.’

He sifted through a pile of bills and smirked. ‘That’s the ticket.’

‘I could probably roll the perfect joint just from watching him do it, like, hourly, but no, I honestly didn’t smoke.’

‘What strength of will.’

‘He smoked enough for both of us.’

He withdrew his checkbook and neatly tore five, dated each, and she silently named the bills: Rent, cable, phone, electricity, renter’s insurance.

‘You’ll drop these tomorrow?’

She nodded, admiring the flawless penmanship and careful recording of each debit. ‘Did you smoke?’

‘At a dull prep school in the middle of nowhere with rich ne’er do wells – what do you think went on when we weren’t studying or killing each other at sports?’

‘Community service.’

He chuckled and moved his chair closer. ‘What a long harsh day. Nice to come home to you.’

She rubbed his back and he closed his eyes, looking absolutely serene.

‘Tell me more about those musicians.’

‘Aren’t you hungry?’

He opened the silverware drawer, looked skyward, and grabbed a menu. ‘Anything from here.’

She ordered pizza, caprese salad, and pastini soup. As she set placemats and plates, he repeated a need to hear how she’d partied with the band.

‘Second-hand smoke gave me a permanent high and I forgot everything,’ she said, returning to her typewriter.

‘Write it down before it’s totally forgotten,’ he coaxed.

He wouldn’t read her journals or he’d know she had, briefly: January 10 1987; Sometimes I actually enjoy life. Aspen is the best place on earth and Phillip’s really wonderful. Could never have gone with Christian W., but the temptation… ‘Aren’t you almost tired of it?’

‘Not how you tell it.’

‘I’ve given you an exhaustive account ten times.’

‘I had a brutal day,’ he wheedled.

‘It doesn’t end differently,’ she put the stamped bills in her ancient Coach bag, ‘and my perfect recall has faded.’

‘Be a sport and a supportive girlfriend.’

‘Maybe I’m embarrassed discussing Phillip T the Druggie.’

‘Very hard picturing you with that guy,’ he said, eyes narrowed and arms firmly perched on the text book stack, ‘but it’s cool you were once a hippie.’

She burst out laughing: By no stretch had she been that. ‘I was a penniless waitress.’

‘Start at the bar that night,’ he prompted. ‘I’ve never been near anyone that famous.’

Making a great show of straightening chairs and covering the typewriter, she paused to say, ‘I told you about New Year’s, right?’ then swept every kitchen crevice while Bruce drummed his fingers on a pile of textbooks. ‘And the TV folk?’ Tons of current stars earning weekly $100,000 paychecks sunk dollars in lodge-like mansions, tearing down ancient trees for better views into town and complaining loudly about lack of privacy, dropped by the restaurant, good tippers all but general pains with their no oil or remove-the-breadbasket snippiness. One oft-married famous couple, she of the awesome legs and he bearing an uncomfortable, snarling, self-aware resemblance to Clint Eastwood, brought personal spats to the table and tersely ordered each dish as if dividing assets: SHE’LL have the red snapper, which is unbelievable since SHE never touches seafood unless HER chef makes it to HER unattainable needs. Clare merely kept her head low, smiled, made eye contact only when the wife sourly announced it wasn’t HER fault her HUSBAND didn’t know the perils of ingesting red meat. After their third visit, when they’d inexplicably motioned towards her and the manager apologetically led them to her station, Clare dubbed them The Honeymooners.

Finally parking the broom in the miniscule closet by the refrigerator, she asked if he had time for an old bar story.

‘If you want,’ he said diffidently, flipping through his bio-chem book.

The last waitress on the floor when The Famous Band showed up, she hadn’t recognized less groomed versions of their video appearances. Ultimately the highest tippers ever, better than Phillip as customer, more generous than the godly Mr. Tossarello, ensconced in a corner booth, all mildly yet attractively disheveled, they were immediately friendly, asked endlessly where she grew up, what she wanted to do – what was she, 21? – did she know she had a killer figure? She answered pleasantly, ‘Illinois’, and this job her current line of business. Eventually her other tables cleared, and the guys took turns guessing her name. ‘She looks too smart to be a Heather of Jennifer,’ one of them said. The fiercest yet kindest blues eyes looked right at her; he said, ‘It’s a ‘C’ name though.’ The manager called her over and said, ‘Give ‘em whatever they want.’ Phillip waited at the bar and grabbed her arm as she ordered scotch and sodas, asked if she knew who the fuck sat at the back table. ‘Bunch of miners from Avon,’ she’d drawled to annoy him: One allegedly should identify every celebrity traipsing through Aspen and drinking himself blind until last call. When he informed her, she affected Oh, THOSE guys. Their tab rang up to several thousand dollars and Clare gleefully read the almost 50% credit card tip; at least 1 of 5 remaining loans would soon disappear from the books. Closing out, lining her pockets with hundreds totaling grands, Kip, the Ivy League bartender, smirked and shut down the register: ‘What’d you do, charm them with your sparkling personality?’ They beckoned her again, asked, ‘You off the clock?’ She glanced at Phillip, who smoothly introduced himself; Blue Eyes, a total babe standing up, said, ‘You want to hang with us?’ looking only at Clare. Phillip decided for them: ‘Come back to our place.’ He left the car parked by the bar after Christian Woodard casually motioned to the enormous running limo across the street. She thought, This I love, as champagne bottles popped for the 10 minute drive to the Templeton compound. Into the immaculate house the guys brought more bubbly and bottles of harder stuff, lazed on chairs by the fireplace Phillip started, rifled through Clare’s neatly arranged record collection on the one bookshelf she’d designated hers.

‘Put this on,’ Kevin the drummer ordered and she had: ‘He should sing more,’ he announced. ‘One album and he’s gone. He writes better shit than anyone in this room.’

Everyone’s laughter relieved Clare, because last she read in Rolling Stone, Christian Woodard placed high in its All-Time Top 100 Songwriters. She’d heard Kevin and Gavin duked it over stupid band issues and didn’t want fisticuffs on a fun night as the only female among a group of rockers, and Phil, looking like he’d died and gone to stoner’s heaven, handling himself like a normal, non-groupie person, not blathering as most guys his age might. Settling on the floor, leaning against, not sitting, on a chair, she watched, flabbergasted, as Ethan produced a generous bag of cocaine. Polite host Phillip produced a mirror, and Ethan chopped piles into neat lines, withdrew a crisp hundred from the pocket of his rancid-looking Army jacket, and snorted two quick hits. She’d never seen drugs this illegal before, pot hardly counted, half of NIU toked year round; she shivered happily, pictured cops bursting in, her name forever linked with scandal. Phillip kept looking at her in a spooky, sexy way, like he’d just have to take care of that later. Refusing more champagne, wanting to soberly observe this crowd of users, she caught herself staring as Christian, fresh from inhaling a few lines Ethan cut for him, sat next to her. His eyes were insanely bright and didn’t miss a thing.

‘Is he your favorite musician?’ Hard to tell whom he meant: Ethan? The other guys? Steve Forbert?

‘Sure,’ she answered. ‘What about you?’

‘Like, who influenced me?’ Leaning back, he took a deep breath, spotlit and ready to deliver to a sellout crowd. ‘Townshend. I saw him on ‘Smothers Brothers’ and thought, They’re having a blast. It’s what we did, watch TV or sneak into theaters. Ever live in a small town?’ Before she could answer he said, ‘All you do is wish you could leave it.’ He finished his beer and went on, ‘You know us, right?’

‘I’m not asking for an autograph, but yeah, we have your records.’

He looked sheepish for half a second and said, ‘This is a nice place. We have a house on the beach. Malibu.’

What could she do but shake her head yes and wish she wore something cuter than plain white shirt and pleated black pants? What in hell was Phil talking about? Drugs, she thought, giggling: You buy nickel bags? Yeah, me too! Gavin, the married bad boy, sat very still, amazing as he’d drank endlessly at the bar and leaned over the mirror a few times. Ethan, the showiest band member, endlessly discussed his long-time girlfriend, now wife, and their son, Evan Louis Timm. ‘Sucks being away so much,’ he said, snorting again, suddenly glitter-eyed and loose-limbed.

‘When’s the last time you were with a guy?’ Christian asked very quietly.

‘My boyfriend’s right there,’ she pointed out, thinking, Last night’s eight-minute session barely counts. Maybe he wasn’t attracted to her anymore, now overly conscientious to the youngish equestriennes showing up more and more for private lessons; one actually called him ‘Mr. Templeton’ which he completely dug.

‘Holy fuck. That’s not you brother?’ he said, mortified.

‘I don’t have any brothers.’

‘How is he?’

Clare produced a convincingly puzzled expression Tom once admired: A Supreme Court Justice would rule in your favor if you questioned a defendant with that expression, to which she’d answered, Hell will freeze over before I hit law school and replied, ‘Phillip owns the house and I live with him.’

‘Adventurously?’ Christian asked.

‘We do all right,’ she shrugged, silently noting, We did, once totally comfortable yet fearless until – when?

‘You been together a while?’

She said slowly, ‘Going on two years this summer.’

Putting an arm around her back, he declared that abundant time to really know a person. ‘If he knows what he’s doing, you should be a happy girl,’ he said emphatically.

Unused to gab sessions, the expected socialization in college instead an immersion with Tom and fight to make good grades, she offered, making sure Phil couldn’t hear, ‘He’s quite experienced.’

‘No one knows sex until they’ve been in a band, or slept with someone IN a band.’

‘Spend a lot of time making this true?’

‘Baby, I promise you – what you call good or great is nothing once you’ve made it with a successful rock and roller.’

‘What about a plain old guy from a band without a record contract?’ she frowned.

‘He wouldn’t know,’ he said logically.

‘Cheap sex,’ she said, hoping she looked neither too innocent nor eager.

‘Good practice. When someone’s that willing, inhibitions vanish,’ he said, snapping his fingers, ‘and availability is everything.’

‘Is it?’ she asked, really wanting to know, believing he should deliver a truthful answer.

