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do just that by the president and publisher of my own company. And hadn’t I learned that being Miss Nicey-Nice had gotten me to where I was today? A big fat nowhere.
    The intercom on my telephone buzzed. “Jaaane,” came Morgan’s intolerable voice. “Your cousin Dana called while you were in Remke’s office. She said you have the number.”
    â€œThanks.” I rolled my eyes and stabbed the intercom button off. Great. Now I’d have to call back Dana before I went to lunch with Natasha. Talking to my cousin generally made me feel nauseated. Then again, maybe calling her back now wasn’t a bad idea. I couldn’t afford to eat anything at lunch, anyway.
    The intercom crackled again. “Jaaane—I forgot to tell you. She said to call her on her cell. She’s at the Plaza till noon. Something about a pre-stroll down the aisle.”
    The unexpected sting of tears hit the backs of my eyes. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! I ordered myself. Do not lose it. You have a big meeting ahead of you. So what if Dana’s sipping tea at the Plaza and walking around with her stupid cell phone as she floats down the aisle in her own stupid mini-ballroom? You’re having lunch with a semi-big celebrity! A celebrity you even know! You’re doing just as well as Dana. Better, actually. Dana didn’t even work, unless you counted occasionally advising her neighbors about color schemes. Actually, that sounded pretty good.
    I slumped over my desk, defeated.
    My eyes landed on the tiny photo of my parents and me in a heart-shaped frame that Aunt Ina had given me. My dad, handsome and smiling, was lifting me up in hisarms, and my mom was squeezing his biceps. According to Ina, who’d snapped the photo, I’d been three.
    I wondered how my father would feel if knew that Dana was the one walking down the aisle of the Plaza Hotel in two months. Would he be disappointed? Shake his head and tell my mother I’d failed him?
    Maybe I’d better explain. It had been Marvin Gregg who’d shown me the Plaza Hotel for the first time. “See that fancy hotel, Princess?” he’d said, pointing across the street as we strolled up Fifth Avenue. We were on our way to the Central Park Zoo for a Jane-and-Daddy-only-day. “That’s the Plaza. It costs a million dollars just to go inside. But that’s where you’re going to have your wedding. One day, I’m going to walk you down the aisle in the ballroom of the Plaza Hotel! Whaddaya think of that, Princess?”
    â€œDaddy, I’m only nine!” I’d complained, hands on hips. I remember staring up at the hotel and thinking it looked like a castle. That hadn’t been the mere musings of a child. The Plaza Hotel did look like a castle.
    â€œYeah, but you’re gonna be all grown up one day, Princess,” he’d said, squeezing my hand. “And you deserve a million-dollar wedding. I tell you what. You find the guy, and I’ll see what I can do. How’s that sound, Princess?”
    â€œDaddy, I wanna see the monkeys! Let’s go, already!” I recalled whining. And I remember him laughing. He’d twirled me down Fifth Avenue to the corner of 59th Street as though we were ballroom dancing.
    Marvin Gregg died the next day of a freak stroke. He was thirty-six years old.
    I’d never told anyone about that conversation. Not my mother, or Aunt Ina, or even any of my friends. It wasn’t the kind of thing you told anyone. It was the kind of thingyou just kept close to your heart. Sometimes it comforted you, and sometimes it made you cry.
    â€œJaaane!”
    Now what? I stabbed the intercom button. “Yeah?”
    â€œRemke said you should come up with title suggestions for the Nutley memoir and write back cover copy for the sales catalog before you leave for lunch. He wants both on his desk by noon.” I heard the you’ll-never-get-it-done-in-time triumph in