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he’d have to call the plumber himself tomorrow, when he was supposed to be working, and he was still irritated—hell, he was irritated now, almost eight months later—when he saw Amber in the kitchen helping herself to the last of the peach pie in the fridge—the piece he’d been saving for himself—and he’d made some stupid comment about how if she wasn’t careful, she’d end up like Kerri Franklin’s daughter—talk about the pot calling the kettle black—and next thing he knew, the pie was in the garbage and Amber was dropping pounds as if they were flies, and now she was maybe 125 pounds—six feet tall and 125 pounds!—and it was all his fault. He was a lousy parent. A terrible husband and a worse father. So how could he go home when every time he walked through the front door of their messy bungalow, he was greeted by his own failings and swiftly wrapped in the open arms of despair?
    He’d tried talking to Pauline about their daughter, but she’d brushed aside his concerns.
“Pas de problème,”
she’dsniffed in her annoying habit of throwing French phrases into their conversations. It was the style to be superskinny these days. She rhymed off a bunch of television actresses he’d never heard of, then pointed to the covers of half a dozen fashion magazines that lay across the bed, like squares on a quilt. All boasted pictures of shapeless young women, their monstrous-sized heads overwhelming their sticklike bodies. Whatever happened to tits and ass? he’d wondered.
    Of course, if tits and ass was what you were looking for, there was always Kerri Franklin.
    John shook his head, trying not to picture the voluptuous woman writhing beneath him, trying not to hear his name escaping those obscenely lush lips. Their affair, wedged in between husbands number two and three, had lasted only a few months, although it had enjoyed a brief resurgence after the departure of husband number three. That was after the surgery on her eyes but before the latest round of implants, and definitely before Ian Crosbie had arrived on the scene. John wondered if there’d be another heated reunion once the good doctor came to his senses and went back to his wife. He wondered what it felt like to have silicone breasts and collagen-enhanced lips. He wondered why women did such terrible things to themselves, why they were so willing, even eager, to turn themselves into living cartoons.
    Skeletons and cartoons, John was thinking as the phone rang. He reached across his desk and picked up the receiver. “Weber,” he announced instead of hello.
    “Good,” his wife said. “You’re still there.”
    John smiled. Finally, he was thinking. Something they could agree on. “What’s up?”
    “I was wondering what you felt like for dinner.”
    John felt instantly guilty—for thinking ill of his wife, for his affair with Kerri Franklin, for dredging up excuses not to go home. “I don’t know. Maybe—”
    “I thought you could pick up something from McDonald’s. They’ve been showing these commercials for McChicken sandwiches all afternoon, and it’s really put me in the mood.”
    John rubbed at the bridge of his nose, scratched at his receding hairline, and let out a deep breath. “I’m not sure what time I’ll be getting home,” he began, grateful when he saw a late-model, white Cadillac pull into the parking lot, and Howard and Judy Martin emerge, a look of grim determination on their faces. Clearly something was wrong. Just as clearly, he would have to stay and find out what it was. “Looks like I might be tied up here for a while—”
    The line went dead in his hands.
    “Thank you for being so understanding,” John continued, waving the Martins inside his office. “Howard … Judy,” he said, rising to his feet and motioning toward the two brown, high-back chairs in front of his desk. “Is there a problem?” It was a stupid question, he realized, sitting back down, and noting the stiffness of Howard’s