nfatuation is the fun part of falling in love,” Cynthie said to David when they were ensconced in Serafino’s and the waiter had brought their very expensive filets and departed.

David smiled at her and thought, I bet Min isn’t talking psychology with Cal. God knew what Min was doing with Cal. Whatever it was, he was going to have to find a way to stop it.

“Infatuation triggers a chemical in the brain called PEA,” Cynthie said. “Your heart races, and you get breathless and dizzy, you tremble, and you can’t think. It’s what most people think of when they think of falling in love, and everybody goes through it.” She smiled a lovely, faraway smile. “Our infatuation was wonderful. We couldn’t resist each other.”

“Hmm.” David picked up his blue-frosted margarita glass. “Tell me again how it’s not working out for them.”

“Well,” Cynthie said, “about now, he should be realizing it’s time to cut his losses. He’ll take her to her car to make sure she’s safe, and then he’ll shake her hand and say, ‘Have a nice life,’ and that’ll be it.”

“What if he was attracted to her?”

“I told you, he wasn’t,” Cynthie said, but her smile faded. “But if he was, which he wasn’t, then he’d ask her out again and look for more cues, more evidence that she’s somebody he should love. Like whether his family and friends like her. But she’s not Roger’s type, he likes giggly little blondes, and I doubt Tony even saw her since he’s pretty much a breast-butt-legs man, so it wasn’t his friends who prompted him to pick her up.”

“Hard to tell what made him do that,” David said, trying to sound innocent.

“And she’s not going to meet his family, but even if she did, his mother would hate her, his mother disapproves of everything, so that wouldn’t be a cue, since Cal needs his family to approve of him.”

“So you’re saying that’s all it would take for them to reject each other?” David said. “Friends and family disapproving?”

“Unless she doesn’t like her family or wants to rebel against them. Then their disapproval would push her into his arms, but it doesn’t sound like that’s the case.”

“No,” David said, thinking of two dinners with Min’s parents in the past two months. “They’re very close.”

“Then family and friends are very powerful,” Cynthie said. “Which is why I’ve been nice to Tony for nine months. But, David, it’s not going to happen. Cal is in the mature love and attachment stage with me, which means he won’t be attracted to Min.”

“Mature love. That would be the, uh, fourth stage,” David said, trying to show he’d been listening.

“Right,” Cynthie said. “Infatuation doesn’t last because it’s conditional and conditions change, but if it’s real love, it turns into mature, unconditional love, and new chemicals are released in the brain, endorphins that make you feel warm and peaceful and satisfied and content whenever you’re with the one you love.” She took a deep breath. “And miserable when you’re without him because if he’s not there, the brain won’t produce the chemicals.”

“Oh,” David said, understanding now. “So you’re going through endorphin withdrawal.”

“Temporarily,” Cynthie said, her chin up. “He’ll be back. He’s going without sex, which is pain, a physiological cue to deepen his attachment to me.”

“Pain,” David said, thinking anything that hurt Cal was a good idea.

Cynthie nodded. “In order to move from infatuation to attachment, Cal will have to feel joy or pain when he’s with Min. The joy could be great conversation or great sex, the pain could be jealousy, frustration, fear, almost anything that adds stress. The pain cue is the reason there are so many wartime romances. And office romances.”

“Right,” David said, remembering an intern from his earlier years.

“But I don’t think that’s going to happen tonight. I think he’s going to be bored. I must say that it’s a great comfort to know that your Min is dull and frigid.”

“I didn’t say she was dull and frigid,” David said. “I wouldn’t date somebody who was dull and frigid.”

“Then you should have stuck it out,” Cynthie said. “Infatuation lasts anywhere from six months to three years, and you can’t know you’ve found the right person until you’ve worked your way through it. You quit at two months so you couldn’t have reached attachment and neither could she.” She shrugged. “Mistake.”

“Six months to three years?” David said. “And you pushed Cal after nine months?” He shrugged. “Mistake.”

Cynthie put down her fork. “Not a mistake. I know Cal, I have written articles on Cal, and he is in the attachment stage, we both are.”

David stopped eating, appalled. “You wrote about your lover?”

“Well, I didn’t call him by his real name,” Cynthie said. “And I didn’t say he was my lover.”

“Isn’t that unethical?”

“No.” Cynthie pushed her plate away, most of her dinner untouched. “That’s how we met. I’d heard about him through a couple of my clients. He had quite a reputation.”

“I know,” David said, thinking vicious thoughts about Cal Morrisey, God’s Gift to Women. “Totally undeserved.”

