This Lullaby

Chapter Eight

“Don’t you give me no rotten tomato, cause all I ever wanted was your sweet potato.” Dexter stopped as the music did. Now, all we could hear was the fridge rattling and Monkey snoring. “Okay, so what else rhymes with potato? ”

Ted strummed his guitar, looking at the ceiling. On the couch by the refrigerator, John Miller rolled over, his red head bonking the wall.

“Anybody?” Dexter asked.

“Well,” Lucas said, crossing his legs, “it depends on if you want a real rhyme, or a pseudo rhyme.”

Dexter looked at him. “Pseudo rhyme,” he repeated.

“A real rhyme,” Lucas began, in what I already recognized as his eggbert voice, “is tomato. But you could easily tack an o onto another word and make a rhyme of it, even if it’s not grammatically correct. Like, say, relate-o. Or abate-o.”

“Don’t you give me no rotten tomato,” Dexter sang, “just ’cause to your crazy shit I cannot relate-o.”

Silence. Ted plucked out another chord, then tightened a string.

“Needs work,” Lucas said. “But I think we’re getting somewhere.”

“Can you all just please shut up,” John Miller moaned from the couch, his voice muffled. “I’m trying to sleep. ”

“It’s two in the afternoon, and this is the kitchen,” Ted told him. “Go someplace else or quit bitching.”

“Boys, boys,” Dexter said.

Ted sighed. “People, we need to focus on this. I want ‘The Potato Opus’ to be ready for that show next week.”

“‘The Potato Opus’?” Lucas said. “Is that what it’s called now?”

“Can you think of something better?”

Lucas was quiet for a second. “Nope,” he said finally. “Sure can’t.”

“Then shut the hell up.” Ted picked up the guitar. “From the top, first verse, with feeling.”

And so it went. Another day at the yellow house, where I’d been spending a fair amount of my free time lately. Not that I liked the setting, particularly; the place was a total dump, mostly because four guys lived there and none of them had ever been introduced formally to a bottle of Lysol. There was rotting food in the fridge, something black and mildewy growing on the shower tiles, and some sort of unidentifiable rank smell coming from beneath the back deck. Only Dexter’s room was decent, and that was because I had my limits. When I found a pair of dirty underwear under a couch cushion, or had to fight the fruit flies in the kitchen that were always swarming the garbage can, I at least could take comfort in the fact that his bed was made, his CDs stacked alphabetically, and the plug-in air freshener was working its pink, rose-shaped little heart out. All of this work on my part was a small price to pay, I figured, for my sanity.

Which, in truth, had been sorely tested lately, ever since my mother had returned from her honeymoon and set up her new marriage under our shared roof. All through the spring we’d had workmen passing through, hauling drywall and windows and tracking sawdust across the floors. They’d knocked out the wall of the old den, extending it into the backyard, and added a new master suite, complete with a new bathroom featuring a sunken tub and side-by-side sinks separated by blocks of colored glass. Crossing over the threshold into what Chris and I had named “the new wing” was like entering an entirely different house, which was pretty much my mother’s intention. It was her matched set, with a new bedroom, a new husband, and new carpet. Her life was perfect. But as was often the case, the rest of us were still adjusting.

One problem was Don’s stuff. Being a lifelong bachelor, he had certain objects that he’d grown attached to, very little of which fit my mother’s decorating scheme for the new wing. The only thing that even remotely reflected Don’s taste in their bedroom, in fact, was a large Moroccan tapestry depicting various biblical tableaus. It was enormous and took up most of a wall, but it did match the carpet almost perfectly, and therefore constituted a compromise of taste that my mother could live with. The remainder of his belongings were exiled to the rest of the house, which meant that Chris and I had to adjust to living with Don’s decor.

The first piece I noticed, a couple of days after their return, was a framed print by some Renaissance painter of a hugely buxom woman posing in a garden. Her fingers were big, pudgy, and white, and she was stretched across a couch, buck naked. She had huge breasts, which were hanging down off the couch, and she was eating grapes, a fistful in one hand, another about to drop into her mouth. It might have been art-a flexible term, in my opinion-but it was disgusting. Especially hanging on the wall over our kitchen table, where I had no choice but to look at it while I ate breakfast.

“Man,” Chris said to me the first morning it was there, about two days after Don had moved in. He was eating cereal, already dressed in his Jiffy Lube uniform. “How much you think a woman like that weighed?”

I took a bite of my muffin, trying to concentrate on the newspaper in front of me. “I have no idea,” I said.

“At least two-fifty,” Chris decided, slurping down another spoonful. “Those breasts alone have to be five pounds. Maybe even seven.”

“Do we have to talk about this?”

“How can you not?” he said. “God. It’s right there. It’s like trying to ignore the sun or something.”

And it wasn’t just the picture. It was the modern art statue that now stood in the foyer that looked, frankly, like a big penis. (Was there a theme here? I’d never pegged Don for that type, but now I was starting to wonder.) Add to that the fancy set of Cal phalon pots that now hung over our kitchen island and the red leather sofa in the living room, which just screamed Single Man on the Make to me, and it was no wonder I was feeling a little out of place. But then again, this house wasn’t really mine to claim anymore. Don was now permanent-supposedly-while I was of temporary status, gone come fall. For once, I was the one with an expiration date, and I was finding I didn’t like it much.

Which explained, in some ways, why I was over at Dexter’s so much. But there was another reason, one I wasn’t so quick to admit. Even to myself.

For as long as I’d been dating, I’d had a mental flow chart, a schedule, of how things usually went. Relationships always started with that heady, swoonish period, where the other person is like some new invention that suddenly solves all life’s worst problems, like losing socks in the dryer or toasting bagels without burning the edges. At this phase, which usually lasts about six weeks max, the other person is perfect. But at six weeks and two days, the cracks begin to show; not real structural damage yet, but little things that niggle and nag. Like the way they always assume you’ll pay for your own movie, just because you did once, or how they use the dashboard of their car as an imaginary keyboard at long stoplights. Once, you might have thought this was cute, or endearing. Now, it annoys you, but not enough to change anything. Come week eight, though, the strain is starting to show. This person is, in fact, human, and here’s where most relationships splinter and die. Because either you can stick around and deal with these problems, or ease out gracefully, knowing that at some point in the not-too-distant future, there will emerge another perfect person, who will fix everything, at least for six weeks.

I knew this pattern even before my first real boyfriend, because I’d seen my mother go through it several times already. With marriages, the pattern is stretched out, adjusted, like working with dog years: the six weeks becomes a year, sometimes two. But it’s the same. That was why it was always so easy to figure out how long my stepfathers would last. It all comes down to math.

If I did the math with Dexter, on paper it was perfect. We’d come in well under the three-month mark, with me leaving for college just as the shine was wearing off. But the problem was that Dexter wasn’t cooperating. If my theories of relationships were plotted geographically, Dexter wasn’t even left of center or far out in right field. He was on another map altogether, rapidly approaching the distant corner and headed into the unknown.

First, he was very gangly. I’d never liked gangly guys, and Dexter was clumsy, skinny, and always in motion. It was not surprising to me now that our relationship had started with him crashing into me in various ways, since I now knew he moved through the world with a series of flying elbows, banged knees, and flailing limbs. In the short time we’d been together, he’d already broken my alarm clock, crushed one of my beaded necklaces underfoot, and managed, somehow, to leave a huge scuff mark on my ceiling. I am not joking. He was always jiggling his knees, or drumming his fingers, as if revving up, just waiting for the checkered flag to drop so he could spin out at full speed. I found myself constantly reaching over and trying to quiet him, covering his knee or fingers with my hand, thinking it would silence them, when instead I would be caught up in it with him, jangling along, as if whatever current charged him was now flowing through me.

Point two: he was a slob. His shirttail was always out, his tie usually had a stain, his hair, while curly and thick, sprung out from his head wildly in a mad-scientist sort of fashion. Also, his shoelaces were continually untied. He was all loose ends, and I hated loose ends. If I could ever have gotten him to stand still long enough, I knew I would have been unable to resist tucking, tying, smoothing, organizing, as if he were a particularly messy closet just screaming for my attention. But instead I found myself gritting my teeth, riding the wave of my natural anxiety, because this wasn’t permanent, me and him, and to think so would only hurt both of us.

Which led to point three: he really liked me. Not in an only-until-the-end-of-the-summer way, which was safest. In fact, he never talked about the future at all, as if we had so much time, and there wasn’t a definite end point to our relationship. I, of course, wanted to make things clear from the start: that I was leaving, no attachments, the standard spiel I repeated in my head finally spoken aloud. But whenever I tried to do this, he evaded so easily that it was as if he could read my mind, see what was coming, and for once move gracefully to sidestep the issue entirely.

Now, as work on “The Potato Song” broke up so that Ted could go to work, Dexter came over and stood in front of me, stretching his arms over his head. “Total turn-on seeing a real band at work, isn’t it?”

“ Relate-o is a lame rhyme,” I said, “pseudo or not.”

He winced, then smiled. “It’s a work in progress,” he explained.

I put down my crossword puzzle-I’d finished about half of it-and he picked it up, glancing at what I’d finished. “Impressive,” he said. “And of course, Miss Remy does her crosswords in ink. What, you don’t make mistakes?”

“Nope.”

“You’re here, though,” he said.

“Okay,” I admitted, “maybe one.”

He grinned again. We’d only been seeing each other for a few weeks now, but this easy give-and-take still surprised me. From that very first day in my room, I felt like we’d somehow skipped the formalities of the Beginning of a Relationship: those awkward moments when you’re not all over each other and are still feeling out the other person’s boundaries and limits. Maybe this was because we’d been circling each other for a while before he finally catapulted through my window. But if I let myself think about it much-and I didn’t-I had flashes of realizing that I’d been comfortable with him even at the very start. Clearly, he’d been comfortable with me, grabbing my hand as he had that first day. As if he knew, even then, that we’d be here now.

“I bet you,” he said to me, “that I can name more states by the time that woman comes out of the dry cleaners than you can.”

I looked at him. We were sitting outside of Joie, both of us on our lunch break, me drinking a Diet Coke, him snarfing down a sleeve of Fig Newtons. “Dexter,” I said, “it’s hot.”

“Come on,” he said, sliding his hand over my leg. “I’ll bet you.”

“No.”

“Scared?”

“Again, no.”

He cocked his head to the side, then squeezed my knee. His foot, of course, was tapping. “Let’s go. She’s about to walk in. When the door shuts behind her, time’s on.”

“Oh, God.” I said. “What’s the bet?”

“Five bucks.”

“Boring. And too easy.”

“Ten bucks.”

“Okay. And you have to buy dinner.”

“Done.”

We watched as the woman, who was wearing pink shorts and a T-shirt and carrying an armful of wrinkled dress shirts, pulled open the door to the cleaners. As it swung shut, I said, “Maine.”

“North Dakota.”

“Florida.”

“Virginia.”

“California.”

“Delaware.” I was keeping track on my fingers: he’d been known to cheat but denied it with great vehemence, so I always had to have proof. Challenges, to Dexter, were like those duels in the old movies, where men in white suits smacked each other across the face with gloves, and all honor was at stake. So far, I hadn’t won them all, but I hadn’t backed down either. I was, after all, still new at this.

Dexter’s challenges, apparently, were legendary. The first one I’d seen had been between him and John Miller. It was a couple of days after Dexter and I had gotten together, one of the first times I’d gone over to the yellow house with him. We found John Miller sitting at the kitchen table in his pajamas, eating a banana. There was a big bunch of them on the table in front of him, seemingly out of place in a kitchen where I now knew the major food groups consisted of Slurpees and beer.

“What’s up with the bananas?” Dexter asked him, pulling out a chair and sitting down.

John Miller, who still looked half asleep, glanced up and said, “Fruit of the Month Club. My nana gave it to me for my birthday.”

“Potassium,” Dexter said. “You need that every day, you know.”

John Miller yawned, as if used to this kind of stupid information. Then he went back to his banana.

“I bet,” Dexter said suddenly, in the voice I later would come to recognize as the one that always preceded a challenge, deep and game show host-like, “that you can’t eat ten bananas.”

John Miller finished chewing the bite in his mouth, then swallowed. “I bet,” he replied, “that you’re right.”

“It’s a challenge,” Dexter said. Then he nudged out a chair, with a knee that was already jiggling, for me, and said, in the same low, slow voice, “Will you take it?”

“Are you crazy?”

“For ten bucks.”

“I am not eating ten bananas for ten bucks,” John Miller said indignantly.

“It’s a dollar a banana!” Dexter said.

“And furthermore,” John Miller went on, tossing the now-empty peel at an overflowing garbage can by the back door, and missing, “this double-dare shit of yours is getting old, Dexter. You can’t just go around throwing down challenges whenever you feel like it.”

“Are you passing on the challenge?”

“Will you stop using that voice?”

“Twenty bucks,” Dexter said. “Twenty bucks-”

“No,” John Miller told him.

“-and I’ll clean the bathroom.”

This, clearly, changed things. John Miller looked at the bananas, then at Dexter. Then at the bananas again. “Does the one I just ate count as one?”

“No.”

John Miller slapped the table. “What? It’s not even to my stomach yet, for godsakes!”

Dexter thought for a second. “Okay. We’ll let Remy call this one.”

“What?” I said. They were both looking at me.

“You’re an unbiased view,” Dexter explained.

“She’s your girlfriend,” John Miller complained. “That’s not unbiased!”

“She is not my girlfriend.” Dexter looked at me, as if this might upset me, which was evidence that he didn’t know me at all. He said, “What I mean is, we may be seeing each other”-and here he paused, as if waiting for me to chime in with something, which I didn’t, so he went on-“but you are your own person with your opinions and convictions. Correct?”

“I’m not his girlfriend,” I told John Miller.

“She loves me,” Dexter said to him, as an aside, and I felt my face flame. “Anyway,” he said, moving on breezily, “Remy? What do you think? Does it count or not?”

“Well,” I said, “I think it should count somehow. Perhaps as half.”

“Half!” Dexter looked at me as if he was just so pleased, as if he had carved me out of clay himself. “Perfect. So, if you choose to accept this challenge, you must eat nine and a half bananas.”

John Miller thought about this for a second. Later, I would learn that money was always scarce at the yellow house, and these challenges provided some balance of cash flow from one person to another. Twenty bucks was food and beer money for at least a couple of days. And it was really only nine bananas. And a half.

“Okay,” John Miller said. And they shook on it.

Before the challenge could happen, witnesses had to be gathered. Ted was brought in from the back deck, along with a girl he’d been seeing, introduced to me as Scary Mary (I chose not to ask), and, after a futile search for the keyboardist, Lucas, Dexter’s dog Monkey was agreed upon as a suitable replacement. We all gathered around the table, or on the long, ugly brown couch that was next to the refrigerator, while John Miller did some deep breathing and stretching, as if preparing for a fifty-yard dash.

“Okay,” Ted, the only one with a working watch and therefore timekeeper, said, “Go!”

If you’ve never seen someone take on a food challenge, as I had not at that point, you might expect it to actually be exciting. Except that the challenge was not to eat nine and a half bananas quickly: it was just to eat nine and a half bananas. So by banana four or so, boredom set in, and Ted and Scary Mary went to the Waffle House, leaving me, Dexter, and Monkey to wait out the next five and a half bananas. It turned out we didn’t have to: John Miller conceded defeat in the middle of banana six, then carefully got to his feet and went to the bathroom.

“I hope you didn’t kill him,” I told Dexter as the door shut behind him, the lock clicking.

“No way,” he said easily, stretching back in his chair. “You should have seen him last month, when he ate fifteen eggs in a row. Then we were worried. He turned bright red.”

“You know,” I said, “funny how it’s never you having to eat vast quantities of things.”

“Not true. I just moved on after completing the master of all challenges back in April.”

I hated to even ask what would earn such a title, but curiosity got the better of me. “Which was?”

“Thirty-two ounces of Miracle Whip,” he said. “In twenty minutes flat.”

Just the thought of this made my stomach twist. I hated mayonnaise, and any derivation thereof: egg salad, tuna salad, even deviled eggs. “That’s disgusting.”

“I know.” He said it proudly. “I could never top it, even if I tried.”

I had to wonder what kind of person got such satisfaction from constant competitiveness. And Dexter would make challenges about anything, whether it was in his control or not. Some recent favorites included I Bet You a Quarter the Next Car That Passes Is Either Blue or Green, Five Bucks Says I Can Make Something Edible Out of the Canned Corn, French-Fried Potato Sticks, and Mustard in the Pantry, and, of course, How Many States Can You Name While That Woman Picks Up Her Dry Cleaning?

I, personally, was up to twenty. Dexter was at nineteen and experiencing a bit of a brain cramp.

“California,” he said finally, casting a nervous look at the front of the cleaners, where we could see the woman talking to someone behind the counter.

“Already said it,” I told him.

“Wisconsin.”

“Montana.”

“South Carolina.”

The door opened: it was her. “Game over,” I said. “I win.”

“You do not!”

I held up my fingers, where I’d been keeping track. “I win by one,” I said. “Pay up.”

He started to reach into his pockets, sighing, then instead pulled me closer, spreading his fingers around my waist, burying his face in my neck.

“Nope,” I said, putting my hands on his chest, “won’t work.”

“I’ll be your slave,” he said into my ear, and I felt a chill run up my back, then cast it off just as quickly, reminding myself again that I always had a boyfriend in summer, someone that caught my eye after school was finished and usually lasted right up until the beach trip my family took each August. The only difference this time was that I was going west instead of east. And I liked being able to think about it that way, in terms of a compass, something set in stone that would remain, unchanged, long after I was gone.

Besides, I knew already we would never work long-term. He was so imperfect already, his cracks and fissures apparent. I could only imagine what structural damage lay beneath, deep in the foundation. But still, it was hard to keep my head clear as he kissed me there, in July, with another challenge behind me. After all, I was up now, and it still seemed like we had time.

“The question is, has he been given The Speech yet?” Jess asked.

“No,” Chloe told her. “The question is, have you slept with him yet?”

They all looked at me. It wasn’t rude for them to ask, of course: usually this was common knowledge-once, common assumption. But now I hesitated, which was unnerving.

“No,” I said finally. There was a quick intake of breath-shock!-from somebody, then silence.