He nodded attentively, staring at her hair, forehead, finally into her eyes. After a straight swig of whiskey, he asked equably, ‘Could I ask you back to Gavin’s house?’

‘Are you allowed guests?’

‘I’m allowed what I want,’ he said, dark, blue/ebony eyes firmly fixed on hers. So beautiful, if he weren’t Christian Woodard, man of rock and roll, he’d still be considered gorgeous; if willing to follow musicians, she’d have no choice but to trail him; feature for feature, he approached perfection. She lived with someone who could, realistically, throw her out for being a cheat under his own roof: Drunk, stoned Phillip, currently varying his routine with lines. Someone turned up the volume; now awfully tired of Phil’s endless rotation of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, she thought how fitting The Clash sounded. Who, she asked herself, advised Neil to sing? Christian suddenly pulled her up, and they walked out to the deck.

‘I need a real hug,’ he said, all bashful without the guys watching him. ‘Would you mind?’

Awkwardly tackling him as he gently righted himself while sweetly grazing her neck then resting his head on her shoulder, he advised, ‘Just stand with me,’ the come-fuck-me rhetoric in the house replaced by a dear sensitivity, which she imagined got plenty of girls in bed.

‘You doing all right?’ she asked.

He sighed and tugged her hair a little. ‘I’ve been through a bad time,’ he stepped away, ‘and I’m not supposed to use that shit.’

‘Then don’t.’

‘It’s that simple?’ he asked.

‘I couldn’t say because I’ve never tried it.’

‘You’re not missing out.’

‘What’s unnecessary should be easy to quit.’

‘Want to help me?’

‘Already my job description.’

‘For a spoiled rich boy? You wanted to?’ This shocked him, who’d seen it all.

‘Such was the plan,’ she said, not proud of the arrangement Phil suggested in Chicago.

Looking around furtively he announced, ‘You could do better. What’s happened he needs a girl like you rehabbing him?’

‘He had a broken heart.’ What kind of girls do you mean? Unbearably sexy and remote, or unlimited small-town innocents you seduced before and after hitting it big?

‘For that he gets you? Hope he knows you could just take off,’ he said, smiling endearingly. ‘What’s your name again?’

She couldn’t stop laughing; she backed away and shook with laughter, felt his hand steadying her, looked at him and collapsed into another fit of unstoppable giggles. He’d commented about her having a C name. Felt good being held, laughed with, and appreciated: She could do better. She slowly repeated her full name, inanely describing a recent legal name change. Nodding understandingly, he said his father’s egress inspired the underlying Heck writing theme: Kill him, find him, lord the bank account over him; he hated the bastard, wished him death for leaving him and his mother on welfare outside East St. Louis. ‘I bought her the biggest goddamn house. Then I sent her a credit card, her first. The bills go to me. And if my father’ – he almost spat the word – ‘shows up, I’ll beat the shit out of him.’

‘He hasn’t?’

‘I too use my mom’s name. He forgot us. When I was five.’

‘What was it before?’

‘Edwards, a name that stunk,’ he replied most Waspishly, then stated his full, legal name: Christian Maxwell, Woodard replacing his father’s surname. The classmates who publicly mocked the former Chris Edwards when Heck’s first album debuted weren’t invited to any hometown concert benefits for their old school.

Feeling terrible someone about 35 – she guessed – still felt such anger, she hoped to heal from her own father’s cruelty before turning 30. Looking at her skewed wrist, she believed Christian’s fury perfectly justified.

‘I love talking to you,’ he said shyly. ‘No one just listens anymore.’

‘I imagine people need things from you.’

The recognition on his face palpable: ‘Always. My ex-wife, the girl who sort of moved in, my mom – that I don’t mind – those guys. I’d like someone to just hear me, you know?’ He squinted at her detachedly and added, ‘Not that I know you or that goofball at all, but he’s extremely lucky.’

‘He’s been good to me,’ she said, thinking of Phillip swooping into the apartment, asking briskly, You packed? Ready for a long drive? Let’s load the car after less than a month. She saw Phil listening to Kevin, unaware she’d left. ‘Better make sure he has what he needs,’ she said inanely when Christian began slowly kissing her. Heavenly yet familiar, as he too tasted of pot and beer, and his tongue running over her teeth inveigled dormant sexual feelings. Lately Phillip touched her only when ready to screw, dispensing with things she usually liked, and fell asleep after. Christian slid his hand under the back of her shirt and said, ‘I’d like you to see the house. And Clare, don’t think I’ll ask again.’

‘I won’t.’ They kissed some more, breathing in the freezing air, and he had to wipe his nose for non weather-related purposes. They paused, started again, loosening up, a nice melding of good bodies and sweet, lovely attraction.

Slowly accepting Christian a non-optimum choice, traveling and meeting 18-year-olds, getting off drugs or liquor, she knew Phil would mention the betrayal at a rotten moment: after a long restaurant shift or finding her ski jacket on the back of a chair. She backed off Christian first, a rejection he accepted brusquely.

‘Maybe I’ll see you at the bar,’ he said, all business, buttoning his coat. He looked at her almost repentantly and said, ‘I really can’t call you. Too complicated.’

‘I agree.’

‘One last kiss?’ He gathered her in his arms again.

Gently, insistently running hands just under her waistband, slowly running a finger down one breast, her mouth now puffy and lightly bruised: She almost led him through the back entrance to the closed-off, finished basement. Silently returning him to the living room, minus a proper goodbye, she went upstairs and slept till noon when the house emptied. Cleaning up downstairs, she left Phil alone the rest of the day. Outside of MTV and a careful confession on Dateline years later about unfaithful wives who loved their addict husbands, she didn’t see him. She and Phil agreed never to discuss the party to discourage additional druggie musicians visiting. Not everyone brought their own liquor and mounds of fine grade cocaine.

Bruce refused to believe she only kissed the guy. He’d ask several different ways, waiting to say ‘A HA! But you said you DIDN’T sleep with him,’ and she never wavered. He always summed up with, ‘Bet you wish you had.’

That night she said, ‘There’s this one thing,’ placing takeout on trays and pouring Diet Cokes in glasses. ‘Something Christian said before we went inside.’ She nibbled pizza and Bruce watched patiently as he practically inhaled a few slices.

‘Some gem finally springs to mind?’

‘He wanted the last word. Typical,’ she explained, ‘of a man in a band.’

Bruce sat quietly, ostensibly to help her memory perk up. When he served salad and thunked the pizza box in the trash, she had it. ‘He was correct – I’d never be around anyone as famous,’ she said, eyes glimmering.

‘Are you afraid I’ll be mad?’

She looked at him witheringly and said, ‘Yup. I’ve blocked it until you were brave enough to handle it.’

‘Is it that bad.’

‘I said, Christian, this is the best night and how great is it we met? He believed me and said,’ she bit her lip and looked dolefully at Bruce, ‘You know what this means, right? It means,’’ she lowered her voice, ‘Now. Now you’re messing with a son of a bitch.’ Who could refuse that?’

‘That’s beyond nervy,’ Bruce began; she thought she’d pay admission to see him react like that again as he sputtered the line over and over in disbelief. ‘Now you’re messing,’ he started, laughed almost as hard as she over Christian’s forgetting her name. ‘Forget the secretarial work and write this shit down. Seabury’s family has a million publishing contacts. I’ll talk to him.’

Recalling Griffin Seabury’s lame advice about peddling her photography, she said, ‘I don’t think it translates to paper.’ He wouldn’t lend a hand then or now, didn’t think, I could help someone’s career or match them with the right connections. ‘He’s working too much these days.’

‘For Chrissakes,’ he said impatiently, ‘he’s my friend and wouldn’t mind offering a phone number. Put together a chapter and send it to whomever he recommends. Maybe you’ll have a new career.’ He wiped down and leaned against the counter, finished the huge container of soup. ‘Shuffling papers must get tedious.’

Not desirous of another man telling her to struggle with something in which she held a mild interest, picturing Bruce grading papers and shifting through contact sheets with endless helpful suggestions, she said firmly, ‘Mark’s a good boss, Megan’s fun, I know what I’m doing, and I like it there.’

‘I still think you could write,’ he said firmly, and she loved him for believing that.

‘You just really like that story. It has controlled substances, Aspen, famous people, and – almost –sex.’

‘It’s all in the telling. Wouldn’t be half as interesting if someone else wrote it.’

‘Depended on the writer,’ she said obstinately.

‘And I agree with Christian,’ he pronounced the name with East Coast élan, ‘that most girls aren’t propositioned like that.’

‘I was living with someone,’ she said stuffily, ‘who would have pitched me and my records into the cold Aspen night for embarrassing him in front of his third favorite band.’

‘Would that junkie have noticed?’

‘Just seemed sleazy to pack an overnight bag and say, See you, Phil, Christian here thinks I need to experiment.’

‘Were you that committed?’

‘I never cheated.’

‘Were you in love?’

‘I wouldn’t sleep with one person for two years without loving him.’

Later, after the electric blanket warmed and a quick scoot under the covers in the frigid bedroom, he said, ‘That story actually always turns me on,’ and started kissing her. ‘My girl could have slept with a famous musician and said no. And you rejected him but not me,’ he said proudly.

‘If I were with someone else, I’d have told you no.’

‘But I wouldn’t have hit on you.’ He smoothed her hair back over the pillow. ‘Sleeping with you is the best. Poor Christian. He missed out.’

After she and Tom lost their virtue together, she’d wondered why other women – and rarely men – thought sex such a sacrament. Some girls at school used it as a bargaining chip to ensure marriage, primly asking, what man didn’t respect a pure bride? She saw no reason not to enter it with abandon, free herself up, do whatever he wanted. She wasn’t shy about asking nicely for necessary techniques, reaching an orgasm, getting it right, meeting his needs. Tom loved it until his actual sexuality was no longer in question. Phil, awesome in the beginning, lost interest in her like he did everything else. Bruce never stopped admiring her abilities, lack of shyness, and love of a good time. Quite rarely she wondered if she should have had a one-night stand with Christian, dredging his compliments during idle or depressed moments. He’d said one thing she’d never told anyone: Always do what the other person wants, a sidebar after she’d removed his hand from her blouse buttons but before they went back to the living room. Because he believed himself the proud originator of this notion, she couldn’t bear telling him she’d known that since her first time with Tom. Happy someone saw things her way, she’d merely said, That’s exactly true.

