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but figured the effort would be lost since Ava wasn’t around to see it. So she just pictured it in vivid Technicolor as she pushed away from the wall and punched the call button for the elevator again. “Yeah, right. Well, it’s been nice talking to you, Av, but I’ve got a pretty busy schedu—”
    “Oh, no you don’t. Honestly, Rinne, did I tell you I was finished with this conversation? Did your mother teach you no manners whatsoever?”
    Corinne pictured her staunchly Italian Catholic mother—who had been known to slap the backs of her children’s heads for slouching at the dinner table—and clenched her jaw. “I’m not in the mood to listen to you talk about my mother, Ava, so watch it.”
    “My, my, it sounds like someone neglected to eat her Wheaties this morning,” Ava purred. “What’s the matter, darling? Come on, you can tell me all about it.”
    “Wow, that is such an unappealing offer. Thanks.” Frankly, Corinne wasn’t certain she had the strength to think about the problem at hand at the moment, let alone hash it all out for an audience. The restorative powers of Coca-Cola were legendary, but even it could only do so much. Since the damned elevator seemed determined never to arrive, she’d need everything she had to climb back up to the office. She turned toward the stairwell.
    “Your sarcasm is noted and frowned upon.”
    “Look, Ava, I don’t know what happened today to stir this all up for you again, but now is not a good time. You can’t wish things back to the way they were, and neither can I. All you can do is deal. Regina and Missy are happy with their impossible men. We can either be happy for them, or we can sit around and moan about how the world isn’t what we thought it was. I barely have time to waste on the first one, let alone the second.”
    “Oh, I know,” Ava pouted. She could actually do that—pout with her voice as well as her face. “Different strokes, love makes the world go round, to each her own, Ava is a bitch, yadda yadda yadda.”
    “Correction—Ava is the bitch.”
    “Darling, I think I’m flattered.”
    “Don’t be, because I’m totally about to hang up on you.” Corinne went ahead and tucked her soda against her side so she’d have a hand free to make that obscene gesture after all. “But because you are, inexplicably, my friend, I am first going to give you twenty seconds to tell me why the hell you called me today to bitch about how Reggie and Missy abandoned your fantasy fix plan. Like I said, that boat’s already sunk.”
    “You said it had already sailed.”
    “Ten seconds, Ava.”
    “Well, of course I didn’t call about the fixes. I’m so over that.”
    Corinne turned to jog up her second flight and frowned. “Stop. Rewind. Slo-mo playback. Say huh? If you didn’t call about the fixes, why were you accusing me of deserting you?”
    “Are you not the woman who bailed on a modeling gig booked by her struggling young agent friend, forcing the agent to scrape up an appropriate substitute just fifteen minutes before the shoot started?”
    Corinne nearly tripped over a riser. “Ava, that was seven years ago!”
    “There’s no statute of limitations on betrayal, now, is there?”
    “Okay, hanging up now.”
    “Wait. Not so fast. I called for a reason.”
    “Oh, you mean a reason other than to bitch and moan at me?”
    “Clearly,” Ava said, her tone changing from melodramatic to business-like in a heartbeat. “I wanted to ask you about something.”
    “No, Ava, I will not ask the editor to do a full-color spread on the Markham Agency. Bye.”
    “Will you stop jumping to conclusions? This is another matter entirely. A matter I thought my friend, the talented investigative reporter, could help me with.”
    Corinne lowered the now half-empty soda can and made a face. “No, I won’t rewrite all your press releases this month, either.”
    “Then will you tell me if there’s some sort of weird serial killer running around