“Are you kidding?” Cynthie said. “I was studying him, and he got me.” Her mouth curved again. “Nature gave him that face and body, and his parents gave him conditional affection as a child. He’s been trained to please people to get approval, and the people he likes to please most are women, who are more than willing to be pleased by him because he looks the way he does. So his looks guarantee assumption and his charm guarantees attraction. He’s one of the most elegant adaptive solutions I’ve ever observed. The papers I wrote on him got a lot of attention.”

David tried to picture Cal Morrisey as a child, trying to earn affection. All he could come up with was a good-looking dark-haired kid in a tuxedo, leaning on a swing set and smiling confidently at little girls. “Did he know you wrote papers on him?”

“No,” Cynthie said. “He still doesn’t. He never will. I finished that work, it’s over. I’m writing a book now, already under contract. It’s almost done.” She smiled, a satisfied feline smile. “The point is, I’m not some silly woman moaning, ‘But I thought he loved me,’ I have clinical proof he does love me. And he’ll come back to me soon, as long as your Min doesn’t distract him.”

“So,” David said, leaning closer. “If we wanted to make sure they didn’t get to—what was it? Attraction?—what would we do?”

Cynthie’s eyes widened. “Do?” She put her wineglass down and thought about it. “Well, I suppose we could talk to their friends and families, poison the well, so to speak. And we could offer them joy in different forms to counteract whatever happens between them. But that wouldn’t be... David, we don’t have to do anything. Cal loves me.”

“Right,” David said, sitting back. Family, he thought. I have an in with the family.

Cynthie smiled at him. “I’m tired of talking about them,” she said. “What is it that you do for a living?”

David thought, It’s about time we got to me. He said, “I’m in software development,” and watched her eyes glaze over.

Outside Emilio’s, Min took a deep breath of summer night air and thought, I’m happy. Evidently great food was an antidote to rage and humiliation. Good to know for the future.

Then Cal came out and said, “Where’s your car?” and broke her mood.

“No car,” Min said. “I can walk it.” She held out her hand. “Thank you for a lovely evening. Sort of. Good-bye.”

“No,” Cal said, ignoring her hand. “Which way is your place?”

“Look,” Min said, exasperated. “I can walk—”

“In the city alone at night? No, you can’t. I was raised better than that. I’m walking you home, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so which way are we going?”

Min thought about arguing with him, but there wasn’t much point. Even one short evening with Calvin Morrisey had taught her that he got what he wanted. “Okay. Fine. Thank you very much. It’s this way.”

She started off down the street, listening to the breeze in the trees and the muted street noises, and Cal fell into step beside her, the sound of his footfalls matching the click of her heels in a nice rhythm.

“So what is it you do for a living?” she asked.

“I run a business seminar group with two partners.”

“You’re a teacher?” Min said, surprised.

“Yes,” he said. “So you’re an actuary. I have a great deal of respect for your profession. You do it for money. I do it for recreation.”

“Do what?”

“Figure out whether something’s a good bet or not.” He looked down at her. “You’re a gambler. You do it with millions of dollars of an insurance company’s money. I do it with ten-dollar bills.”

“Yeah, but I don’t lose any of my own money,” Min said.

“Neither do I,” Cal said.

“You win every bet?” Min said, disbelief making her voice flat.

“Pretty much,” Cal said.

“Hell of a guy,” Min said. “Is that why you went into business for yourself? So you could control the risk?”

“No, I just didn’t want to work for anybody else,” Cal said. “That didn’t leave me any other options.”

“We turn here,” Min said, slowing as they came to the corner. “Look, I can—”

“Keep walking,” Cal said, and Min did.

“So what’s the name of this company?”

“Morrisey, Packard, Capa.”

“Packard and Capa being the other two guys on the landing with you,” Min said. “The big blond and the bull—uh, the jock-looking one.”

“Yeah.” Cal grinned. “Bull?”

“One of my friends mentioned his head looked like a bullet,” Min said, wincing. “She meant it as a compliment.”

“Bet she did,” Cal said. “That would be the redhead, right?”

“You noticed her,” Min said, and felt a twinge.

“No, the bullethead noticed her,” Cal said.

“Don’t tell him she said that,” Min said. “She wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings.”

“It takes a lot to bring Tony down,” Cal said. “But I won’t mention it.”

“Thank you.”

The farther they got from the busier streets, the darker it became, even with the streetlights, and Min began to feel grateful he was there. “So why do people hire you to teach? I mean, you specifically. Instead of somebody else.”

“We tailor the programs,” Cal said. “In any instructional situation, a certain percentage of the student population will fail to master the material. We guarantee one hundred percent and we stay until it’s achieved.”