“Wow,” Lissa said finally. “You like him.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I said, not refuting this exactly, which set off another round of silence and exchanged looks. Out at the Spot, with the sun going down, I felt the trampoline bounce lightly beneath me and leaned back, spreading my fingers over the cool metal of the springs.

“No Speech, no sex,” Jess said, summing up. “This is dangerous.”

“Maybe he’s different,” Lissa offered, stirring her drink with one finger.

“Nobody’s different,” Chloe told her. “Remy knows that better than any of us.”

It says something about my absolute adherence to a plan concerning relationships that my best friends had terms, like outline headings, detailing my actions. The Speech usually came right as the heady, romantic, fun-new-boyfriend phase was boiling to full steam. It was my way of hitting the brakes, slowly downshifting, and usually involved me pulling whatever Ken was in my life at that time aside to say something like: hey, I really like you and we’re having fun, but you know, I can’t get too serious because I’m going to the beach/really going to focus on school come fall/just getting over someone and not up to anything long-term. This was the summer speech: the winter/holiday one was pretty much the same, except you inserted I’m going skiing/really going to have to rally until graduation/dealing with a lot of family crap for the last part. And usually, guys took it one of two ways. If they really liked me, as in wear-my-class-ring-love-me-always, they bolted, which was just as well. If they liked me but were willing to slow down, to see boundaries, they nodded and saved face by saying they felt the same way. And then I was free to proceed to the next step, which-and I’m not proud-usually involved sleeping with them.

But not right away. Never right away, not anymore. I liked to have enough time invested to see a few cracks and get rid of anyone whose failings I knew I couldn’t deal with in the long term, i.e., more than the six weeks that usually encompassed the fun-new-boyfriend phase.

Once, I was easy. Now, I was choosy. See? Big difference. And besides, something was different about Dexter. Whenever I tried to revert to my set outline, something stopped me. I could give him the talk, and he’d probably be fine with it. I could sleep with him, and he’d be fine-more than fine-with that too. But somewhere, deep in my conscious mind, something niggled me that maybe he wouldn’t, that maybe he’d think less of me, or something. I knew it was stupid.

And besides, I’d just been busy. That was probably it, really.

Chloe opened her bottled water, took a swig, then chased it with a sip from the tiny bottle of bourbon in her hand. “What are you doing?” she asked me, point blank.

“I’m just having fun,” I replied, taking a swig of my Diet Zip. It seemed easy to say this, having just run through it in my head. “He’s leaving at the end of the summer too, you know.”

“Then why haven’t you given him The Speech?” Jess asked.

“I just,” I said, and then shook my cup, stalling. “I haven’t thought about it, to be honest.”

They looked at one another, considering the implications of this. Lissa said, “I think he’s really nice, Remy. He’s sweet.”

“He’s clumsy,” Jess grumbled. “He keeps stepping on my feet.”

“Maybe,” Chloe said, as if it was just occurring to her, “you just have big feet.”

“Maybe,” Jess replied, “you should shut up.”

Lissa sighed, closing her eyes. “You guys. Please. We’re talking about Remy.”

“We don’t have to talk about Remy,” I said. “We really don’t. Let’s talk about somebody else.”

There was silence for a second: I sucked down some more of my drink, Lissa lit a cigarette. Finally Chloe said, “You know, the other night Dexter said he’d give me ten bucks if I could stand on my head for twenty minutes. What the hell does that mean?”

They all looked at me. I said, “Just ignore him. Next?”

“I think Adam’s seeing someone else,” Lissa said suddenly.

“Okay,” I said. “Now, see, this is interesting.”

Lissa ran her finger over the rim of her cup, her head down, one curl bouncing slightly with the movement. It had been about a month since Adam had dumped her, and she’d moved through her weepy stage to just kind of sad all the time, with occasional moments when I actually heard her laugh out loud, then stop, as if she’d forgotten she wasn’t supposed to be happy.

“Who is she?” Chloe asked.

“I don’t know. She drives a red Mazda.”

Jess looked at me, shaking her head. I said, “Lissa, have you been driving by his house?”

“No,” she said, and then looked up at us. We, of course, were all staring back at her, knowing she was lying. “No! But the other day there was construction on Willow and then I-”

“Do you want him to think you’re weak?” Jess asked her. “Do you want to give him that satisfaction?”

“How can he already be with somebody else?” Lissa asked her, and Jess just sighed, shaking her head. “I’m not even totally okay yet, and he’s with someone else? How can that be?”

“Because he’s a jerk,” I told her.

“Because he’s a guy,” Chloe added. “And guys don’t get attached, guys don’t ever give themselves over completely, and guys lie. That’s why they should be handled with great trepidation, not trusted, and held at arm’s length whenever possible. Right, Remy?”

I looked at her, and there it was again: that shifting of her eyes that meant she’d seen something in me lately she didn’t recognize, and it worried her. Because if I wasn’t cold, hard Remy, then she couldn’t be the Chloe she was, either.

“Right,” I said, and smiled at Lissa. I had to lead the way here, of course. She’d never make it out otherwise. “Absolutely.”

The band wasn’t called the G Flats at all. That was just their wedding persona, the one they had been forced to take on because of an incident involving the van, some authorities in Pennsylvania, and Don’s brother Michael, who was an attorney there. Apparently playing at my mother’s wedding had been some kind of payback, but it had also seemed like the right time to relocate, as the band-whose real name was Truth Squad-did every summer.

For the past two years, they’d worked their way across the country, always following the same process: find a town with a decent local music scene, rent a cheap apartment, and start playing the clubs. In the first week they all got day jobs, preferably at the same place, since they shared one mode of transportation. (So now, Dexter and Lucas worked at Flash Camera, while John Miller fixed lattes at Jump Java, and Ted bagged groceries at Mayor’s Market.) Although most of the guys had some college, or, in Ted’s case, a diploma, they always got easy jobs that didn’t require much overtime or thinking. Then they’d hit the local club scene, hoping to land a regular weekly gig, as they had at Bendo. Tuesday nights, which were the slowest there, were now all theirs.

They’d only been in town for a couple of days when I’d first met Dexter at Don’s Motors: they were sleeping in the van then, in the city park, until they found the yellow house. Now it seemed they’d stick around until they were run out of town for owing money or small legal infractions (it had happened before) or just got bored. Everything was planned to be transitory: they boasted that they could pack up and be gone in an hour flat, already drawing a finger across the wrinkled map in the van’s glove box, seeking out a new destination.

So maybe that was what kept me from giving The Speech, this idea that his life was just as impermanent at this moment as mine. I didn’t want to be like other girls that were probably in other towns, listening to Truth Squad bootlegs and pining for Dexter Jones, born in Washington, D.C., a Pisces, lead singer, thrower of challenges, permanent address unknown. His history was as murky as mine was clear, with his dog seeming to be the only family in which he had interest. I was soon to be Remy Starr, formerly of Lakeview, now of Stanford, undecided major, leaning toward economics. We were only converging for a few weeks, fleeting. No need to follow protocol.

That night me, Chloe, Jess, and Lissa got to Bendo around nine. Truth Squad was already playing, and the crowd was thin but enthusiastic. I noted, then quickly made a point of not noting, that it was mostly made up of girls, a few of them crowded up close, next to the stage, holding their beers and swaying to the music.

The music, in fact, was a mix of covers and originals. The covers were, as Dexter put it, “a necessary evil”-required at weddings, and useful at clubs, at least at the beginning of sets, to prevent being beaned with beer caps and cigarette butts. (This, apparently, had happened as well.) But Dexter and Ted, who had started the band during their junior year of high school, preferred their original compositions, the biggest and most ambitious of which were the potato songs.

By the time we sat down, the band was finishing the last verse of “Gimme Three Steps” as the assembled girls clapped and whoo-whooed. Then there was a few seconds of practice chords, some conferring between Ted and Dexter, and then Dexter said, “We’re going to do an original song for you all now, an instant classic. Folks, this is ‘The Potato Song.’”

More cheering from the girls, one of whom-a buxom redhead with broad shoulders I recognized from the perpetual lines for the ladies’ room-moved closer to the stage, so that she was practically at Dexter’s feet. He smiled down at her, politely.

“I saw her in the produce section,” he began, “late last Saturday. It hadn’t been but seven days since she went away…”

Another loud whoop, from someone who was, apparently, already fond of “The Potato Song.” Good thing, I thought. There were dozens where that came from.

“Once she’d loved my filet mignon, my carnivore inklings,” Dexter continued, “but now she was a vegan princess, living off of beans. She’d given up the cheese and bacon, sworn off Burger King, and when I wouldn’t do the same she gave me back my ring. I stood there by the romaine lettuce, feeling my heart pine” -and here he put a hand over his chest, and looked mournful, to which the crowd cheered- “wishing that this meatless beauty still would be all mine. She turned around to go to checkout, fifteen items or less. And I knew this was the last go-round, so this is what I said…”

He stopped here, letting the music build, and John Miller drummed a bit faster, the beat picking up. I could see some people in the crowd already mouthing the words.

“Don’t you ever give me no rotten tomato, ’cause all I ever wanted was your sweet potato,” Dexter sang. “Mashed, whipped, creamed, smothered, chunked, and diced, anyway you fix it baby sure tastes nice.”

“This is a song?” Jess asked me, but Lissa was laughing now, clapping along.

“This is many songs,” I told her. “It’s an opus.”

“A what?” she said, but I didn’t even repeat it, because now the song was reaching its climax, which was basically a recitation of every possible kind of vegetable. The crowd was shouting things out, and Dexter was singing hard, winding up the song: when they finished, with a crashing of cymbals, the crowd burst into loud applause. Dexter leaned into the microphone, said they’d be back in a few minutes, and then got down off the stage, grabbing a plastic cup off a speaker as he did so. I watched as the redheaded girl walked up to him, zeroing in, effectively cutting off his path as he started across the floor.

“Ooh, Remy,” Chloe said, noticing this too, “your man has a groupie.”

“He’s not my man,” I said, taking a sip of my beer.

“Remy’s with the band,” Chloe told Jess, who snorted. “So much for that no-musicians rule. Next thing you know she’ll be on the bus and selling T-shirts in the parking lot, showing off her boobs to get in the stage door.”

“At least she has boobs to show,” Jess said.

“I have boobs,” Chloe said, pointing to her chest. “Just because they’re not weighing me down doesn’t mean they’re not substantial.”

“Okay, B cup,” Jess said, taking a sip of her drink.

“I have boobs!” Chloe said again, a bit too loudly-she’d already had a couple of minibottles at the Spot. “My boobs are great, goddammit. You know that? They’re fantastic! My boobs are amazing. ”

“Chloe,” I said, but of course then it was too late. Not only were two guys standing nearby now completely absorbed in checking out her chest, but Dexter was sliding in beside me, a bemused look on his face. Chloe flushed red-rare for her-while Lissa patted her sympathetically on the shoulder.

“So it is true,” Dexter said finally. “Girls do talk about boobs when they’re in groups. I always thought so, but I never had proof.”

“Chloe was just making a point,” Lissa explained to him.

“Clearly,” Dexter said, and Chloe brushed a hand through her hair and turned her head, as if she was suddenly fascinated by the wall. “So anyway,” he said brightly, moving on, “‘The Potato Song’ really went over well, don’t you think?”

“I do,” I said, moving in closer as he slid his arm around my waist. That was the thing about Dexter: he wasn’t totally touchy-feely, like Jonathan had been, but he had these signature moves that I liked. The hand around my waist, for one, but then there was this thing that made me crazy, the way he cupped his fingers around the back of my neck, putting them just so, so that his thumb touched a pulse point. It was so hard to explain, but it gave me a chill, every time, almost like he was touching my heart.

I looked up and Chloe had her eye on me, vigilant as ever. I shook off these thoughts, quick, and finished my beer just as Ted came up.

“Nice work on that second verse,” was the first thing he said, and not nicely, but in a sarcastic, snarky way. “You know, if you butcher the words you do the song a disservice.”

“Butcher what words?” Dexter said.

Ted sighed, loudly. “It’s not that she was a vegan princess, living off of beans. It’s she’s a vegan princess, living off beans.”

Dexter just looked at him, completely nonplussed, as if he’d just given the weather report. Chloe said, “What’s the difference?”

“The entire world is the difference!” Ted snapped. “ Living off of beans is proper English, which brings with it the connotation of higher society, accepted standards, and the status quo. Living off beans, however, is reminiscent of a more slang culture, realistic, and a lower class, which is indicative of both the speaker in the song and the music that accompanies it.”

“All this from one word?” Jess asked him.

“One word,” Ted replied, dead serious, “can change the whole world.”

There was a moment while we all considered this. Finally Lissa said to Chloe, loud enough for all of us to hear (she’d had a minibottle or two herself), “I bet he did really well on his SATs.”

“Shhh,” Chloe said, just as loudly.

“Ted,” Dexter said, “I hear what you’re saying. And I understand. Thanks for pointing out the distinction, and I won’t make the mistake again.”

Ted just stood there, blinking. “Okay,” he said, somewhat uneasily. “Good. Well. Uh, I’m gonna go smoke.”

“Sounds good,” Dexter said, and with that Ted walked away, cutting through the crowd toward the bar. A couple of girls standing by the door eyed him as he passed, nodding at each other. God, this band thing was sick. Some women had no shame.

“Very impressive,” I said to Dexter.

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” he explained. “You see, Ted is very passionate. And really, all he wants is to be heard. Hear him, nod, agree. Three steps. Easy cheesy.”

“Easy cheesy,” I repeated, and then he slid his hand up to my neck, pressing his fingers just so, and I got that weird feeling again. This time, it wasn’t so easy to shake, and as Dexter moved closer to me, kissing my forehead, I closed my eyes and wondered how deep I’d let this get before ducking out. Maybe it wouldn’t be the whole summer. Maybe I needed to derail it sooner, to prevent a real crash in the end.

“Paging Dexter,” a voice came from the front of the club. I looked up: it was John Miller, squinting in the house lights. “Paging Dexter. You are needed on aisle five for a price check.”

The redheaded girl was back at the stage, right up close. She turned her head and followed John Miller’s gaze, right to us. To me. And I looked right back at her, feeling possessive suddenly of something that I wasn’t even sure I should want to claim as mine.

“Gotta go,” Dexter said. Then he leaned into my ear and added, “Wait for me?”

“Maybe,” I said.

He laughed, as if this was a joke, and disappeared into the crowd. A few seconds later I watched him climb onstage, so lanky and clumsy: he tagged a speaker with one foot, sending it toppling, as he headed to the mike. One of his shoelaces, of course, was undone.

“Oh, man,” Chloe said. She was looking right at me, shaking her head, and I told myself she was wrong, so wrong, even as she spoke. “You’re a goner.”

Chapter Nine

“I thought this was a cookout. You know, dogs and burgers, Tater Tots, ambrosia salad.” Dexter picked up a box of Twinkies, tossing them into the cart. “And Twinkies.”

“It is,” I said, consulting the list again before I picked a four-dollar glass jar of imported sun-dried tomatoes off the shelf. “Except that it’s a cookout thrown by my mother.”

“And?”

“And,” I said, “my mother doesn’t cook.”

He looked at me, waiting.

“At all. My mother doesn’t cook at all.”

“She must cook sometimes.”

“Nope.”

“Everyone can make scrambled eggs, Remy. It’s programmed into you at birth, the default setting. Like being able to swim and knowing not to mix pickles with oatmeal. You just know. ”

“My mother,” I told him, pushing the cart farther up the aisle as he lagged along beside, taking long, loping steps, “doesn’t even like scrambled eggs. She only eats eggs Benedict.”

“Which is?” he said, stopping as he was momentarily distracted by a large plastic water gun that was displayed, right at kid’s eye level, in the middle of the cereal section.

“You don’t know what eggs Benedict is?”

“Should I?” he asked, picking up the water gun and pulling the trigger, which made a click-click-click sound. He pointed it around the corner, like a sniper, taking shelter behind a display of canned corn.

“It’s a way of making eggs that is really complicated and fancy and involves hollandaise sauce,” I told him. “And English muffins.”

“Ugh.” He made a face, then shuddered. “I hate English muffins.”

“What?”

“English muffins,” he said, putting the water gun back as we started walking again. “I can’t eat them. I can’t even think about them. In fact, we should stop talking about them right now.”

We paused in front of the spices: my mother wanted something called Asian Fish Sauce. I peered closely at all the bottles, already frustrated, while Dexter busied himself juggling some boxes of Sweet ’n Low. Shopping with him, as I’d discovered, was like having a toddler in tow. He was constantly distracted, grabbing at things, and we’d already taken on entirely too many impulse items, all of which I intended to rid the cart of at the checkout when he wasn’t looking.

“Do you mean to tell me,” I said, reaching up as I spotted the fish sauce, “that you can eat an entire jar of mayonnaise in one sitting but find English muffins, which are basically just bread, to be disgusting?”

“Ughhh.” He shuddered again, a full-body one this time, and put a hand on his stomach. “Icks-nay on the uffins-may. I’m serious.”

It was taking us forever. My mother’s list only had about fifteen things on it, but they were all specialty items: imported goat cheese, focaccia bread, an incredibly specific brand of olives in the red bottle, not the green. Plus there was the new grill she’d bought just for the occasion-the nicest one at the specialty hardware store, according to Chris, who didn’t keep her from overspending as I would have-plus the brand-new patio furniture (otherwise, where would we sit?), and my mother was spending a small fortune on what was supposed to be a simple Fourth of July barbecue.

This had been all her idea. She’d been working away at her book ever since she and Don had returned from the honeymoon, but a few days earlier she’d emerged midday with an inspiration: a real, all-American Fourth of July cookout with the family. Chris and Jennifer Anne should come, and Don’s secretary, Patty, who was single, poor thing, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if she hit it off with my mother’s decorator, Jorge, who we just had to have over to thank for all his hard work on the addition? And wouldn’t it be such a great way for everyone to meet my new beau (insert me cringing here) and christen the new patio and our wonderful, amazing, beautiful lives together as a blended family?

Oh, yes. It would. Of course.

“What?” Dexter said to me now, stepping in front of the cart, which I’d been pushing, apparently, faster and faster as these stress thoughts filled my head. It knocked him in the gut, forcing him backward, and he put his hands on it, pushing it back to me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, trying to get the cart going again. No luck. He wasn’t budging. “Why?”

