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into the wall, jumping up and blinking like the wall attacked him.
    He actually growls at it.
    Watch out, wall!
    I laugh and reach into the microwave, the soothing warmth and waft of lavender giving me some gentle clarity I really need.
    Mom’s grateful response as I set the rice sock on her shoulders fills me with a kind of sadness I’ve come to know all too well. It’s the sense of a life lived for everyone else. Everything I do involves fixing problems for other people—for my boss, for our clients, for the mystery shoppers I manage, for my friends, for my mom, for the world. 
    I can’t let it go.
    Spritzy is on the carpet in the living room as I take a step to go upstairs and put the day behind me. He looks at me, eyes beseeching, and then he plants his little ass on the carpet and uses his front paws to drag himself across the carpet.
    Oh, no .
    My phone buzzes just then as my horrified eyes take in the dog’s obvious, uh, clues.
    It’s a text from a private number. One I haven’t seen before.
    And all it says is:
    Meet me tomorrow in my office at eleven. Your discretion is required. Lipstick is optional. AJM.  
    AJM?
    I frown at the screen while Spritzy violates the carpet. I reach the top of the stairs and it hits me.
    Andrew. Andrew James McCormick. AJM. 
    Andrew is finally texting me. Nearly two years of wondering and waiting, of late nights talking with Amy and Shannon, of dissecting and analyzing and giving up.
    I had to slap him to get him to contact me?
    Men.

Chapter Five
    The next morning, I park my Turdmobile in the employee parking lot and click my remote to lock it. Then I unlock it. I only lock it out of habit, from when I used to own my own car. 
    This one? I hope someone steals it.
    My boss, Greg, got an account where we drive advertisement-covered cars all over town. I inherited Shannon’s car when she was offered the ideal job at Anterdec by Mr. Flawless Billionaire and she decided to reach for perfection and we crabs in the pot that is called Consolidated Evalu-Shop couldn’t grab her ankles fast enough to pull her back in.
    Er, I mean...I’m happy for her.
    And I got her car.
    It’s really an ad for a coffee shop. The brown, roasted coffee bean on top wasn’t supposed to look like a giant turd, but it does.
    The coffee shop’s slogan, Coffee Gets Everything Moving , doesn’t help.
    And yet, it’s all a postmodern marketing campaign. None of the companies we advertise is real. We drive around and test whether people will go to the websites advertised on the cars. So far, response has been great. We get the cars for one more year. I sold my junker and have diligently saved a car payment every month so I’ll have enough to buy something new if this account goes down the toilet.
    To the dogs.
    You know—belly up.
    Speaking of bellies up, I look over as I walk into the building and see my coworker Josh’s car, with Marie’s face plastered across the side of it, advertising erectile dysfunction medication. Turns out he’s picked up more men with this quirky ad wrap than he ever did driving his nicer car, so he’s sticking with what he calls the PickUpMobile. 
    Get it?
    I trudge up the concrete steps. Our office building looks like Leningrad and the Boston Government Service Center building got married and had a baby.
    Before I even sling my overloaded purse onto my desktop Josh is standing in my doorway like a sweaty, half-bald vampire living off the blood of the damned.
    The DoggieDate Damned.
    “How was your date?” he asks, handing me a latte. Ah. There we go. He knows me so well. Almost too well. There are long dry spells in my romantic life where I wish he and I weren’t attracted to the same sex. He’d be the perfect boyfriend. He cooks nice meals, he cleans, he gives a good foot rub and he’s remarkably tolerant of character disordered people.
    Don’t discount that last trait. The older I get the more I realize how crucial it is.
    “Anal glands,” I say, fishing