"Your daughter is marrying his son," Julia reminded her.

"So we'll discuss the wedding. I just wanted you to know." Her mother paused, then issued a giddy laugh. "I can't imagine why you always used to complain about the dating scene. Dating is fun! I don't want to keep you. Go eat your dinner. I'll see you tomorrow." With a click, the connection was severed.

"Your father is taking my mother to Tavern on the Green," Julia reported, folding her cell phone shut and watching Ron's face for signs that he recognized the potential for disaster in this date.

"Big spender," Ron muttered. "Forget about it."

"How can I forget about it? It's important."

"Not that important." He snagged her with one long arm and pulled her on top of him. "Your mother and my father are grown-ups. They're allowed to have dinner together. Okay?" He dug his hands into her hair and drew her down for a kiss.

It was a lovely kiss, almost lovely enough to keep her from thinking. But her brain refused to shut down. "What if after dinner they wind up like this?" she asked, stretching her body along his.

His eyes darkened with horror. "Yuck."

"Exactly."

"They're grown-ups," he repeated, clearly able to dismiss ghastly thoughts more easily than she. He kissed her again, slid his thigh between her legs, cupped her bottom and came very close to emptying her mind. He pressed his thigh higher and she groaned, every last thought draining from her.

"Good," he whispered, arching against her. His penis was at full alert once more, pressing and poking, needing just a little assistance to line up properly...and her cell phone beeped again. "You didn't turn it off?"

"Obviously not."

He reached for the night table but she got there first, grabbing her phone and popping it open. "Hello?"

"Julia, it's me," Susie said, the words dissolving in a sob. "Casey's dating Halle Berry."

Julia rolled off Ron and sat up. Her womb ached. Her thighs clenched. Her entire body screamed at her to get off the phone and back to Ron-but her heart, her soul couldn't abandon Susie. "Halle Berry?"

Ron sat up and mouthed, What? Julia ignored him.

"Some lady who looks like her," Susie said.

"Where are you?" Julia asked. Her sister's voice seemed strange, and not just from crying. "You sound like you're standing inside a metal barrel."

"I'm in the bathroom," Susie whimpered. "It's a very small bathroom. I don't want Ricky to see me crying."

"He can handle it," Julia assured her in a soothing tone. "He loves you."

Is it your mother again? Ron mouthed. Julia shook her head.

"I'm supposed to be the sane one on this trip, remember?" Susie sniffled. The noise echoed off the bathroom walls and through the phone. "I can't fall apart. Anyway, Ricky talked to Anna and he's all goo-goo. Anna was the one who told me. She called to say she saw Casey with this Halle Berry lady in the East Village."

"You broke up with him," Julia reminded her. "He's allowed to date other women."

"Just because I don't want to marry him doesn't mean I want him dating other women!"

"Susie, look. There's nothing you can do about it now. When you come home-"

"He'll probably be married to her by then. He wants to settle down."

"Believe me, he won't be married to her that fast. Planning a wedding takes time."

"We should elope," Ron said, responding to Julia's end of the conversation.

Susie must have heard him. "Is that Ron? Oh, Julia, I'm sorry. I'm interrupting something, right?"

"Don't worry about it. You're not the first interruption."

"Oh. Okay. I'm okay, Julia, okay?"

"Stop saying okay."

"Okay." Susie drew in a long breath. "I'll get off now. I don't think I'm crying anymore."

"I'll talk to you tomorrow," Julia promised.

"Okay. I mean-whatever."

Julia disconnected and put her phone on the night table. "Did you turn it off?"

"Yes," she said.

"Good. Maybe I won't have to kill your family." He pulled her into his arms, but she didn't melt into him. "What?"

"My sister's heart is breaking." Julia ruminated for a moment. "It's her own fault because she ended things with Casey, so what can she expect? He's seeing someone else. Surprise, surprise."

"She'll get over it."

"Probably. But right now she feels like shit. She was crying on the phone."

"Not your problem." He lifted her hair off her neck and kissed her nape. A bolt of heat flashed the length of her spine.

"It is my problem," she said, although the words lacked conviction. "She's my sister. I love her."

"She's tough. She'll survive." He trailed kisses down her back. She sighed, turned to him, covered his mouth with hers...and his phone rang.

"God damn fucking shit!" he howled.

She laughed. "Don't blame me. It's not my cell."

Spewing curses under his breath, he reached over her and lifted the receiver of the phone on his night table. "What?" he snarled. He listened for a minute, closed his eyes, said something in a foreign language that Julia suspected she'd be better off not translating and handed the phone to her. "It's your brother," he said with such venom she believed he was once again plotting a hit on her family.