“That sounds like promotional literature.”

“It’s also the truth.”

“And you do this how?” Min said. “Charming them?”

“What have you got against charming?” Cal said.

“It so rarely goes hand in hand with ‘honest,’ ” Min said.

Cal sighed. “People shut down because of fear. The first thing we do is analyze the students to find out who’s afraid and how they’re coping with it. Some of them freeze up, so we put them with Roger. Very gentle guy, Roger. He can reassure anybody into learning anything.”

“That’s a little creepy,” Min said, trying to picture Roger as one of those slick self-help gurus.

“You are a very suspicious woman,” Cal said. “Then some people hide their fear in wisecracks, disrupting class. Tony takes them. They joke around together until everybody’s relaxed.”

“And who do you get?” Min said.

“I get the angry ones,” Cal said. “The ones who are mad that they’re scared.”

“And you charm them out of it,” Min said.

“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way, but yes, I suppose that’s one interpretation.”

The angry ones. They walked on in silence, their footsteps echoing together.

Min looked up at him. “You must have felt right at home with me tonight.”

“Nope,” Cal said. “You’re not mad because you’re scared. I doubt that much scares you. You’re mad because somebody was lousy to you. And there’s not enough charm in the world to get you out of that until you’ve resolved the deeper issue.”

“And yet you kept on trying,” Min said.

“No, I didn’t,” Cal said. “Once you’d told me you’d been dumped, I backed off.”

Min thought about it. “I guess you did. Pretty much.”

“Now aren’t you sorry you were such a grump all night?” Cal said.

“No,” Min said. “Because you were pouring on the charm before that, which means you were trying to get something from me, God knows what—” Sex to win a bet, you beast. “—and you deserved to be called on that.”

A few steps later Cal said, “Fair enough.”

Min smiled to herself in the darkness and thought, Well, he does have an honest bone in his body. Too bad it’s just one. They walked on in silence until they reached the steps to her house. “This is it. Thank you very much—”

“Where?” Cal said, looking around. “I don’t see a house.”

“Up there,” Min said, pointing up the hill. “The steps are right there. So we can—”

Cal peered up the hill into the darkness. “Christ, woman, that looks like Everest. How many steps are there?”

“Thirty-two,” Min said, “and another twenty-six after that to get up to my apartment in the attic.” She held out her hand. “So we’ll say goodnight here. Thank you for the walk home. Best of luck in the future.”

He ignored her to look up the hill again. “Nope. I’m not leaving you to climb up there in the dark.”

“It’s okay,” Min said. “Seventy-eight percent of women who are attacked are attacked by men they know.”

“Is that another shot at me?” Cal said.

“No. I don’t know any men who would climb thirty-two steps to attack me, so I’m safe. You can go home with a clear conscience.”

“No,” he said patiently. “I can’t. Get moving. I’ll be right behind you.”

Behind her? Thirty-two steps with him looking at her butt? “No, you won’t.”

“Look, it’s late, I’m tired, can we just—”

“It’ll be a cold day in hell when you follow me up those steps. You want to go up, you go first.”

“Why?” he said, mystified.

“You’re not looking at my rear end all the way up that hill.”

He shook his head. “You know, Dobbs, you look like a sane person, and then you open your mouth—”

“Start climbing or go home,” Min said.

Cal sighed and took the first step. “Wait a minute. Now you’ll be looking at my butt all the way up the steps.”

“Yes, but you probably have a great butt,” Min said. “It’s an entirely different dynamic.”

“I can’t even see yours,” Cal said. “It’s dark and your jacket is too long.”

“Climb or leave,” Min said, and Cal started up the steps.

When they got to the top, he hesitated, and she saw the mid-century stone and stucco house through his eyes, dark and shabby and overgrown with climbing rosebushes that were so ancient they’d degenerated into thornbushes. “It’s nice,” she said, on the defensive.

“It’s probably great in the daytime,” he said, politely.

“Right.” Min pushed past him to climb the stone steps to the front porch. She unlocked the door. “There, see? You can go now.”

“This is not your door,” he said. “You said you live twenty-six steps up.”

“Fine, climb all the way to the attic.” She waved him in front of her into the square hall of the house. With him there, the faded blue wallpaper and dull oak woodwork looked shabby instead of comfortable, and that irritated her. “Up,” she said, pointing to the narrow stairway along one wall, looking even narrower now that he was at the bottom with what looked like several yards of shoulder blocking her way, and he climbed two more flights of stairs to the narrow landing with her following.

He had a great butt.

And that’s all that’s nice about him, Min told herself. Be sensible, keep your head here. You’re never going to see him again.