“Because you just got this look on your face like your brain was caving in.”

“Nice,” I said. “Thanks ever so much.”

“And,” he continued, “you’re biting your lip. You only do that when you’re about to shift into superobsessive, what-if mode.”

I just looked at him. As if I was that easy to figure out, a puzzle that could be cracked in, how long had it been, two weeks? It was insulting.

“I’m fine,” I said coolly.

“Ah! The ice queen voice. Which means, of course, that I’m right.” He came around the cart, holding the edge, and stood behind me, putting his hands over mine. He started pushing and walking in his goofy way, forcing me to fall into his rhythm, which felt as awkward as it looked, like walking with a shoeful of marbles. “What if I embarrass you?” he said, as if posing a theory, like, say, quantum physics. “What if I break some heirloom family china? Or talk about your underwear?”

I glared at him, then pushed the cart harder, making him stumble. But he hung on, pulling me back against him, his fingers spreading across my stomach. Then he leaned down and whispered, right in my ear, “What if I throw down a challenge to Don, right there over dinner, daring him to eat that entire jar of sun-dried tomatoes and chase it with a stick of margarine? And what if ”-and here he gasped, dramatically-“oh my God, he does it?”

I covered my face with my hand, shaking my head. I hated it when he made me laugh when I didn’t want to: it seemed some huge loss of control, so unlike me, like the most glaring of character flaws.

“But you know,” he said, still in my ear, “that probably won’t happen.”

“I hate you,” I told him, and he kissed my neck, finally letting go of the cart.

“Not true,” he replied, and started down the aisle, already distracted by a huge display of Velveeta cheese in the dairy section. “Never true.”

“So, Remy. I hear you’re going to Stanford!”

I nodded and smiled, shifting my drink to my other hand, and felt with my tongue to see if I had spinach in my teeth. I didn’t. But Don’s secretary, Patty, who I hadn’t seen since her tearful bit at the wedding reception, was standing in front of me expectantly, with a nice big piece wedged around an incisor.

“Well,” she said, dabbing at her forehead with a napkin, “it’s just a wonderful school. You must be really excited.”

“I am,” I told her. Then I reached up, nonchalantly, and brushed at one of my teeth, hoping that somehow she would subconsciously pick up on this, like osmosis, and get the hint. But no. She was still smiling at me, fresh sweat beading her forehead as she gulped down the rest of her wine and glanced around, wondering what to say next.

She was distracted suddenly, as was I, by a small commotion over by the brand-new grill, where Chris had been assigned to prepare the incredibly expensive steaks my mother had special ordered from the butcher. They were, I’d heard her tell someone, “Brazilian beef,” whatever that meant, as if cows from below the equator were of greater value than your average Holstein chewing cud in Michigan.

Chris wasn’t doing well. First he’d burned off part of an eyebrow and a fair amount of arm hair lighting the grill. Then he’d had some trouble mastering the complicated spatula in the top-of-the-line accessories set the salesman had convinced my mother she absolutely had to have, resulting in one of the steaks being flung across the patio, where it landed with a slap on one of the imported loafers of our decorator, Jorge.

Now the flames on the grill were leaping as Chris struggled with the gas valve. All of us assembled stood there, holding our drinks as the fire shot up, making the steaks scream and sizzle, then died out completely, the grill making a gurgling noise. My mother, deep in conversation with one of our neighbors, glanced over in a disinterested way, as if this methodic burning and destruction of the main course was someone else’s problem.

“Don’t worry!” Chris called as the flames shot up again and he batted at them with the spatula, “it’s under control.” He sounded about as sure of this as he looked, which was to say, with half a right eyebrow and the smell of singed hair still lingering, not very.

“Everyone, please!” my mother called out, covering gamely by gesturing at the table where we’d set up all the cheeses and appetizers. “Eat, eat! We’ve got so much food here!”

Chris was waving smoke out of his face while Jennifer Anne stood off to his left, biting her lip. She’d brought several side dishes, all in plastic containers with matching, pastel-colored lids. On the bottom of each lid, in permanent marker, was written PROPERTY OF JENNIFER A. BAKER, PLEASE RETURN. As if the whole world was part of an international conspiracy to steal her Tupperware.

“Barbara,” Patty called out, “this is just wonderful.”

“Oh, it’s nothing!” my mother said, fanning her face with her hand. She was in black pants and a lime green tank top that showed off her honeymoon tan, her hair pulled back in a headband: she looked the picture of suburban entertaining, as if at any moment she might light a tiki torch and spray some Cheez Whiz onto crackers.

It was always interesting to see how my mother’s relationships manifested themselves in her personality. With my dad she was a hippie-in all the pictures I’d seen she looked so young, wearing gauzy skirts or frayed jeans, her hair long and black and parted right down the middle. During the time she was married to Harold, the professor, she’d gone academic, sporting a lot of tweed and wearing her reading glasses all the time, even though she saw well enough without them. Once married to Win, the doctor, she’d gone country club, in little sweater sets and tennis skirts, though she couldn’t play to save her life. And with Martin, the golf pro-who she’d met, of course, at the country club-she went into a young phase, since he was six years her junior: short skirts, jeans, little flimsy dresses. Now, as Don’s wife, Barb, she’d gone subdivision on us: I could just see them, years from now, wearing matching jogging suits and riding around in a golf cart, en route to work on their back swing. I really did hope this was my mother’s last marriage: I wasn’t sure she, or I, could take another incarnation.

Now I watched as Don, wearing a golf shirt and drinking a beer in the bottle, helped himself to another of the crostini, popping it into his mouth. I’d expected him to be the grill master, but he didn’t even seem to be that fond of food at all, in fact, judging by the vast quantities of Ensure that he consumed, those little cans of liquid diet that claim to have all the nutritional value of a good meal with the convenience of a pop-top. He bought them by the case at Sam’s Club. For some reason, this bothered me even more than my now breasty breakfasts, seeing Don walking through the house reading the newspaper, in his leather slippers, a can of Ensure seemingly affixed to his hand, the fffftttt sound of him popping the top now signaling his presence.

“Remy, honey?” my mother called out. “Can you come here a second?”

I made my excuses to Patty and walked across the patio, where my mother slid her hand around my wrist, pulled me gently close to her, and whispered, “I’m wondering if I should be worried about the steaks.”

I glanced over at the grill, where Chris had positioned himself in such a way that it was difficult-but not impossible-to see that the prime Brazilian beef cuts had been reduced to small, black objects resembling lava rocks.

“Yes and no,” I told her, and she absently brushed her fingers over my skin. My mother’s hands were always cool, even in the hottest of weather. I suddenly had a flash of her pressing a palm to my forehead when I was a child, checking for fever, and me thinking this then too. “I’ll deal with it,” I told her.

“Oh, Remy,” she said, squeezing my hand. “What am I going to do without you?”

Ever since she’d come home it had been like this, these sudden moments when her face changed and I knew she was thinking that I might actually go to Stanford after all, that it was really about to happen. She had her new husband, her new wing, her new book. She’d be fine without me, and we both knew it. This is what daughters did. They left, and came home later with lives of their own. It was a basic plot in any number of her books: girl strikes out, makes good, finds love, gets revenge. In that order. The making good and striking out part I liked. The rest would just be bonus.

“Come on, Mom,” I told her. “You won’t even know I’m gone.”

She sighed, shaking her head, and pulled me close, kissing my cheek. I could smell her perfume, mixed with hair spray, and I closed my eyes for a second, breathing it in. With all the changes, some things stayed the same.

Which is exactly what I was thinking as I stood in the kitchen, pulling the hamburgers I’d bought out of the back of the refrigerator, where I’d camouflaged them behind a stack of Ensures. At the supermarket, when Dexter had asked why I was buying this stuff even though it wasn’t on the list, I’d just told him that I liked to be prepared for any eventuality, because you just never knew. Could be I was too cynical. Or maybe, unlike so many others who moved in my mother’s orbit, I had just learned from the past.

“Okay, so it is true.” I turned around to see Jennifer Anne standing behind me. In one hand, she had two packs of hot dogs: in the other, a bag of buns. She half-smiled, as if we’d both been caught doing something, and said, “Great minds think alike, right?”

“I am impressed,” I told her as she came over and opened one of the packs, arranging the dogs on a plate. “You know her well.”

“No, but I do know Christopher,” she said. “I had my reservations about that grill from the day we brought it home from the store. He went in there and just got bedazzled. As soon as the guy started talking about convection, he was gone.”

“Convection?” I said.

She sighed, pushing her hair out of her face. “It has to do with the heating process,” she explained. “Instead of the heat just rising up, it surrounds the food. That’s what got Christopher in. The guy just kept saying it, like a mantra. It surrounds the food. It surrounds the food.”

I snorted, and she glanced over at me, then smiled, almost tentatively, as if she had to check first to make sure I wasn’t making fun of her. Then we just stood there, both of us stacking meat products, for a second, until I decided we were on the verge of a Hallmark moment and had to take action.

“So anyway,” I said, “I’m wondering how we’re going to explain this last-minute menu substitution.”

“The steaks were bad,” she said simply. “They smelled off. And this is just so kitschy, all-American, burger and dogs. Your mom will love it.”

“Okay,” I said, picking up my plate of patties. She grabbed the buns and her plate, then started toward the door to the patio. I followed behind, glad to let her handle it.

We were halfway out the door when she turned her head, nodding to the front yard, and said, “Looks like your guest has arrived.”

I glanced out the window. Sure enough, there was Dexter, coming down the sidewalk, a good half hour late. He was carrying a bottle of wine (impressive) and wearing jeans and a clean white T-shirt (even more so). He was also holding a leash, the other end of which was attached to Monkey, who was charging ahead, tongue out, at a speed that seemed impressive considering his old age.

“Can you take this?” I asked Jennifer Anne, handing over my plate of patties.

“Sure,” she said. “See you outside.”

As I came down the driveway, the screen door slamming behind me, Dexter was tying Monkey’s leash to our mailbox. I could hear him talking to the dog as I came up, just as you would talk to anyone, and Monkey had his head cocked to the side, still panting, as if he was listening carefully and waiting for his turn to respond.

“… might not be into dogs, so you’ll just stay here, okay?” Dexter was saying, tying the leash into a knot, then another knot, as if Monkey, whose back leg was trembling even as he sat down, possessed some form of superhuman strength. “And then later, we’ll go find a pool so you can take a dip, and then maybe, if we’re really feeling crazy, we’ll take a ride in the van and you can put your head out the window. Okay?”

Monkey kept panting, closing his eyes as Dexter scratched under his chin. As I came closer he saw me and started wagging his tail, the sound a dull thump against the grass.

“Hey,” Dexter said, turning around. “Sorry I’m late. Had a little problem with the Monkster here.”

“A problem?” I said, squatting down beside him and letting Monkey sniff my hand.

“Well,” Dexter said, “I’ve been so busy with work and the gigs and all that, you know, I’ve kind of neglected him. He’s lonely. He doesn’t know any other dogs here, and he’s really quite social. He’s used to having a whole network of friends.”

I looked at him, then at Monkey, who was now busy chewing his own haunch. “I see,” I said.

“And I was getting ready to leave this afternoon, and he was following me around, all pathetic. Whining. Scratching at my shoes.” He rubbed his hand over the top of Monkey’s head, pulling on his ears in a way that looked painful but that the dog seemed to love, making a low, happy noise in his throat. “He can just stay out here, right?” Dexter asked me, standing up. Monkey wagged his tail hopefully, perking up his ears, the way he always seemed to do at the sound of Dexter’s voice. “He won’t cause any trouble.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’ll bring him some water.”

Dexter smiled at me, a nice smile, as if I’d surprised him. “Thanks,” he said, and then added, to Monkey, “See, I told you. She likes you.”

Monkey was back to chewing his haunch now, as if this last fact didn’t concern him much. Then I got him some water from the garage, Dexter double-checked the leash knot again, and we headed around the side of the house, where I could already smell hot dogs cooking.

My mother was deep in conversation with Patty when we walked up, but at the sight of Dexter she stopped talking, put a hand to her chest-a trademark fluttering gesture-and said, “Well, hello. You must be Dexter.”

“I am,” Dexter said, taking her hand as she extended it and shaking it.

“I recognize you from the wedding!” she said, as if just now putting this together, even though I’d told her at least twice about the connection. “What a wonderful singer you are!”

Dexter seemed pleased and somewhat embarrassed at this. My mother was still holding his hand. “Great wedding,” he said finally. “Congratulations.”

“Oh, you must have something to drink,” my mother said, glancing around for me, and of course, I was right there between them. “Remy, honey, offer Dexter a beer. Or some wine? Or a soft drink?”

“Beer would be fine,” Dexter said to me.

“Remy, sweetie, there’s some more cold in the fridge, okay?” My mother put a hand on my back, effectively steering me toward the kitchen, then hooked her arm in Dexter’s and said, “You have to meet Jorge, he’s just this brilliant decorator. Jorge! Come here, you absolutely have to meet Remy’s new boyfriend!”

Jorge started across the patio as my mother kept trilling about how fabulous everyone within a five-foot radius was. Meanwhile, I headed into the kitchen to fetch Dexter a beer, like hired help. By the time I brought it back out to him Don had joined the conversation and now everyone was discussing, for some weird reason, Milwaukee.

“Coldest weather I’ve ever felt,” Don was saying, popping a handful of imported nuts into his mouth. “The wind can rip you apart in five minutes there. Plus it’s murder on cars. Salt damage.”

“Great snow, though,” Dexter said, taking the beer as I handed it to him and managing, very subtly, to brush his fingers with mine as he did so. “And the local music scene is really coming on there. It’s early, but it’s there.”

Don huffed at this, taking another swig of his beer. “Music is not a real career,” he said. “Up until last year this boy was majoring in business, can you believe that? At UVA.”

“Well, isn’t that interesting,” my mother said. “Now, tell me again how you two are related?”

“Don is my father’s brother-in-law,” Dexter told her. “His sister is my aunt.”

“That’s just wonderful!” my mother said, a bit too enthusiastically. “Small world, isn’t it?”

“You know,” Don went on, “he had a full scholarship. His way paid. Dropped out. Broke his mother’s heart, and for what? Music.”

Now, even my mother couldn’t come up with anything to say. I just looked at Don, wondering where this was coming from. Maybe it was the Ensures.

“He’s a brilliant singer,” my mother said again to Jorge, who nodded, as if he hadn’t already heard this several times. Don seemed to be distracted now, looking out across the patio, holding his empty beer. I glanced at Dexter and realized that I’d never seen him like this: a bit cowed, uncomfortable, unable to come up with the quick funny retort that always seemed so close at hand. He ran a hand through his hair, tugging at it, then glanced around the yard, taking another sip of his beer.

“Come on,” I said, and slipped my hand around his. “Let’s get some food.” Then I pulled him away, gently, over to the grill, where Chris seemed very happy to be poking at the hot dogs, back in his element.

“Guess what,” I said, and he glanced up, eyebrows raised. “Don’s an asshole.”

“No, he isn’t,” Dexter said. He smiled, as if it wasn’t any big deal, then put an arm over my shoulders. “Every family has a black sheep, right? It’s the American way.”

“Tell me about it,” Chris said, flipping a burger. “At least you weren’t in jail.”

Dexter took a big swig of his beer. “Only once,” he said cheerfully, then winked at me. And that was it: so quickly, he was back to his old self, as if all that had just happened was a big joke, one that he was in on, and didn’t bother him in the least. I, however, kept looking at Don, my stomach burning, as if I now had a score to settle. Seeing Dexter so quiet, if only for a second, had somehow made him more real to me. As if for those few moments, he wasn’t just my summer boyfriend but something bigger, something I had a stake in.

The rest of the evening went well. The burgers and dogs were tasty, and most of the expensive olive-and-sun-dried-tomato spread went uneaten, while Jennifer Anne’s deviled eggs and three-bean salad were a hit. I even saw my mother licking her fingers after consuming a second piece of Jennifer Anne’s chocolate pudding pie, which was garnished with a healthy scoop of Cool Whip. So much for gourmet.

By dark everyone was saying their good-byes, and my mother disappeared to her room, claiming to be completely wiped out from the party because entertaining, even when other people do most of the work, can be so exhausting. So Jennifer Anne and Chris and Dexter and I stacked the dishes and wrapped things up, tossing most of the gourmet crap and the burned steaks, saving only one, with the blackened stuff trimmed off, for Monkey.

“He’ll love it,” Dexter said, taking it from Jennifer Anne, who had wrapped it up in foil, the edges folded neatly. “He’s really a Dog Chow kind of guy, so this is like Christmas to him.”

“What an interesting name he has,” she said.

“I got him for my tenth birthday,” Dexter told her, glancing outside. “I really wanted a monkey, so I was kind of disappointed. But he’s turned out to be much better. Monkeys get really mean, apparently.”

Jennifer Anne looked at him, somewhat quizzically, then smiled. “I’ve heard that,” she said, not unkindly, and went back to covering leftover pita bread with Cling Wrap.

“So if you’ve got a minute,” Chris said to Dexter, wiping the counter down with a sponge, “you should come up and see my hatchlings. They’re amazing.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dexter said enthusiastically. Then he looked at me. “You okay?”

“Go ahead,” I said, as if I was his mom or something, and they took off up the stairs, feet clumping, on the way to the lizard room.

Across the kitchen, Jennifer Anne sighed, shutting the fridge. “I will never understand this hobby of his,” she said. “I mean, dogs and cats you can cuddle. Who wants to cuddle a lizard?”

This seemed like a difficult question to answer, so I just pulled the plug on the drain, where I was washing dishes, and let the water gurgle down noisily. Upstairs, it sounded like the honeycomb hideout: giggling, various oohs and ahhs, and the occasional skittering noise, followed by uproarious laughter.

Jennifer Anne cast her eyes up at the ceiling, obviously unnerved. “Tell Christopher I’m in the den,” she said, picking up her purse from the sideboard, where it was parked next to her plastic containers, now cleaned, lids accounted for. She drew out a book and headed into the next room, where a few seconds later I heard the TV come on, murmuring softly.

I picked up the foil-wrapped steak and walked outside, flicking on the porch light. As I came down the front walk Monkey got to his feet and started wagging his tail.