     Pouring punch for donors shouldn’t involve answering personal questions. She smiled kindly and said, ‘I’m his guest.’

     ‘Pleased to meet you, Miss –‘

     ‘McAndrew. Clare McAndrew.’

     ‘I’m Georgia Brinkmeier. My husband, Bill.’

     Smiling benignly as they hovered and she filled cups, Clare thanked Mrs. Brinkmeier for attending. The lacquer-haired Georgia admired her outfit and asked who made it.

     ‘Bluefly. That’s a lovely dress.’

     ‘HE picked it out,’ she said proudly. ‘We get to the city every month.’

     Clare looked for Griffin, who’d warned her these events were unimaginably dull; he much appreciated her assistance. Cornered by another older couple, fixedly interested, he waited to excuse himself; everyone needed him. A classical trio in the drawing room sedately played, waiters passed crackers spread with, Clare suspected, supermarket cheese, and she hoped no one noticed her imbibing too much weak punch. She imagined filling a tiny basket designated for checks at the end of the table – her post – with her own and calling it a night. Griffin looked passably happy being glad-handed and drawn into serious conversations about someone’s son or daughter’s academic progress. He could be a politician, she thought, observing his deft handling of a struggling junior’s mother: He assured her Kristin would indeed benefit from one-on-one sessions with the next English teacher.

     A seriously dressed woman about her age approached the table. Clare immediately took in the Chanel jacket and trousers, Jimmy Choo heels and bag; it’d been weeks since she’d seen excessive designer pieces. For half a second she regretted not donning the expensive Marni dress and lovely, somber, yet stylish cardigan from Tom’s funeral, safe in their garment bag, hanging on her half of the closet. Felt plain ghoulish wearing the pristine almost-cocktail type number after its sad debut.

     ‘Thank you,’ Ms. Best-Dressed said tonelessly, accepting the drink.

     ‘Appetizer?’

     ‘All carbs. I’d need another hour at the gym if I ate that,’ she pointed at a tray of salami on toothpicks, ‘but the salt makes it so…tempting.’

     Tinier in frame, Clare bravely took two, and offered the other to Ms. Skinny, who looked upset at Clare helping herself. ‘They’re not pigs in a blanket,’ she said encouragingly like the bad girl on the overnight: Try one, I filched these from my mom’s purse, puff and inhale.

     ‘If my trainer yells at me, I’m sending him here.’

     ‘This isn’t my house, so he couldn’t find me.’

     ‘Are you allowed to talk to the guests?’ she whispered. ‘You’re quite friendly but I don’t want your pay docked for fraternizing.’

     ‘I’m in good with the school’s top people,’ she promised.

     ‘Still, I can’t get you in trouble.’

     ‘I appreciate that.’

     ‘But thank you for the treat. I never eat processed anything. So wicked!’ She wandered off to a man Clare presumed her husband, a tall East Bank Club type she’d seen at the bus stop.

     Griffin came over and asked, ‘How goes it?’

     ‘Look – two checks,’ she fixed him a drink.

     ‘I saw you charming the Dragon Lady,’ recoiling at the too-sweet, flavor-to-be-named later concoction.

     ‘Earning my keep.’

     ‘Maggie Jordan’s mother,’ he informed her, ‘gives great money every year.’

     ‘I serve that family a lot.’

     ‘This is utter swill,’ he said, unobtrusively hiding the silver cup behind a stack of napkins. With his dreaded ‘Let’s mingle’ she followed him obediently. Introduced to the drama teacher, assistant librarian, and so many parents she saw little point memorizing their names, Clare smiled politely at Todd Murphy, the owner’s son.

     ‘Have you met the Jordan’s?’ he asked after complimenting Clare’s slim-fitting sweater neatly draped over tight velvet skirt.

     ‘Only in passing,’ she said, surprising herself: Who said things like that? It was as common as I didn’t know him but I knew OF him.

     ‘They’re fun people. Ella? Andrew? This is Clare, Griffin’s friend from Chicago. Same neighborhood.’

     Ella graciously said hello again, Clare unconcernedly accepting her own non-recognition outside the work area. ‘What a smashing outfit,’ she said kindly. ‘Is it local?’

     ‘Online,’ Clare said, and everyone laughed.

     ‘Are you the young lady from the cafeteria?’ Andrew asked. ‘My daughter mentioned Mr. Seabury finally met someone.’

     Griffin recovered quickly and said, ‘Clare’s en route to Manhattan. We’ve been friends since…’

     ‘After college,’ Clare said smoothly.

     ‘We’ve talked about this, but I always forget.’

     ‘Nineteen eighty eight.’

     ‘Where in New York?’  Andrew asked.

     ‘The Village,’ Clare replied.

     ‘Hope you have a job lined up,’ Ella said.

     ‘She does,’ Griffin said proudly. ‘RothCo.’

     ‘I should say hello,’ Ella said, and walked towards the Brinkmeier’s.

     Andrew asked Griffin how the scholarship fund compared to last year’s.

     ‘We’ve had some generous contributions.’

     ‘My assistant sent ours.’

     ‘Already deposited,’ Griffin assured him.

     ‘Maggie’s decided to major in theater,’ Andrew said, resigned to wayward teenagers never listening to their parents, ‘at Yale.’

     ‘Let’s work on getting her math scores up,’ Griffin advised.

     ‘I saw. She’s been told,’ Andrew smiled. ‘You look very familiar,’ he said to Clare.

     ‘I lived on Fullerton and Cleveland.’

     ‘I’m with Equity,’ he said.

     ‘Twenty Two bus?’

     ‘That’s the connection,’ he grinned toothily.

     ‘More punch?’ she asked politely.

     Ducking behind the safe table, she meticulously poured and placed cups on a tray. Ella stopped by, looking bored; Clare understood. ‘May I?’ she asked, and Clare agreeably refilled. ‘I didn’t realize you were with our Headmaster,’ almost an apology.

     ‘My idea. Better than hiring an extra person to pour.’

     ‘They’re adequately staffed,’ Ella agreed. She sipped in no hurry to greet anyone. ‘Excited about New York?’ she handed a full glass to her husband en route to the jolly Brinkmeier’s.

     ‘Immensely,’ Clare said. ‘I leave in two weeks.’

     ‘What do you do till then?’

     ‘I’m already working,’ she said, sidestepping neatly, ‘which takes up most of my day.’

     ‘Why don’t we go outside for a minute?’

     They sat at a round patio table on the heated deck, grasping the nastiest cocktails ever, Clare grateful for something to do with her hands.

     ‘Sorry I dragged you out here, but I couldn’t handle more reintroductions. I’ll be happy when Maggie graduates,’ Ella said.

     ‘She reads a lot,’ Clare offered. ‘There’s always a pile of books at dinner, and she just devours them.’

     ‘Every night?’

     ‘The others are a little loud around boys, but Maggie’s not.’

     ‘She’s happy Mr. Seabury’s met someone.’

     ‘We’re keeping that quiet, setting a good example,’ Clare echoed Griffin’s commandment: Acknowledge, don’t encourage.

     ‘He’s quite a catch,’ Ella said mischievously.

     ‘Is that right?’ Clare, clearly the humble hunter, snagger of the Big Man on Campus, asked; Ella didn’t offer a kind word about two basically nice people meeting past traditional courting age.

     ‘I tried setting him up but he refused. And I mean pretty, successful friends with their own money.’

     ‘He’s aloof about personal things.’

     ‘I know,’ she smiled again.

     ‘How’d you meet your husband?’

     ‘A fix up, so I’m always thinking, Who can I introduce?’ She finished her punch. ‘You two should visit us in Chicago sometime.’

     ‘I’ll be on the East Coast,’ she reminded her.

     ‘Any plans for the holiday?’

     ‘Working on them,’ she replied. Marshall had called directly, insisting his lazy sons unpack and do her household tasks following their usual three-man dinner, now happily including her.

     ‘I’d hate Griffin all alone in that house.’

     Clare promised he’d be fine.

     ‘The school is like family.’

     ‘They’ve been very nice to me.’

     ‘Who have you met?’

     ‘Everyone here, and the kitchen staff,’ she explained, now stupefied beyond description. Never in her working years had she endured a gathering that made the Republican National Convention feel like Lollapalooza. And the baiting, vainglorious Ella, foisting her allegedly superior position over Clare, expecting her to grovel for approval: What a dimwitted observation about The Great Catch alone on Thanksgiving. Slightly miffed Griffin insisted on pinned up hair and real pearls, not the showy necklace and earrings locked in the Vuitton satchel, she’d been aggravated since the TSE sweater and cheapish straight skirt arrived 2 minutes before the noon deadline, fretting instead of working, opening the front door when a car passed. The pieces just fit, as did the mall shoes thankfully covered by a stiff satin hem. Unreasonably ticked off the Chloe hung safely in New York while charging the only decent option Bluefly promised for next day delivery, her annoyance increased when Griffin repeated she wear either a long dress or nice pants. She’d twirled a few times and asked him to inspect her with the magnifying glass in the junk drawer; he’d grabbed her arm too firmly with a curt, ‘We cannot be late.’ On the short walk to the Murphy’s private home, she’d calmly said, ‘This isn’t your first party,’ and he finally relaxed, wore his Headmaster look when they walked in the door. She offered to man the drink table, reminding him she’d bartended plenty, and he gratefully said that’d be helpful. Now Ella pried and dropped hints, and Clare, depleted of clever ripostes and disinterested, non-revealing answers, sat, stomach tightening and feet hurting. She couldn’t live this life, manipulating rich parents, adjusting to their skewed perceptions of childrearing, and asking for money without mentioning it. Slightly ashamed realizing the girls she’d tutored at the housing projects wouldn’t get here without these dopes, she sat up, appeared engaged and interested, ignoring the lightheadedness from skipped dinner and too much sweet punch disastrously combined with stale salami and crackers. No lunch, just Griffin’s standard breakfast of toast, eggs, and coffee. She pressed fingertips to temples as Bruce once instructed to relieve pressure, back when fierce headaches inexplicably swooped in, cluster migraines he’d diagnosed, from not eating or ingesting the wrong diet. Straightening her back, stretching her legs, unobtrusively drawing in abdominal muscles and breathing evenly, she fought a queasy, dizzy, unfamiliar wooziness, not the cozy, early-stages-in-the-drinking-game ease. There’d be no Xanax tonight after drinking like a member of Rod Stewart’s ‘70s entourage, a shame because this mix wouldn’t soothe her nerves and induce deep sleep.

