Susie shrugged. "It wouldn't surprise me."

"Why do you really want to go home?" he pressed her.

She sighed deeply. "Because when you think about it, there's really no place else to go."

That sounded so profound, he wasn't sure how to respond. Susie was a poet. He ought to expect weighty, meaningful stuff from her.

She wanted to go home because there was no place else to go. She hated picket fences, but she wanted what was on the other side of them. She dreamed of chocolate.

Okay. Chocolate he could get a handle on. "How about," he suggested, "I buy you some M&M's?"

She smiled, a shy, surprisingly pretty smile. "Peanut?"

"If you want."

"And then we'll go home?"

He caught her smile on tape. "Then we'll go home," he said.

I have been very patient, Adam, the e-mail read, but I just don't understand what's going on with you anymore. Where is your commitment to values and causes? Where is your embrace of the planet? How can you be spending a whole summer stocking shelves in a store like Bloom's, a monument to corpulence, when children in Africa are starving?

Corpulence, he contemplated as he stared at the neat blue print on his computer screen. Cool word.

Yes, our grandparents used to tell us to clean our plates because children in Africa were starving...

Grandma Ida and Grandpa Isaac had never nagged him about children starving in Africa. On the other hand, his grandparents on the Feldman side of the family had had a thing about starving children in Asia, trotting out guilt-inducing reminders to persuade him to finish some food they'd served him that he didn't like-lima beans, or that lunch-loaf stuff, pink meat with pimento-stuffed green olives embedded in it like chunks in vomit. "Children are starving in Asia," his grandma Ethel would scold, and he'd retort, "Yeah? Name two," and Susie would say: "Cheng and Fijimatsu." She used to make him laugh so hard he snorted milk, and Grandma Ethel would be horrified and make both him and Susie leave the table, which of course meant they no longer had to eat that crud with the green olives in it.

Smiling at the memory, he turned his attention back to Tash's e-mail....Children really are starving in Africa, Adam. I can direct you to some online sites that discuss the malnutrition problems and drought conditions in sub-Saharan Africa if you don't believe me. But I know you *do* believe me. You're a man of principle. You understand that we're *all* citizens of the world, sharing this ever-shrinking planet. I'm spending my summer trying to make downtown Seattle a little less gynophobic, and what are you doing? Helping overweight New Yorkers fill their pantries with kosher roast beef, which in case you forgot is a meat. Remember those statistics I sent you about how much more plant protein can be produced compared with meat protein, using the same resources?

So maybe he wasn't a man of principle, he admitted as he leaned back in his old desk chair and closed his eyes. The back of the chair tilted, cradling his spine comfortably. His body was feeling better than it had since graduation weekend-and he didn't even need any weed to make him mellow.

He truly had the best sisters in the world. One had come up with the names "Cheng" and "Fijimatsu" just when he'd needed to hear them, and the other had let him use her apartment. "Thank you, God," he murmured as his mouth curved into a satisfied smile. "Thank you, God, for Susie's wit and Julia's key." He pondered for a minute and decided to thank God for Elyse, too.

And frankly, Tash's e-mail continued, I am astonished that you can take such pride in having devised a reorganization plan for how the shelves are stocked in the basement of your family's store. You're an Ivy League graduate, for Christ's sake, on your way to Purdue for a Ph.D., and you take *pride* in reorganizing shelves? What is wrong with this picture?

Nothing, he almost answered aloud. Nothing was wrong with the picture, or with him. Reorganizing the stock shelves had been brilliant. The stock staff in the basement would be singing his praises long after he left for Purdue.

That understanding tempered his smile. A month ago, he'd been counting the seconds until he could leave for Indiana. Now his impending departure, while still a couple of months off, dampened his spirits. And that was not just because of Elyse. He wasn't the sentimental type. He didn't fall in love at the drop of a tutu. Spending a few hours with her at Julia's apartment had been pretty damn nice, but love wasn't part of the equation at this point.

It was Indiana that dampened his spirits. Grandma Ida thought Purdue was where nonkosher chickens came from. Adam understood that chickens had nothing to do with the place, but plains did. Prairies. Midwestern folks who probably smiled when they walked down the street, and waved at strangers. Hell, maybe they even said "Howdy." And they didn't walk; they moseyed, moving at a relaxed pace, admiring the scenery around them, pausing to catch up on the local gossip with Mabel or to admire Hank's shiny new pickup truck.

Jesus. How on earth was Adam going to fit in there?

He wasn't crazy about New York. It was noisy and crowded, dirty and pushy. Auto alarms blared at 3:00 a.m. Heat rose through the subway grates as if Dante's Inferno actually burned below the sidewalks. Bike couriers would rather run down a pedestrian than veer around him. Cabbies would jump the curb if it meant beating a rival to a fare.

