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because of her silver-tongued hero in the baggy shorts, she was at the Pasta Bowl, carbo-loading in public. And so was Zinny Bauer, the last person on earth she wanted to see.
    That was bad enough, but Jason made it worse, far worse—Jason made it into one of the most excruciating moments of her life. What happened was purely crazy, and if she hadn’t known Jason better she would have thought he’d planned it. They were squabbling over his cigarette and how unlaid-back and uptight the whole thing had made him—he was drunk, and she didn’t appreciate him when he was drunk, not at all—when his face suddenly took on a conspiratorial look and he said, “Hey, Paula, you see who’s here?”
    â€œWho?” she said, and she shot a glance over her shoulder and froze: it was Zinny Bauer and her husband Armin. “Oh, shit,” she said, and she lowered her head and focussed on her plate as if it were the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen. “She didn’t see me, did she? We’ve got to go. Right now. Right this minute.”
    Jason was smirking. He looked happy about it, as if he and Zinny Bauer were old friends. “But you’ve only had four plates, babe,” he said. “You sure we got our money’s worth? I could go for maybe just a touch more pasta—and I haven’t even had any salad yet.”
    â€œNo joking around, this isn’t funny.” Her voice withered in her throat. “I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to talk to her. I just want to get out of here, okay?”
    His smile got wider. “Sure, babe, I know how you feel—but you’re going to beat her, you are, no sweat. You don’t have to let anybody chase you out of your favorite restaurant in your owntown—I mean, that’s not right, is it? That’s not in the spirit of friendly competition.”
    â€œJason,” she said, and she reached across the table and took hold of his wrist. “I mean it. Let’s get out of here. Now.”
    Her throat was constricted, as if everything she’d eaten was about to come up. Her legs ached, and her ankle—the one she’d sprained last spring—felt as if someone had driven a nail through it. All she could think of was Zinny Bauer, with her long muscles and the shaved blond stubble of her head and her eyes that never quit. Zinny Bauer was behind her, at her back, right there, and it was too much to bear.
“Jason,”
she hissed.
    â€œOkay, okay,” he was saying, and he tipped back the dregs of his beer and reached into his pocket and scattered a couple of rumpled bills across the table by way of a tip. Then he rose from the chair with a slow drunken grandeur and gave her a wink as if to indicate that the coast was clear. She got up, hunching her shoulders as if she could compress herself into invisibility and stared down at her feet as Jason took her arm and led her across the room—if Zinny saw her, Paula wouldn’t know about it because she wasn’t going to look up, and she wasn’t going to make eye contact, she wasn’t.
    Or so she thought.
    She was concentrating on her feet, on the black-and-white checked pattern of the floor tiles and how her running shoes negotiated them as if they were attached to somebody else’s legs, when all of a sudden Jason stopped and her eyes flew up and there they were, hovering over Zinny Bauer’s table like casual acquaintances, like neighbors on their way to a P.T.A. meeting. “But aren’t you Zinny Bauer?” Jason said, his voice gone high and nasal as he shifted into his Valley Girl imitation. “The great triathlete? Oh, God, yes, yes, you are, aren’t you? Oh, God, could I have your autograph for my little girl?”
    Paula was made of stone. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even blink her eyes. And Zinny—she looked as if her plane had just crashed. Jason was