     ‘Can you excuse me one minute?’ she finally asked. Ella watched curiously, then in horror as Clare made it to the bushes and threw up repeatedly.

     ‘Poor thing,’ she said, bringing cloth napkins and a glass of water. ‘You missed your dress, thank goodness. Don’t worry, no one saw.’ She wiped Clare’s face and urged her to drink. ‘That was the world’s worst cocktail. Who in hell made it?’

     ‘The caterer,’ Clare sputtered, almost in tears.

     ‘Want me to get Griffin?’

     ‘This night is too important. Uh oh, better stand back,’ and she hurled again, carefully selecting another garden section to ruin.

Ella pulled back wisps of hair the tortoiseshell vise couldn’t hold and patted her shoulder. ‘More?’

‘Oh GOD,’ Clare moaned, and threw up again. ‘I think I should be alone.’

‘That’s stupid. Can you sit down now?’ She solicitously helped her to a chair. ‘Maybe it’s a flu.’

Sinking into the hard wooden chair, Clare rested her chin on her hands. ‘I make a great first impression,’ she said, her stomach still uneasy.

‘Who cares? I got sick on the L years ago when I was pregnant. People actually laughed and only one guy helped.’

‘Well, thank God you’re here,’ she mumbled.

‘Stay put. The party’s about finished and Drew and I can drive you home.’

‘I think the fresh air helps.’ Head hurting while the shiftiness in her belly dissipated, she took another breath and tucked her feet under the chair. ‘You promise we don’t have an audience?’

‘Who could see through those curtains?’ Ella pointed to drawn drapes. ‘They’re all talking.’ She glanced through the glass door. ‘Okay, someone’s getting coats. Griffin’s looking for you.’

When he came outside, she offered a sickly smile.

‘What happened?’

‘Clare has a bug,’ Ella said. ‘Be careful not to catch it.’

‘We’re going home,’ he said, and she almost cried from the concern in his voice. ‘We’ll get a ride.’

‘I should walk just in case.’ The Jordan’s wouldn’t appreciate having to detail their car. ‘Can you get my coat and we’ll leave that way?’ She pointed to the back gate.

‘Whatever you want, sweetheart.’

Ella tenderly adjusted Clare’s scarf and patted her hand. ‘Griffin, call us if you need anything. We’re staying upstairs. Clare, lovely meeting you. Feel better.’

With a weak ‘thank you’ she clung to Griffin as he helped her down the steps and into the refreshing night air. ‘Not again,’ she muttered, and heaved behind a huge oak tree near his house. ‘I’m never sick like this, ever.’

Producing a clean handkerchief and gently wiping her forehead and mouth, he said kindly, ‘It’s okay. I’ll help.’

‘Did I destroy your event?’ she asked miserably.

‘I wondered where you went. Then I saw you and the Dragon Lady chatting which surprised me, cuz she’s generally stone-like,’ he explained, leading her up the front steps. After hanging up coats, they went upstairs; in the bathroom, he hung up her clothes, brought his softest t-shirt, and soaked a washcloth. She washed her face while he fixed her toothbrush and gently rubbed her back. Finally in bed, she suggested he sleep in the other room.

‘I will not.’

‘I wonder if I should take anything?’

‘I could call Bruce.’

‘It’s really late.’

‘Two hours earlier in Vail,’ he reminded her, taking the phone and dialing from the hallway. ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Clare’s been, uh, retching a while, and it doesn’t look like a normal flu. Some bad punch. Food or alcohol- poisoning maybe?’ Clare saw him pacing silently, listening earnestly. ‘Not long enough. She’ll get better here.’ Leaving the phone on the stair landing, he recited Bruce’s orders: ‘Drink water, eat rice, and sleep. And if you feel like this tomorrow, I take you to the doctor.’ He returned from the bathroom, shaking an old-fashioned thermometer. A minute later he said, ‘Ninety-nine. When it reaches a hundred, we go to the ER.’

Too weak to protest, she shrank under the covers and said, ‘Thanks for asking Bruce.’ A night of scary dreams: Heavy suitcases hand-carried 10 floors, law degree revoked, Daddy alive and making her move to her old room…Mama saying there wasn’t space for another, escorting her through the screen door where the school bus waited, driver saying HE’D decide when she could leave, she always sat in the back, away from that shifty-eyed weirdo. Isn’t anyone taking us home? Darcy little help as usual, giggling with those daft, dim footballers who never allowed Darius McCall a seat within 10 rows of their domain. ‘I’m more than okay, Clarinda,’ he said sweetly, hair choppily cut as some evil punishment from another of his awful mother’s boyfriends. She’d asked Mama if they could take him in, told Daddy the state would contribute – she’d read an article about welfare and foster kids, arrived at dinner armed with the facts – and he’d said, ‘I’m not taking in strays.’ Clare thought him better off away from her own wicked, moody, belittling father who acted nice about once a year. Awakening sweaty, panting, panicked, it took forever to remember Griffin’s house, and she reached for him, relieved he knew her and briefly awoke to ask what she needed…

She slept till almost 10am. Feeling slightly less shaky, she threw up again and called for Griffin, forgetting he had a class. She showered, changed the sheets, and curled up on the couch, then called Alex directly and explained she was taking a sick day.

 ‘This is a first. Last year’s walking pneumonia knocked you out one afternoon.’

‘Can anything wait?’

‘Check your e-mail for the last budget Liz and I sent,’ he said, ‘and go back to bed.’

More nitpicky corrections from Elizabeth, clearly detailing reasons the bank wouldn’t add another point. If I were Alex, Clare thought, I’d find another banker. Writing an agreement without suggesting that, she tried appearing less ghostlike when Griffin and Danko returned.

‘Your dog went to school,’ Griffin said proudly. ‘I didn’t want him nudging or bothering you.’

She turned on the seldom-used TV. ‘Why aren’t you at the office?’

‘Workday’s over. What do you want to do?’ he asked.

‘Beside lie here and wish for death?’ she stared at the ceiling, patted the companionable Danko resting on the floor.

‘My dad always stayed with us and played cards. We could watch movies or read. Are you hungry yet?’

‘Don’t say the F word. The sound sickens me.’

He sat at the other end of the couch and tucked her feet on his lap. ‘Is your stomach better?’

‘Yeah, it is,’ she lied.

‘How about your temperature?’ he asked, reminding her of the school nurse believing cramp lies, allowing girls to camp on the tiny cot during PE class.

‘Normal,’ another fib: she hadn’t checked it.

‘You look okay,’ he said, bravely leaning in for a kiss.

‘If we both got sick…’

‘No Marshall attending to us.’

‘Nothing on TV,’ she said miserably, ‘and I can’t work.’

‘Who said you had to?’

‘I cannot mess up this job.’

‘Missing one twelve hour day won’t send you to the unemployment line.’

‘You ever been on one?’

‘After TradeWell for a couple months.’ Between the office closing and moving to California, yeah, he’d taken advantage of a state fund fed for years. ‘That two fifty a week covered the basics.’

They settled on Shadow of a Doubt, Clare dozing off every few minutes. Awakening before the train scene, she said, ‘Actually a coke doesn’t sound bad.’

Gallantly fetching an icy one from the fridge, he resumed keeping her company on the sofa. ‘Anything else?’

Just to keep from talking, she said, ‘I ask everyone to describe a childhood moment.’

He said agreeably, ‘Any age?’

‘Earliest thought or memory. Like, way back. Something happy.’

Asking for a minute to dredge, he began: ‘Watching my mom hang wallpaper in our playroom. Jimmy and I held the rolls and she cut and spread the paste.’ Describing the wooden soldiers and drums, how she’d painstakingly measured, divided, and brushed, yet ran out with less than a foot of wall to cover and attached tiny shreds that created another marching warrior with a weird, distorted expression, he went on, ‘I cried when she said, Time to make dinner. Even grabbed her ankles and she dragged me down the hall, laughing, and Jimmy jumped on my back. She kept walking and pulling us, saying, ‘My boys,’’ he said happily. ‘Dad always said she moved like a ballerina.’

‘Which house?’

‘On the water in Rye. Dad kept it for a summer place when he moved to the city. Same wallpaper, same bedrooms with our hockey and lacrosse stuff.’

‘You SKATE?’

‘Since I could stand. Do you?’

‘We had a pond and Mom bought us skates,’ she began, remembering the second hand store and Mama’s insistence she and Darcy buy the next size up. ‘I laced them up and just…went.’

‘No one holding you up?’

‘I don’t remember anyone else there,’ she pictured the frigid pond, laces around her ankles, string mittens, not sure if they were hers or merely an image. She’d stepped onto the ice and buckled for a second, then slid easily. After one particularly gruesome scene of Dad’s where he’d left for a few days and returned a put-upon, misunderstood man, he’d watched her glide on the ice, a willing participant in her unneeded, unwanted audience. Five years old and she’d wished Mama told him to stay away. Bad man, she’d muttered while wobbling over bumps and branches. If Griffin asked, she’d not use this childhood story as an example of anything.

‘Are you up for it?’ Griffin asked as she shook off memories of dead parents and small poor towns.

‘One second,’ she said, wondering if she’d see the wallpaper or trophies.

‘How old? How far back?’

‘Five. First day of kindergarten. They made us drink milk from little cartons.’

Griffin asked if they weren’t standard issue like his school.

