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this dog and I knew. But my gut is not honed for moments like this, Kathy. There is nothing to suggest that my gut should be trusted.”

    “That’s just not true. You’ve made plenty of gut decisions in your life, and lots of them have been right.”

    “No, they haven’t. Because if they had, they wouldn’t have led me here. I’m twenty-nine, and I’m pretty much a failure. Somehow I’ve managed to avoid that realization throughout my twenties, but there’s no avoiding it now. I am going to be thirty years old, and I will have nothing. I will be nothing.” I started crying at the incontrovertible truth of it.

    “Are you having a blood sugar crisis?” Kathy suddenly demanded.

    “What?” I asked, disoriented by the question.

    “When did you last eat?”

    I glanced at the clock and dabbed at my eyes. “Seven hours ago.”

    “Nora, you know you can’t go that long without eating. Are you on a cell phone?”

    “No.”

    “A cordless phone?”

    “Yes,” I sniffled.

    “Bring me with you, and walk into the kitchen, and drink some juice, if you have it,” she instructed.

    “My problem is not my blood sugar, Kathy. It’s my life.” I couldn’t believe that Kathy, of all people, was reducing this to a biological event. My life was a disaster. I was a disaster.

    “Nora, come on. You know how this goes. When your blood sugar drops, you get irrational, but you don’t see it.”

    “Maybe sometimes,” I allowed, “but that’s not what’s going on now.” But she had planted a small seed of doubt, so I figured I might as well follow her directions. Juice never hurt anyone. And I did remember making the discovery that a decent percentage of my relationship problems could be solved by carrying a Fruit Roll-Up in my purse. “I’m drinking the juice, but it’s going to take a few minutes,” I warned. “That’s
if
you’re right.”

    “Well, in the meantime, let’s talk about me.”

    “I don’t want to hear anything good. I love you, but if you tell me your book’s been optioned for a telemovie, it’s war.”

    “No, let’s talk about my love life. Let’s talk about my”—she said the next two words with absolute revulsion—”Internet dating. You met Dan in real time, so you don’t know about this awful process. I’ll fill you in.”

    “I had a profile up on a dating Web site. I just happened to meet Dan a few weeks later.”

    “So you never had to do the deed. Let me just ask you. I’m not Quasimodo, am I?”

    I laughed. “You’re great-looking. You know that.”

    “I’ve always thought of myself as reasonably attractive. And I’m generally okay with that. I’ve always thought, if I was given a choice to be reasonably attractive or drop-dead gorgeous, I’d go with reasonably attractive. But this Web site is messing with my head. I’ve been on it for a month now, and five guys have written me. Two were clearly troglodytes just writing to anyone. E-mails like, ‘U R from Boston? Me too.’ They actually used the letters:
U R
. And two were really, really old. Like fifteen, twenty years older than I said I wanted in my profile. Disrespecting my wishes from the get-go is always a turn-on. The last one was this really sweet, really homely guy and I wrote back to him to say I’d just started dating someone and that maybe I’d get back to him in the future if it didn’t work out.”

    “Which was a lie.”

    “Of course. But I didn’t want him thinking people don’t write back to him because he’s homely. I felt for him.”

    “Maybe he’s just not photogenic,” I suggested. I sat down on the couch and put my feet up on the coffee table. I realized how lucky I was to have my breakdown on a day when Fara was out of the apartment.

    “He had ten pictures up there. And he was a different brand of homely in every one. One was ‘grizzly man homely,’ another was ‘ski bum homely.’ There was no denying it.”

    “Have you been on the Web site