“Hey buddy,” I said. He poked at my hand, then got a whiff of the steak and started nudging my fingers with his nose, snuffling. “Got a treat for you here.”

Monkey wolfed down the steak in about two bites, almost taking part of my pinky with it. Well, it was dark. When he was done he burped and rolled over onto his back, sticking his belly in the air, and I sat down on the grass beside him.

It was a nice night, clear and cooler, perfect Fourth of July weather. A few people were popping off firecrackers a couple of streets over, the noise pinging in the dark. Monkey kept rolling closer to me, nudging my elbow, until I finally relented and scratched the matted fur on his belly. He needed a bath. Badly. Plus he had bad breath. But there was something sweet about him, nonetheless, and he was practically humming as I moved my fingers across him.

We sat there like that for a while until I heard the screen door slam and Dexter call out my name. At the sound of his voice, Monkey instantly sat up, ears perked, and then got to his feet, walking toward it until the leash was stretched to the limit.

“Hey,” Dexter said. I couldn’t see his face, just his outline in the brightness of the porch light. Monkey barked, as if he’d called him, and his tail wagging grew frenzied, like intense windmill action, and I wondered if he’d knock himself down with the sheer force of it.

“Hey,” I said back, and he started down the steps toward us. As he came closer across the grass, I watched Monkey, amazed at his full-body excitement to see this person he’d only been away from for an hour or so. What did it feel like, I wondered, to love someone that much? So much that you couldn’t even control yourself when they came close, as if you might just break free of whatever was holding you and throw yourself at them with enough force to easily overwhelm you both. I had to wonder, but Monkey clearly knew: you could see it, feel it coming off him, like a heat. I almost envied him that. Almost.

It was late that night, when I was lying in Dexter’s room on his bed, that he picked up the guitar. He wasn’t much of a player, he told me, as he sat across the room, shirtless, barefoot, his fingers finding the strings in the dark. He played a little riff of something, a Beatles song, then a few lines of the latest version of “The Potato Opus.” He didn’t play like Ted, of course: his chords seemed more hesitant, as if he was plucking by sheer luck. I leaned back against the pillows and listened as he sang to me. A bit of this, a bit of that. Nothing in full. And then, just as I felt I might be drifting off to sleep, something else.

“This lullaby is only a few words, a simple run of chords-”

“No.” I sat up, now wide awake. “Don’t.”

Even in the dark, I could see he was surprised. He dropped his hands from the guitar and looked at me, and I hoped he couldn’t see my face either. Because it was all fun and games, so far. Just a few moments when I worried it might go deep enough to drown me. Like now. And I could pull back, would pull back, before it went that far.

I’d only told him about the song in a moment of weakness, a time of true confessions, which I usually avoided in relationships. The past was so sticky, full of land mines: I made it a point, usually, not to be so detailed in the map of myself I handed over to a guy. And the song, that song, was one of the biggest keys to me. Like a soft spot, a bruise that never quite healed right. The first place I was sure they would strike back, when the time came for them to do so.

“You don’t want to hear it?” he asked now.

“No,” I said again. “I don’t.”

He’d been so surprised when I told him. We’d been having our own challenge of sorts, a kind of Guess What You’d Never Know About Me. I found out that he was allergic to raspberries, that he’d busted out his front tooth running into a park bench in sixth grade, that his first girlfriend was a distant cousin of Elvis. And I’d told him that I’d come this close to piercing my belly button before fainting, that one year I’d sold more Girl Scout cookies than anyone else in my troop, and that my father was Thomas Custer, and “This Lullaby” had been written for me.

Of course he knew the song, he said, and then hummed the opening chords, pulling the words out of thin air. They’d even sung it a couple of times at weddings, he said: some brides picked it for the dance with their father. Which seemed so stupid to me, considering the words. I will let you down, it says, right there in the first verse, plain as day. What kind of father says such a thing? But that, of course, was a question I’d long ago quit asking myself.

He was still strumming the chords, finding them in the dark.

“Dexter.”

“Why do you hate it that much?”

“I don’t hate it. I just… I’m sick of it, that’s all.” But this wasn’t true either. I did hate it sometimes, for the lie that it was. As if my father had been able, with just a few words scribbled in a Motel 6, to excuse the fact that he never bothered to know me. Seven years he’d spent with my mother, most of them good until one last blowout, resulting in him leaving for California, with her pregnant, although she didn’t find that out until later. Two years after I was born, he died of a heart attack, never having made it back across the country to see me. It was the ultimate out, this song, admitting to the world that he’d only disappoint me, and didn’t that just make him so noble, really? As if he was beating me to the punch, his words living forever, while I was left speechless, no rebuttal, no words left to say.

Dexter strummed the guitar idly, not picking out any real melody, just messing around. He said, “Funny how I’ve heard that song all my life and never knew it was for you.”

“It’s just a song,” I said, running my fingers over the windowsill, easing them around those snow globes. “I never even knew him.”

“It’s too bad. I bet he was a cool guy.”

“Maybe,” I said. It was weird to be talking about my father out loud, something I hadn’t done since sixth grade, when my mother found therapy the way some people find God and dragged us all in for group, individual, and art until her money ran out.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, and I was unnerved by how solemn he sounded, how serious. As if he’d found that map after all and was dangerously close, circling.

“It’s nothing,” I said.

He was quiet for a second, and I had a flash of his face earlier that night, caught unaware by Don’s pronouncements, and the vulnerability I’d seen there. It had unsettled me, because I was used to the Dexter I liked, the funny guy with the skinny waist and the fingers that pressed against my neck just so. In just seconds I’d seen another shade of him, and if it had been light where we were now, he’d have seen the same of me. So I was grateful, as I had been so often in my life, for the dark.

I rolled over and pressed myself into the pillow, listening to the sound of my own breathing. I heard him move, a soft noise as the guitar was put down, and next his arms were around me, circling my back, his face against my shoulder. He was so close to me in that moment, too close, but I had never pushed a guy away for that. If anything I pulled them nearer, taking them in, as I did now, sure in my belief that knowing me that well would easily be enough to scare them away.

Chapter Ten

“I mean, God,” Lissa said, stopping in front of a huge display of bedsheets, “who knows the difference between a duvet and a comforter?”

We were in Linens Etc., armed with Lissa’s mom’s gold card, the list of items that the university suggested for all incoming freshmen, and a letter from Lissa’s future roommate, a girl named Delia from Boca Raton, Florida. She’d already been in contact so that she and Lissa could color-coordinate their bed linens, discuss who should bring what in the way of televisions, microwaves, and wall hangings, and just to “break the ice” so that by August, when classes started, they’d already “be like sisters.” If Lissa wasn’t already glum about starting college post-Adam, this letter-written on pink stationery in silver ink, and spewing forth glitter when she pulled it from the envelope-had pretty much done her in.

“A duvet,” I told her, stopping to eye a stack of thick purple towels, “is a cover for a comforter, usually a down comforter. And a comforter is just a glorified quilt.”

She crossed her eyes at me, sighed, and pushed some hair out of her face. Lately she’d just seemed cranky all the time, defeated, as if at the age of eighteen life already sucked beyond any hope of improvement.

“I’m supposed to get a comforter in a purple/pink hue,” she said, reading off Delia’s letter. “And sheets to match. And a bed ruffle, whatever the hell that is.”

“It goes around the base of the bed,” I explained. “To cover the legs and provide a sort of color continuity, all the way to the floor.”

She looked at me, eyebrows raised. “Color continuity?” she asked.

“My mother bought a new bedroom suite a few years back,” I said, taking the list out of her hand. “I got an entire education in thread count sheets and Egyptian cotton.”

Lissa stopped the cart next to a display of plastic wastebas kets, picking up a lime green one with blue trim. “I should get this,” she told me, turning it in her hands, “just because it will so clash with her predetermined scheme. In fact, I should pick the most butt-ugly furnishings as a complete protest against her assumption that I would just go along with whatever she said.”

I glanced around: butt ugly was entirely possible at Linens Etc., which carried not only lime green trash cans but also leopard-patterned tissue holders, framed prints of kittens frolicking with puppies, and bath mats shaped like feet. “Lissa,” I said gently, “maybe we shouldn’t do this today.”

“We have to,” she grumbled, grabbing a pack of sheets-the wrong size, and bright red-off a nearby shelf and tossing them into the cart. “I’m seeing Delia at orientation next week and I’m sure she’ll want a freaking update.”

I picked up the red sheets and put them back on the shelf while she pouted around the toothbrush holders, completely un-enthused. “Lissa, is this really how you want to start college? With a totally shit attitude?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah, well that’s easy for you to say, Miss Going-across-the-Country-Free-and Clear-No-Problems. You’ll be out in sunny California, windsurfing and eating sushi while I’m stuck here in the same place I’ve always been, watching Adam date his way through the entire freshman class.”

“Windsurfing and sushi?” I said. “At the same time?”

“You know what I mean!” she snapped, and a woman pricing a stack of washcloths glanced over at us. Lissa lowered her voice and added, “I might not even go to school anyway. I might defer and join the Peace Corps and go to Africa and shave my head and dig latrines.”

“Shave your head?” I said, because, really, this was the most ludicrous part of the whole thing. “You? Do you have any idea how ugly most people’s bare heads are? They’ve got all kinds of bumps, Lissa. And you won’t know until it’s too late and you’re flat-out bald.”

“You’re not even listening to me!” she said. “It’s always been so easy for you, Remy. So gorgeous and confident and smart. No guy ever dumped you and left you shattered.”

“That’s not true,” I said in a level voice. “And you know it.”

She paused at this, as our shared history caught up with her. Okay, so maybe I was known for having the upper hand in my relationships, but there was a reason for that. She didn’t know what happened that night at Albert’s, within shouting distance of her own bedroom window. But since then, I’d been stomped on my fair share. Even Jonathan had caught me unaware.

“I planned my whole future around Adam,” she said now, quietly. “And now I have nothing.”

“No,” I told her, “now you just don’t have Adam. There’s a big difference, Lissa. You just can’t see it yet.”

She harrumphed at this, yanking a cow-print Kleenex box cover off the shelf and adding it to the cart. “I can see that everyone else is doing exactly what they wanted with the rest of their lives. They’re all at the gate, pawing the dirt and ready to run, and I’ve already got a lame leg and am this close to being taken around back of the stable to be put out of my misery.”

“Sweetie,” I said, trying to be patient, “we’ve only been out of high school a month. This isn’t even the real world yet. It’s just in-between time.”

“Well, I hate it here,” she snapped, gesturing all around her, including not only Linens Etc. but the world itself, “in between or not. Give me high school any day. I’d go back in a second, if I could.”

“It’s too early for nostalgia,” I told her. “Really.”

We walked along the main aisle toward the miniblind section, not talking. As she grumbled over curtains I walked over to the clearance section, where summer picnic ware was on special, one day only. There were plastic plates in all colors, and cutlery with clear handles, forks with metallic prongs. I picked up a set of tumblers decorated with pink flamingoes: definitely butt ugly.

But I was thinking of the yellow house, where the only dish-ware consisted of one ceramic plate, a few mismatched forks and knives, some gas-station freebie coffee mugs, and whatever paper goods Ted had managed to score from the damaged bin at Mayor’s Market. It was the only time I’d ever heard someone ask, “Can you grab me the spoon?” as opposed to “a spoon,” which at least connoted there was more than one. And here, on bargain special, was an entire plastic, blue-handled set of cutlery-a virtual plethora of flatware-for only $6.99. I picked them up and put them in the cart without even thinking.

About ten seconds later, it hit me. What was I doing? Buying flatware for a guy? For a boyfriend? It was as if I, like my brother, had been suddenly brainwashed by aliens. What kind of girl purchases housewares for someone she has hardly been dating for a month? Psycho desperate-to-get-married-and-pop-out-babies types, that’s who, I told myself, shuddering at the thought. I threw the cutlery set back onto the table with such speed it crashed into a stack of dolphin-patterned plates, causing a commotion loud enough to distract Lissa from the reading lamps.

Calm down, I told myself, taking in a deep breath, then promptly spitting it out, since everything in Linens Etc. stank of scented candles.

“Remy?” Lissa said. She was holding a green lamp. “You okay?”

I nodded, and she went back to browsing. At least she was feeling better: the lamp did match the trash can.

I pushed the cart through hand towels, storage supplies, and halfway into candles-where the smell became a stench-all the while reminding myself that everything does not necessarily have a Greater Meaning. It was just a bargain set of plastic ware, for God’s sake, not a promise ring. This settled me somewhat, even as the more rational part of my mind reminded me that never, in the course of oh, say, fifteen relationships since junior high school, had I ever had the urge to buy a boyfriend anything more permanent than a Zip Coke. Even at birthdays and Christmas I kept to my basic gifts, stuff like shirts and CDs, things that would eventually go out of style. Not like plastic picnic ware, which would probably be around to greet the roaches after the final nuclear holocaust. Plus, if you really went deep into the meaning of gifts, dishes equaled food, food equaled sustenance, and sustenance equaled life, which meant that by giving even one plastic fork I was basically saying I wanted to take care of Dexter forever and ever, amen. Yikes.

On the way to the checkout, Lissa and I passed the clearance table again. She picked up a retro-looking alarm clock. “This is cute,” she said. “And look at those plastic plates and silverware. Maybe I could use those for when we fix stuff in the room.”

“Maybe,” I said, shrugging and ignoring the table as if it was someone I’d dated.

“But what if I didn’t use it?” she went on, in the voice I recognized as Lissa entering Prime Indecisive Mode. “I mean, it’s only seven bucks, right? And it’s cute. But I probably don’t have room for it, anyway.”

“Probably not,” I said, starting to push the cart again.

She didn’t move, the alarm clock in one hand, fingering the cute plastic pouch the cutlery came in. “It’s really cute, though,” she said. “And it would be better than using takeout stuff all the time. But still, it’s a lot of silverware, I mean it’ll only be me and Delia…”

This time I didn’t say anything. All I could smell were those candles.

“… but maybe we’d have other people in sometimes, you know, for pizza or whatever?” She sighed. “No, forget it, it’s just an impulse thing, I don’t need it.”

I started to push the cart again, and she took a couple of steps. Two, to be exact.

“On the other hand,” she said, then stopped talking. A sigh. Then, “No, forget it-”

“God!” I said, reaching behind me and grabbing the plastic pouch, stuffing it into the cart. “I’ll buy it. Let’s just go, okay?”

She looked at me, wide-eyed. “Do you want it, though? Because I’m not really sure I’ll use it-”

“Yes,” I said loudly. “I want it. I need it. Let’s go.”

“Well, okay,” Lissa said, somewhat uncertainly. “If you really need it.”

Later, when I dropped her off, I told her to make sure she took everything, even the plastic ware. But in typical fashion, she cleaned out every bag from my trunk except one. I promptly forgot about it, that is until a few nights later, when Dexter and I were unloading some groceries he’d bought for the yellow house-peanut butter, bread, orange juice, and Doritos-from my car. He grabbed all his bags, then was about to shut the trunk when he stopped and leaned over.

“What’s this?” he asked, pulling out a white plastic shopping bag, knotted neatly at the top-I’d taught Lissa well-so that its contents wouldn’t spill.

“Nothing,” I said quickly, trying to take it from him.

“Wait, wait,” he said, holding it out of my reach. The peanut butter fell out of one of his other bags, rolling across the yard, but he ignored this, too intrigued by what I didn’t want him to see. “What is it?”

“Something I bought for myself,” I said curtly, grabbing for it again. No luck. He was too tall, and his arms too long.

“Is it a secret?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

He shook the bag slightly, listening to the sound it made. “Doesn’t sound secret,” he decided.

“What does secret sound like?” I asked. Idiot. “Give it here.”

“Like tampons,” he told me, shaking it again. “This doesn’t sound like tampons.”

I glared at him, and he handed it over, as if now he didn’t want to find out. He walked across the grass to pick up the peanut butter, wiping it on his shirt-of course-and chucking it back into the bag.

“If you must know,” I said, as if it was absolutely no big deal whatsoever, “it’s just this plastic ware I bought at Linens Etc.”

He thought about this. “Plastic ware.”

“Yes. It was on sale.”

We stood there. From inside the yellow house, I could hear the TV, and someone laughing. Monkey was standing on the other side of the screen door, watching us, his tail going full speed.

“Plastic ware,” he said slowly, “like knives and forks and spoons?”

I brushed a bit of dirt off the back of my car-was that a scratch?-and said casually, “Yeah, I guess. Just the basics, you know.”

“Did you need plastic ware?” he asked.

I shrugged.

“Because,” he went on, and I fought the urge to squirm, “it’s so funny, because I need plastic ware. Badly. ”

“Can we go inside, please?” I asked, slamming the trunk shut. “It’s hot out here.”

He looked at the bag again, then at me. And then, slowly, the smile I knew and dreaded crept across his face. “You bought me plastic ware, ” he said. “Didn’t you?’

“No,” I growled, picking at my license plate.

“You did!” he hooted, laughing out loud. “You bought me some forks. And knives. And spoons. Because-”

“No,” I said loudly.

“-you love me!” He grinned, as if he’d solved the puzzler for all time, as I felt a flush creep across my face. Stupid Lissa. I could have killed her.

“It was on sale,” I told him again, as if this was some kind of an excuse.

“You love me,” he said simply, taking the bag and adding it to the others.

“Only seven bucks,” I added, but he was already walking away, so sure of himself. “It was on clearance, for God’s sake.”

“Love me,” he called out over his shoulder, in a singsong voice. “You. Love. Me.”

I stood there in the front yard, at the bottom of the stairs, feeling for the first time in a long while that things were completely out of my control. How had I let this happen? Years of CDs and sweaters, interchangeable gifts, and now one set of picnic ware and I totally lose the upper hand. It seemed impossible.

Dexter walked up the front steps to the door, Monkey bursting forth and bustling around, sniffing at the bags, until they both went inside and the door slammed shut behind them. Something told me, as I stood there, that I should just turn around, go back to my car, and drive home as fast as possible, then lock every door and window and hunker down to protect my dignity. Or my sanity. So many times it seemed like there were chances to stop things before they started. Or even stop them in midstream. But it was even worse when you knew at that very moment that there was still time to save yourself, and yet you couldn’t even budge.