‘We made our own butter and drank pasteurized milk from glass bottles at home. I pretended I meant to open the other side and set a trend.’

‘You rabble-rouser.’

‘I shouldn’t have mentioned dairy,’ she said, scurrying to the first floor powder room. Dry heaves and the headache nearly gone. Griffin timidly tapped on the door.

‘Still?’ he asked in his heartbreakingly concerned voice. ‘I really think,’ he said, running the tap over a fresh washcloth, ‘we need to see the U of W doctor.’

Clare finally counted days, dismissing the lateness as merely aging or typical when straying from her usual routine, and agreed: Bruce was quite a good doctor and she seldom took ill. There’d been a scare with Phillip when, for one week, he’d cut out pot and promised to settle down; she didn’t have a career, he could teach or board more horses, and they’d learn to be good parents. With palpably sad relief, he’d said mawkishly, I would have loved experiencing this with you. She wouldn’t let him near her for weeks, fearful of another midnight run to the drugstore for every variety of pregnancy test.

Griffin helped her into jeans and another roomy pullover. In the car he glanced at her until she told him to focus on the road. ‘Want music?’ he asked.

Queasily conjuring needles, gauze, shaken vials, and swabs, she pictured a happier outcome than, A virulent strain probably picked up in the school cafeteria. Almost convinced her skin was at long last perfected, imagining Marshall the proudest grandfather in Manhattan, she shakily went into the ER, Griffin firmly propping her up and withdrawing her wallet, politely producing the Blue Cross card for the admitting nurse.

Dressed in a breezy hospital robe and Griffin’s thick socks, she perched on the metal table and swung her feet. Dear girl, what have you done now? Ready to take on the toughest assignment yet? Who knew you possessed such fertile bloodlines? Just wait – you’re a mere 5 days past the expiration date.  Expecting the doctor, she called out ‘Come in’ and saw Griffin, brow arranged in his concerned look, hovering in the doorway, arms balanced on the frame.

‘Too invasive?’ he asked.

He’d seen her at her sickest, weakest, least attractive; he shouldn’t mind a crackly paper dress and beat up socks. ‘Not really,’ she said simply.

‘Bruce said,’ he began almost shyly, ‘that if we haven’t been one hundred per cent careful, there’s a possibility.’

‘Quite doubtful. I mean, I’m not…under forty. And we’ve been cautious,’ she replied, putting aside the afternoon he practically jumped her after a rotten round of teacher conferences.

‘How would that be?’ he asked.

‘Something I didn’t dare want,’ she said honestly.

He looked at her strangely, as if they’d only recently met and she’d asked for a loan. ‘We’ve been together what, a month or so?’

Well, no mistaking how he felt. One more thing I get to do on my own, she thought, eyeing him quite unhappily, wondering how she’d believed in loving him. ‘Probably nothing to worry about.’

‘But I think –‘ Griffin started as the doctor stood politely, waiting for him to move.

‘It’s that way,’ Dr. Kendrick said less congenially, directing Griffin to the waiting room.

‘How is it?’ he asked, after the lovely exam and blood withdrawal.

‘Nauseating,’ she said. ‘The worst stomach flu on record.’

‘Any history of diabetes, high blood pressure…’

‘Just the big guns: Heart attack and cancer.’

He frowned at both awful diseases and asked which branch of her family carried what. She explained, and he said, ‘The lab’s open late. Any chance of the nine-month diagnoses?’

‘Too late for that,’ this time doubtfully. At last she’d be just like the other Pearl City/Winslow/Mt. Carroll girls: single, pregnant, unengaged. In the hour between not knowing and merely hoping, ticking off viabilities, her own money now, a nanny, working from home, envisioning crisply pastel walls and built-in bookcases brimming with vintage hardcover children’s classics, she dressed and walked to the front desk. Defiantly observing Griffin intently studying a month-old Newsweek and glancing at his watch, she wished he wanted this one thing.

‘It’s fine,’ she said briskly, donning coat and gloves. ‘I’m ready to go.’

‘What the –‘

‘We made too much of a simple flu.’

‘The doctor said that?’

‘Maybe not those precise words, but close enough.’

‘Clare, wait up. If you’re really okay why don’t we talk about what’s got you so cranky?’

‘If you catch this virus, you’ll understand,’ the first of many unbecoming but necessary prevarications.

CHAPTER ONE: BELIEVE WHAT YOU SAY

‘I’m in the picture too,’ Clare remarked, watching the images emerge. ‘It’s like the Ivy-League dining club before the big party.’

     ‘I looked right at you,’ Griffin said.

     ‘Your glasses caught me,’ she said. ‘I’m in them, so is the camera, and the group, the full reflection,’ she pointed helpfully.

     Looking at the snap, he said, in full view and range of the others, ‘Did you guys see?’ He held the photo and stared with her for a long time. ‘Wow. Leave it to you to notice the most artistic thing in this picture. If you hadn’t, in ten years I still would’ve missed it,’ and he shook his head in undeniable pride.

Our Own Funny Way

     ‘Are you up to your old tricks? Starving then overeating?’ Tom demanded.

     ‘I swear I’ve never been this hungry,’ Clare confessed, forcibly setting her fork on the plate. ‘It’s like I can’t eat enough, often enough, or fast enough.’

     ‘You look thin.’

     ‘We run ten miles a day and David’s on this insane weight-lifting routine, combined with Pilates at that gym.’

     ‘I meant you’re dazzling,’ he said with a flirtatious tone unheard in years. He peered at her forehead and stated the Chicago Botox administers as thorough as those in New York. ‘Can you afford it?’

     ‘I swapped legal services for botulism-filled needles. Speaking of looking good – where’s your guy?’

     ‘Another family drinking fete.’

     ‘He’s definitely missed. I’d have loved seeing him and David in another political discussion.’

     ‘Row, you mean.’

     ‘You look gorgeous, Tommy. I swear, you get better every year.’

     ‘Nice somebody notices.’

     ‘Who wouldn’t?’

     Popping more champagne, a gift from the head of a family foundation for which he seamlessly matched funds, resulting in a new wing named at Northwestern, Tom topped off the glasses of his surprise guests. Besides his enormous hourly rate – a fraction of Clare’s – the Holloway Foundation plied him with what he called moonshine.

     Griffin phoned earlier that week, after Tom invited Clare and David, and he and Elizabeth were available only on Saturday. Sensing her Chicago days numbered, she’d boldly requested Tom open the patio for six – not knowing Gib wouldn’t attend – then seven, as Griffin and Clare’s dear old friend was in town for a conference. Clare tossed a salad with the one dressing she made well and David showed off his culinary side with bottles of wine. Upon introduction to Elizabeth Prothero, Clare took in her groomed, self-possessed aura: Hair perfectly arranged in a chignon, tiny hint of makeup flawlessly applied, so-so outfit – why had a-line skirts made a comeback? – subtly showing a very firm, athletic build, absolutely of Griffin’s world; Clare wondered why they hadn’t just married in the first place. They’d lost almost 20 years, and she wanted to take them by the scruff of the neck and get them to the church on time. Griffin the invincible, always believing he could travel, explore, build huts in Poona, find a body of water to fight for hours, living without a sense of time chasing or prodding him into something solid. Elizabeth described her lovely job at LaSalle Bank, home a mere two blocks from Tom and Gib, Martha’s Vineyard family cottage next to Caroline Kennedy’s: Who’d fit in better with the Seabury clan? Was Griffin awaiting another solo camping sojourn and deep talk with nature, still the flower child despite his aversion to the topic of money?

     Bruce arrived as Tom served dessert, all apologetic about a late meeting and delayed flight; hopefully his contribution made up for unforgivable tardiness, and he produced two cases of expensive bottled beer.

     Clare thought he looked foxier than ever. Hair tamed but foppishly curly, slightly peppered with gray, he remained fit and thin, now a trusted and successful physician: uncomplaining, understanding, and caring. He slapped hands with Griffin, hugged Elizabeth, thanked Tom for including him, and embraced Clare very sweetly. Finally, he sat next to Clare and David and Tom brought him a warmed plate; Bruce scooped up food as if starved. ‘Long flight, boring presentation,’ he explained, starting on a second serving of potatoes.

     ‘Certification?’ David asked.

     ‘A different city every year,’ Bruce replied, then described the clinic outside Vail, his wife the Project Manager who installed new billing/scheduling software and instructed the staff on correct usage, and two brilliant, adorable kids. Gazing at Bruce’s eagerly produced PDA, Clare startled: How’d such sublime genes produce these sullen creatures? Couldn’t the photographer have waited half a second for better angles? Connery sneered like he’d climb the water tower someday, and JJ’s expression read: Slow learner, easily manipulated to beat up whomever the popular kids tell me to. Bruce spoke so highly of their sports achievements she believed her supposition about their academic performances correct. Perhaps, despite Maddie’s MBA from U of C and Bruce’s straight-A pluses – he’d shown her the report card stash in one of their fun moments – genius skipped their offspring. David appeared very interested as Bruce droned about their house, his parents, the fresh Colorado air – what would she know about that – and Clare imagined leaving the table for twenty minutes when Bruce wound up his latest plumbing saga; he wouldn’t notice nobody listened.

     ‘Remember that, Clare?’ he asked, third serving plate empty in front of him.

     Griffin helpfully named the after-game outing where she first met Bruce.

     ‘Nineteen eighty-nine,’ Clare said without nostalgia.

     ‘’Eighty-eight,’ Bruce corrected her.

     David asked if said ‘80s inebriation caused poor recollection.

     ‘I made it through that decade smashed,’ she said drolly.

     ‘I knew you drank up,’ he said delightedly, pulling her onto his lap and running a hand down her back. ‘So you kids hung out in Wrigleyville? Clare loves it.’

     ‘My second home,’ she said, looking at him meaningfully, the public affection entirely comfortable in Tom’s private garden. ‘Give me those triple-size drink cups and a nice Cubs shirt.’

     ‘We saw,’ Elizabeth chimed in. ‘Griffy showed me the website. How despicable, that girl spilling beer, and someone traipsing after you.’