She pressed the receiver to her ear. "Adam?"

"Hi, Julia. I tried you at home and no one answered, and I figured you were at Ron's. So I tried your cell phone, but it was busy, and then it was dead. Maybe the batteries need recharging."

"They don't," she said, feeling Ron's tension rolling over her in waves. "I turned the phone off."

"Oh. Well, sorry."

"What do you want?"

"I've got this cool plan to program some new software for the store. I meant to talk to you about it during the day, but I got so into theorizing, and then I wanted to try some stuff on my laptop. I think it'll work. It'd be really cool, Julia. I'm really psyched about it."

"Can we discuss it tomorrow?"

"Sure we can. Sorry. I was just psyched."

"I'm sure I'll be psyched when you tell me about it, too," she said. "Right now I've got to deal with Ron."

"Yeah. Okay."

"Don't say okay," she growled.

"Uh-huh. Tell him I'm sorry." The phone went silent.

She leaned over and placed it in its cradle, then gave Ron a hesitant smile. "He says he's sorry."

"Is it too late to back out of this marriage?" Ron asked.

She used her thumb to twirl her engagement ring around her finger. The diamond's facets winked light at her. Her smile grew. "I'm afraid so," she said, settling into the curve of his arm and resting her head against his shoulder. "You're stuck with me-and my whole family."

"Terrific," he grunted. She kissed his throat and he muttered something unintelligible. She slid her hand down his torso and he muttered something else that included the words Bloom and hell. She wrapped her fingers around his penis, which instantly revived, and he stopped muttering. In fact, she'd be willing to bet he stopped thinking altogether-which was really the best way to go about having sex.

Thirteen.

Casey's mother had a pot of fish boiling on the stove. Cod, probably, with some carrots, black pepper and chunks of potato mixed in. Where she'd learned to cook this way he couldn't guess. It sure as hell wasn't the Culinary Institute.

He'd come to his parents' house because his father had received an audit notice from the IRS, and Casey, as the only member of the family with a college degree, was expected to solve this problem. "There's nothing to solve," he told his father after reading the letter. "You and your accountant will meet with the auditor and go through your records."

"What if I don't have the right records?" his father moaned. He was seated in his usual chair in the brown-and-beige living room, and Casey was seated on the couch, his gaze trained on the Mets game being broadcast on TV so he wouldn't have to look at the leprechauns eerily grinning down at him from the shelves of the hutch. Fumes of boiled fish wafted in from the kitchen, reminding Casey that he hadn't eaten since breakfast-and that he'd rather fast for a full week than dine on his mother's boiled fish.

"Of course you have the right records," he told his father. "You gave the records to your accountant so he could put together your return. You haven't thrown the records out since then, have you?"

"No, I've got them in a box in the basement," his father said, his face going paler than his silvery blond hair. "It's a box from O'Malley's Liquor, from when I bought that case of Hennessy's. Expensive stuff, but he'd had it on sale, and then there was a discount if you bought by the case, so..." He sighed. "I'd better put my records in a different box. A liquor-store box wouldn't look good."

"I don't think they'd care, Dad."

His father lapsed into a tense silence, his lips arced downward and his eyes glassy with panic. "What if they arrest me?" he whispered.

"They're not going to arrest you," Casey said, hoping he sounded patient and reassuring. In truth, he wasn't feeling either. He had headaches of his own; he didn't care to suffer his father's headaches, as well.

His life was spinning like a pinwheel in a hurricane, so swift the points dissolved into a circular blur. Barely two weeks ago he was asking Susie to marry him. Now Eva was insisting that the bakery she'd found for sale on Avenue B, two doors north of Fourth Street, was perfect for him and he'd better grab it before the owner sold it to someone else to finance his retirement in Hialeah. "Grabbing it" would entail Casey's taking over the remaining three years on the lease and buying the shop's ovens, refrigerators, counters and other equipment, some of which was okay and some of which was ancient enough to belong in the Smithsonian.

The place wasn't bad. He could use the archaic equipment until he had enough money to replace it-money on top of what he'd need to take over the lease. Mose had told him that between loans and investors Casey could pull it off. Mose knew about financing new businesses. Eva knew real estate.

Casey didn't know what he knew, other than bagels and panic and the fact that his heart tightened like a fist that rapped painfully against his rib cage whenever he thought of Susie. If she'd said yes to his marriage proposal, or even just to moving in with him, would he be so eager to set up his own business? If he set up his business in her neighborhood, how would he feel about her dropping by to pick up a loaf of herbed Italian bread or braided challah or a dozen bagels? If he left Bloom's, would Morty Sugarman be able to maintain the deli's bagel quality?