The door swung open again, and there was Monkey, panting. Above him, dangling past the doorframe from the left, was one hand, fingers gripping a bright blue fork, wiggling it around suggestively, as if it was some kind of signal, spelling out messages in supersecret spy code. What was it saying? What did it mean? Did I even care anymore?

The fork kept wiggling, beckoning. Last chance, I thought.

I sighed out loud, and started up the steps.

There were certain ways to tell that my mother was getting close to finishing a novel. First, she’d start working at all hours, not just her set schedule of noon to four. Then I’d start waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of her typewriter, and look out my window to see the light spilling in long, slanting squares from her study onto the side yard. She’d also start talking to herself as she wrote, under her breath. It wasn’t loud enough to really make out what she was saying, but at times it sounded like there were two people in there, one dictating and one just rushing to get it down, one clackety-clacking line at a time. And finally, the most revealing sign of all, always a dead giveaway: when she hit her stride, and the words came so easily she had to fight to hold them back long enough to get them on the page, she always put on the Beatles, and they sang her to her epilogue.

I was on my way down for breakfast in the middle of July, rubbing my eyes, when I stopped at the top of the stairs and listened. Yep. Paul McCartney, his voice high, something from the early years.

The lizard room door opened behind me and Chris came out, in his work uniform, carrying a few empty jars of baby food, one of the daily diet staples of the lizards. He cocked his head to the side, shutting the door behind him. “Sounds like that album with the Norwegian song on it,” he said.

“Nope,” I told him, starting down the stairs. “It’s that one where they’re all in the window, looking down.”

He nodded, and fell into step behind me. When we reached the kitchen we saw the bead curtain was drawn across the entryway to the study, and beyond it Paul’s voice had given way to John Lennon’s. I walked over and peered through the curtain, impressed by the stack of paper on the desk beside her and one burned-out candle. She had to have had two hundred pages, at least. When she was rolling, nothing could stop her.

I turned back into the kitchen and pushed aside two empty cans of Ensure-I was determined not to clean up after Don, although I was tested daily-before fixing myself a bowl of oatmeal with bananas and a big cup of coffee. Then I sat down, my back to the naked woman on the wall, and pulled the family calendar-a freebie from Don Davis Motors, featuring Don himself smiling in front of a shiny 4Runner-off the wall.

It was July 15. In two months, give or take a few days, I would be packing up my two suitcases and my laptop and heading to the airport, and seven hours later I would arrive in California to begin my life at Stanford. There was so little written between now and then; even the day I left was hardly marked, except for a simple circle in lipstick I’d done myself, as if it was a big deal only to me.

“Oh, man,” Chris grumbled from in front of the fridge. I glanced over to see him holding an almost empty bag of bread: all that was left were the two end pieces, which I suppose have a real name, but we’d always called the butts. “He did it again.”

Don had lived alone so long that he was having trouble grasping the concept that other people actually came after him and, sometimes, used the same products he did. He thought nothing of finishing off the last of the orange juice, then sticking the empty carton back in the fridge, or taking the last of the usable bread and leaving the butts for Chris to deal with. Even though Chris and I had both asked him, oh so politely, to write things down when he used them up (we kept a list on the fridge, labeled GROCERIES NEEDED) he either forgot or just didn’t care.

Chris shut the fridge door a bit enthusiastically, shaking the rows of Ensures that were stacked there. They clanked against one another, and one toppled off, falling back between the fridge and the wall with a thunk.

“I hate those things,” he grumbled, stuffing the bread butts into the toaster oven. “And, God, I just bought this bag. If he’s sucking down those Ensures, why does he need to eat my bread anyway? Isn’t that a complete meal in itself?”

“I thought so,” I said.

“I mean,” he went on as the music picked up in the next room, all yeah-yeah-yeahs, “all I’m asking for is a little consideration, you know? Some give-and-take. It’s not too much to ask, I don’t think. Is it?”

I shrugged, looking again at that lipstick circle. Not my problem.

“Remy?” My mother’s voice drifted from the study, the typewriter noises stopping for a second. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Sure,” I called back to her.

“Bring me some coffee?” The typewriter started up again. “With milk?”

I got up and poured a cup almost to the top, then dumped in skim milk until it reached the rim: one of the only things that we had in common, completely, was taking our coffee the same way. I walked over to the entryway to the study, balancing her cup and mine, and pushed aside the curtain.

The room smelled like vanilla, and I had to move a row of mugs-most half full, their rims stained with the pearly pink that was her “house lipstick”-aside to make room. One of the cats was curled up on the chair next to her, and hissed at me halfheartedly as I slid it out of the way so I could sit down. Next to me was a stack of typewritten pages, neatly aligned. I was right: she was really cooking. The number of the page on the top was 207.

I knew better than to start talking until she was done with whatever sentence, or scene, she was in the midst of writing. So I pulled page 207 off the stack and skimmed it, folding my legs beneath me.

“Luc,” Melanie called to the other room in the suite, but there was only silence beyond. “Please.”

No answer from the man who just hours earlier had kissed her under a shower of rose petals, claiming her in front of all Paris society as the one he loved. How could a marriage bed be so cold? Melanie shivered in her lace gown, feeling tears fill her eyes as she caught sight of her bouquet, white roses and purple lilies, lying where the maid had left it on the bedside table. It was still so fresh and new, and Melanie could remember pressing her face to the full blossoms, breathing them in as the realization that she was now Mrs. Luc Perethel washed over her. Once, the words had seemed magical, like a spell cast in a fairy tale. But now, with the city lit up through her open window, Melanie ached not for her new husband but for another man, in another city. Oh, Brock, she thought. She didn’t dare to say the words aloud for fear that they would be carried away, soaring out of her reach, to find the only one true love she’d ever had.

Uh-oh. I glanced up at my mother, who was still typing away, her brow furrowed, lips moving. Now, I knew that what she wrote was pure fiction. After all, this was a woman who’d been constructing stories about the lives and loves of the rich while we were clipping coupons and having our phone cut off on a regular basis. And it wasn’t like Luc, the cold new husband, had a fondness for Ensures or anything. I hoped.

“Oh, thank you!” My mother, spying her fresh cup of coffee, stretched her fingers and picked it up, taking a sip. She had her hair pulled back in a loose ponytail, no makeup, and was wearing pajamas and the leopard-print bedroom slippers I’d gotten her for her last birthday. She yawned, leaning back in her chair, and said, “I’ve been going all night. What time is it?”

I glanced at the clock in the kitchen, visible through the curtain, which was still swaying slightly. “Eight-fifteen.”

She sighed, putting the cup to her lips again. I glanced over at the sheet in the typewriter, trying to make out what happened next, but all I could see was several lines of dialogue. Apparently, Luc did have something to say after all.

“So it’s going well,” I said, nodding toward the stack next to my elbow.

She flopped her hand at me in a so-so kind of way. “Oh, well, it’s smack in the middle, and you know there’s always a dull spot. But last night I was just about asleep when I had this inspiration. It had to do with swans.”

I waited. But that appeared to be all she would tell me, as now she’d grabbed a nail file from the mug stuffed with pens and pencils and was at work on a pinkie, shaping it deftly.

“Swans,” I said finally.

She chucked the nail file down on the desk and stretched her arms over her head. “You know,” she said, tucking a stray hair behind her ear, “they’re dreadful creatures, really. Beautiful to look at but mean. The Romans used them instead of guard dogs.”

I nodded, drinking my coffee. Across the room, I could hear the cat snoring.

“So,” she went on, “it got me thinking about what cost beauty. Or for that matter, what cost anything? Would you trade love for beauty? Or happiness for beauty? Could a gorgeous person with a mean streak be a worthy trade? And if you did make the trade, decide you’d take that beautiful swan and hope it wouldn’t turn on you, what would you do if it did?”

These were rhetorical questions. I thought.

“I just couldn’t stop thinking about it,” she said, shaking her head. “And then I couldn’t sleep, either. I think it’s that ridiculous tapestry Don insisted we hang on the wall. I can’t relax looking at all these carefully stitched depictions of military battles and people being crucified.”

“It is a little much,” I agreed. Every time I went into her room to get anything I found myself somewhat transfixed by it. It was hard to tear your eyes away from the panel that illustrated the beheading of John the Baptist.

“So I came down here,” she said, “thinking I’d just tinker, and now it’s eight in the A.M. and I’m still not sure what the answer is. How can that be?”

The music faded out now, and it was very, very quiet. I was sure I could feel my ulcer stirring, but it might have just been the coffee. My mother was always very dramatic when she was writing. At least once during every novel she’d fling herself into the kitchen, near tears, hysterical that she’d lost any talent she ever possessed, the book was a quagmire, a disaster, the end of her career, and Chris and I would just sit there, silent, until she wailed out again. After a few minutes, or hours, or-in bad times-days, she’d be right back in the study, curtain closed, typing away. And when the books arrived months later, smelling so new with their smooth, not-yet-cracked spines, she always forgot about the breakdowns that played a part in creating them. If I reminded her, she said writing novels was like childbirth: if you truly remembered how awful it got, you’d never do it again.

“You’ll work it out,” I said now. “You always do.”

She bit her lip and glanced down at the page in the typewriter, then out the window. The sunlight was spilling in, and I realized she did look tired, even sad, in a way I hadn’t noticed before. “I know,” she said, as if only agreeing with me to move past this. And then, after a quiet second or two, she switched gears completely and asked, “How’s Dexter?”

“Okay, I guess,” I said.

“I like him very much.” She yawned, then smiled at me apologetically. “He’s not like the other boys you’ve dated.”

“I had a no-musician rule,” I explained.

She sighed. “So did I.”

I laughed, and she did too. Then I said, “Okay, so why’d you break it?”

“Oh, the reason anyone does anything,” she said. “I was in love.”

I heard the front door swing shut as Chris left for work, yelling a good-bye behind him. We watched as he walked down the driveway to his car, a Mountain Dew-his version of coffee-in one hand.

“I think he’s going to buy her a ring, if he hasn’t already,” my mother said thoughtfully. “I just have this feeling.”

Chris started the engine, then pulled out into neighborhood traffic, turning around slowly in the cul-de-sac. He was swigging the Mountain Dew as he drove past.

“Well,” I said, “you would know.”

She finished her coffee, then reached over and brushed her fingers over my cheek, tracing the shape of my face. A dramatic gesture, like most of hers, but it was comforting in that she’d done it for as long as I could remember. Her fingers, as always, were cool.

“Oh, my Remy,” she said. “Only you understand.”

I knew what she meant, and yet I didn’t. I was a lot like my mother, but not in ways I was proud of. If my parents had stayed together and grown to be old hippies singing protest songs as they washed dishes after dinner, maybe I would have been different. If I’d ever seen what love really could do, or was, maybe I’d have believed in it from the start. But too much of my life had been spent watching marriages come together and then fall apart. So I understood, yes. But sometimes, like lately, I wished that I didn’t, not at all.

“But it’s filling up.”

“Filling up but not full.” I took the Tide from him and unscrewed the cap. “It has to be full.”

“I always put the soap in right when it starts,” he said.

“Which is why,” I said, pouring a bit of detergent in as the water level rose, “your clothes don’t ever get truly clean. There is a chemistry involved here, Dexter.”

“It’s laundry,” he said.

“Exactly.”

He sighed. “You know,” he said as I poured in the rest of the Tide and eased the lid shut, “the rest of the guys are even worse. They hardly ever even do laundry, much less separate their colors and brights.”

“Colors and whites,” I corrected him. “Colors and brights go together.”

“Are you this anal about everything?”

“Do you want everything to be pink again?”

That shut him up. Our little laundry lesson this evening had been precipitated by his throwing a new red shirt into the hot water cycle, which left everything he’d been wearing lately with a rosy tinge. Since the plastic ware incident I’d been doing all I could to be the very opposite of domestic, but I couldn’t abide a pink boyfriend. So here I was, in the laundry room of the yellow house, a place I normally steadfastedly avoided because of the enormous pile of unwashed underwear, socks, and various T-shirts that dwelled there, often spilling out into the hallway. Which was not surprising, considering that hardly anyone ever bought detergent. Just last week, John Miller had apparently washed all his jeans in Palmolive.

Once the cycle started, I stepped carefully over a pile of nasty socks, back out into the hallway, and eased the door shut as far as it would go. Then I followed Dexter into the kitchen, where Lucas was sitting at the table, eating a tangerine.

“You doing laundry?” he asked Dexter.

“Yep.”

“Again?”

Dexter nodded. “I’m bleaching out my whites.”

Lucas looked impressed. But then, he was wearing a shirt with a ketchup stain on the collar. “Wow,” he said. “That’s-”

And then, suddenly, it was dark. Totally dark. All the lights cut off, the refrigerator whirred to a stop, the swishing of the washing machine went quiet. The only brightness anywhere left that I could see was the porch light of the house next door.

“Hey!” John Miller yelled from the living room, where he was absorbed, as usual about this time each night, in Wheel of Fortune. “I was just about to solve the puzzle, man!”

“Shut up,” Lucas said, standing and walking over to the light switch, which he flipped on and off a couple of times, click-clack-click. “Must be a blown fuse.”

“It’s the whole house,” Dexter said.

“So?”

“So, if it was just one fuse something would still be on.” Dexter picked up a lighter from the middle of the table and flicked it. “Must be a power outage. Probably the whole grid’s out.”

“Oh.” Lucas sat back down. In the living room, there was a crash as John Miller attemped to navigate the darkness.

This wasn’t my problem. Surely it wasn’t. Still, I couldn’t help but point out, “Um, the lights are on next door.”

Dexter leaned back in his chair, glancing out the window to verify this. “So they are,” he said. “In-teresting.”

Lucas started to peel another tangerine as John Miller appeared in the kitchen doorway. His pale skin seemed even brighter in the dark. “Lights are out,” he said, as if we were blind and needed to be told this.

“Thank you, Einstein,” Lucas grumbled.

“It’s a circuitry problem,” Dexter decided. “Bad wiring, maybe.”

John Miller came into the room and flopped down on the couch. For a minute, no one said anything, and it became clear to me that this, to them, wasn’t really that big a problem. Lights, schmights.

“Did you not pay your bill?” I asked Dexter, finally.

“Bill?” he repeated.

“The power bill.”

Silence. Then, from Lucas, “Oh, man. The freaking power bill.”

“But we paid that,” John Miller said. “It was right there on the counter, I saw it yesterday.”

Dexter looked at him. “You saw it, or we paid it?”

“Both?” John Miller said, and Lucas sighed, impatiently.

“Where was it?” I asked John Miller, standing up. Someone had to do something, clearly. “Which counter?”

“There,” he said, pointing, but it was dark and I couldn’t see where. “In that drawer where we keep the important stuff.”

Dexter picked up a lighter and lit a candle, then turned to the drawer and began to dig around, sorting through what, to the guys, was deemed Important. Apparently, this included soy sauce packets, a plastic hula girl toy, and matchbooks from what looked like every convenience store and bar in town.

Oh, and a few pieces of paper, one of which Dexter seized and held aloft. “Is this it?”

I took it from him, squinting down at the writing. “No,” I said, slowly, “this is a notice saying if you didn’t pay your bill by-let’s see- yesterday, they were going to cut the power off.”

“Wow,” John Miller said. “How did that slip past us?”

I turned it over: stuck to the back was a set of pizza coupons with one ripped off, all of those left still a little greasy. “No idea,” I said.

“Yesterday,” Lucas said thoughtfully. “Wow, so they gave us, like, a half day over that. That’s mighty generous of them.”

I just looked at him.

“Okay,” Dexter said cheerfully, “so whose job was it to pay the power bill?”

Another silence. Then John Miller said, “Ted?”

“Ted,” Lucas echoed.

“Ted,” Dexter said, reaching over to the phone and yanking it off the hook. He dialed a number, then sat there, drumming his fingers on the table. “Hi, hey, Ted. Dexter. Guess where I am?” He listened for a second. “Nope. The dark. I’m in the dark. Weren’t you supposed to pay the power bill?”

I could hear Ted saying something, talking fast.

“I was about to solve the puzzle!” John Miller yelled. “I only needed an L or a V. ”

“Nobody cares,” Lucas told him.

Dexter continued to listen to Ted, who apparently had not taken a breath yet, making only hmm-hmm noises now and then. Finally he said, “Okay then!” and hung up the phone.

“So?” Lucas said.

“So,” Dexter told us, “Ted has it under control.”

“Meaning?” I asked.

“Meaning that he’s royally pissed, because, apparently, I was supposed to pay the power bill.” Then he smiled. “So! Who wants to tell ghost stories?”

“Dexter, honestly,” I said. This kind of irresponsibility made my ulcer ache, but apparently Lucas and John Miller were used to it. Neither one of them seemed particularly fazed, or even surprised.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” he said. “Ted’s got the money, he’s going to call them and see what he can do about getting it on tonight or early tomorrow.”

“Good for Ted,” Lucas said. “But what about you?”

“Me?” Dexter seemed surprised. “What about me?”

“He means,” I said, “that you should do something nice for the house by way of apology for this.”

“Exactly,” Lucas said. “Listen to Remy.”

Dexter looked at me. “Honey, you’re not helping.”

“We’re in the dark!” John Miller said. “And it’s your fault, Dexter.”

“Okay, okay,” Dexter said. “Fine. I’ll do something for the house. I’ll-”

“Clean the bathroom?” Lucas said.

“No,” Dexter said flatly.

“Do a load of my laundry?”

“No.”

Finally, John Miller said, “Buy beer?”

Everyone waited.

“Yes,” Dexter said. “Yes! I will buy beer. Here.” He reached into his pocket and came up with a crumpled bill, which he held up for all of us to see. “Twenty bucks. Of my hard-earned money. For you.”

Lucas swiped it off the table, fast, as if expecting Dexter to change his mind. “Wonderful. Let’s go.”

“I’ll drive,” said John Miller, jumping to his feet. He and Lucas left the kitchen, arguing about where the keys were. Then the screen door slammed, and we were alone.

Dexter reached over the kitchen counter and found another candle, then lit it and put it on the table as I slid into the chair opposite him. “Romantic,” I told him.

“Of course,” he said. “I planned all of this, just to get you alone in a dark house in the candlelight.”

“Chee-sy,” I said.

He smiled. “I try.”