“Well, at least you know anybody who walks you home twice is serious about you,” he said, as he reached the top.

He turned as he said it, and Min, still two steps down scoping out his rear end, walked into his elbow and clipped herself hard over the eye, knocking herself enough off balance that she tripped back, grabbed the railing, and sat down on the step.

“Oh, Christ,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He bent over her and she warded him off.

“No, no,” she said. “My fault. Following too close.” Ouch, she thought, gingerly feeling the place he’d smacked her. That’s what you get for being shallow and objectifying the beast.

“Just let me see it,” he said, trying to look into her eyes. He put his hand gently on the side of her face to tip her chin up.

“No.” She brushed his hand away as her skin started to tingle. “I’m fine. Aside from being part of the seventy-eight percent of women who are attacked by—”

“Oh, cut me a break,” he said, straightening. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She stood up again and detoured around him to unlock her door. “You can go now.”

“Right.” He picked up her hand and shook it once. “Great to meet you, Dobbs. Sorry about the elbow to the head. Have a nice life.”

“Oh, I’m going to,” Min said. “I’m giving up men and getting a cat.” She slipped inside and shut the door in his face before he could say anything else. Have a nice life. Who is he kidding?

She turned on her grandmother’s china lamp by the door, and her living room sprang into shabby but comforting view. The light on her machine was blinking, and she went over and pressed the button, and then rubbed her temple while she listened.

“Min,” her sister’s voice said. “Just wanted to make sure you didn’t forget the fitting tomorrow. It’ll be nice to see you.” Diana sounded a little woebegone, which was not like her, and Min replayed the message to hear her again. Something was wrong.

“The Dobbs girls cannot win,” she said, and thought about Calvin Morrisey. She went over to her battered mantel and looked over the snow globes lined up there into the tarnished mirror that had once hung in her grandmother’s hall. A plain round face, plain brown hair, that’s what Cal Morrisey had looked at all night. And now it had a nice bruise. She sighed and picked up the snow globe Bonnie had given her for Christmas, Cinderella and her prince on the steps of their blue castle, doves flying overhead. Cal Morrisey would look right at home on those steps. She, on the other hand, would be asked to try the servants’ entrance. “Just not the fairy tale type,” she said and put the globe down to go turn on her stereo, hitting the up button until Elvis started to sing “The Devil in Disguise.”

“And let’s not forget that’s what Calvin Morrisey is, Dobbs,” she told herself, and went to put arnica on her bruise and take a hot bath to wash the memory of the evening away. At least the part with David in it. There were some moments after David that weren’t entirely horrible.

But she definitely wasn’t going to see Calvin Morrisey again.

When Cal got to work the next morning, the sun was shining through the tall windows in the loft office, the smell of coffee permeated the room, Roger waved to him from his desk by the window, and Elvis Costello was singing “The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes” on the CD player. All right, Cal thought. He dropped a folder on the frosted glass desktop, poured himself a cup of coffee, and pulled out his Aeron chair, ready to make the world a better place for people trapped in business training seminars.

Tony came through the door and slapped him on the back. “Nice going last night. Tell me you won.”

“What are you talking about?” Cal said.

“The bet with David,” Tony said. “The one about the gray-checked suit. Tell me you won it.”

“Sure.” Cal dropped into his desk chair. “You saw me leave with her.”

“You’re right, you’re right, I should have had faith. You want to tell David or should I?”

“Tell him what?” Cal turned on his Mac and hit the GET MESSAGE button for his e-mail.

“That you had sex with the suit,” Tony said.

“What?” Cal said, squinting at the screen while Elvis sang backup to his morning. “Of course I didn’t.”

“Oh.” Tony nodded. “Well, you’ve still got a month.”

“Tony,” Cal said as the list of messages showed up in the window. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m positive it’s wasting my time.”

“David bet you that you could get the suit into bed in a month,” Tony was saying with obvious patience. “I could use the money, too, so if you’d—”

“No,” Cal said. “I did not make that bet.”

“David thinks you made the bet,” Tony said.

“No, he doesn’t,” Cal said. “Now that he’s sober he does not think that he bet me ten thousand dollars I could get a strange woman into bed. Now could we get some work done? There’s money in it for you. They pay us to do this stuff.”

He slid the folder on his desk across to Tony, who picked it up and leafed through it. “Piece of cake,” he said, and began to move away. “Oh, just so you know, Cynthie left with David last night.”

“Good for them.” Cal turned back to his e-mail.

“This doesn’t bother you?” Tony said.

“Why are you harassing me this morning?” Cal said, putting an edge on his voice.

“I just want to make sure you’re not going back to her,” Tony said. “My future is on the line here.”

