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her life with so many obligations and commitments that she’ll wake up one morning in Chappaqua with one child in a bassinet and a second on the way. It is love approached with the outlook of a biochemist or an economics professor, of a man who approaches her ambivalence as a problem to be solved. How long will she be able to resist? It isn’t only about the money, of course, about his multimillion dollar inheritance and her lapsed health insurance. If that were the case, it would all be too easy. But the fact of the matter is that she loves Colby Parker, maybe she’s even in love with Colby Parker, and the prospect of Wednesdays without French toast and marriage proposals and prickly pear cacti would shatter her heart. If only there were no breaking point. If only their arrangement—or rather, their multiple arrangements, for Colby knows that she gets her toes wet now and then, but he knows absolutely nothing about Jack—could continue indefinitely.
    â€œYou shouldn’t have spent the money ahead of time like that,” she says. “It makes me uncomfortable.”
    â€œIt wasn’t that much money,” he answers, crestfallen. “Besides, what else am I supposed to do with it? You can’t take it with you, right?”
    â€œThere are other things to do with it,” she snaps. “Think about it.”
    â€œJesus,” says Colby. “I was trying to be nice. I’m sure any other woman in the world would be flattered—overjoyed—to take a trip to Tuscany with me. In fact, if you don’t want to go, if you’re so dead-set against it, I’ll send that couple over there. They look like they could use a vacation.”
    Colby waves the tickets in the air, signaling for the waiter. Starshine reaches for his arm, tugs at his sleeve from across the tabletop. Her water glass totters on the edge of the Formica and thenshatters in the aisle. The couple along the far wall glance toward them and quickly returns to their own purgatory. “Goddamnit,” cries Colby, stooping to dry the corner of his penny loafer with a napkin, the thought of sending their fellow diners to Europe now far from his thoughts.
    They order, eat. Colby carries the conversation, avoiding all references to Italy and marriage, trying to earn back his lost ground. Starshine picks at the condiments around her whitefish salad, shreds the lettuce into infinitesimal strands. She can picture Colby at this father’s office later that afternoon, making the most of his sinecure, memorizing Walt Whitman’s “Brooklyn Bridge” to impress her. She can also picture him laid out in a crypt at Woodlawn, surrounded by gold bars and photographs of Starshine Hart, like some modern-day Egyptian pharaoh determined to take it all with him. This last bit strikes her as uproariously entertaining. She is rippling with laughter by the time their dishes are cleared, and Colby, thinking that hindsight has transformed their spat into a comic memory, leaves an exorbitant tip. They both exit the Unicorn in good cheer.
    â€œI’ll call you during the afternoon,” says Colby.
    â€œI’m going out to Staten Island to visit Aunt Agatha. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
    â€œAnd we’re on for Friday night?”
    â€œLast time I checked.”
    â€œThen Friday night it is,” he says. “Send my best to your aunt.”
    Colby is a favorite of Aunt Agatha’s, although the pair have only met once. The old woman frequently reminds her niece that there is no crime in loving a wealthy man—a man who can take care of you in your old age, with private attendants, so you don’t get railroaded off to a nursing home. And Colby, of course, believes that Agatha’s opinion might sway Starshine’s, as though marriage were a matter of familial consensus—which, of course, it is not.
    â€œNo problem,” answers Starshine. On the tip of her tongue are the words, Why