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to not
     break down herself.
    For two hours they spoke of every amusing thing they could think of that didn’t particularly matter and ate eggs and butter
     and cheese and pastry. Afterward, Meredith ordered decaf coffee, explaining her new theory that caffeine was the devil, and
     Mish teased her for being such a priss.
    After lunch, Mish wanted to stop by a pharmacy to pick up cold sore ointment (the clown had left her with that special tingling)
     and Meredith said she would come with. Wandering around drugstores was something they did very well together. It was just
     like high school, except that Meredith no longer worried about Mish stealing cosmetics.
    “Hey, remember the summer you stayed at my house and we put this in our hair?” Mish was standing in aisle three holding up
     a box of Flirt.
    “Totally.” Meredith smiled. “It was meant to be burgundy but it turned our hair pink.”
    “Mine was more fuchsia. It matched my fluorescent bikini.”
    “Clit pink. That was what my mother called it when she met me at the airport.”
    “Didn’t she think it was so cool she copied it or something?”
    “Yup.” Meredith took the box from Mish’s hand and placed it back on the shelf. As she did, she saw something flash in the
     corner of her eye. A big diamond ring—like the one in
Us
magazine—on the very small, slender hand of a very young girl. Meredith
     tried not to stare but it was hard—the girl was so pretty. She was indeterminately Asian, or possibly Middle Eastern—with
     the sort of fine boned, sloe-eyed darkness that politically incorrect casting directors described as “exotic.” In a wife-beater
     tank and grubby, frayed jeans, she was doing the rich-hippie thing. The look was one Meredith had always admired but had never
     been able to pull off.
    “Hello? Fashion moment,” said Mish, who always talked to strangers after a couple of glasses of wine. She winked at the girl
     and pointed approvingly at her outfit.
    “Uh, thanks,” said the girl, grabbing a tube of organic lemon--verbena toothpaste—not, Meredith sensed, because she wanted
     it but because she wanted to get away from the weirdly complimentary gawking women.
    Meredith wondered if they looked middle-aged to her. She was just about to say this to Mish when she noticed him. The handsome
     gynecologist. Farther down the aisle, choosing conditioners. As Mish wandered away, Meredith watched surreptitiously while
     the rich young hippie sidled up to him. Dr. Veil smiled and said something to her. She giggled, took the bottle of conditioner
     from his hand and exchanged it for another. Then confidently, almost cockily, she walked away. He waited a dignified amount
     of time before following her out of the aisle, an adoring expression on his face. He did not seem to notice Meredith at all.
    Meredith found Mish in the contraceptives aisle, looking at a box of condoms. “Who do you suppose the ribs are actually
for,
anyway?”
    “Listen, can we go? There’s someone here I can’t really run into.”
    Mish paused, but Meredith was already halfway out of the store.
    When they were outside and a full block away, Mish put her arm around her friend’s waist. “One-night stand?” she asked. “High
     school enemy? Shrink? The host of a party you got totally wasted at and ended up dancing topless on top of the freezer? Or
     wait—that wasn’t you. That was me.”
    Meredith laughed. “Worse,” she said. “That modelly looking Asian chick? The one with the diamond? Did you see that guy she
     was with? The tall, good-looking one about twice her age? That’s my gynecologist.”
    Mish wrinkled her nose. “I hate people,” she said. “Don’t you hate people?”

5
    Irma Moore feasted her eyes on the buffet of horror laid out before her. Terminal 4, Heathrow International, at seven a.m.
     was, she decided, a magnificent contemporary restaging of Dante’s lowest circle of hell, or perhaps, if she closed her eyes
     to freeze its last image