“How?” Cal said.

“Well, you’ll get married first,” Tony said, coming back to sit on the corner of Cal’s desk. “You always do everything first. And then Roger will get married and you’ll both move to the suburbs. And Roger is going to marry somebody as uptight as he is, which means I’ll have to live with you, and since Cynthie never did like me, she’d be a problem to convince on that.”

“So would I,” Cal said. “Get off my desk.”

“It wouldn’t be with you, not in the house,” Tony said. “I figure a nice apartment over the garage. It’d be convenient for you. You could come over and watch the game and get drunk and not have to drive home. And I could baby-sit the kids when you and the wife wanted to go out.”

“First,” Cal said, “I’m not getting married, so forget the wife. Second, if I was insane enough to get married, I wouldn’t have kids. Third, if I was insane enough to get married and have kids, it would be a cold day in hell I’d let you baby-sit.”

“Well, we’ll both have matured by then,” Tony said. “I wouldn’t let me baby-sit now, either.”

“I’m getting married first,” Roger said.

They both turned to him, and he smiled back, big, blond, and placid in the sunlight from the big loft windows.

“I’m going to marry Bonnie,” Roger said.

Cal frowned at him. “Who’s Bonnie?”

“The mini-blonde he met last night,” Tony said, disgust in his voice.

“Her name is Bonnie,” Roger said, his voice like ice, and both Cal and Tony straightened.

“He’s serious,” Cal said to Tony. “What happened?”

“The redhead wanted me,” Tony said. “So I went over. And Roger followed and hooked up with the mini... with Bonnie. And sometime between then and now he lost his mind.” He shook his head at Roger. “This is a woman you’ve known less than twelve hours. It took you a year to pick out a couch, but you’re seriously—”

“Yes,” Roger said. “She’s the one.”

“Maybe,” Cal said, thinking, The hell she is. “You didn’t tell her that, though. Right?”

“No,” Roger said. “I thought it was too soon.”

“You think?” Tony said. “Jesus.”

“I’m going to marry her,” Roger said, “so stop yelling and get used to it. She’s perfect.”

“No woman is perfect,” Tony said. “Which is why we must keep looking. You going to see her tonight?”

“No,” Roger said. “They have some Thursday night thing they do every other week. Bonnie called it their ‘If Dinner.’ ”

“They?” Tony said.

Roger nodded. “Bonnie, Liza, and Min.”

“Who’s Min?” Tony said, lost again.

“The one I’m not going to sleep with,” Cal said. If Bonnie was anything like Min, Roger was in big trouble.

“You seeing Bonnie on Friday?” Tony said to Roger, sticking to the basics.

Roger nodded. “She said they’ll be at The Long Shot. It’s not their regular hangout, but she said she’d look for me there. And she’s coming to the game Saturday. And we might go to dinner Saturday night.”

“She’s coming to watch you coach a kid’s baseball game?” Cal said. “She must love you a lot.”

“Not yet,” Roger said. “But she will.”

“Friday,” Tony said, ignoring them. “That’s good. I can hit on Liza, and Cal can move on the suit.”

“No,” Cal said.

Roger looked sympathetic. “What happened?”

Cal went back to his computer. “She’s a conservative, anti-gambling actuary who spent dinner bitching at me. Then I took her home, climbed fifty-eight steps to her apartment to make sure she didn’t get mugged, and elbowed her in the eye. It was the worst date of my life, and I’m sure it was in her bottom five.”

“You hit her?” Tony said.

“By accident,” Cal said. “I’d send flowers to apologize, but she’s anti-charm, too. It’s over. Move on.”

“So you’re going to give up on another one,” Tony said, shaking his head.

Cal looked up at him, annoyed. “Now tell me about your deep and lasting relationships.”

“Yes, but that’s me,” Tony said. “I’m shallow.”

“Bonnie lives on the first floor of that house,” Roger said, as if they hadn’t spoken, “so I just had to make the first thirty-two steps. And then she felt bad for me, so she invited me in for coffee. I can get used to the steps.”

“Does that mean Liza lives on the second floor?” Tony said.

“No, Liza lives over on Pennington,” Roger said. “She moves every year to a new place, about the time she changes jobs. Bonnie says Liza likes change.”

Cal looked at Tony. “You didn’t walk her home?”

“She ditched me while I was in the john,” Tony said. “I think she’s playing hard to get.”

“Sounds like Min,” Cal said, going back to the computer. “Except I don’t think she’s playing.”

“Bonnie and I walked Liza home,” Roger said. “It was nice. It gave me more time with Bonnie.”

