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too hot to wear it down.”
    “Put it in a chignon.”
    “Not enough time. Come on. We’ll be late.”
    “You get away with a lot because you’re tall and slender,” Donna sighed, following her down the steps.
    “But you get all the men because you’re a short little bitty girly-girl.”
    This was an old argument, one that had started years ago when they joined the same law firm, where they camouflaged their femininity beneath stiff mannish suits and competed with one another in cold severity, until finally they got into a fight that ended up in an all-night laughing/crying true-confessions session and their eventual best-friendship.
    Donna slid into the passenger seat. Only five foot two, and as full of curves as a bag of apples, her usual expression was a fierce scowl, the only way she could get most people to take her seriously. “May I remind you, Your Honor, you’re the one who’s engaged.”
    “You’ve had how many men propose?”
    “True.” Donna giggled. “While we’re on that subject—”
    “Yes?”
    “I want you and Jason to meet Eric.”
    “This sounds very serious.”
    “I like him a lot, Kelly. We can talk law, or just be together. When I curl up next to him, I feel so content—”
    “How lovely for you, Donna.”
    Donna hugged herself smugly. “Lovely. Yes.”
    “Donna …”
    “Mmm?”
    “I met a nice man today.”
    “A nice man ? Isn’t Jason a nice man?”
    “Jason is a handsome, brilliant, ambitious pain in the butt. The guy I met was a niceman.”
    “Define nice .” They were almost at the house. Donna pulled the sun visor down and checked her reflection in the mirror.
    “I don’t know, Donna, there was just something about him. He was so easy to talk to. Sort of like what you’re saying about Eric. I didn’t have to perform for him, and I don’t think he was performing for me. He seemed … honest. Real.”
    “You met him in the cemetery?”
    “I’d seen him there before. His mother died recently.”
    Carefully Donna touched up her mascara. “How old?”
    “Maybe forty.”
    “Then he’s married.”
    “Getting a divorce, actually.”
    “Did you tell him you’re engaged?”
    “Yup. I also told him I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing.”
    “You met this guy this morning and told him about Jason?”
    “Donna, I can’t explain it. I felt like I knew the man. I felt like … like we were old friends.” The thought of his face, the entire healthy sense of the man flashed through her. “More than friends.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Donna slapped the visor up and slam-dunked her mascara wand into the open Kenya bag resting on the floor by her feet. “Okay, you know how strange this sounds? You met him this morning, you feel like old friends, but you don’t know his name.”
    “But you liked Eric all at once!”
    “Yeah, well, we also exchanged names and other appropriate information like whether or not we were on the Most Wanted List.”
    “I’m not explaining it well. We agreed not to give our names to each other. We’re going to meet again next Sunday, and we wanted the freedom to be able to talk then as openly as we did this morning. You’d have to be there, I guess, to understand. The whole atmosphere of the place is so otherworldly—”
    “To say the least,” Donna interposed wryly.
    “It was as if we were in our own universe. We could talk about what really mattered. We could say anything.”
    “Good grief. You’re glowing.”
    “Really?” Kelly tilted the rearview mirror so she could look at herself. “Yeah, I am.” She was silent a moment as they sat waiting for a light to change. “If I didn’t think it sounded so absolutely impossibly insane, Donna, I’d think I’d fallen in love.”
    “Aren’t you in love with Jason?”
    “Not like this. I’ve never felt like this before.”

    Because the forty-five thousand citizens of Arlington, Massachusetts, are, in general, neither disgustingly