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messy London way. Girlfriend . He has a girlfriend.
    As soon as I see her, I put my head down and walk away, and I don’t stop to see if he looks after me. I can hear her voice echoing down the street as they walk into Sweet Melissa Patisserie. “And I was like, why, you know? And— Ooh! Waffles! Bliss! And he said, look, darling, you always knew it was going to be like this—”
    And then they’re gone. The perfect man … and his perfect girlfriend. I still feel an endorphin rush from smiling at him, is that weird? It probably is. Not to mention shallow, after the end-of-days hysteria of a few minutes ago.
    Then I glance up at my reflection in a store window and let out a wail: I am a mascara-stained, puke-puckered sweat rat. Urgh. Why do I only ever see cute guys when I look like an armpit?
    Anyway, I can’t do serious relationships. I haven’t since the whole Eddie meltdown. Even my casual hookups have a tendency to bite me in the ass. (If you know what I … never mind.) I’ve ignored three texts and two calls from Mike since that Sunday. At least Madeleine hasn’t found out about it. (Yet.)
    “Well, if it isn’t Little Miss Whole Person,” says a voice. I look up. It’s Vic, the raisiny old guy who lives downstairs.
    “Hi! I mean, good evening! Mr.— uh—”
    “Vittorio Bartolo,” he says, with a flourish. “Call me Vic.”
    “I’m Pia … Pia Keller. And I’m really sorry, again, about your kitchen ceiling.” I haven’t seen him since that morning; Julia took over as a go-between. “Is it all, um, okay?”
    “It’s perfect. Thank you.” He grins, and all those craggy crevices I noticed last Sunday morning move around his face again. Suddenly I have the feeling he found the whole thing kind of funny. “I’m sorry I called you a half a person the other morning. I didn’t mean to offend.”
    “You didn’t. How’s your sister?”
    “Marie’s fine,” he says. “She’s with her grandkids over in New Jersey. She spends half the week with them, half with me. It makes her feel popular. So, are you going to tell me why you’re huffing and puffing like you’re gonna blow the house down? Oops, sorry. Wrong choice of words.”
    “Ha,” I say. Quite the comedian, isn’t he? “Um, I need a job. I need to make money.”
    “Welcome to New York,” he says amiably. “It’s nothing to cry about. Just get on with it. Your future is waiting for you.”
    “What if I can’t? My life in New York will be over before it’s even started.”
    “Not for nothing, but the way I see it, the only people who make any money in this world are entrepreneurs,” he says. “Come up with an idea for a business, make it work, sell it on.”
    “That sounds doable … except the selling-it-on part. And the making-it-work part. Oh, and the coming-up-with-an-idea-for-a-business part.”
    Vic erupts into a wheezy laugh. For a second I’m scared he’s going to collapse a lung.
    “Actually, when I was fourteen, I tried to start a business,” I say, remembering. “I made one-of-a-kind ripped jean shorts from second-hand jeans I bought real cheap on eBay, and sold them as customized vintage on Etsy.”
    “I don’t know what any of that means.”
    “Yeah, no one did. They weren’t that great. I sold about half of them.” I sigh, remembering the dozens of dilapidated cutoffs falling out of every drawer in my room for months. Angie was supposed to help me out with the customizing part—she’s good at stuff like that—but she flaked out on me. “And when I was eleven I tried to start a kids’ club. We were on vacation in the south of France, and my idea was I’d organize activities for the younger kids staying in the same town.… Kind of like a party planner. But the other parents didn’t believe that I was responsible enough to look after their kids so it, y’know, didn’t take.”
    “Well, that sounds like it would have been a great idea.”
    We grin at each other for a second.
    “You