“Where’s that?”

“Across town, by the university. It’s a pretty big place.” I could see him in my peripheral vision; he was gnawing on the cuff of his shirt, looking irritated.

“Hate Spinnerbait,” he grumbled. “Bunch of poser rock assholes. Totally manufactured sound, and their fans are a bunch of pretty-boy, frat-a-tat blondies with good hair driving Daddy’s car with no taste whatsoever. ”

“Ouch,” I said, unable to help but notice this description, while harsh, did somewhat describe Trey, Paul’s best friend, as well as Paul himself, if you didn’t know him better. Which, of course, I did.

“Well, this is big news,” Lucas said as I turned onto their street. “But not as big as what else is going on.”

“What’s that?” I said, immediately flashing back to the van speeding out of Mayor’s Village earlier.

He glanced over at me, and I could tell by his face he was weighing whether it was even my business. “High-level band stuff,” he said cryptically. “We’re on the brink. Basically.”

“Really,” I said. “The brink of what?”

He shrugged as I slowed down, the yellow house coming up in sight. I could see Ted and Scary Mary in the front yard, sitting in lawn chairs: she had her feet in his lap, and they were sharing a box of Twinkies. “Rubber Records wants to meet with us. We’re going up to D.C. next week, to you know, talk to them.”

“Wow,” I said, navigating my way into the driveway, where the van was parked at an angle. Ted looked over at us, mildly interested, and Mary waved as Lucas popped open his door and got out. “That’s great.”

“Get this,” he yelled at Ted. “Spinnerbait’s playing tonight.”

“Hate Spinnerbait!” Mary said.

“Where at?” Ted asked as Lucas shut my door and walked around the front of the car.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said, knocking his hand on my half-open window. “I appreciate it.”

“Man, what is that all about?” Ted yelled. “They’re invading our territory!”

“It’s a turf war!” Lucas said back, and they both laughed.

He started to walk away, but I beeped the horn, and he turned around. “Hey, Lucas.”

“Yeah?” He took a couple of steps back toward me.

“Good luck with everything,” I said, then felt somewhat awkward, seeing that I hardly knew him. Still, for some reason I needed to say something. “I mean, good luck to you guys.”

“Yeah,” he said, shrugging. “We’ll see how it goes.”

As I pulled out, he was dragging up a milk crate to join Mary and Ted’s outdoor picnic as Ted tossed him a Twinkie. I glanced back one last time at the house, where I could see Monkey sitting in the doorway, panting. I wondered where Dexter was, then reminded myself that it wasn’t my concern any longer. But if he’d been home, he probably would have come out and said hello to me. Just because we were friends.

I started down the street, easing to a slow stop at the stop sign. In my rearview, I could see Ted, Mary, and Lucas still sitting there, talking, but now Dexter was with them, crouching down next to the makeshift table, unwrapping a Twinkie while Monkey circled them, tail wagging. They were all talking, and for a split second I felt a pang, as if I was missing out on something. Weird. Then, the car behind me beeped, impatient, and I jerked myself back to reality, shaking off this fog and moving forward again.

When I got home, the house was quiet. My mother was out of town, at a writers’ conference she attended every August, where she taught workshops to aspiring romance novelists, soaking up buckets of admiration for three days and two nights in the Florida Keys. As for Chris, he was basically living and sleeping at Jennifer Anne’s, where the bread wasn’t all butts and he could eat his breakfast staring at prints of cheerful flower gardens instead of fifteen-pound neoclassic breasts. Normally I liked having the house to myself, but things were still awkward with me and Don, so I’d taken Lissa up on her offer of sleeping at her house for the weekend, informing Don of my decision with a formal note I wedged under the growing pyramid of empty Ensure cans on the kitchen table.

Now I went into my mother’s office, pushing the curtain aside. On the shelf next to her desk, there was a stack of papers: the new novel, or what there was of it so far. I pulled it into my lap and tucked my legs up underneath me, flipping the pages. When I’d last left Melanie, she’d been facing a cold marital bed with a distant husband, realizing her marriage had been a mistake. That had been about page 200, and by 250, she had left Paris and was back in New York, working in fashion design for a nasty woman with villain written all over her. Apparently, coincidence of coincidences, Brock Dobbin was also back in New York, having been injured during some kind of third world riot while working in his prizewinning career as a photojournalist. At the fall shows, they’d caught each other’s eye from across the runaway, and a romance was reborn.

I skipped to page 300, where things had obviously gone bad: Melanie was in a mental hospital, doped up on painkillers, while her former boss took credit for her entire fall line. Her estranged husband, Luc, was also back in the picture, involved in some kind of elaborate financial scheme. Brock Dobbin seemed to have disappeared entirely, but I found him on page 374, in a Mexican prison, where he was facing dubious charges of trafficking drugs and falling for the charms of a local beggar girl named Carmelita. This, I figured, had to be where my mother was losing her train of thought, but by 400 she seemed to have her steam back, and everyone was in Milan preparing for the fall shows. Luc was trying to reconcile with Melanie, but his intentions weren’t good, while Brock was back on the job, chasing a story about the dirty underside of fashion with his trusty Nikon and a sense of justice that no injury, not even a rock to the head in Guatemala, could quell.