We sat there for a second, in the quiet. I could see him watching me, and after a second I pushed out my chair and walked around the table to him, sliding into his lap. “If you were my roommate and pulled this kind of crap,” I said as he brushed my hair off my shoulder, “I’d kill you.”

“You’d learn to love it.”

“I doubt that.”

“I think,” he said, “that you are actually, secretly attracted to all the parts of my personality that you claim to abhor.”

I looked at him. “I don’t think so.”

“Then what is it?”

“What is what?”

“What is it,” he said, “that makes you like me?”

“Dexter.”

“No, really.” He pulled me back against him, so my head was next to his, his hands locked around my waist. In front of us the candle was flickering, sending uneven shadows across the far wall. “Tell me.”

“No,” I said, adding, “it’s too weird.”

“It is not. Look. I’ll tell you what I like about you.”

I groaned.

“Well, obviously, you’re beautiful,” he said, ignoring this. “And that, I have to admit, was what first got my attention at the dealership that day. But then, I must say, it’s your confidence that really did me in. You know, so many girls are always insecure, wondering if they’re fat, or if you really like them, but not you. Man. You acted like you couldn’t have given less of a shit whether I talked to you or not.”

“Acted?” I said.

“See?” I could feel him grinning. “That’s what I mean.”

“So you’re attracted to the fact that I’m a bitch?”

“No, no. That’s not it.” He shifted his weight. “What I liked was that it was a challenge. To get past that, to wriggle through. Most people are easy to figure out. But a girl like you, Remy, has layers. What you see is so far from what you get. You may come across hard, but down deep, you’re a big softie.”

“What?” I said. Honestly, I was offended. “I am not soft.”

“You bought me plastic ware.”

“It was on sale!” I yelled. “God!”

“You’re really nice to my dog.”

I sighed.

“And,” he continued, “not only did you volunteer to come over here and teach me how to properly separate my colors from brights-”

“Colors from whites. ”

“-but you also stepped up to help solve our power bill problem and smooth over the differences with the guys. Face it, Remy. You’re sweet.”

“Shut up,” I grumbled.

“Why is that a bad thing?” he asked.

“It’s not,” I said. “It’s just not true.” And it wasn’t. I’d been called a lot of things in my life, but sweet had never been one of them. It made me feel strangely unnerved, as if he’d discovered a deep secret I hadn’t even known I was keeping.

“Okay,” he said. “Now you.”

“Now me what?”

“Now, you tell me why you like me.”

“Who says I do?”

“Remy,” he said sternly. “Don’t make me call you sweet again.”

“Fine, fine.” I sat up and leaned forward, stalling by pulling the candle over to the edge of the table. Talk about losing my edge: this was what I’d become. True confessions by candlelight. “Well,” I said finally, knowing he was waiting, “you make me laugh.”

He nodded. “And?”

“You’re pretty good-looking.”

“ Pretty good-looking? I called you beautiful.”

“You want to be beautiful?” I asked him.

“Are you saying I’m not?”

I looked at the ceiling, shaking my head.

“I’m kidding, I’ll stop. God, relax, would you? I’m not asking you to recite the Declaration of Independence at gunpoint.”

“I wish,” I said, and he laughed, loud enough to blow out the candle on the table, leaving us again in total darkness.

“Okay,” he said as I turned back to face him, sliding my arms around his neck. “You don’t have to say it out loud. I already know why you like me.”

“You do, huh?”

“Yep.”

He wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me closer. “So,” I said. “Tell me.”

“It’s an animal attraction,” he said simply. “Totally chemical.”

“Hmm,” I said. “You could be right.”

“It doesn’t matter, anyway, why you like me.”

“No?”

“Nope.” His hands were in my hair now, and I was leaning in, not able to totally make out his face, but his voice was clear, close to my ear. “Just that you do.”

Chapter Eleven

“This,” Chloe said as another bubble rose up and popped in her face, “is disgusting.”

“Stop,” I told her. “He can hear you, you know.”

She sighed, wiping her face with the back of her hand. It was hot, and the black asphalt of the driveway made things seem positively steamy. Monkey, however, sitting between us in a plastic baby pool up to his haunches in cold water, was totally content.

“Get his front feet,” I said to Chloe, squeezing more shampoo into my hand and lathering it up. “They’re really dirty.”

“All of him is dirty,” she grumbled as Monkey stood up and shook again, sending soap suds and dirty water over both of us in a wave. “And have you looked at these nails? They’re longer than Talinga’s, for God’s sake.”

Monkey stood up suddenly, barking, having spied a cat working its way through a row of hedges on the edge of Chloe’s yard. “Down boy,” Chloe said. “Hello? Sit, Monkey. Sit. ”

Monkey shook again, dousing us both, and I pushed down on his butt. He sat with a splash, his tail flopping over the side. “Good boy,” I said, even though he was already trying to stand up again.

“You know, if my mother were to show up now I’d be homeless,” Chloe said, spraying Monkey’s chest with the hose. “Just the sight of this mangy beast within spitting distance of her prized Blue Category Chem Special would give her an aneurysm.”

“Blue Category What?”

“It’s a kind of grass,” she explained.

“Oh.”

Chloe had first given me a flat-out no when she opened the door to see me on her front porch, shampoo and dog in hand, before I’d even begun my hard sell. But after a few minutes of wheedling, plus a promise to buy her dinner and whatever else she wanted to do that night, she’d relented, and even seemed to warm to Monkey a bit, petting him cautiously as I got the baby pool-a Wal-Mart bargain at a mere nine bucks-out of my car. I’d planned to wash the dog at my house, but Chris had co-opted our hose to rig up an elaborate watering system for the lizards, which left me with few options.

“I still can’t believe how low you’ve stooped,” she said now as I finished the final rinse, then let Monkey leap from the pool and do a series of full-body shakes up and down the driveway. “This is total girlfriend behavior.”

“No,” I said, steering Monkey away from the grass before Chloe had a chance to freak out. “This is a humanitarian act. He was miserable.”

Which was true. Plus, I’d been spending a fair amount of time with Monkey lately, and okay, there was a certain odor to him. And if all it took to fix things was a five-dollar bottle of dog shampoo, some nail clippers, and a quick trim, what was the harm in taking action? It wasn’t for me, anyway. It was for Monkey.

“I thought you weren’t getting attached,” she said as I pulled the clippers out of my pocket and sat the dog down again.

“I’m not,” I told her. “It’s just for the summer. I told you that.”

“I’m not talking about Dexter.” She nodded at Monkey, who was now trying to lick my face. He stank of citrus now: all they’d had left was an orangey citrus scent. But we’d trimmed the hair over his eyes and around his feet, which made him look five years younger. It was true what Lola said: a good haircut changed everything. “This is an additional level of commitment. And responsibility. It’s going to make things complicated.”

“Chloe, he’s a dog, not a five-year-old with an abandonment complex.”

“Still.” She squatted down beside me, watching as I finished up one paw and switched to the other. “And anyway, what happened to our wild and carefree summer? Once you dumped Jonathan I thought we’d just date our way to August. No worries. Remember?”

“I’m not worried,” I said.

“Not now,” she said darkly.

“Not ever,” I told her. I stood up. “There. He’s done.”

We stood back and surveyed our work. “A vast improvement,” she said.

“You think?”

“Anything would have been,” she said, shrugging. But then she bent down and petted him, running her hand over the top of his head as I spread a few towels across the backseat of my car. I liked Monkey, sure, but that didn’t necessarily mean I was up for picking dog hair out of my upholstery for the next few weeks.

“Come on, Monk,” I called out, and he sprang up, trotting down the driveway. He just hopped in, then promptly stuck his head out the back window, sniffing the air. “Thanks for the help, Chloe.”

As I slid into the front seat, the leather hot under my legs, she stood and watched me, her hands on her hips. “You know,” she said, “it’s not too late. If you go ahead and break up with him now you’d still have a good month’s worth of quality single-girl time before you leave for school.”

I stuck my key in the ignition. “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

“See you around five-thirty?”

“Yeah,” I told her. “I’ll pick you up.”

She nodded, then stood there, one hand shielding her eyes as I backed out into the street. Of course it would be that cut-and-dried for her, how I could end things with Dexter. It was the way we’d always operated. Chloe was, after all, my twin in all things concerning boys and relationships. Now, I was throwing her a curve, veering off in a way she couldn’t understand. I knew how she felt. Ever since I’d met Dexter, things weren’t making much sense to me either.

The collage was on the wall in the kitchen of the yellow house, right over the sofa. It started innocently enough, with just a couple of snapshots tacked up; at first glance, I’d assumed they were of the guys’ friends. But upon closer inspection, I’d realized that the pictures, like the ones Dexter had given me weeks earlier, were of customers of Flash Camera.

Dexter and Lucas had both been hired there to run the photo machine, which basically consisted of sitting on a stool and peering through a little hole at the images, marking them and adjusting them, if possible, for optimum color and brightness. This wasn’t rocket science, but it did involve a bit of skill, a good eye, and most of all an attention span that could focus on one, sometimes monotonous activity for an hour or two at a time. This meant, pretty much, that Dexter was out. After Dexter had ruined an entire set of once-in-a-lifetime Hawaiian vacation pictures and twenty disposable wedding cameras, the owner of Flash Camera gently suggested that he might be happier using his strong customer service skills by taking a counter position. And because he was so charming, she’d kept him on at a technician’s salary, which Lucas was always quick to bitch about when given the chance.

“My job involves so much more responsibility,” he’d sniff every payday, snatching up his check. “All you have to do is basic math and be able to alphabetize.”

“Ah,” Dexter always said, smartly adjusting his name tag in a model employee fashion, “but I alphabetize very, very well.”

Actually, he didn’t. He was constantly losing people’s pictures, mostly because he’d get distracted and stick the R s in with the B s, or sometimes glance at the labels wrong and put them under people’s first names. If he worked for me, I wouldn’t have trusted him with anything more complicated than sharpening pencils, and even that only when supervised.

So while Ted, working at Mayor’s Market, could score some bruised but edible produce, and John Miller was jacked up on coffee constantly from his job at Jump Java, Dexter and Lucas were left with little to contribute. That is, until they started making doubles of the pictures that intrigued them.

They were boys, so of course it started with a set of dirty pictures. Not X-rated, exactly: the first one on the wall that I saw was of a woman in her bra and panties, posing in front of a fireplace. She wasn’t exactly pretty, however, and it didn’t help that right in the back of the shot, clearly visible, was a huge bag of cat litter with the words KITTY KLEAN! splashed across the front of it, which took away from that exotic, Playboy -esque quality that I assumed she and whoever took the picture had been going for.

As the weeks passed, more and more pictures were added to the collage. There were vacation snapshots, a family posing en masse in front of the Washington Monument, everyone smiling except for one daughter who was scowling darkly, her middle finger clearly displayed. A few more nudie shots, including one of a very fat man spread out in black underwear across a leopard-skin bedspread. All of these people had no idea that in a little yellow house off Merchant Drive their personal memories were being slapped up on the wall and showcased as art for strangers.

The day I washed Monkey, Chloe and I brought him back about six, and Dexter was already home, sitting in the living room watching PBS and eating tangerines. Apparently they were on special at Mayor’s Market, and Ted was getting a discount. They came about twenty-five to a case and, like Don’s Ensures at home, were everywhere.

“Okay,” I said, pushing open the screen door and holding Monkey back by the collar. “Behold.”

I let him go, and he skittered across the floor, tail wagging madly, to leap on the couch, knocking a stack of magazines to the floor. “Oh, man, look at you,” Dexter said, scratching Monkey behind his ears. “He smells different,” he said. “Like you washed him in Orange Crush.”

“That’s the shampoo,” Chloe said, flopping into the plastic lawn chair next to the coffee table. “It’ll stop stinking in, oh, about a week.”

Dexter glanced at me and I shook my head to show him she was kidding. Monkey hopped off the couch and went into the kitchen, where we heard him gulping down what sounded like about a gallon of water without stopping.

“Well,” Dexter said, pulling me into his lap, “those makeovers sure make a man thirsty.”

The screen door opened and John Miller walked in, tossing the van keys onto a speaker by the door. Then he walked to the middle of the room, held up his hands to stop all conversation, and said, very simply, “I have news.”

We all looked at him. Then the door opened again, and Ted came in, still wearing his Mayor’s Market green smock, and carrying two boxes of tangerines.

“Oh, God,” Dexter said, “ please no more tangerines.”

“I have news,” Ted announced, ignoring this. “Big news. Where’s Lucas?”

“Work,” Dexter said.

“I have news too,” John Miller said to Ted. “And I was here first, so-”

“This is important news,” Ted replied, waving him off. “Okay, so-”

“Wait just a second!” John Miller shook his head, his face incredulous. He had been born indignant, always convinced that he was somehow being wronged. “Why do you always do that? You know, my news could be important too.”

It was quiet as Ted and Dexter exchanged a skeptical look, not unnoticed by John Miller, who sighed loudly, shaking his head.

“Maybe,” Dexter said finally, holding up his hands, “we should just take a moment to really think about the fact that we’ve gone a long time with no big news at all, and now here, simultaneously, we have two big newses all at once.”

“Newses?” Chloe said.

“The point is,” Dexter went on smoothly, “it’s really impressive.”

“The point is,” Ted said loudly, “I met this A and R chick today from Rubber Records and she’s coming to hear us tonight.”

Silence. Except for Monkey walking in, dripping water from his mouth, his newly clipped nails tippy-tapping very quietly on the floor.

“Does anyone smell oranges?” Ted asked, sniffing.

“That,” John Miller said darkly, glaring at him, “was totally unfair.”

“A and R?” Chloe said. “What’s that?”

“Artists and Repertoire,” Ted explained, taking off his smock and balling it up in one hand, then stuffing it into his back pocket. “It means if she likes us she might offer us a deal.”

“I had news,” John Miller grumbled, but it was over. He knew he’d been beaten. “Big news.”

“How serious is this?” Dexter asked Ted, leaning forward. “Just-making-conversation-I’ll-show-up-to-see-you, or definitely-I-have-pull-at-the-label-I’ll-come-see-you?”

Ted reached into his pocket. “She gave me a card. She’s got a meeting tonight, but when I said we usually started the second set by ten-thirty she said she’d make it by then, no problem.”

Dexter slid me off his lap, then stood up, and Ted handed him the card. He squinted at it for a good while, then handed it back. “Okay,” he said. “Find Lucas. We have to talk about this.”

“You know this could be nothing,” John Miller said, still smarting a bit. “It could be a bunch of smoke up your ass.”

“And it probably is,” Ted replied. “But it also could be that she likes us and we get a meeting and before the summer’s out we’re in a bigger place, bigger venue, bigger town. It happened to Spinnerbait.”

“Hate Spinnerbait,” John Miller said, and they all three nodded, as if this was clear fact.

“Spinnerbait has a deal, though,” Dexter added. “And a record.”

“Spinnerbait?” I said.

“They were this band that started playing the bars near Williamsburg when we did,” Dexter said to me. “Total assholes. Frat rats. But they had this really good guitar player-”

“He wasn’t that good,” Ted said indignantly. “Totally overrated.”

“-and their original stuff was tight. They got signed last year.” Dexter sighed, then looked up at the ceiling. “We hate Spinnerbait.”

“Hate Spinnerbait,” John Miller repeated, and Ted nodded.

“Okay, get ahold of Lucas,” Dexter said, slapping his hands together. “Emergency session. Band meeting!”

“Band meeting!” Ted yelled, as if everyone who was in the band and could feasibly hear it wasn’t within a two-foot radius. “I’m gonna go scrub up and we reconnoiter in the kitchen, twenty minutes.”

Dexter grabbed the cordless phone off the top of the TV, jabbed in some numbers, and then left the room with it pressed against his ear. I could hear him ask for Lucas, then say, “Guess what Ted scored at work today?” Then a pause, as Lucas offered a theory. “No, not tangerines…”

John Miller sat down on the couch, crossing one leg over another and leaning back so that his head hit the wall behind him with a thunk. Chloe looked at me, raising her eyebrows, then shook a cigarette out of her pack and lit it, dropping the spent match in an ashtray already overflowing with tangerine peels.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” I said finally. “What’s your news?”

“No, now it’s completely anticlimactic,” he grumbled. He still looked so much like a little kid to me, all red haired and freckled, like a grade schooler you might see on TV in a peanut butter commercial. It didn’t help that he was pouting.

“Suit yourself,” I said, and picked up the remote, turning the TV on. It wasn’t like I was about to beg him or anything.

“My news was,” he said slowly, lifting his head off the wall, “that she agreed to come to Bendo tonight.”

“She did.”

“Yes. Finally. I’ve only been asking her for weeks. ” He reached up and scratched his ear. “And it was a very big deal because I was beginning to think I was going to make no progress at all with her.”

I said to Chloe, “John Miller is in love with his boss.”

Chloe exhaled loudly. “At Jump Java?”

John Miller sighed again. “She’s not really my boss,” he told us. “She’s more of a coworker. A friend, really.”

Chloe looked at me. “This is Scarlett Thomas?”

I nodded, but John Miller’s eyes shot open. “You know her?”

“I guess,” Chloe said, shrugging. “Remy knows her better, though. She and Chris go way back, right?”

I swallowed, concentrating on flipping the channels on the TV. I’d known about John Miller’s infatuation with Scarlett back when it was just curious interest, then watched-along with the rest of the employees at various Mayor’s Village businesses-as it progressed to puppy-dog-esque devotion before finally reaching the ridiculous level of romantic pining that was its current state. Scarlett was the manager of Jump Java, and she’d only hired John Miller because of Lola, who she still owed a favor to for her last cut and color. And while I’d listened to John Miller sing her praises, I’d managed to keep it quiet that I knew her more than just in passing. Until now.

I could feel John Miller looking at me, even as I pretended to be completely engrossed in a news story about structural problems with the new county dam. He said, “Remy? You know Scarlett?”

“My brother dated her,” I said, in what I hoped was a no-big-deal kind of voice. “It was ages ago.”

He reached over and took the remote, hitting the mute button. The dam remained on the screen, holding water back just fine, it seemed to me. “Tell me,” he said. “Now.”

I looked at him.

“I mean,” he said quickly, “can you tell me? Anything?”

Across the room, Chloe laughed. I shrugged and said, “My brother dated her toward the end of their senior year. It wasn’t serious. Chris was still in his pothead thing, and Scarlett was way too smart to put up with it. Plus she already had Grace, then.”