     ‘It was dark, and I suspect there’s more than one goofball following me – us. Clare’s figuring out who’s stalking me, right?’

     ‘Allegedly,’ Clare said. Sherry said they’d have to hire a PI at this point, and asked if she knew, in her job capacity, of any officers who might help. Clare promptly called Officer Grainias who gleefully promised to catch the intrusive groupie while David dismissively suggested the person would eventually lose interest in his morning routine.

     ‘And poor Griffy, getting chewed out,’ Elizabeth went on, smiling.

     Clare looked at her directly and asked quietly, ‘Didn’t it help?’

     ‘I HAD to meet you two,’ she said gratefully.

     Griffin nodded almost happily, and Clare imagined how her heart would have broken years before. David drew her even closer and whispered: ‘Our job is done.’

     In a soft voice: ‘Any other jobs come to mind?’ and loved the actual blush spreading across his cheeks. Not a favorite act, she performed it in keeping with the meet-your-partner’s-needs approach. He’d recently confessed no one even pretended interest in giving or receiving and she replied, ‘I’m fine with or without it,’ convinced until trying half an Ambien first.

     ‘Dirty mind,’ he said directly in her ear before kissing it.

     ‘Some people need a heavy-footed kick to get them to straighten up and fly right,’ Tom said suddenly. ‘Must’ve been uncomfortable seeing it so publicly though.’ He’d been awfully quiet since Bruce’s arrival, drinking increasingly while being an excellent host. Clare reached across the table and said, ‘I agree.’

     ‘Me, too,’ David added. ‘Sorry, Griffin, I’m sometimes direct.’

     ‘Big news,’ Clare said.

     Elizabeth laughed and inched her chair closer to Clare’s. ‘I’m so glad he went on that camping trip, saw you again, and got yelled at,’ she said, eyes flashing.

     ‘Happy to assist,’ Clare said agreeably.

     ‘What about you two? Still just pals?’ Griffin asked, eyeing Clare and David, all over each other.

     ‘And that’s all we ever will be, so I don’t hope for more,’ David said resignedly. ‘Hey everyone, Griffin was funny just now.’

     ‘How rare,’ Elizabeth said.

     ‘I crack you up plenty,’ Griffin protested.

     ‘Honey? Someday you’ll run out of family members to mock.’

     Clare decided in another context – co-workers, she at a better school on scholarship – Elizabeth might have been her friend. Alex would be into her – he liked smart polished blondes with respectable careers. Realizing she’d slept with three of the four guys, nothing she’d regroup again socially – her total a meager 6 and she’d probably not have a sit-down again with Tim Reiser, Phillip Templeton, and Alex Rothman – Clare fractioned three-fourths, 75% of the male entirety at the table.  The night before, David asked who satisfied her more, he or Moneybags Rothman, and she’d written fake critiques while he solemnly promised to improve. ‘On what?’ she’d asked. ‘Any better, I’d never get to work,’ kicking off a highly tactile session.

Noticing Tom’s polite, distracted, faraway look, she followed him into the kitchen with a tray of dirty dishes despite his protests she act like a guest. ‘Something’s not right,’ she said.

     ‘How perceptive.’

     She sat on the counter, site of deep talks since he and Gib bought the Huge House. ‘They’re all drunk on bad beer and good champagne, so we can, you know…’

     ‘Gib’s leaving,’ he said simply. ‘Correction: He’s left.’

     With a what-the-fuck expression, she said, ‘Christ, Tommy. Why didn’t you say anything?’

     ‘I didn’t cancel tonight because I thought a houseful would keep me busy. And I’m glad because those are some really nice people.’ He turned to wipe his eyes and Clare immediately looked at the photos on the icebox, remembered another correlation between them: He didn’t hug often. ‘If you can believe this huge cliché, he’s decided he doesn’t like the gay fucking lifestyle, which is pitiful considering he acts straighter than you and your guy.’

     She asked carefully, ‘Where’s he going?’

     ‘To a wide woman in Lake Geneva convinced we’ve merely lived in the same house all these years.’

     Clare laughed out loud and felt terrible until Tom smiled grimly, appreciating her enjoying his humor. ‘How big? Country club pool large, cellulite size fourteen?’

     ‘Looks like his ex-wife, only sturdier. You met her in June.’

     ‘Oh, heavens,’ racking her mind for the described desperate divorcee, unable to pinpoint her: They all looked and dressed alike in terrycloth and gaudy print cover-ups. It’d been 4 days of non-stop, collegiate partying, most embarrassingly enjoyable away from the city, same urbanites in a spa-like setting, any excuse for the cocktail hours… ‘David could have him disbarred, and let’s see, I’ll cut off her fudge supply.’

     ‘Thanks for taking my side.’

     ‘I always do, Finnegan. And you know what? You’ll meet someone cuter, younger, and nicer in about a minute.’

     ‘He’d better be like you,’ he said, helping her down, ‘if that means anything.’

     ‘Sort of,’ she said doubtfully.

     ‘I mean, he’ll understand me like you did, and just be a he.’ His lips briefly grazed hers and a second later she thought, Didn’t happen…but it did again, Tom moving closer, merely requiring comfort, she decided.

     ‘Oh, don’t,’ she said easily, unstirred after years without him, mind firmly fixed on passionate nights with David, her boss; how’d that happen?

     ‘Forgotten when we’re sober tomorrow,’ he smiled widely, eyes crinkling Bobby Kennedy-style.

     They returned to the deck where Elizabeth instructed Griffin on correct table clearing. David and Bruce, locked in serious talk, spoke of liability, lawsuit, and asset management. She and Tom looked at each other, shrugged, and he popped open another bottle. ‘Well?’ he asked, conveying a need to get and stay really intoxicated. As they drained their glasses, Elizabeth edged over to the built-in bench, and held out her champagne flute.

     ‘Pardon my abysmal manners,’ Tom said formally, ‘for not offering additional bubbly.’

‘You’re in your own world.’

     ‘Off-putting, isn’t it?’ he asked.

     ‘I just dealt with deadly cold Asian bankers, so nothing gives me chills.’

     ‘You’re in M and A?’

     ‘I manage and find deals, yes.’

     ‘Where’d you get your MBA?’ Clare asked.

     ‘Northwestern.’

     ‘Me too. Double law and MBA,’ Tom explained, ‘after NIU with Clare. Hey, that dessert was disgustingly good. Where’d you learn baking?’

     ‘Our housekeeper shared her recipes and I’d practice, give away the results. I don’t eat much.’

     ‘Clearly,’ Tom smiled.

     ‘How’d you get Griffin to eat anything not on the macrobiotic diet?’ Clare asked.

     ‘That closet gorger? He’d work out, eat vegetables, I’d make a torte or a devil’s food cake and there’d be, like, crumbs the next day. This is when we dated after college.’

     Working her way to a deeper non-sober state, Clare said disdainfully, ‘The grief he’d give me about carbs, white flour, preservatives, and outdoor living…’

     ‘When?’ she asked.

     ‘TradeWell. I hung out, rarely, with Jeremy’s group.’

     ‘YOU’RE the assistant he talked about ALL the time! I got it. Jesus. Jeremy. Not a big fan.’

     ‘Tom – you remember him from that night at Café BaBa Reeba.’

     ‘Am I supposed to?’

     ‘He went off on the bartender and you gave him why for what for.’

     ‘The tall guy? Beefy, blond, bitchy?’

     Clare nodded. ‘He and Bruce with those shiny pretty girls,’ and Tom appeared to picture the scene anew. ‘What do you have on Jeremy?’ she asked.

     ‘Oh, I know he’s Griffin’s best pal since finger-paint class, but honestly, I always found him gross. Even in college he acted like a salesman, you know?’

     Closer to wasted, Clare and Tom repeatedly voiced their agreement: Jeremy was shady, seedy, snippy, madly in love with himself. Or had been, Clare added, reckoning law school happened after she knew him and the JD presumably promoted open-mindedness. Tom’s look suggested she was beyond cracked and firmly announced Jeremy earned behind the back cruelty.

     ‘He takes this traveling job, comes home, plays the proud papa, Sara worships him, and I’m positive he’s’ – Elizabeth looked over at Griffin, his chores completed, now sitting with David and Bruce – ‘playing around. He had an offer at AG Edwards five minutes from the house, instead he does this big routine about keeping accounts on the West Coast, like the company would crumble without him. Sara believes EVERYTHING,’ she went on intensely, ‘and she’s nice and all, but blind as a bat. He set up the living-by-her-parents like a family man, but that job keeps him away from everyone. I told Griffy if he ever acts like Jeremy, I’ll walk. Not that I’m positive we’ll have kids,’ she said in a sad tone.

     Clare and Tom reassured her: She could have a baby anytime. Knowing Griffin’s work ethic, Clare very much doubted Elizabeth should worry about marrying a long-distance career man.

     ‘This is it for you and Griffin, right?’ Tom asked.

     ‘I hope.’

     ‘Then we’ll have another party, right here,’ Tom said decisively.

     ‘I’ll send out for a cake,’ Clare offered.

     ‘If you two aren’t the nicest people I’ve met here,’ she said. ‘I don’t want a big to-do because I already did that.’

     ‘Why didn’t you get married after college?’ Clare asked.

     ‘We were too immature. Griffin’s lack of direction, my need to make loads of money and be more successful than my sister,’ she explained, her liquor consumption finally displaying a less haughty side. ‘After the divorces, actually BEFORE my divorce…’ she blushed. ‘I knew it wasn’t right to stay with Greg if I didn’t feel this way’ – she angled her shoulder towards Griffin – ‘about him.’

     ‘Where were you?’ Tom asked.

     ‘Here. I’ve been in the Gold Coast ten years.’

     ‘And Griffin, one state over…you guys, um, got together?’ Tom asked, fascinated.

     ‘Not until later,’ she said sternly.

     ‘Got it,’ Clare said hastily.

     ‘Since we’re all friends,’ Elizabeth continued, holding out her glass while Tom uncorked their third shared bottle, ‘Clare, tell me about Alex Rothman.’

