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psychic. Or maybe he’d just sensed my inborn fondness for bacon cheeseburgers.
    Oh fucking well.
    A tall, thinly bearded brunette guy came in moments later, heading directly for me.
    “I’m Jesse,” he said, sitting down in the vacated chair. “I’ll be finishing up for Willow.”
    “Okay.”
    No hand-holding this time. Jesse let his eyes go unfocused, thenmuttered a few adenoidal niceties about how my life was like a rose, and the earth was our mother, and blah-blah-tofu-flaxseed-blah that I basically tuned out, being still not-a-little freaked by the shrill bedside manner of Karnak Numero Uno, frankly. Other than that, it was stultifying.
    “Thanks a lot,” I said, when he’d finally droned to a close. “That was very, um, helpful.”
    Jesse nodded, smug. “Go in peace, sister.”
    “Jesus,” said Ellis, once we’d escaped the building. “What were you thinking about, the Spanish Inquisition?”
    “Pool boys, actually.”
    Ellis’s hand popped up for a high-five slap.
    I didn’t disappoint her.
    But I sure as hell should’ve kept my fingers crossed for a very long time afterward, because the universe was about to chuck a veritable barge-load of shit, sidelong, into the whirling blur of a rather enormous fan.
    The blades of which were angled directly toward still-oblivious me.

7

    M y front porch pillars were still twined with spiraling green Christmas garlands and strings of unlit-by-day white lights.
    “You know,” said Ellis, “it being March, you might want to think about taking down the holiday crap.”
    I shook my head. “Fuck that. I’d only have to put it all up again come Thanksgiving.”
    “You guys’re going to be here that long?”
    “Probably,” I said, kicking a small rock down the sidewalk. “It’s not like I exactly have a choice.”
    “Well, it looks like you’re in mourning for Martha Stewart.”
    “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” I kicked the little rock again, sending it skittering into the snowy grass of my lawn.
    A pair of fire engines caterwauled south along Twentieth, belching low plumes of diesel exhaust.
    Ellis shook her head. “I can’t believe Dean isn’t here for the girls’ birthday.”
    “
But Bunny, it’s Pittcon
,” I said, quoting my absent spouse, “
the premier annual sales event of the global scientific-instrument industry
.”
    “Sounds like a giant fucking drag.”
    “No doubt,” I said, “But they have it this time every year so he’s probably going to miss all our birthdays forever, barring employment catastrophe.”
    I peeked into the living room window before we mounted the front porch—no sign of children. “They’re not up yet. Want to sit out here for a while?”
    We settled back into the bouncy old metal chairs that had come with the house.
    “When should we open the girls’ presents?” asked Ellis.
    “After dinner, probably. Once we bring out the cake.”
    “When do you want to open
your
presents?”
    “I don’t officially turn thirty-two until Sunday—trying not to think about it.”
    “So Dean’s going to miss that, too?”
    I stretched out my legs, crossing them at the ankle. “Reply hazy. Ask again later.”
    “Shitheel,” she said. “He better come home with a deeply excellent present.”
    “T-shirt from the airport, probably. New Orleans if I’m lucky, Denver if I’m not.”
    “What’d he get you last year?”
    “Sushi delivery and a gold bangle from Tiffany. But I was just back from the hospital, having successfully whelped dual offspring.”
    Ellis nodded at that. “Raw fish and good jewelry… commendable.”
    “Except for the part about me having called in both orders myself with Dean’s Amex. Which started out as a subsidiary card to mine, by the way.”
    “And did you ask his permission first?”
    “Of course.”
    She shook her head, smirking. “Amateur.”
    “
Dude
. I am acquisitive, not floridly delusional.”
    A high, thin screech rattled the upstairs windows.
    “Hadley,”