“Jesus, man, pull yourself together,” Tony said.

“You’re serious about this?” Cal said, turning back to Roger.

“Yes.”

Cal saw determination on his face. “Congratulations,” he said, deciding to check Bonnie out. “Wait a month to propose. You don’t want to scare her.”

“That’s what I thought,” Roger said.

“You’re both nuts,” Tony said.

“We’re all going to be unemployed if we don’t get to work,” Cal said. “Start with the Batchelder refresher.”

“Bonnie says Min is great,” Roger said. “She looked nice.”

“Min is not nice,” Cal said. “Min is mad at the world and taking it out on whatever guy is standing next to her. Now about the Batchelder refresher—”

“Are you sure David knows there’s no bet?” Tony said.

“Positive,” Cal said. “I’m never seeing that woman again. Now about the Batchelder refresher...”

At half past four that afternoon, Min walked into the ivory moiré–draped fitting room of the city’s best bridal emporium, well aware she was late and not caring much. Her mother was probably so absorbed in harassing Diana and the fitter that—

“You’re late,” Nanette Dobbs said. “The appointment was for four.”

“I work.” Min crossed the thick gold carpet and detoured around the dark-haired bundle of exasperation that had given birth to her, dropping her jacket on an ivory-upholstered chair. “That means the insurance company gets first dibs on my time. If you want me here on the dot, schedule this for after work.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Nanette said. “Your dress is in the second dressing room. The fitter is with Diana and the other girls. Give me your blouse, you’ll just drop it on the floor in there.” She held out one imperious, French-manicured hand, and Min sighed and took off her blouse.

“Oh, Min,” her mother said, her voice heavy with unsurprised contempt. “Wherever did you get that bra?”

Min looked down at her underwear. Plain cotton, but perfectly respectable. “I have no idea. Why?”

“White cotton,” Nanette said. “Honestly, Min, plain cotton is like plain vanilla—”

“I like plain vanilla.”

“—there’s no excitement there at all.”

Min blinked. “I was at work. There’s never any excitement.”

“I’m talking about men,” Nanette said. “You’re thirty-three. Your prime years are past you, and you’re wearing white cotton.”

“I was at work” Min said, losing patience.

“It doesn’t matter.” Her mother shook out Min’s blouse, checked the label, saw it was silk, and looked partly mollified. “If you’re wearing white cotton lingerie, you’ll feel like white cotton, and you’ll act like white cotton, and white cotton cannot get a man, nor can it keep one. Always wear lace.”

“You’d make a nice pimp,” Min said, and headed for the dressing room.

“Minerva,” her mother said.

“Well, I’m sorry.” Min stopped and turned around. “But honestly, Mother, this conversation is getting old. I’m not even sure I want to get married, and you’re critiquing my underwear because it’s not good enough bait. Can’t you—”

Nanette lifted her chin, and her jawline became even more taut. “This is the kind of attitude that’s going to lose David.”

Min took a deep breath. “About David...”

“What?” Her mother’s body tensed beneath her size four Dana Buchman suit. “What about David?”

Min smiled cheerfully. “We’re no longer seeing each other.”

“Oh, Min,” Nanette wailed, clutching Min’s blouse to her bosom, the picture of despair in the middle of a lot of expensive gold and ivory décor.

“He wasn’t right for me, Mother,” Min said.

“Yes,” Nanette said, “but couldn’t you have kept him until after the wedding?”

“Evidently not,” Min said. “Let’s cut to the chase. What do I have to do to keep you from mentioning his name ever again?”

“Wear lace.”

“That will get you off my back?”

“For a while.”

Min grinned at her and headed for the dressing room door. “You are a piece of work.”

“So are you, darling,” Nanette said, surveying her eldest. “I’m very proud of you, you know. You have a blotch of makeup over your eye. What is that?”

“Oh, for crying out loud.” Min closed the door behind her. She unzipped her skirt, let it fall to the gold carpet, and studied herself in the gold-framed mirror. “You’re not that bad,” she told herself, not convinced. “You just have to find a man who likes very healthy women.”

She unclipped the long lavender skirt from the gold hanger and stepped into it, being careful not to rip the knife-pleated chiffon ruffle at the bottom, and sucked in her stomach to get it buttoned. Then she shrugged on the lavender chiffon blouse and buttoned the tiny buttons, stretching the fabric tightly across her bust so that her white bra showed at the corners of the low, squared bodice. She shook out the sleeves, and the chiffon fell over her hands in wide double ruffles that she would drag through everything at the reception. The blouse also erupted around her hips in more ruffles at the side. “Oh, yes,” she said. “More width at the hip. Can’t ever get enough of that.”