He nodded. Grace was Scarlett’s daughter, who was three now. She’d been born when Scarlett was a junior, causing a minor neighborhood scandal. But Scarlett had stayed in school, finishing during a summer session the credits she’d missed, and now was taking classes part-time at the university while managing Jump Java and, apparently, putting up with the besotted John Miller passing longing glances over the muffins about twenty hours a week.

“Isn’t Scarlett a little out of your league?” Chloe asked him, not unkindly. “I mean, she’s got a kid.”

“I am wonderful with children,” he said indignantly. “Grace loves me.”

“Grace loves everybody,” I told him. Just like Monkey, I thought. Kids and dogs. It’s just too easy.

“No,” he said, “she especially likes me.”

Dexter stuck his head through the doorway and pointed a finger at John Miller. “Band meeting!” he said.

“Band meeting,” John Miller repeated, standing up. Then he looked at me and said, “A little help tonight would be greatly appreciated, Remy. A good word, maybe?”

“I can’t promise anything,” I said. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

He seemed happier, hearing this, as he headed into the kitchen. I got up and grabbed my purse, finding my keys. “Let’s go,” I said to Chloe. “Band meeting and all.”

She nodded, stuffing her smokes in her pocket and walking to the front door, pushing it open. “I’ll call Lissa from the car. See if she wants to meet us at the Spot.”

“Sounds good.”

As the screen door slammed behind her, Dexter walked over to me. “This is big,” he said, smiling. “I mean, maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’ll be a crushing disappointment.”

“That’s the right attitude.”

“Or maybe,” he went on, pulling his hands through his hair the way he always did when just barely able to contain himself, “it’s the beginning of something. You know, when Spinnerbait got that meeting with the label, they immediately got an in to the bigger clubs. We could be in Richmond, or D.C., easy. It could happen.”

He was just standing there, grinning, and I made myself smile back. Of course this was good news. Wasn’t it me who wanted everything to be transitory, anyway? It was the best-case scenario, really, for him to get some great chance and ride off in the dirty white van into the sunset, tailpipe dragging. In time he’d just be some story I’d tell, about the crazy musician I’d spent the last days of my senior summer with, just the way Scarlett Thomas was only a footnote now to Chris. They had these stupid songs about potatoes, I could hear myself telling someone. A whole opus.

Yes, definitely. It was best this way.

Dexter leaned down and kissed my forehead, then looked at me closely, cocking his head to the side. “You okay? You look weird.”

“Thanks,” I said. “God.”

“No, I mean, you just seem-”

“Band meeting!” Ted yelled from the kitchen. “We’re recon noitering right now!”

Dexter glanced toward the doorway, then back at me.

“Go,” I said, pressing my palms to his chest and pushing him backward, gently. “Band meeting.”

He smiled, and for a second I felt a tug, some alien feeling that made me, for an instant, want to pull him back within arm’s length. But by then he was already walking backward, toward the kitchen, where the voices of his band mates were now building as they made their plans.

“I’ll see you at Bendo around nine,” he said. “Right?”

I nodded, cool as ever, and he turned the corner, leaving me standing there. Watching him go. What a weird feeling that was. I decided I didn’t like it. Not at all.

By ten-thirty, as Truth Squad’s second set was about to get under way, the A &R chick still hadn’t shown up. The natives were getting restless.

“I say we just go on and forget about her,” Lucas said, spitting some ice back into his cup of ginger ale. “All this worrying is making us suck anyway. Ted was off key the whole last set.”

Ted, sitting next to me and carving lines into the table, glared at him darkly. “I,” he said, “am the only reason she’s coming. So get off my fucking back.”

“Now, now.” Dexter tugged at his collar, something he’d been doing all night long: it was completely stretched out of shape, hanging lopsided. “We need to go up there and do the best job we can. A lot is riding on this.”

“No pressure, though,” Lucas grumbled.

“Where the hell is John Miller?” Ted said, pushing up from the table and craning his neck around the room. “Isn’t this a band meeting?”

“It’s impromptu,” Dexter told him, tugging at his collar again. “Plus he’s over there with what’s-her-name. The coffee boss.”

We all looked at once. Sure enough, at a booth by the stage, John Miller was sitting with Scarlett. He had his drumsticks on the table and was talking animatedly, using his hands. Scarlett was drinking a beer and listening, a polite smile on her face. Every once in a while she’d glance around the room, as if she’d expected this to be more of a group thing and was wondering where everyone else was.

“Pathetic,” Ted said. “Totally blowing us and the band’s future off for a chick. That’s Yoko Ono behavior, man.”

“Leave him alone,” Dexter said. “Okay, so I’m thinking we should start with ‘Potato Song Two,’ then do the kumquat version, and then…”

I tuned them out, drawing my finger through the circle of water under my beer. Off to my left, I could see Chloe, Lissa, and Jess talking to a group of guys at the bar. At the Spot earlier, Chloe had decided they all needed to “get back out there” and make the most of the “summer single-girl thing,” appointing herself ringleader for the effort. So far there had been progress: she was sitting on a barstool next to a blond guy with surfer looks. Lissa was talking to two guys, one really cute, who was still scop ing the room as if in search of an upgrade (bad sign), and one not-so-cute-but-decent who seemed interested and not completely offended that he was most likely an also-ran. And then there was Jess, trapped by the beer taps by a short, wiry guy who was talking so excitedly that she kept having to lean back, which could only have meant he was spitting out more than words.

“… decided that we’d do no covers. That was the entire upshot of yesterday’s meeting,” Dexter said.

“I’m just saying that if the potato songs don’t go over well we need a backup plan,” Lucas argued. “What if she hates potatoes? What if she thinks the songs are, you know, infantile, frat-party crap?”

There was a moment of astonished silence as Dexter and Ted absorbed this. Then Ted said, “So that’s what you think?”

“No,” Lucas said quickly, glancing at Dexter, who was now tugging his collar hard enough that I had to reach up and unlatch his fingers, bringing down his hand. He hardly noticed. Lucas said, “I’m just saying we don’t want to come across as derivative.”

“And doing covers isn’t derivative?” Dexter said.

“Covers will get the crowd going and show our range,” Lucas told him. “Look, I’ve been in a lot of bands-”

“Oh, God,” Ted said, throwing up his hands dramatically. “Here we go. Educate us, oh wise one.”

“-and I know from experience that these reps like a tight set that gets the crowd going and showcases our potential as a band. Which means a mix of our own stuff and songs that we cover, yeah, but with our own take on them. It’s not like we do ‘I’ve Got You Babe’ just the way Sonny and Cher do. We give it a twist.”

“We are not doing a Sonny and Cher song here tonight!” Ted yelled. “No way, man. I am not going to be the G Flats for this chick. That’s wedding crap. Forget it.”

“It was just an example,” Lucas said flatly. “We can do another song. Calm down, would you?”

“Hey,” Robert, the owner of Bendo, yelled from behind the bar, “you guys planning on actually working tonight?”

“Let’s go,” Ted said, standing up and finishing his beer.

“Did we even decide anything?” Lucas asked, but Ted ignored him as they made their way to the stage.

Dexter sighed, running his fingers through his hair. I’d never seen him like this, so on edge. “God,” he said softly, shaking his head. “This is so freaking stressful.”

“Stop thinking about it,” I told him. “Just go up there and play the way you always do. Thinking about it is throwing you off.”

“We sounded like shit, didn’t we?”

“No,” I said, which wasn’t entirely a lie. But Ted had been off-key, John Miller was showboating outrageously-tossing drumsticks in the air, missing them-and Dexter had mangled the words to “Potato Song Three,” a song that I knew he could, literally, sing in his sleep. “But you sounded unsure of yourself. Wobbly. And you’re not. You’ve done this a million times.”

“A million times.” He still didn’t sound convinced, however.

“It’s like riding a bike,” I told him. “If you actually think about it too much, you realize how complicated a concept it actually is. You have to just hop on and go, and not worry about the mechanics. Let it run itself.”

“You,” he said, kissing my cheek, “are so right. How can you always be so right?”

“It’s a curse,” I said, shrugging. He squeezed my leg and slid out of the booth, still tugging at his collar, and I watched him weave through the crowd, stopping to flick John Miller, who was still chatting up Scarlett, on the head as he passed. Ted put on his guitar, played a few random chords, and then he, Lucas, and Dexter exchanged glances and head nods, setting the game plan.

The first song was a bit unsteady. But then, the next was better. I could see Dexter relaxing, easing into it, and by the third song, when I saw the A &R chick come in, they sounded tighter than they had all evening. I recognized her immediately. First, she was a little old for Bendo, which catered to a college and younger crowd, and second, she was dressed entirely too fashionably for this small town: black pants, silky shirt, small black glasses just nerdy enough to be cool. Her hair was long and pulled back loosely at the base of her neck, and when she walked up to the bar for a drink, every one of the guys chatting up my girlfriends stopped to stare at her. By the time the song wound down, the crowd on the floor was thickening, and I saw Ted glance at the bar, see her, and then say something, quietly, to Dexter.

After the applause and hooting died down, Dexter tugged at his shirt collar and said, “Okay, we’re going to do a little number for you now called ‘The Potato Song.’ ”

The crowd cheered: they’d been playing Bendo long enough now that “The Potato Song,” and its many incarnations, was known. Ted started the opening bridge, John Miller picked up his sticks, and they launched into it.

I kept my eyes on the girl at the bar. She was listening, beer in hand, taking a sip now and then. She smiled at the line about the vegan princess, and again when the crowd chimed in and yelled, “sweet potato!” And when it was over, she clapped enthusiastically, not just politely. A good sign.

Feeling confident, they continued with another “Potato Song.” But this one wasn’t quite so strong, and the crowd didn’t know it as well. They gave it a good shot, the best they could, but it sounded flat, and at one point John Miller, who’d only recently learned the new part, screwed up and lost the beat for a second. I saw Dexter flinch at this, then tug his collar. Ted was looking everywhere but at the bar. They launched right into another original song, one not even about potatoes, but it too sounded off, and they cut it short after two verses, ditching the third.

By now the A &R girl seemed distracted, almost bored, looking around the club and then-very bad sign-at her watch. Ted leaned over and said something to Dexter, who shook his head quickly. But then Lucas stepped forward, nodding, and Ted said something else, and Dexter finally shrugged and turned back to the microphone. John Miller tapped out a beat, Ted picked it up, and they launched full force into an old Thin Lizzy song. And suddenly the crowd was right with them again, pressing up closer. And after the first verse, the A &R chick ordered another beer.

When the song was over, Ted spoke to Dexter, who hesitated. Then Ted said something else, and Dexter made a face, shaking his head.

Just do it, I thought to myself. Another cover won’t kill you.

Dexter looked at Lucas, who nodded, and I relaxed. Then the first chords began. They sounded so familiar, somehow, as if I knew them in a different incarnation. I listened for a second, and the realization grew stronger, as if it was just at the tip of my mind, close enough to touch. And then, I got it.

“This lullaby,” Dexter sang, “is only a few words…”

Oh, my God, I thought.

“A simple run of chords…”

It sounded more retro and lounge-singer-esque, the maudlin aspect that had made it a wedding and lite FM favorite now twisted into something else, something self-mocking, as if it was winking at its own seriousness. I felt a drop in my stomach: he knew how I felt about this. He knew. And still, he kept singing.

“Quiet here in this spare room, but you can hear it, hear it…”

The crowd was loving it, cheering, some girls along the back row singing along, hands on their hearts, like washed-up divas on the Labor Day telethon.

I looked over at the bar, where Chloe was staring right at me, but she didn’t have a smug look, instead something even worse. It might have been pity, but I turned my head away before I could know for sure. And a few seats down from her, the A &R chick was swaying, smiling. She loved it.

I got up from the booth. All around me the crowd was singing along to the song, one they’d heard all their lives too, but never quite in the context that I had. To them it was just old and sappy enough now to be nostalgic, a song their parents might have listened to. It was probably played at their bar mitzvahs or sisters’ weddings, trotted out about the same time as “Daddy’s Little Girl” and “Butterfly Kisses.” But it was working. The appeal was obvious, the energy coming through the crowd so strongly, the kind of response that Ted, in a million potato dreams, wouldn’t even have hoped for.

“I will let you down,” Dexter sang as I pushed my way toward the bar. “But this lullaby plays on…”

I went to the bathroom, where for once there was no line, and shut myself into a stall. Then I sat down, pulled my hands through my hair, and told myself to calm down. It meant nothing, this song. All my life I’d let other people put so much weight to it, until it was heavy enough to drown me, but it was just music. But even there, locked in the stall, I could still hear it going, those notes I’d known by heart for as long as I could remember, now twisted and different, with another man I hardly knew who had some claim to me, however small, singing the words.

What had my mother always said when we listened to it on the one scratchy album she owned of my dad, back when we still had a record player? His gift to you, she’d tell me, idly brushing my hair back from my forehead with a dreamy expression, as if someday I’d truly understand how important this was. By then, she had already forgotten the bad times with my father, the ones I heard secondhand: how they were dirt-poor, how he’d hardly spent any time with Chris when he was a baby, and only married her-not even legally, it turned out-in a last-ditch attempt to save a relationship already beyond repair. What a legacy. What a gift. It was like a parting prize in a game show where I’d lost big, a handful of Rice-A-Roni and some cheap luggage thrust upon me as I left, little consolation.

The final note sounded: the drum cymbals hummed. Then, huge applause, cheering. It was over.

Okay then. I walked out of the bathroom and headed straight to the bar, where Chloe was sitting on a stool with a bored expression. Truth Squad was still going, playing a medley of camp songs-played Led Zeppelin style, with crashing guitars and a lot of whooping-that I recognized as being a set-ender. The guy Chloe had been talking to was gone, Lissa was still talking to the not-cute-but-decent one, and Jess, I assumed, had used one of her regular excuses and was either “at the pay phone” or “getting something from the car.”

“What happened to the surfer boy?” I asked Chloe as she scooted over, making room for me on her stool.

“Girlfriend,” she said, nodding to a booth off on our left, where the guy was now nuzzling a redheaded girl with a pierced eyebrow.

I nodded as Ted did a few windmill guitar moves, John Miller going all out on a drum solo, his face almost as red as his hair. I wondered if Scarlett was impressed, but she’d left the booth where she’d been sitting, so I couldn’t know for sure.

“Interesting song choice earlier, didn’t you think?” Chloe asked me, pushing off the floor with her foot so that we twisted slightly in the stool, to one side and then back again. “Couldn’t help but feel that I had heard it somewhere before.”

I didn’t say anything, instead just watching as John Miller continued to battle his drum set while the crowd clapped along.

“Of all the things he should know,” she went on, “that you hate that song is a freaking given. I mean, God. It’s basic. ”

“Chloe,” I said softly, “shut up, okay?”

I could feel her looking at me, slightly wide-eyed, before going back to stirring her drink with her finger. Now there was only one person between me and the A &R chick, who was jotting something down with a pencil she’d borrowed from the bartender, who was watching her write with great interest while ignoring a whole slew of people waving money for beers.

“We’re Truth Squad!” Dexter yelled, “and we’re here every Tuesday. Thank you and good night!”

The canned dance music came on, everyone pushed toward the bar, and I watched as Dexter hopped off the stage, conferred with Ted for a second, and they both began heading toward us, Lucas in tow. John Miller was already making a beeline for Scarlett, who I now saw standing by the door, as if trying to ease herself out gradually.

The A &R chick was already holding out her hand to Dexter as they came up. “Arianna Moss,” she said, and Dexter pumped her hand a bit too eagerly. “Great set.”

“Thanks,” he replied, and she kept smiling at him. I glanced across the room, looking toward the door, wondering where Jess was.

Ted, pressing closer, added, “The acoustics in here are terrible. We’d sound much better with decent equipment, and the crowd kind of sucks.”

Dexter shot him a you-aren’t-helping kind of look. “We’d love to hear what you think,” he said to her. “Can I buy you a beer?”

She glanced at her watch. “Sure. Let me just make a call first.”

As she walked away, pulling a cell phone out of her pocket, Dexter saw me, waved, and mouthed that he’d be just a minute. I shrugged, and he started to move toward me, but Ted pulled him back.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded. “She’s here to talk to all of us, Dexter, not just you.”

“He said we wanted to hear what she thinks,” Lucas told him. “Calm down.”

“He’s buying her a beer!” Ted said.

“That’s called public relations,” Dexter told him, glancing back in my direction. But now Arianna Moss was already coming back, tucking her phone in her pocket.

“And what was up with that song?” Ted shook his head, incredulous. “Sonny and Cher would have been better. God, anything would have been better. We might as well have had on leisure suits and been playing dinner theater with that crappy song.”

“She loved it,” Dexter said, trying to catch my eye, but I let a burly guy wearing a baseball cap step into my line of vision.

“She did,” Lucas agreed. “Plus it got us out of the bottomless pit into which ‘The Potato Song’ had flung us.”

“‘The Potato Song,’” Ted huffed, “was doing just fine. If John Miller had bothered to make it to the last band practice on time-”

“Oh, it’s always somebody else, isn’t it?” Lucas snapped.

“Shut up, you guys,” Dexter said under his breath.

“Ready to talk?” Arianna Moss asked as she walked up. She asked Dexter. I noticed, and so did Ted. But only he, of course, was truly bothered.

“Sure,” Dexter said. “Over here okay?”

“Sounds good.”

They started walking and I turned my back again, waving down the bartender for a beer as they passed. By the time I’d paid they were sitting in a booth by the door, she and Dexter on one side, Lucas and Ted on the other. She was talking: they were all listening.

Jess appeared next to my elbow. “Is it time to go yet?” she asked me.

“Where have you been?” Chloe said.

“I had to get something from the car,” Jess said flatly.

“Remy, hey, there you are.” John Miller popped up beside me. “You seen Scarlett?”

“She was over by the door last I saw her.”

He jerked his head around, eyes scanning the wall. Then he started waving his arms. “Scarlett! Over here!”

Scarlett looked up, saw us, and smiled in a way that made me think I’d been right on in assuming she’d been hoping to leave in-conspicuously. But John Miller was waving her over, oblivious, so she had no choice but to work her way through the crowd to us.

“You were great,” she said to John Miller, who beamed. “Really good.”

