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  But there could be chicken marsala.

  Min shoved her salad to one side, logged onto the net, and did a search for “chicken marsala” because doing a search for “Cal Morrisey” would not have been helpful to her damn plan.

  “Very popular dish,” she said when she got 48,300 matches. Even allowing for the weird randomness that more than 48,000 of them would demonstrate if she ever got that far, that was still a lot of recipes. There was one with artichokes, that was insane. One had lemon juice, which couldn’t be right, another peppers, another onions. It was amazing how many ways people had found to garbage up a plain recipe. She printed off two that sounded right and went to log off the net, but instead, on a random impulse, Googled for “dyslexia” instead. An hour later, she logged off with a new respect for what Calvin Morrisey had accomplished.

  When she got off work, she stopped by the grocery. There was something about having a plan for dinner, a recipe in hand, that made her feel much less hostile about food. Of course, she was going to have to adapt the recipe. It called for the chicken to be breaded in flour, which was just extra calories, and carb calories no less. Skip the breading. Salt and pepper she already had, and parsley had no calories, so she picked up a jar of that. Skinless, boneless chicken breasts she was familiar with, no problem there, but butter and olive oil? “It is to laugh,” she said and got spray olive oil in a can. Mushrooms were mostly water, so she could have those, and then there was the marsala. She found it in the cooking wine section. Resolutely passing by the bread section, she checked out feeling triumphant, went home and changed into her sweats, cranked up the CD player, and sang her head off to her Elvis 30 album as she cooked.

  An hour later, Elvis was starting all over again and she was staring at the mess in her only frying pan trying to figure out what had gone wrong. She’d browned the chicken in the non-stick skillet and then followed all the other directions but it looked funny and tasted like hell. She tapped her spatula on the edge of the stove for a few moments and thought, Okay, I’m not a cook. I still deserve great food, and dropped the spatula to pick up the phone.

  “Emilio?” she said when he answered. “Do you deliver?”

  The Parker seminar was turning into the worst mess Morrisey, Packard, Capa had ever seen, mostly because the idiot who was in charge of training kept changing the seminar information. “I’m faxing some information over,” she’d say when she called. “Just slot it in somewhere.”

  “That bitch must die,” Tony said when she called at ten till five on Tuesday. “I’ve got a date with Liza tonight.”

  “I’ll stay for the fax,” Roger said. “Bonnie will understand.”

  “You go, I’ll stay,” Cal said. “I’m dateless and too tired to move anyway.”

  Tony and Roger left, both heading for warm women, and Cal read the fax and tightened the seminar packet one more time, trying to feel grateful that there wasn’t any place he had to be, no woman demanding his time and attention. At seven, he turned off the computer with relief and realized he was starving.

  Emilio’s seemed like an excellent idea.

  “Don’t tell me,” Emilio said when Cal came through the swinging doors into the kitchen. “Chicken marsala.”

  “I’ve had enough chicken marsala for a while,” Cal said as the phone rang. Emilio turned to get it and Cal added, “Something simple. Tomato and basil on spaghetti—” No. Forty percent of all pasta sold was spaghetti. No imagination. “Make that fettuccine—”

  He stopped when Emilio held up his hand and said, “Emilio’s,” into the phone. Emilio listened and then looked back over his shoulder at Cal and said, “We usually don’t, but for such a special customer, we’ll make an exception. Chicken marsala, right? No, no, no trouble at all. You can overtip the delivery boy.”

  He hung up and smiled at Cal. “That was Min. She wants chicken marsala. You can deliver it to her.”

  “What?” Cal said, dumbfounded.

  “You know the way. It’s probably on your way home.”

  “It’s not on my way home, it’s not on anybody’s way home except God’s, the damn place is vertical. What gave you the idea I’d do this?”

  Emilio shrugged. “I don’t know. She called, you were here, you two are great together, it seemed like a good idea. Did you have a fight?”

  “No, we didn’t have a fight,” Cal said. “We’re not seeing each other because I’m all wrong for her and she’s waiting for Elvis. Call her back and tell her your delivery boy died.”

  “Then she won’t have anything for dinner,” Emilio said. “And you know Min. She’s one of those women who eats.”

  Cal thought about the look on Min’s face when she ate chicken marsala. It was almost as good as the look on her face when she ate doughnuts. Which wasn’t anywhere near as good as the look on her face when he’d kissed her, that had been—

  Emilio shrugged. “Fine. Brian can take it to her.”

  “No,” Cal said. “I’ll take it to her. Hurry up, will you? I’m hungry.”

  Chapter Six

  Forty-five minutes later, Cal was climbing the steps to Min’s place when something small and orange streaked past him and almost knocked him down the hill. He finished the climb cautiously, but when he looked around at the top, nothing was there. He rang the doorbell, and Bonnie came to let him in.

  “Hi,” he said. “Min ordered takeout.” He held up the bag, feeling stupid, his least favorite feeling in the world.

  “And you’re delivering?” Bonnie said as she stepped back.

  “Well, you can never have enough extra cash,” Cal said and hit the stairs, knowing she was watching him. When he got to the top, he heard Elvis Presley singing “Heartbreak Hotel” through Min’s door and sighed.

  Min looked surprised when she opened the door at his knock, and he felt pretty stunned himself: as far as he could see, all she was wearing was a very long, very old blue sweatshirt and lumpy sweatsocks. Her hair was down in frizzy waves, and she was wearing no makeup, so the only color on her face was the fading yellow bruise from where he’d clocked her.

  “What the hell?” she said. “How did you get in the front door?”

  “This is how you open the door to delivery guys?” Cal said, staring at the good strong legs he’d scoped out in the bar on Friday.

  “No, this is how I open the door to Bonnie,” Min said. “Stop ogling. I have shorts on under this.” She pulled up the edge of her shirt and he saw baggy plaid boxers that were only marginally less ugly than her shirt and socks. “Why did you get in the front door?”

  Then something orange streaked past both their legs and into the apartment.

  “What is that?” Min said, and Cal came in, leaving the door open behind him.

  “I don’t know.” Cal put Emilio’s bag down on an old cast iron sewing machine table beside a couch that looked like a moth-eaten, overstuffed pumpkin. “It ran past me on the steps—”

  “Oh, Lord,” Min said and Cal turned to look where she was looking.

  The mangiest-looking animal he’d ever seen was glaring at them from the end of the couch, its left eye closed and sinister. It was mottled all over in browns and oranges so that, in general, it matched the couch.

  “What is that?” Min said.

  “I think it’s a cat,” Cal said.

  “What kind?” Min said, an awful fascination in her voice.

  “Not a good kind,” Cal said. “Although you did say you wanted one.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Min said.

  “When I brought you home last week,” Cal said. “You said you were going to get a cat.”

  “That was a joke,” Min said, keeping an eye on the cat. “That’s what every woman in her thirties who’s been screwed over by men says. ‘I’m going to give up the bastards and get a cat.’ It’s a cliché.”

  “You know,” Cal said, watching the cat, too, “if you’re going to talk in code, you have to warn me.”

  The cat didn’t seem to be moving, so Cal look