New York shoppers were too demanding. Whenever he ventured upstairs into the store, he heard them bickering with the clerks-"How fresh is this bread? You baked it yesterday, right? I can tell it wasn't baked today-my thumb can't push through the crust. If it was fresh, my thumb would go right through..." and "I told you to slice the Nova tissue thin! You call that tissue thin? I would never blow my nose with a tissue that thick!"-and arguing over who stood next in line. If Bloom's was out of a certain brand of minced garlic, the world might just end.

New York was the place his family lived: his mother, always asking where Adam was going, with whom and why, but prefacing every question with "It's none of my business," as if that made her prying acceptable. His sisters, who still seemed to view him as the little snot-nosed dweeb he'd been ten or fifteen years ago. His uncle Jay, always with one foot out the door, racing off to play golf or racquetball or anything that would get him out of his office and away from his responsibilities. His grandmother one floor above him, armed with a criticism for every occasion. His aunt Martha, living right down the hall, eager to pontificate on the subjugation of women. Maybe she'd like to join Tash's Space Needle protest.

He stared at the print on his laptop screen, wondering whether to write a response to Tash's e-mail. He could tell her about Cheng and Fijimatsu, but she wouldn't get it.

Instead, he logged onto the Internet and called up Columbia University's Web site. Three clicks got him to their math department. Scrolling through the faculty, he grinned. A nice smattering of unpronounceable names mixed in with the familiar ones-Asian, Scandinavian, Slavic, Greek, a few token women. He recognized some of the names from journal articles he'd read and conference workshops he'd attended. He'd feel right at home at Columbia.

That was why he'd never applied to the graduate school there: he'd been afraid that attending graduate school in New York City would make him feel right at home.

Adam Bloom would never, not even if the earth reversed its rotational direction and the stars fell out of the sky, feel at home in West Lafayette, Indiana. The truth slapped him in the face like a wet sponge, cold and shocking. With or without Tash, notwithstanding the couple of professors at Purdue with whom he'd been corresponding about his research plans, regardless of the fact that rents were actually affordable in West Lafayette...Adam was never going to be the kind of guy who smiled and said "Howdy" to strangers and admired shiny new pickup trucks as he moseyed down the street.

Stunned, he snapped his laptop shut and leaned back in his chair again, so far back he could view the ceiling. It was a New York City ceiling, smooth and white, with molding around the corners. His room smelled like New York City. Beyond his windows the sounds of New York City bubbled and churned.

Damn it, he was a Bloom. How could he possibly survive life with all those chickens at Purdue?

Sixteen.

By eleven-thirty, Susie had cruised every block in Alphabet City at least three times without finding a parking space big enough for the van. Eleven-thirty was a lively hour in her part of the East Village; people swarmed the sidewalks, hooking up, panhandling, squabbling, and exiting from cafes, bars, used-book stores and all-night groceries brandishing beer bottles, lottery tickets, collector's-item comic books and key rings. Surely one of those key rings contained a key to a car that could be driven out of a parking space, but Susie's only open-curb sightings were stretches adjacent to fire hydrants, bus stops and alley driveways.

Although she rarely had to worry about parking a car in the city, she knew that when no spot was available, the best strategy was to stake out a promising block, double-park at one end of the street, and watch, and wait. Sooner or later, someone would get into a car and drive away. Whereas if she kept driving through the neighborhood, she might be on another block when a spot on this block opened, and some other lucky driver would snag it.

She didn't mind watching and waiting. She needed solitude to sort through her thoughts, and for the first time since she and Rick had left the city-actually, for the first time in a lot longer than that, given that she had two roommates, worked at Bloom's and at Nico's and lived in a city with a population of about eight million-she was alone. Well, almost alone. Linus sprawled languidly in the back of the van. Rick had cleared out all his other gear when Susie had dropped him off at his place, but she'd wound up with custody of Linus.

What the hell was she supposed to do with a six-foot-tall plastic lobster who still glistened in his nooks and crannies, where a residue of scummy Pine Haven Lake water remained trapped? Her apartment barely had room for her and Anna and Caitlin. Keeping Linus in the apartment would sacrifice valuable square footage, and dragging him up the two flights of stairs to her floor wouldn't be much fun, either. Perhaps Nico could display Linus in the pizzeria...but then people would look at Linus and wonder why they were eating pizza instead of lobster, and they'd leave dissatisfied. And of course, Linus couldn't be displayed at Bloom's, because lobster was trayf.

She could give Linus to Casey. He had so much space in Queens, after all.

Assuming he was still living in Queens. For all she knew, he could have moved in with Halle Berry by now.

She gave her head a fierce shake, refusing to succumb to pessimism. Something had happened to her today. Actually, it had been happening over the past week, but today, when she'd seen the old cabin at Pine Haven, whatever was happening had reached its culmination in one of those nauseating epiphanies her ancient-Greek drama professor at Bennington used to wax ecstatic about.