Morty was a terrific guy. Casey had learned a great deal from him. But he was an old-school bagel maker. It would never occur to him to create a sour-cream-and-chives bagel, or a pesto-and-sundried-tomato bagel. If the bagel department started slipping at Bloom's, would Susie blame Casey?

Would he ever stop caring? Would his fisted heart ever stop bruising itself on his rib cage?

His father broke into his ruminations. "So, if they're not going to arrest me, why are they auditing me?"

"I've heard they go after self-employed people more often than wage earners," Casey said. His father was the proprietor, president and sole employee of Gordon's Electric. He did well enough installing sockets, repairing light fixtures, bringing the wiring in old houses up to code so they could handle window-unit air conditioners and using a simple software system to send out bills and keep track of payments. But he'd never earned such a big income that Uncle Sam could expect to fund the Pentagon on what the Gordons of Forest Hills paid in taxes. "They just want to keep you honest," Casey explained.

"I'm very honest." His father folded his hands together and then shook them loose, folded them and shook them. Casey found himself momentarily mesmerized by the wedding ring on his father's left hand. Such a potent, solid symbol, such a permanent fixture. Nothing elaborate or fancy, just a plain gold band that said, I took a vow, and I'm living by it every day. Casey never wore rings-working with dough could get messy, and jewelry was all but taboo when a person used certain equipment. Still, a ring like that, announcing to the world that you were a grown-up, a man of your word...Wearing a wedding ring struck Casey as a profoundly honest thing to do. "You think they'll find out about those circuit breakers I bought wholesale and then sold to Jimmy Benedetti at list price?" his father asked anxiously. "I never declared that income. He paid me in cash."

"And you made, what? Ten bucks off the deal? Forget it, Dad. That kind of thing doesn't matter to the IRS."

"So why are they auditing me?"

"You should go to confession before the audit," his mother shouted from the kitchen. "Just to be sure."

"What if the auditor isn't Catholic?" his father wondered aloud. "You think going to confession'll make a difference?"

Casey admitted, with a pang of self-awareness, that he loved his parents. They were weird, they were annoying, and he truly adored them. The possibility that worrying about this stupid audit might cause his father to go into cardiac arrest pained him almost as much as losing Susie did.

His father quit wringing his hands long enough to rake his fingers through his hair. At his left elbow the TV droned, the Cubs scoring two runs off a bases-loaded single and increasing their lead over the Mets. "I'll tell you, Casey, I haven't slept since that letter arrived." His father gestured toward the coffee table, where the vile missive from the IRS lay. "All I can say is, thank God you and your sister work for other people, your sister at Poodle-Do and you at Bloom's. Let them do all the bookkeeping. No one's gonna come after you with an audit."

Now was not a good time to tell his father how serious his plans for leaving Bloom's had become. Nor would he mention that he, too, had been having trouble sleeping. His insomnia was only partly attributable to his career decision; mostly it had to do with Susie. He lay awake wondering where she and her cousin were and why they were making some stupid home movie when she could be in New York, educating him about her neighborhood's shopping habits and the foot traffic on Avenue B. Could people who lived in brownstone walk-ups afford two-ninety-nine for a loaf of gourmet bread? If he charged less than two-ninety-nine, would he go bankrupt? Would the IRS audit him? Why wasn't Susie by his side, helping him make this momentous decision? Why wasn't she in his bed? What the hell was she so afraid of, anyway?

The same things he was afraid of, he supposed: committing to a course, making a change, redefining his life.

"So, they giving you a raise at Bloom's any time soon?"

"They pay me well," Casey said noncommittally.

"They ought to pay you more. You're dating the boss's daughter."

"Sister," Casey automatically corrected him, as if it mattered anymore. He wasn't dating any relative of his boss's. And his boss-a woman he liked, a woman he'd imagined might one day become his sister-in-law-was going to hate him once he announced that he was leaving Bloom's, if that was what he decided to do.

"Play your cards right, your name could be up there above the door. Bloom's and Gordon's," his father said. "Of course, then they might audit you."

"He should find a nice Catholic girl," Casey's mother hollered from the kitchen. "Casey, are you staying for supper?"

He pictured the vat of boiling cod on her stove and his stomach lurched. "Can't," he said, leaping to his feet, figuring escape would be easier with his mother in the kitchen and his father demoralized over his tax situation.

"I made too much for Dad and me. You'd like it. It's like a chowder," his mother yelled.