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So because it’s not quantifiable but is assumed to be extraordinary, she’s valued. If you found out she was your next-door neighbor, you wouldn’t be interested anymore.”
    “You mean you wouldn’t. Because if It Girl was my neighbor, I’d only have about a zillion questions. Savage and It Girl: a killer combo!”
    “That’s the other thing.”
    “Yeah?” The waitress had returned with more plates brimming with noodles and dumplings, which she was wolfing down in a way that both alarmed and intrigued him. The weirdest things this woman does that get me hot. Swear to God!
    “You might not yet realize this, since you haven’t spent a lot of time here in the last two decades, but this town is strange. The company you work for is strange. This entire area is very, very odd.”
    “Yeah, but in a good way, right? Ha!” His chopsticks had blocked hers just in time. “You can have the last vegetable pot sticker. I get the last chicken one.” He whacked her chopstick again, eliciting a giggle. “Begone!”
    “Fine, take it.” She leaned back, smiling, but the smile disappeared when she again looked over his shoulder. “I don’t have a problem with the notes, I don’t think. But there are more direct ways to get your message across.”
    “Okay. I’m just gonna pretend that the thing you just said had something—anything—to do with the other things you said. Because otherwise you’ll know you’ve lost me.”
    She leaned forward. He was a good boy and did not scope her cleavage, which he absolutely could have, since she was wearing a forest green tank top under a black linen jacket. Linen pants, too, and little green shoes; his ex from college had been into pretty shoes, so now he noticed women’s shoes, and knew Manolos were so 2005. He didn’t necessarily want to notice them, or know Manolos were so 2005, but it was just how things were now. Breakups change people.
    “Linus, listen. We work in a town called Savage, which once upon a time had the slightly less awful name of Hamilton until a rich guy named Marion Savage bought a horse called Dan Patch and, when that horse won a few races, they changed the name of the city.”
    “Wait.” He paused, slurped the forkful of peanut noodles, swallowed. “So Savage is named after a horse?”
    “If only. Savage is named after the guy who bought the horse.”
    “Marion was a guy?” †
    “Like that makes any of this better? Oh, and at least a third of us graduated from Cretin High School—yes, that’s Cretin High School , and we work for a company that makes big metal animals that people can shoot at, and our mutual boss hardly ever comes in because she’s determined to turn broomball into an Olympic sport. Let’s see, did I miss anything?”
    “I don’t see why you’re down on the horse. He was a terrific horse. Audrey the Receptionist told me Dan Patch broke world records for speed.”
    “As a harness horse,” she replied, scorn heavy on harness . “My point is, get out. Get out while you still can, I pray you.”
    “This explains Dan Patch Drive.”
    “Yes.”
    “And Dan Patch Lane.”
    “Yes. Don’t forget Dan Patch Day. It’s horses or Cretins around here.”
    “And superheroes.”
    “Myth,” she said. She wiped her mouth, stood, grabbed her purse, and said, “I have to go the bathroom. It was lovely talking to you.”
    He figured she wasn’t coming back from the bathroom and . . . nope. She was not. When he asked the waitress for the check, she replied that his date had paid the entire bill and left. (“She was in a hurry to get somewhere, huh?”)
    Date? Is that what that was?
    He hadn’t walked five feet into the parking lot when he saw the small crowd gathered around a thirtyish, tearful redhead cradling a squalling (also redhead) infant. “I locked my keys in—stupid, stupid! And shut the door, and then Renee was locked in! And I didn’t know what to do and I forgot my phone and then that lady fixed it! There, baby,