She loved Casey.

She was pissed as hell at him. She hated the corner he'd painted her into, the limb he'd led her out onto. She would resent him forever, and never ever forgive him for putting her through this hell.

But damn it, she loved him. And if she had to grow up, settle down, beat Halle's berries to a pulp and-she shuddered just to think of it-marry Casey, she would.

It had all come together at the cabin. She'd seen the farshimelt old building and remembered that summer she and Rick and their siblings and mothers had lived there. She'd remembered the quarrels over the checkerboard, which Neil was always overturning, sometimes while Susie and Rick were in the middle of a game, so he could play backgammon on the board's flip side. She'd remembered the way Julia had dawdled in the bathroom, fussing with her hair, while the rest of them lined up outside in the tiny hallway, jiggling, banging on the door and begging her to hurry up so they wouldn't pee in their pants. She'd remembered the way the lake had been murky even then, and its musty smell had made her sneeze. She'd remembered taking long hikes on paths that meandered through the woods, and inhaling that amazing pine fragrance-which she hadn't associated with public bathrooms in those days. She'd remembered convincing Neil to sneak away from Aunt Martha at the general store in White Lake and buy a jar of marshmallow fluff so they could make peanut-butter-and-fluff sandwiches. Julia would never have bought the fluff; she was too well behaved. But Neil had been willing, and Susie and Rick had donated their combined assets-a collection of linty coins dug from the deepest recesses of their pockets-and Neil had bought the fluff. When they'd gotten back to the cabin and Aunt Martha had seen the jar, she'd lectured them for what felt like an hour on the subject of nutrition and tooth decay. Once she'd run out of gas and abandoned the kitchen, Susie and her siblings and cousins had all feasted on peanut-butter-and-fluff sandwiches. White bread almost didn't matter if you piled enough peanut butter and fluff onto it.

Family meant fighting for the bathroom and sitting through dreary lectures on nutrition, but it also meant sugary, sticky sandwiches and checkers and even backgammon, which Susie had gotten pretty good at once Neil had taught her the game. Family meant understanding who you were, accepting it, even embracing it. It meant being honest, because you couldn't bullshit your family. They knew you too well.

It meant recognizing that sometimes love sucked, but a lack of love sucked a whole lot more.

A couple with their arms wrapped around each other's shoulders ambled down the street, holding each other so closely they looked like contestants in a three-legged race. Susie sat straighter, sending them mental vibes: Go to a car. Get in it. Drive it away. They walked the length of the block, then entered a brownstone.

She cursed, but she wasn't really upset. She was too wired about having acknowledged that she loved Casey to allow anger to mar the moment. Her notepad was in the back of the van with Linus and her suitcase. Maybe she ought to write a poem.

No. Writing a poem demanded intense concentration, and right now she had to concentrate on finding a parking space. Instead of writing, she poked inside her purse and pulled out her cell phone. She speed-dialed Julia's cell phone and listened to the ring on the other end.

"What?" Joffe growled.

"Joffe? It's Susie. Why are you answering Julia's phone?"

"It's almost midnight," he grumbled. "That's it. I'm breaking up with Julia because she refuses to turn off her fucking cell phone. You heard it first. The wedding is off."

"Okay," Susie said pleasantly. "Can I talk to her?"

She heard a few muffled sounds and juicy obscenities, and then her sister's voice: "The wedding isn't off. He's just being a schmuck."

"You want to marry a schmuck?"

"Sometimes he's not a schmuck," Julia said in his defense. "But it is late, Susie. We're in bed."

"I'm not. I'm in the Truck-a-Buck van with blood on the door," Susie told her. "I'm waiting for a parking spot to open up."

"Where are you?"

"In Manhattan. We came home."

"Really? Did you finish the infomercial? Don't do that, Ron," she said in a different voice.

"What's he doing?"

"Something X-rated. Don't ask."

"We didn't finish the movie," Susie said, "but we finished all the location shooting."

"Why is it that I keep calling it an infomercial and you keep calling it a movie?" Julia asked. Then she sighed and muttered, "Not now, Ron."

"The movie is going to be great," Susie said, choosing to duck Julia's question. "But I'm glad to be home. I missed the city. What's going on?"

"Other than what Ron is doing-which he should not be doing," she scolded, her voice directed away from the phone to her future husband, "Dierdre says it's a good thing Mom is dating Ron's father. Don't ask," she added before Susie could muddle through the questions that statement provoked. "So what's going on with you? You sound better than the last time we talked."

"I am better. I think." She leaned forward and squinted at the middle-aged couple strolling around the corner and onto her block. They had to be suburbanites. They'd come to the East Village to slum, and now they would get into their gas-guzzling car and drive back to their fancy house in Mamaroneck. Susie scanned the cars parked along the curb in search of an oversized American sedan.