“We’re usually a lot tighter,” John Miller told her with a bit of a swagger, “but Ted was off tonight. He was late for the last practice, didn’t know the new arrangements.”

Scarlett nodded and glanced around her. The crowd at the bar was thickening, now about three deep, and people kept jostling us.

Lucas came up behind John Miller and managed to flick him on the back of the head while balancing two beers. “Hey, in case you, you know, have a minute, we’re talking to this A &R woman over here and she’s probably getting us a great gig in D.C. if, you know, you care in the least. ”

John Miller rubbed the back of his head. “D.C.? Really?”

“That big theater, the one where we saw Spinnerbait that time.” Lucas grimaced. “Hate Spinnerbait, though.”

“Hate Spinnerbait,” John Miller agreed, taking one of the beers. “That’s a band,” he explained to Scarlett.

“Ah,” she said.

“Come on,” Lucas said. “She needs to talk to all of us. This could be big, man.”

“I’ll be back in a minute,” John Miller said to Scarlett, squeezing her arm. “This is just, you know, official band business. Management decisions and all that.”

“Right,” Scarlett said as he followed Lucas over to the booth, where Ted made room for both of them. I could see Dexter sitting in the corner, against the wall, folding a matchbook and listening intently as Arianna Moss spoke.

“Poor you,” Chloe said to Scarlett. “He’s obsessed.”

“He’s very nice,” Scarlett said.

“He’s pathetic.” Chloe hopped off the barstool. “I’m going to the bathroom. You coming?”

I shook my head. She bumped a couple of guys aside and disappeared into the crowd. As the bodies around us shifted I could catch the occasional glance of Dexter. He looked like he was explaining something while Arianna Moss nodded her head, taking a sip of her beer. Ted and Lucas were talking, and John Miller seemed totally distracted, glancing over at us every few seconds to make sure Scarlett hadn’t made a break for it.

“John Miller’s very nice,” I said, feeling obligated to do so just because he kept looking at me.

“He is,” Scarlett agreed. “A little young for me, though. I’m not sure he’s really parent material, if you know what I mean.”

I wanted to tell her that this, at least in my experience, wasn’t as big of a factor in a relationship as you’d think, but decided against it.

“So how long have you been dating Dexter?” she asked me.

“Not long.” I glanced over again at the booth. Dexter was waving his hands around while Arianna Moss laughed, lighting a cigarette. You would have thought they were on a date. If you didn’t know better.

“He seems really great,” she said. “Sweet. And funny.”

I nodded. “Yeah. He is.”

Ted suddenly appeared next to me, bursting through a crowd of large girls in tight shirts who seemed to be celebrating a bach elorette: one of them was wearing a veil, the rest Barbie hats. “Two beers!” he shouted at the bartender in his typical vexed way, then stood there and seethed for a second before noticing us.

“How’s it going?” I asked him.

He glared back at the booth. “Fine. Dexter will probably be in her pants within the hour, not that it’s gonna help the band any.”

Scarlett looked at me, raising her eyebrows. I said, “Really.”

“Well,” he shrugged, as if only now realizing that maybe I wasn’t the best person to say this to. Not that it stopped him: this was Ted, after all. “It’s just how he is, you know. He hooks up, things end badly, and we’re out a gig, or a place to live, or a hundred bucks in grocery money. He always does this.”

Now, standing there, I felt so stupid I was sure it showed on my face, if that was possible. I picked up Chloe’s drink-now all ice-and took a gulp from it, just to do something.

“The point is,” he growled as the beers were dropped in front of him, “if we’re going to work as a group, we have to think as a group. Period.”

And then he was gone, bumping the girls behind us hard enough to trigger a wave of curse words and lewd gestures. I was stuck there with Scarlett, looking like Band Floozy Number Five.

“Well,” Scarlett said uneasily. “I’m sure he didn’t really mean that.”

I hated that she felt sorry for me. It was even worse than feeling sorry for myself, but not by much. I turned my back to the booth-damned if I cared what happened over there now-and sat back on the stool, crossing my legs. “Whatever,” I told her. “It’s not like I don’t know the deal about Dexter.”

“Oh. Really?”

I picked up Chloe’s straw, twisting it between my fingers. “Just between you and me,” I said, “it’s kind of why I picked him in the first place. I mean, I’m off to school in the fall. I can’t have any big commitments. That’s why it’s perfect, you know. A set ending. No complications.”

“Right,” she said, steadying herself as a stray elbow bumped her from behind.

“I mean, God. All relationships should be this easy, you know? Find a cute guy in June, have fun till August, leave scot-free in September.” This was so easy to say, I realized, that it had to be the truth. Wasn’t this always what I’d said about Jonathan, and any other of my seasonal boyfriends? Of course this wasn’t different.

She nodded, but something in her face told me she wasn’t the kind of girl to believe this, much less do it herself. But then again, she had a kid. It was different when other people were at stake. I mean, in normal families.

“Yep,” I said, “just a summer boyfriend. No worries. No entanglements. Just the way I like it. I mean, it’s not like Dexter’s husband material or anything. He can’t even keep his shoes tied.”

I laughed again. God, this was so true. So true. What had I been thinking?

We stood there for a second, in a silence that was not exactly awkward but not altogether comfortable either.

She looked at her watch, then behind me, into the crowd. She seemed surprised for a second, and I figured John Miller must have given her another one of his hold-on-honey-I’m-almost-done-here waves. “Look,” she said, “I really have to go, or my sitter’s going to kill me. Can you tell John Miller I’ll see him tomorrow?”

“Sure,” I told her. “No problem.”

“Thanks, Remy. Take care, okay?”

“You too.”

I watched her walk to the door, then cut out quickly just as John Miller turned his head, looking over at us again. Too late, I thought. I scared her off. Big, bad Remy, cold bitch, was back.

“Now,” Jess said, appearing next to me, “it has got to be time to go.”

“I’m in,” Chloe said, plopping down beside me. “No decent prospects here.”

“Lissa’s doing okay,” Jess told her.

Chloe bent forward, peering down the bar. “That’s the first guy that spoke to her when she got here, so yes, we should go. If we don’t she’ll be engaged to him by last call. Lissa!”

Lissa jumped. “Yes?”

“We’re going!” Chloe slid off the stool, pulling me with her. “There’s got to be something better to do tonight. Got to be.”

“You guys,” Lissa said as she came up, fluffing her hair, “I’m talking to somebody.”

“He’s subpar,” Chloe told her, glancing at him again. He waved and smiled, poor guy. “You can do better.”

“But he’s nice,” Lissa protested. “I’ve been talking to him all night.”

“Exactly,” Jess said. “You need a variety of guys, not just one. Right, Remy?”

“Right,” I agreed. “Let’s go already.”

We were almost to the door when I saw Jonathan. He was standing by the jukebox, talking to the bouncer. I’d seen him from a distance a few times since we’d broken up, but this was the first official drive-by, so I slowed down.

“Hey Remy,” he said as we passed, reaching out, in typical fashion, to brush my arm. Normally I would have sidestepped, out of range, but this time I didn’t. He didn’t look much different, his hair a bit shorter, his skin tan. Typical summer changes, all easily undone by September. “How’ve you been?”

“Good,” I said as Chloe and Lissa walked past me, out the door. Jess I could feel hovering closer by, as if I needed reminding not to waste too much breath here. “How about you?”

“Freaking great,” he said, smiling big, and I wondered what I’d ever seen in him, with his slick looks and touchy-feely ways. Talk about subpar. I’d been bottom fishing and hadn’t even known it. Not that Dexter was much of an improvement, apparently.

“Oh, Jonathan,” I said, smiling at him and moving just a bit closer as two girls passed behind me. “You always were so modest.”

He shrugged, touching my arm again. “I was always great too. Right?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” I told him, but I kept smiling. “I gotta go.”

“Yeah, I’ll see you around,” he called after me, too loudly. “Where you gonna be later? You going to that party in the Arbors?”

I reached over my head with my hand and waggled my fingers, then walked out into the thick, humid night air. Lissa had already pulled her car around, and she and Chloe were waiting, engine idling, as Jess and I came down the stairs.

“Classy,” she said to me as we slid into the backseat.

“I was just talking,” I told her, but she only turned her head, rolling down her window, and didn’t say anything.

Lissa put the car in gear and we were off. I knew Dexter would wonder where I’d gone, just like he’d probably wonder who I’d been talking to and, whoever he was, why I’d been smiling at him that way. Boys were so easy to play. And if nothing else, I gave as good as I got. He could cozy up with some chick all he wanted, but I’d be damned if I’d sit and wait while he did it.

“Where we going?” Lissa asked, turning her head and glancing back at me.

“The Arbors,” I said. “There’s a party there.”

“Now we’re talking,” Chloe said. She reached forward and cranked up the radio. And just like that, it could have been old times: the four of us, on the prowl. Earlier I’d been the odd girl out, Miss Committed, having to warm the bench while they set out into the game. But no more. And there was still so much of summer left.

We were almost out of the parking lot when I heard it. A voice, yelling after us. Chloe turned down the radio as I twisted in my seat, already wondering what I’d say when Dexter asked why I was leaving, what was the deal, how exactly I could refute that automatic assumption that this was just jealous girlfriend behavior. Which it wasn’t. Not at all.

The voice yelled again, just as I peered through the back window. But it wasn’t Dexter. It was the guy Lissa had been talking to. He called her name, looking confused as we pulled out into traffic and drove away.

It was after one when Lissa dropped me off at the end of my driveway. I took off my shoes and started across the grass, taking a sip of the Diet Zip I’d gotten on the way home from the party in the Arbors, which had turned out to be a total bust. By the time we’d gotten there the cops had already been and gone, so we’d headed to the Quik Zip to sit on the hood of Lissa’s car, talking and sharing a big bag of buttered popcorn. A good way to end what had been, for the most part, a crap night.

It was nice outside now, though. Warm, the crickets chirping, and the grass cool under my bare feet. There was a sky full of stars, and the whole neighborhood was quiet, except for a dog barking a few yards over and the soft clackety-clacking of my mother’s typewriter, drifting out of her study window, where the light, as was the norm lately, was bright and burning.

“Hey!”

There was someone behind me. I felt my whole body tense, then run hot, as I turned around. My full Diet Zip left my hand before I even realized it, sailing through the air at warp speed toward the head of the person who was standing in the middle of the lawn. It would have hit square on, perfect target, except that he moved at the last second, and it flew past, crashing against the mailbox and bursting open, showering the curb with Diet Coke and ice.

“What is your problem?” Dexter shouted.

“My problem?” I snapped. I could feel my heart beating, thunk thunk thunk, in my chest. Who lurks around neighborhoods past midnight, sneaking up on people? “You scared the shit out of me.”

“No.” He walked up to me, shoes leaving a trail across the damp grass, until he was right in front of me. “At the club. When you just took off, no explanation? What was that all about, Remy?”

I had to take a moment to collect myself. And mourn for my Diet Zip, which I had refilled just minutes earlier. “You were busy,” I said, shrugging. “And I got tired of waiting.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at me for a second. “No,” he said. “That’s not it.”

I turned my back to him and dug out my keys, shaking them until I found the one that fit the front door. “It’s late,” I said. “I’m tired. I’m going inside to go to bed.”

“Was it the song?” He stepped up even closer to me as I stuffed the key in the lock. “Is that why you freaked out and left?”

“I did not freak out,” I said flatly. “I just figured you had your hands full with that girl, and-”

“Oh, God,” he said. He stepped back, down the steps, and laughed. “Is that what this is about? You’re jealous?”

Okay. Those, as far as I was concerned, were fighting words. I turned around. “I don’t get jealous,” I told him.

“Oh, right. So you’re not human, then.”

I shrugged.

“Remy, for God’s sake. All I know is that one minute I’m telling you I’ll be done in a second and the next you just vanish, and the last I see is you talking to some old boyfriend about meeting him later. Which was kind of surprising, considering we’re seeing each other. Or so I thought.”

There was so much erroneous information in this statement that it honestly took me a second to decide, outline style, what to address first. “You know,” I said finally, “I waited around, Ted said you were deep in negotiations with this girl, my friends were ready to leave. So I left.”

“Ted,” he repeated. “What else did Ted say?”

“Nothing.”

He reached up and pulled his hand through his hair, then let his hand drop to his side. “Okay, then. I guess everything’s fine.”

“Absolutely,” I said and turned around again, turning the key in the lock.

And then, just as I was about to push the door open, he said, “I heard you, you know.”

I stopped, pressing my palm against the wood of the door. I could see myself in the small square of glass there, and him reflected behind me. He was kicking at something in the grass with his toe, not looking at me.

“Heard me what?” I said.

“Talking to Scarlett.” Now he did look up, but I couldn’t turn around. “I wanted to tell you I’d be done in a minute and to wait, if you could. So I walked over, and I heard you. Talking about us.”

So that had been what had surprised Scarlett. I reached up and tucked my hair behind my ear.

“It’s nice to know where I stand, I guess,” he said. “Summer boyfriend and all. Set ending. No worries. A bit surprising, I have to admit. But maybe I should just admire your honesty.”

“Dexter,” I said.

“No, it’s okay. My mother did always say I’d make a lousy husband, so it’s good to get a second opinion. Plus I like knowing you don’t see us going anywhere. Takes the guesswork out of it.”

I turned around and looked at him. “What did you expect? That we’d stay together forever?”

“Are those the only options? Nothing or forever?” He lowered his voice. “God, Remy. Is that what you really believe?”

Maybe, I thought. Maybe it is.

“Look,” I told him, “honesty is good. I’m going away to college, you’ll be gone by the end of the summer, or maybe, after tonight, even sooner. Ted made it sound like you were leaving tomorrow.”

“Ted is an idiot!” he said. “Ted probably also told you I sleep with every girl we meet, didn’t he?”

I shrugged. “It doesn’t-”

“I knew it,” he said. “I knew there was some Ted factor involved in this. The Ted curve. What did he say?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He sighed, loudly. “A year ago I got involved with the girl who booked bands for this club in Virginia Beach. It ended badly and-”

I held up my hand, stopping him. “I don’t care,” I told him. “I don’t. Let’s not do the true confessions thing, okay? Believe me, you don’t want to hear mine.”

He looked surprised at this, and for a second I realized he didn’t know me at all. Not at all.

“I do, though,” he said, and his voice was softer now, conciliatory, as if all this was fixable in some way. “That’s the difference. I’m not in this just for a week, or a month, Remy. I don’t work like that.”

A car drove by, slowing down as it passed. The guy behind the wheel was blatantly staring at us. It took all I had not to flip him the finger, but I resisted.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked, coming closer. “Is it that bad that you might actually really like me?”

“I’m not afraid,” I said. “That’s not it. It’s just simpler this way.”

“So you’re saying we should just decide now that this summer doesn’t mean anything? Just use each other and then when you go or I go it’s over, see you later?”

It sounded so bad when he said it that way. “I have worked all my life to get out of here scot-free,” I said. “I can’t take anything else with me.”

“This doesn’t have to be a burden,” he said. “Why do you want to make it one?”

“Because I know how things end, Dexter.” I lowered my voice. “I’ve seen what commitment leads to, and it isn’t pretty. Going in is the easy part. It’s the endings that suck.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to?” he said incredously. “My mother’s had six husbands. I’ve been related to half the country at one time or another.”

“It’s not a joke.” I shook my head. “This is how it has to be. I’m sorry.”

For a minute neither of us said anything. After so many years of only thinking these things, saying them out loud felt so strange, as if now they were officially real. My cold, hard heart exposed, finally, for what it truly was. Fair warning, I thought. I should have told you from the start. I will let you down.

“I know why you’re saying this,” he said finally, “but you’re missing out. You know, when it works, love is pretty amazing. It’s not overrated. There’s a reason for all those songs.”

I looked down at my hands. “They’re just songs, Dexter. They don’t mean anything.”

He walked over and stood right in front of me, taking my hands in his. “You know, we only sang that tonight because we were dying up there. Lucas heard me humming it the other day and got all inspired and came up with that arrangement. They don’t know it has anything to do with you. They just think it’s a good crowd pleaser.”

“I guess it is,” I said. “Just not for me.”

I felt it then. That strange settling feeling that meant the worst part of breaking up was over, and now there were only a few pleasantries to exchange before you were done for good. It was like the finish line coming up over the hill, and knowing that what lies ahead is all within your sight.

“You know,” he said, rubbing my thumb with his, “it could have gone either way with us. All those marriages and everything. Another day, you’d be the one who believed, and I’d be sending you away.”

“Maybe,” I replied. But I couldn’t even imagine believing in love the way he did. Not with the history we shared. You had to be crazy to come out of it and think forever was still possible.

He leaned forward, still holding my hand, and kissed my forehead. I closed my eyes as he did so, pressing my toes into the grass. I took in everything about him that I’d grown to like: the smell of him, his narrow hips, the smoothness of his skin against mine. So much in so little time.

“I’ll see you around,” he said, pulling back from me. “Okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”

He squeezed my hand one last time, then let it drop and started across the grass. His feet left fresh tracks: the ones from earlier were gone, already absorbed, as if nothing had happened up to here.

Once inside I went up to my bedroom and got undressed, pulling on an old pair of boxers and a tank top and crawling under the sheets. I knew this feeling, the 2 A.M. loneliness that I’d practically invented. It was always worse right after a breakup. In those first few hours officially single again the world seems like it expands, suddenly bigger and more vast now that you have to get through it alone.

That was why I’d started listening to the song, in the beginning: it took my mind off things. It was the one constant in my life, however I felt about it, the one thing that had remained a part of me as stepfathers and boyfriends and houses shifted in and out. The recording never changed, the words staying the same, my father’s voice taking the same breaths between lines. But now I couldn’t even do that. It was now stuck in my mind the way Dexter had sung it: mocking and sweet and different, carrying a heavier and stranger weight than it ever had before.

I kept thinking about how he’d kissed my forehead as we said good-bye. It had to be the nicest breakup ever. Not that it made it any easier. But still.

I rolled over and pulled the pillow tight under my head, closing my eyes. I tried to distract myself with other songs: the Beatles, my current favorite CD, old 1980s hits from my childhood. But Dexter’s voice kept coming back, slipping easily over the words I knew too well. I fell asleep with it still playing in my mind, and the next thing I knew it was morning.