Then she picked up the corset, a blue and lavender watercolor moire tied with lavender ribbons. The fabric had been so beautiful when Diana had chosen it six months before that Min had hired the seamstress to make a comforter for her bed with it, and she looked at the narrow corset now and thought, I’m going to have to wear the comforter. This is never going to fit. She took a deep breath and wrapped the corset around her. It shoved her breasts up to a dizzying height and then failed to meet in the middle by almost two inches. Carbs. She thought vicious thoughts about Cal Morrisey and Emilio’s bread. Then she tried to smooth out the extra foundation without showing the bruise and went out into the dressing room to face her mother.

Instead, she found Diana, standing on the fitting platform in front of the huge, gold-framed mirror, flanked by her two lovely bridesmaids, the women Liza called Wet and Worse, while the Dixie Chicks played on Diana’s portable CD player.

“ ‘Ready to Run,’ ” Min said to Diana. “And so not appropriate.”

“Hmmm?” Diana said, staring into the mirror. “No, it’s Runaway Bride.”

“Right,” Min said, remembering that Diana had decided to score her wedding to music from Julia Roberts’s movies. Well, at least it was a plan.

“I loved that movie,” Susie said. She looked blond, bilious, miserable, and, well, wet in corseted green chiffon, the loser in the bridesmaid dress lottery.

“I thought it was ridiculous,” dark-haired Karen, a.k.a. Worse, said, looking sophisticated and superior in corseted blue chiffon.

Min waved her hand at Worse. “Scoot over so I can see my sister.”

Worse moved, and Min got her first look at Diana. “Wow.”

Diana looked like a fairy tale come to life in ivory chiffon and satin. Her dark curling hair fell from an artfully messy knot into pearl-strewn tendrils around her pale oval face and her neck rose gracefully above the perfect expanse of skin revealed by a very low, square-necked bodice identical to the one flashing Min’s white bra. Her neckline had chiffon ruffles cascading over the beaded ivory corset that cinched her slim waist, and more ruffles fell from her wrists and flowed out from under the corset, parting to reveal a straight skirt flounced with more ruffles along the side like panniers and ending in a knife-pleated border that touched the toes of her satin buckled pumps. She turned on the platform to look into the mirror and Min saw the bustle of gathered chiffon at the base of her spine that erupted in more and more ruffles and pleats until the back of the dress took on a life of its own, quivering when Diana moved.

“What do you think?” Diana said, no expression at all on her face.

I think you look like a sex-crazed princess on heroin, Min thought, but she said, “I think you look beautiful,” because that was true, too.

“You look gorgeous,” Worse said, straightening Di’s skirt, which didn’t need straightening.

“Uh huh,” Wet said. Min wanted to feel sorry for her—it couldn’t be easy watching your best friend marry your ex-boyfriend, especially when you looked like hell in green—but Wet was so spineless that it was hard to sympathize.

“It wouldn’t do for a morning wedding,” Diana said, touching the ribbon bow at her breasts. “It wouldn’t work for evening, either. But my wedding is at dusk. That’s magic time. It changes everything.”

“You look like magic,” Min said, hearing the same strain in Diana’s voice that she’d heard on her answering machine the night before. “Are you all right?”

Diana turned back to the mirror. “You wouldn’t be caught dead in this, would you?”

“If I looked like you, I might.”

Worse surveyed Min from head to toe, taking in the bursting corset and white bra along the way. “It’s not Min’s style.”

“You think?” Min said. “Because I was going to wear the corset to the office when this whole deal was done. Could I talk to my sister alone for a minute, please?”

Worse raised her eyebrows, but Wet escaped into the dressing rooms gladly, and when Min folded her arms and stared, Worse gave up and left, too.

“What’s going on?” Min asked Diana, as the Dixie Chicks finished and Martina McBride began to sing the impossibly chipper “I Love You.”

“Nothing,” Diana said, watching herself in the mirror. “Well, the cake, we’re having problems with the cake, but everything else is perfect.”

“Is it Greg?” Min said, thinking, I wouldn’t want to marry a wimp no matter how cute and rich he was. If she ever got married, it’d be to somebody with edge, somebody who’d be tricky and fast and interesting forever—

“Greg is perfect,” Diana said, fluffing the ruffles that somehow made her hips looks slimmer.

“Oh, good,” Min said. “What about the cake?”

“The cake...” Diana cleared her throat. “The cake didn’t get ordered in time.”

“I thought Greg knew this great baker,” Min said.

“He does,” Diana said. “But he... forgot, and now it’s too late, so I have to find a new baker.”