"You think what?" Julia asked.

The couple ambled past the only Cadillac on the street. Damn. "I guess I've figured some things out. I've got to talk to Casey."

Julia hesitated before saying, "Do you know what's going on with him?"

"The Halle Berry thing, you mean?"

"What Halle Berry thing?"

It was Susie's turn to hesitate. Was more going on with Casey than just that he was dating a movie star look-alike? "What's going on with Casey?" she asked cautiously.

"He's leaving Bloom's."

"What?" The couple slowed as they approached a large, well-waxed car-an Oldsmobile, maybe-with a lot of chrome glinting on it. Susie could hardly focus on them, though. So what if a parking space opened up? Casey was leaving Bloom's? "Where is he going?"

"He's planning to open his own store. We're negotiating a contract so he can continue to supply our bagels. He doesn't want to work for Bloom's anymore."

"That asshole! How could he not want to work at Bloom's?"

"I guess he wants to be his own boss," Julia answered. "He said you had nothing to do with it."

"Like hell I don't. I've gotta go, Julia. Tell Joffe he can do that X-rated thing now." Susie disconnected the call and tossed her cell phone onto the passenger seat. The suburbanites were climbing into their fat-cat Olds, but Susie no longer wanted their space. She had wheels for the night, and she intended to use them.

Queens was practically the suburbs, anyway.

Casey wished Mose hadn't brought the ladies along, but Mose was giving him so much help and free advice that Casey felt he didn't have the right to complain. LaShonna and Eva had commandeered the living room, where they were watching some TV show they apparently found uproariously funny, given the peals of laughter and neighing that spilled into the kitchen, where Casey and Mose sat at the table beneath the unforgiving light of the ceiling fixture and crunched numbers. They were on their second round of Pete's Wicked Ale-God knew how much beer Eva and LaShonna had helped themselves to; Casey could always count the bottles later, if he cared-and they huddled over Mose's laptop, plugging numbers into an Excel spreadsheet and calculating just what Casey would require for his store to succeed.

He was beyond the "if" stage and firmly in commit mode. Whenever he thought about staying at Bloom's, visions of Susie exploded inside his head like a romantic migraine. He realized that quitting a good solid job because of a woman was a moronic move, but he was reassured by the fact that whenever he thought about that storefront on Avenue B, whenever he pictured it filled with the rich fragrance of fresh-baked breads and rolls and imagined the sign above the door-opting for simplicity, he'd decided the store would be named Casey's Gourmet Breads-his head stopped aching. So did his heart.

Opening his own store was the right thing to do, for a whole bunch of reasons. If he could think of only one reason right now-that he needed to put distance between himself and the Blooms, one Bloom in particular-it didn't mean there weren't plenty of other equally valid reasons. In time they'd come to him.

Mose frowned at the screen of the laptop. Casey drank some beer and dismissed the frown. Mose always frowned when he studied numbers. The expression lent him what little gravitas he possessed. Dressed in a faded Knicks jersey with Patrick Ewing's name and number stenciled on the back, a pair of knit athletic shorts stretched out of shape, a pair of badass red-and-silver hightops and a bandanna tied pirate-style around his head, Mose looked more like a third-rate rapper than a rising star in the small-business consulting world.

"Okay, the way I see it, if you charge her twenty-five cents a bagel and she orders what she's currently selling..." Mose jabbed at a couple of digit keys and his frown deepened. "She'd basically be covering your salary plus the cost of producing the bagels. That ain't bad, Woody."

This was why Casey didn't view Mose's frown as a negative sign.

"Now, you're still talking shipping costs. Gotta run those bagels uptown for her. Bloom's has a fleet, doesn't it?"

"Not exactly a fleet," Casey said. "They've got a few trucks."

"Then you gotta negotiate that. Gotta include shipping costs in your price."

"You think she'd pay for that? It's one thing she doesn't have to pay for now."

"Yeah, but that cost'll be offset by her savings on the kitchen space she'll no longer be devoting to bagel baking. She can expand her knish production or something. Plus, you'll be able to produce more for her, and more efficiently."

"Theoretically," Casey said, then took another long drink of beer.

"This whole thing is 'theoretically,' Woody. You open a business based on theoreticals, and then a water main breaks and floods all the stores along your side of the avenue, and all your theoreticals are fucked. Or the business takes off in a way you never anticipated, and your only problem is how to increase production to meet the demand."

"I like the second scenario better."

Mose grinned. From the living room came more giggles and horse noises. Casey was unable to stifle a grimace.

"Hey, at least she's pretty," Mose pointed out in a whisper.

Yes, Eva was pretty. But Casey had spent enough time with her to realize that he considered a woman's laughter more important than her looks. "It's not going to work," he whispered back. "It's just not clicking."