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  “Nope,” Tony said as Bonnie came back from the bathroom. “I don’t date the insane. Well, not until you.”

  “Do you date the insane?” Bonnie said to Roger with interest as she sat down.

  “No, no, Cal, not me,” Roger said, almost falling off his chair. “I hardly ever date.”

  “It’s all right, baby.” Bonnie patted his knee. “You’re allowed to date.”

  “I don’t want to date,” Roger said and Tony rolled his eyes.

  “So that’s Cal’s old girlfriend.” Liza stood. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Wait a minute,” Tony said and caught her arm. “Why do you care about Cal’s love life?”

  “He’s dating my best friend,” Liza said, trying to sound innocent. “I’m curious.”

  “What I meant by the not-dating thing,” Roger said to Bonnie, “was not dating anybody but you.”

  “I really don’t expect monogamy on the third date,” Bonnie said.

  “Okay,” Roger said. “But it’s here anyway.”

  “Am I going to have to put a chain on you?” Tony said to Liza. He stopped to contemplate that for a moment and then shook his head. “Forget the chains. Stay away from Cynthie. She has psychology on the brain. Probably because she’s a psychologist, but still, she comes up with some very whacko stuff.”

  “Analyzed you, did she?” Liza said, looking back across the bar.

  “The not-dating-other-people is just for me, of course,” Roger said to Bonnie. “You don’t have to just date me. Unless you want to.”

  Tony shook his head. “She has this insane four-steps-to-love theory that she thinks explains all relationships.”

  “Oh,” Liza said, taken aback.

  “Which is dumb because chaos theory explains relationships,” Tony said, tugging her back into her seat.

  “What?” Liza said, trying to pull her arm away.

  “Human relationships, like the weather, cannot be predicted,” Tony said, holding on, and Liza sat down again to relieve the pressure on her arm. “Take, for example, Min and Cal. Cal’s a complex dynamical system who’s trying to maintain stability by not dating.”

  “He’s not dating?” Liza said.

  “No,” Tony said. “Can you believe it? That alone is making him unstable. The man is not good at celibacy. Then he meets Min, a disturbance in his environment. He begins to move at random because of the disturbance, trying to find stability, but he’s caught in the field of her attraction, and starts bouncing off the sides of that field at random, never repeating himself but still caught in her pattern. She’s the strange attractor.”

  “Uh huh,” Liza said. “And what good is all of this?”

  Tony leaned closer. “Cynthie thinks relationships follow a pattern and that you can predict them. But how can you? People are complex, the disturbances in their lives are complex, and the attractors in their lives are complex. People in love are pure chaos theory.”

  “Okay,” Liza said, still confused.

  “That’s why Cynthie is crazy,” Tony said, letting go of her. “She thinks love can be analyzed and explained. It can’t.”

  Liza sat back and considered Tony for the first time. Somehow he didn’t look dumb anymore, and it wasn’t because of whatever the hell chaos theory was. It was because he was interested in what he was saying. When he cared, he was smart.

  “What?” Tony said.

  “Have you ever been in love?” Liza said.

  “No,” Tony said. “I don’t think it’s going to happen.” He grinned at her. “It would cause too much disturbance in my environment.”

  Liza frowned. “So why don’t you like Cynthie?”

  “She tried to pin Cal down. She analyzed him and thought she knew him. He deserves better than that. He should be with somebody who’s willing to face the chaos. No rules, no conditions, no theories, no safety nets. The way Bonnie is with Roger.”

  Liza looked over at Bonnie, laughing with Roger. “You’re right. We all deserve that.”

  “Good,” Tony said. “Then you don’t have to talk to Cynthie.”

  Roger said something, and Tony turned away to answer him, and Liza got up and went to meet Cynthie.

  When Liza slid into a seat and said, “Hi, I’m Liza,” Cynthie looked up and did a double take.

  “Hi,” she said, sounding surprised, almost as if she recognized her. “I’m Cynthie. Do we know each other?”

  “No,” Liza said. “But your ex is dating a friend of mine. Tell me everything you know about Calvin Morrisey.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Liza sat back and thought, Chaos theory, my ass, Calvin Morrisey has a pattern. “I knew it,” she said to Cynthie. “I knew he was going to break her heart. How many times has he done this?”

  Cynthie shrugged. “I was at a party one night after we broke up, and I started talking to a woman who had dated him, too. Then somebody else drifted over. By the end of the night there were four of us, all the same story. A couple of months, life is good, you think ‘He’s the one’ and then he kisses you on the cheek, says ‘Have a nice life,’ and he’s gone.”

  “You’re kidding,” Liza said. “And nobody’s hunted him down with a tire iron?”

  “You can’t,” Cynthie said. “What are you going to say, ‘You dated me for two months, how dare you leave me?’ You’d sound demented.” She sipped her drink. “And he doesn’t do it on purpose,” she added, for what must have been the thousandth time.

  “You know, I don’t care,” Liza said. “I just don’t want him hurting Min.”

  “Maybe they’re not that serious,” Cynthie said. “Do they have anything in common?”

  “Not that I can tell,” Liza said.

  “Are they relaxed together?”

  “No,” Liza said. “Mostly they fight.”

  “Do they have shared secrets? In-jokes?”

  Liza shook her head. “They don’t know each other that well.”

  Cynthie drew her fingertip around her glass. “Do you like him? I mean, have you told Min you don’t like him?”

  “Hell, yes,” Liza said. “Bonnie and I have both warned her.”

  “Hmmm.” Cynthie smiled at Liza. “Does he have a nickname for her yet?”

  “A nickname?” Liza tried to remember. “He calls her by her last name sometimes. Never anything like ‘pookie’ or ‘baby doll.’”

  “How about her?” Cynthie said. “Does she have a nickname for him?”

  “The beast,” Liza said. “I don’t think it’s affectionate.”

  Cynthie laughed. “Then why is she dating him?”

  “I’m not sure she is,” Liza said. “But I think she’s going to. I think she’s falling for him even though she doesn’t want to.”

  Cynthie stopped laughing.

  “And that worries me,” Liza said. “She’s a terrific person, she doesn’t deserve to be dallied with. Can you give me some pointers on how he works?”

  Cynthie straightened and nodded. “Sure. Has he given her anything yet?”

  “He’s only known her a week,” Liza said. “I don’t . . .” She stopped when Cynthie shook her head.

  “If he’s serious at all about her, he’ll give her something. He’ll find out what she wants most, and he’ll make sure she gets it. He has to, it’s this pattern he’s fallen into because of his mother.”

  “His mother?” Liza said.

  “She’s withholding,” Cynthie said. “He only knows conditional love. So he acts out the same pattern with every woman he meets, trying to win her love. And then when he gets it, the pattern breaks because if she loves him, she’s not a stand-in for his mother, and he moves on, to make somebody else love him.”

  “He’s got an Oedipus complex?” Liza said, appalled.

  “No,” Cynthie said. “She just set up the pattern. He’s not in love with her.”

  “So that means the more Min rejects him . . .” Liza said.

  “The more he’ll chase her,” Cynthie said, all traces of amusement g