I just looked at him.

“Anyway,” he went on, “I said it was fine, because when you showed up we’d just give you a ride.”

“We,” I repeated.

“Me and the guys.”

I considered this. And I’d been so close to being scot-free, home by now care of Jess. Great. “They’re gone too,” I said finally.

He looked up, his fork midway to his mouth. “They what?”

“They left,” I repeated slowly. “They beeped the horn first.”

“Oh, man, I thought I heard the horn,” he said, shaking his head. “Typical.”

I looked around the mostly empty room, as if a solution to this and all my other problems might be lurking behind, say, a potted plant. No luck. So I did what seemed, by now, inevitable. I walked over to the table where he was sitting, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

“Ah,” he said, with a smile. “Finally, she comes around.”

“Don’t get too excited,” I said, dropping my bag onto the table. I felt tired in every part of my body, as if I’d been stretched thin. “I’m just getting the energy up to call a cab.”

“You should try some of this cake first.” He pushed the plate at me. “Here.”

“I don’t want any cake.”

“It’s really good. It doesn’t taste chalky at all.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t,” I said, “but I’m fine.”

“You probably didn’t even get any, right?” He wiggled the fork at me. “Just try it.”

“No,” I said flatly.

“Come on.”

“No.”

“Mmmm.” He poked at it with the fork, gently. “So tasty.”

“You,” I said finally, “are really pissing me off.”

He shrugged, as if he’d heard this before, then pulled the plate back toward himself, dipping the fork in for another bite. The cleaning crew was chattering away in the front of the room, stacking chairs. One woman with her hair in a long braid picked up my mother’s bouquet, cradling it in her arms.

“Da-da-da-dum,” she said, and laughed when one of her coworkers yelled at her to stop dreaming and get back to work.

Dexter put down the fork, the tasty, non-chalklike cake gone, and pushed the plate away. “So,” he said, looking at me, “this your mom’s first remarriage?”

“Fourth,” I said. “She’s made a career of it.”

“Got you beat,” he told me. “My mom’s on her fifth.”

I had to admit, I was impressed. So far I’d never met anyone with more ex-steps than me. “Really.”

He nodded. “But you know,” he said sarcastically, “I really think this one’s going to last.”

“Hope springs eternal.”

He sighed. “Especially in my mom’s house.”

“Dexter, honey,” someone called out from behind me, “did you get enough to eat?”

He sat up, then raised his voice and said, “Yes, ma’am, I sure did. Thank you.”

“There’s a bit more of this chicken dish left.”

“No, Linda. I’m full. Really.”

“Okay then.”

I looked at him. “Do you know everybody? ”

He shrugged. “Not everybody,” he said. “I just bond easily. It’s part of the whole repeating-stepfather thing. It makes you more mellow.”

“Yeah, right,” I said.

“Because you have to just go with the flow. Your life is not your own, with people coming in and out all the time. You get mellow because you have to. I mean, you know exactly what I’m saying, I bet.”

“Oh yes,” I said flatly, “I am just so easygoing. That is precisely the word that describes me.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No,” I told him. “It isn’t.” And then I stood up and got my bag, feeling my feet ache as they settled into my shoes. “I have to go home now.”

He got to his feet, taking his jacket off the back of the chair. “Share a cab?”

“I don’t think so.”

“All right,” he said, shrugging. “Suit yourself.”

I walked to the door, thinking he’d be behind me, but when I glanced back he was across the room, going out the other way. I had to admit I was surprised, after such intense pursuit, that he had given up already. The drummer had been right, I supposed. The conquest-getting me alone-was all that mattered, and once he saw me up close I wasn’t so special after all. But I, of course, knew that already.

There was a cab parked out front, the driver dozing. I climbed into the backseat, sliding off my shoes. It was, by the green numbers on the dashboard, exactly 2 A.M. At the Thunderbird Hotel across town, my mother was most likely fast asleep, dreaming of the next week she’d spend in St. Bart’s. She’d come home to finish her novel, to move her new husband into the house, to take another stab at being a Mrs. Somebody, sure that this time, indeed, it would be different.

As the cab turned onto the main road, I saw a glint of something through the park, over to my right. It was Dexter, on foot, turning into a neighborhood, and in his white shirt he stood out, almost as if he were glowing. He was walking down the middle of the street, the houses dark on either side of him, quiet in sleep. And watching him head home, for a second it was like he was the only one awake or even alive in all the world right then, except for me.