“Who can do a huge art cake for three weeks from now?”

“It’s not Greg’s fault,” Diana said. “You know men. They’re not dependable on stuff like that. It was my fault for not checking.”

“Not all men are undependable,” Min said. “I met a real beast last night, but he’d have gotten that cake.”

“Well, Greg isn’t a beast,” Diana said. “I’d rather have a good man who forgets cakes than a beast who remembers them.”

“Good point,” Min said. “Look, I’ll find you a cake. It’s the least I can do to make up for my screwups.”

Diana gave up on her ruffles and turned around. “What’s wrong? You’re not a screwup. What’s the matter?”

“I lost David, and I’m too fat for this corset thing,” Min said, holding up the ribbon ends.

“You’re not fat,” Diana said, but she stepped down off the platform. “They probably sent the wrong size. Let me see.”

Min untied the corset and handed it over and then watched as Diana flipped it inside out with expert hands.

“What happened with David?” Diana said as she frowned at the tag.

“I wouldn’t sleep with him so he left.”

“What a dumbass.” Diana looked up, mystified. “You know, this is an eight, it should fit.”

“In what universe?” Min said, outraged. “I wasn’t an eight at birth. Who ordered this thing?”

“I did,” Nanette said from behind her. “I assumed you’d be losing weight for your sister’s wedding. You’re still on your diet, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Min said, biting the word off as she turned to face her mother. “But let’s be realistic here. You bought a blouse that fit.” She looked down to where the tiny buttons stood at attention as they crossed her bustline. “Sort of. Why not—”

“You’ve had a year,” her mother said, clutching a lot of lace from the lingerie department. “I thought the corset could cinch you in if you missed your target by a few pounds, but you’ve had plenty of time to lose that weight.”

Min took a deep breath and popped the button on her skirt. “Look, Mother, I am never going to be thin. I’m Norwegian. If you wanted a thin daughter, you should not have married a man whose female ancestors carried cows home from the pasture.”

“You’re half Norwegian,” Nanette said, “which is no excuse at all because there are plenty of slim Nordic beauties. You’re just eating to rebel against me.”

“Mother, sometimes it’s not about you,” Min snapped as she held her skirt together. “Sometimes it’s genetics.”

“Not your loud voice, dear,” her mother said, and turned to Diana as she held up the corset. “We’ll just have to tie it tighter.”

“Good idea,” Min said. “Then when I pass out at the altar, you can point out how slim and Nordic I am.”

“Minerva, this is your sister’s wedding,” Nanette said. “You can sacrifice a little.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Diana said, holding out her hands. “There’s time to have one made in Min’s size. Everything will be fine.”

“Oh, good.” Min stepped up on the platform to look at herself in the trifold mirror. She looked like the blowsy barmaid who worked in the inn behind the castle, the one who’d trash-picked one of the princess’s castoffs. “This is so not me.”

“It’s a great color for you, Min,” Diana said softly as she came to stand behind her on the platform, and Min leaned back so their shoulders touched.

“You’re going to be the most amazing bride,” she told Diana. “People are going to gasp when they see you.”

“You, too,” Diana said, and squeezed Min’s shoulder.

Yeah, when my corset explodes and my breasts hit the minister.

“What happened to your eye?” Diana said in Min’s ear, low enough so that Nanette couldn’t hear.

“The beast hit me last night,” Min said, and then when Diana straightened she added, “I walked into his elbow. Not his fault.”

“That’s the wrong bra for that dress,” Nanette said from behind them.

“You’re not by any chance my stepmother, are you?” Min said to her mother’s reflection. “Because that would explain so much.”

“Here, darling,” Nanette said and handed her five different colored lace bras. “Go in there and put one of these on and bring me that cotton thing. I’m going to burn it.”

“What cotton thing?” Diana said.

“I’m wearing a plain white bra,” Min told her as she stepped off the platform, her hands full of lace.

Diana widened her eyes and looked prim. “Well, you’re going to hell.”

“Diana,” Nanette said.

“I know,” Min said as she headed for the dressing room. “That’s where all the best men are.”

“Minerva,” Nanette said. “Where are you going?”

“It’s Thursday,” Min said, over her shoulder. “I’m meeting Liza and Bonnie for dinner, and I don’t want to talk about my underwear anymore.” She stopped in the doorway to the dressing room. “Order the bigger corset—much bigger, Mother—and we’ll try this again when it comes in.”

“No carbs,” her mother called after her as she went into the dressing room. “And no butter”

“I know you stole me from my real parents,” Min called back. “They’d let me eat butter.” Then she shut the door behind her before Nanette could tell her to avoid sugar, too.