     ‘Just read the Journal,’ Clare replied coolly, embracing the lightweight feeling in her back, neck, and forehead. ‘He was,’ she drew Tom and Elizabeth closer, ‘a fine man, but no –‘ she stopped just before ‘Griffin John Seabury.’ ‘Like, not marriage material, pardon my quoting a self-help book I’m sure exists. You can’t stay with someone who doesn’t love you enough to propose.’

     ‘That is so TRUE,’ Elizabeth nearly shrieked. ‘Right, Thomas?’

     ‘I’m not a marrying man.’

     ‘You can still agree with us.’

     ‘Okay. Clare is right. Always correct. All-knowing. Doesn’t miss a beat.’

     ‘This is the best dinner party,’ Clare declared.

     ‘You ever talk to Alex?’ Elizabeth asked.

     ‘He’s very dismissive of anyone who misbehaves. It’s my fault for going to a Cubs game.’

     ‘No David if you’d skipped it. Be glad,’ Tom advised. ‘Alex never would have given you what you wanted.’

     ‘David’s a summertime thing, nothing serious, what the old boy network calls a heckuva good time,’ she said, looking at David while hoping to dismantle Elizabeth’s uppity wall of propriety.

     ‘Ladies. Let me advise you since I’m clearly the Love God. Lizzie – march down to City Hall on Monday in a chic late summer suit and marry that guy who, frankly, I don’t see what the fuss is about. Clare. You were about to propose to Alex, and instead nailed a Chi-town Eligible Bachelor,’ Tom said.

     ‘I’m truly living the dream,’ Clare replied.     ‘I want to be asked,’ she said, subtly imitating Elizabeth’s superior tone, ‘in a nice way, wearing something Alex didn’t send me.’

     Elizabeth asked, ‘Like those?’

     Clare nodded, then flexed and pointed one foot, thinking Oh, no, you can’t do that, once you started wearin’ those shoes…  I am officially dreadfully, ecstatically drunk, and congratulated herself for not actually saying, or more horribly, singing the lyrics.

     ‘Stunning,’ Elizabeth said sincerely. ‘Tom, why’d you say that about Griffin?’

     ‘He’s held in high esteem,’ Tom answered jovially, ‘but definitely not my type.’

     They laughed too loudly and Clare spilled champagne on Tom’s shirt, which he found unbearably hilarious. ‘Thousand dollar shoes bring out her unbelievably giddy side,’ he sputtered, nudging Clare’s arm as he refilled her glass. ‘Sip. This isn’t a shot contest.’

     ‘Thousand,’ she sniffed, ‘check your facts. FIFTEEN hundred. A grand gets you those sneakers.’

     ‘How about two?’ Tom asked, nonplussed.

     ‘Almost a purse.’

     Tom covertly informed Elizabeth that Alex, Clare’s ex-paramour, once sent handbags by the carton: ‘Her closet looks like an accessories department.’

     ‘How many?’ Elizabeth asked.

     ‘Don’t count on your fingers,’ Tom admonished as she named a patent tote, bunch of evening bags, tweed numbers, quilted day purses, and one-of-a-kind jeweled clutch Anna Wintour also owned. When the money ran out, she’d hock it all on e-bay; some debt/new expense always showed up just as her bank balance hit twenty grand.

     ‘Baker’s dozen,’ Clare concluded nonchalantly.

     ‘What does your guy buy you?’ Tom asked.

     ‘Plants,’ Elizabeth said glumly. ‘Couple silver chains from India, stuff he found on the street.’

     Clare said leniently, ‘Things with great sentimental value.’

     ‘I’ll take this black number over a fern any old day,’ she said, dangling the new rectangular envelope-type pocketbook by its chain and satin ribbon handles. Clare wanted to say, You could loosen your purse strings, Honey, not liking her own comparison of Alex’s hard-earned new money to Elizabeth’s tightly held 10^th generation, pragmatically doled family dough.

     ‘Next birthday say, I love your appreciation of nature, but a lady needs Marc Jacobs more than something requiring daily spritzing,’ Tom counseled.

     ‘He’s generous in other ways,’ Elizabeth said.

     ‘You deserve to be showered with good things,’ Tom said firmly, ‘and homemade granola muffins and Patagonia don’t count.’

     Clare chuckled for the 30^th time and told Elizabeth, ‘A guy I dated in Aspen gave me painted rocks.’

     ‘And you didn’t stone him why?’ Tom looked surprised missing a minor detail from their brief estrangement.

     ‘Seemed a fitting gift from my roommate Euell Gibbons.’

     ‘Actual gravel with pastel designs?’ he asked.

     ‘He’d scrub them in the river, bake them in the sun, and –‘ she looked down embarrassed. ‘I bet creeping Charlie’s sound dreamy by comparison,’ she said to Elizabeth. ‘They’re somewhere on the bookshelf,’ she added almost timidly.

     ‘Alex was a giant step up,’ Tom said.

     ‘I dated in between,’ she reminded him.

     ‘Did you two – were you ever together?’ Elizabeth asked.

     Clare glanced heavenward and said, ‘I guess,’ as Tom answered, ‘More than three years.’

     ‘I totally sensed that,’ Lizzie the Mystic stated, ‘like when I walked in here.’

     ‘Our groovy connection,’ Tom said.

     ‘Even a blind man knows when the sun is shining,’ Clare added, making perfect sense to one of her drinking partners.

     ‘The only woman I’ve slept with,’ Tom admitted.

     ‘Would you ever again?’ Elizabeth asked.

     ‘We just met and you’re already bringing up marriage, and sex? Didn’t someone say shots quite recently?’

     ‘That was you,’ Clare playfully pinched his arm. ‘Be right back.’ Arranging a tray in the kitchen and adroitly blending a bunch of rums to create Coconut Willies, a drink she’d learned her second round at the Blue Point when the bar became her home again and no one wanted to end a shift, she poured batches into Waterford pitchers and gracefully walked back to the deck, deftly served Tom and Lizzie who threw back as if sampling the tastiest froth since Spring Break. ‘So glad you tended bar before your boring law career,’ Tom toasted her.

     ‘It IS boring,’ Clare said, recognizing an essential axiom about her tedious, tidy days. ‘Remember law school was your big idea.’

     ‘We needed commonality.’

     ‘Liking ninety-eight per cent of the same music wasn’t enough,’ Clare said.

     ‘What two percent?’ Elizabeth asked.

     ‘Pink Floyd,’ they said in unison.

     Again they toasted the amazingly gorgeous summer evening and quoted random songs germane to their drunk and getting drunker conversation. She couldn’t pass the bottles because she had blisters on her fingers; Tom refused to believe she was just a bartender who didn’t like her work; Liz’s Everybody have fun tonight met with raised eyebrows and Clare’s sorrowful, ‘You make me feel like I don’t care’ a most unrecognizable citation according to the nearly baffled response. Patiently explaining the peppy, Pete Townshend composition, Clare envisioned her first fully-viewed video in the new MTV days and struggled to educate someone roughly her own age who never hung out with directionless public university druggies.

     ‘What’s got you three all happy?’ Bruce, no doubt pausing another chapter in his gutter-cleaning saga, called out.

     ‘This,’ Tom replied, holding up a glass.

     ‘Clare knew how to get me laughing,’ Bruce said amiably.

     ‘He kept me around for entertainment,’ Clare tossed back.

     Bruce said mischievously, ‘And you were a brilliant chef.’

     ‘I like her cooking,’ David said.

     ‘God, he must be seriously delusional,’ Tom said to Elizabeth. ‘Are you performing some acutely unusual acts to keep him that enamored?’ he asked Clare.

     ‘That’s about it right there,’ Clare said affably, and Tom smiled.

     ‘My dad would call you a real dish,’ Elizabeth said to Clare. ‘He likes a well-dressed lady who handles her liquor.’

     ‘She’s going to write that one down and paste it to the refrigerator,’ Tom said.

     Ignoring him, Clare asked, ‘Isn’t Griffin’s dad the limit? He’d be the best father-in-law.’

     Elizabeth shrugged and said, ‘He’s something.’

     ‘I even like him,’ Tom said.

     ‘Because?’ Clare asked.

     ‘You seldom like anyone,’ Tom reminded her, ‘so I take your recommendation most seriously.’

     ‘You’re lucky,’ Clare told Elizabeth wistfully.

     ‘I’ve had a father-in-law,’ she replied.

     Clare tried, ‘You’re getting a better one.’

     ‘I am?’

     David ambled over and whispered to Clare he honestly couldn’t suffer through another college, drinking, or college drinking story.

     Clare looked up, surprised: ‘I thought you were having a deep and interesting conversation.’

     ‘We lawyers make fine actors.’ Asking for that white tropical drink and slamming three full shots, he said, ‘I’ll need a month to recover.’ Pouring for his tablemates, he confided maybe this would make them less insufferable.

     Turning up the outdoor music system, Tom asked no one make requests or suggestions and everyone simply enjoy his exquisite and refined choices.

     ‘No party’s complete without the Beatles, Stones, and Clare’s personal friends, Heck,’ Tom gleefully told Elizabeth. ‘They go way back.’

     Apparently those four hours were the most interesting thing about her.

     ‘You’re friends with who?’ Elizabeth inquired.

     ‘The only California rock band melded with Dylan influences I can listen to,’ Tom explained smoothly.

     ‘Met them in Aspen,’ Clare told her, ‘which I stupidly told people.’

     ‘Partied hard with them too,’ Tom added. ‘Especially Christian Woodard, the luscious lead. Go, Clare.’

     ‘That tired tale?’ she asked easily, knowing the story would take mythic proportions at her level of drunkenness around the equally inebriated Elizabeth. Keeping the last seconds of her and Christian’s conversation an important secret all these years, she wouldn’t invite additional sex talk with her first lover and almost-pal who, though unlikely to admit it, would probably find it worth repeating. David’s energy and eagerness to please, Clare was pretty sure, would align with Christian’s assertion she’d learned long before the Aspen party through the ex who’d just dropped kisses on her in his Charlie Trotter-type galley.

     ‘But I do,’ Tom said slyly.

     ‘Please, no,’ Clare said, hoping he’d tell the Clare often fought off men with a stick version.

     ‘They’re the guys who sang Out Go the Lights, right?’ Elizabeth asked innocently.

     Groaning at an inexcusable lack of musical knowledge, Tom told Clare her thirtieth telling of the Heck story would be wasted on someone who probably, even consistently, never learned – or understood – the words. ‘Let’s work on getting you some decent birthday swag,’ he said sympathetically to Elizabeth.

     In a pleasant voice Clare said, ‘Pat Travers sang that, if you want to know,’ another important musical footnote from the brief NIU days, classmates jumping up and down at a house party, shouting lyrics, the record player somehow not skipping.

_

 ‘I’m cleaning up. You don’t have to, in fact you shouldn’t…’ she trailed off. Silently piling forks into shot glasses balanced on beer bottles, the guys practically shushed her. Returning to Tom and Liz, she reflected 2am the absolute latest she’d been up and out in years. Could be later; drinking always compromised her vision and she couldn’t make out the Roman numerals on the wraparound Hermes thing Alex insisted went with her better look. Standing on the deck between two groups, still recalling liquor expeditions in DeKalb during her low-achieving but semi-fun 20s when Tom announced, ‘Clare’s hilarious all loosened up,’ she wished she’d enjoyed those four years more. How dumb of me to chase a boy who insisted the lights remain off and no one hear a thing…the only life risks I took were forced on me. And Aspen…Coulda had a thing with a genuine heartthrob, as if Phil didn’t flirt outside the house…faithfulness is utter tripe, shouldn’t be a rule until you’re good and married. With real clarity she knew David didn’t like being nice to women concurrently, and doubted another girl had the stamina to keep up with his inventive night moves. Sidling up to her, David asked, ‘What’s got you in that little dreamland?’

‘You need to know?’ Things were a little more wild than affectionate the night before; she’d awoken, surprised neither appeared discomfited. Oh, yeah, she’d replied before the party when he’d asked, Wasn’t that something?

Gripping her waist playfully, he replied her thoughts were always interesting when she deigned to relay them.

‘I have an empty glass,’ she said ruefully.

‘Is Pete Townshend ever out of your mind?’

‘Not since nineteen eighty. You and Delta House about done?’

‘I’m officially in the club,’ he said, displaying another full bottle. ‘Sneaky little bastards.’

‘When’s the next Cubs outing?’

‘You’re going too,’ he smiled too confidently.

‘Over my cold dead body,’ she said in a low voice, holding the bottle high above her head. Their eyes locked and they fell into a kiss most unsuitable around these picky and refined East Coast folks. When they unlocked, she swore liquor didn’t make her think Griffin looked at her sadly, not pityingly.

_

     Bruce, Griffin, and Elizabeth thanked Tom profusely, praising his house, food, and wonderful hospitality. Following promises of dreaded baseball games, David sat at the kitchen table and opened the party replay: ‘What’s she see in that guy?’

     Tom explained they’d waited a terribly long time to be together.

     ‘I see – it’s a habit. The guy’s a complete washout.

You weren’t stuck listening to Griffin Seabury for hours. You’d think life experience would give him something to say.’

     ‘How dull?’ Tom asked.

     ‘Good Christ. That lock jaw, and chuckle, and nodding. Who could hear anything? I’m sure he dropped a Binky, Bitsy, and Mimsy.’

     ‘You had a good time,’ Clare said.

     ‘Speaking of, I should’ve sat with you sots.’

     ‘She’s bombed,’ Tom nudged her.

     ‘Courtesy of some fine champagne,’ she said proudly, placing six empty bottles in the recycling bin. ‘And damned excellent blender drinks.’ They listened to the ensuing clinks of many, many empty beers. ‘What?’

     ‘When you’re drunk, you move very precisely,’ Tom offered.

     ‘So no one knows you’ve been drinking,’ David added.

     ‘So it APPEARS that way,’ Clare said. ‘Who likes a sloppy drunk?’

     Both guys raised their hands slowly and solemnly.

     ‘Fuck you both,’ she said giggling, perching on the counter and drawing her knees primly together. ‘Everyone like the shoes?’

     ‘I thought Lizzie was going to filch them,’ Tom said.

     ‘She has monstrously huge feet,’ David explained.

     ‘Is there anything about her you didn’t notice?’ Clare asked.

     ‘Honey, when you’re that tall with size elevens, people see it.’

     ‘These are safe from gigantic blonde poachers,’ Clare nodded, stretching her legs and admiring the satin and suede encasing her puny feet.

     ‘Did Clare tell you where she got those?’ David asked in a deadly calm voice.

     Tom carefully placed dried champagne glasses in the cabinet over the bar and replied, ‘Can I fix some coffee?’

     ‘Sure, Thomas, after you answer.’

     ‘Decaf would work,’ Clare said briskly, finding the labeled bag in the freezer.

     ‘Guys? I’ve had a miserable week and not up to moderating a fight,’ Tom said tiredly.

     ‘Sorry, Pal. Did you get it sorted out?’

     ‘I think we’ll sell this place,’ Tom replied.

     Clare explained, after Tom nodded, that Gib Morrow had left.

     ‘That’s unfortunate,’ David said contritely. ‘Is there anything we can do?’

     Tom took a deep breath and leaned on the counter, gripped the edges, looked extremely pale. ‘Not one thing. But thanks for offering.’

     ‘I don’t feel like looking for a cab,’ Clare said casually, ‘so it’s okay to stay over, right?’

     ‘Sure,’ Tom and David replied.

     Tom waved his hand towards the back stairs: ‘Clare knows the way. I’ll be up in a minute.’

     Inside one of four spare bedrooms, Clare explained she didn’t think Tom should be alone.

     ‘Obviously,’ David agreed, taking the extra pajamas Tom thoughtfully left in the dresser.

     Clare changed, rinsed off makeup, carefully hung her dress, saw the sliver of light under the master bedroom door and knocked gently.

     ‘Like hell,’ he replied when asked how he was doing. He sat in the huge chair, feet propped on an ottoman, holding an unopened file. ‘And I have, like, three proposals to finish by Monday.’

     ‘May I?’

     Not incredibly versed in family law, she willed herself to sober up, managed to sort some research, about to open the laptop when David knocked and asked if they were STILL partying…

     ‘It’s work,’ Clare said.

     ‘I know a little about them,’ he explained after he read HOLLOWAY. ‘Let’s see it.’

     Around five a.m. Clare and David finished parsing the folder contents. Tom offered, in a depressed monotone, a few pertinent names and facts while David commandeered the laptop, confidently typing a forty-page report with his insanely thorough research prowess. He printed the final revised copy and Clare placed it neatly in the file, Tom now ready for a lengthy family foundation meeting in Lake Forest on Monday.

     Besides feeling like a carefree society girl, Clare loved champagne for a buzz that faded fast enough to help a friend. David passed out almost immediately, while Clare reviewed the few flirtatious comments Bruce made. Of the magnetic Elizabeth Prothero who, while certainly good on paper, still wouldn’t get Griffin Seabury to settle down, she generously thought, If she’s willing to forgo marriage, why not with someone who’d treat her to good things and not offer camping trips as dates? It’d be an excellent way to repay Sherry and get the annoying Minn off her private line while returning Alex to his typical good-guy state.

I’ve tried the normal life and can’t live it well. So I buy nothing except the necessities and try remaining anonymous. Where others hit bars and live among friends and family, I tough it out writing (4 books, no agent), reading, demystifying classic movies and, not bursting with pride here, viewing the occasional rerun. Working 2 part-time jobs and playing the same classic rock as I write, I live like I’ll never run out of options.

I did one or two good things: Helped raise someone else’s kids who turned out beautifully and continue to treat me as part of the family, and trained and owned the World’s Best Golden, born 20 years ago today. Purebred magic, Dylan loped over to me at the kennel in Antioch, I picked him up, wrote the check lest anyone else chose him, and happily filled out his papers, naming him Gypsy’s Golden Dylan. I easily and happily admit ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ played just before I pulled into the breeder’s driveway. I didn’t take him directly home; my friend’s 6-year-old son had to see him first and the sheer joy on that kid’s face provides a facile pipeline to happiness. Finally, in my dinky basement apartment on Fullerton Avenue, Dylan snooped around, crawled on the shower floor, and fell asleep. Awakening at 5am with a pitiful, where-am-I wimper, I took him outside on a steamy August morning. A trader-neighbor saw us and said, ‘They say pretty girls pick pretty dogs,’ or something equally smarmy. Dylan was the first celebrity puppy in our building: People clamored for him and every single guy requested his company for girl-hunting in the park. If unnoticed when someone passed us, he’d watch them go, turn, sit, practically raise his paws in a what’d-I-do position. A top news anchor, previously offering indifferent hellos, perched on his knees, uncaringly scuffing his Gucci loafers and navy blazer/grey flannel trouser ensemble to inquire about said hound’s superior bearing and bloodlines, patting him estatically. Unused to much attention, I lived the orbit of fame well, primly explaining: Golden retriever. Not a labrador. Don’t know about golden labradors. Fremont Kennels. 6 weeks/8 weeks/3 months. Housebreaking’s almost done. Iams. Dylan Thomas or Bob, either’s fine. Yeah, there’s also Dillon, Colorado. He became my grief therapy after I lost my father that spring, got me out of the house and exercising again.

How in hell did 20 years elapse and I’m no longer a loner, more a hermit? Stress, illnesses, lack of focus wearies a person and makes the fight harder. Once again trying acculturation, I go to work, play nice, avoid mistakes, walk home, and settle in with a third-hand, 8-year-old laptop. I’m the one people in trouble call, the extra person at the dinner party in charge of trivia contests, the movie critic and personal book shopper. Finagling my way into real jobs, I’m asked to edit, critique, check outfits for professional appropriateness, and asked how to handle difficult family dynamics, the last my specialty. More on that later.