Big tipper, Susie thought, unable to shake her suspicion that he was tipping her with money from the film budget.

As if his generous tip would make or break anything-including her. She pocketed the change and waved limply as Anna and Rick waltzed out of the pizzeria. Given the lack of patrons filling the place, now would be a good time to sweep the floors and tidy up a bit.

Instead, she grabbed her order pad and pen and wrote, Losing Linus.

She stared at the title for a moment, clicking the pen open and shut a few times on her chin, then continued: Lobsters turn red when boiled.

Hearts turn hard when burned.

Bread blackens in the fire.

Chocolate melts, messy.

Love flames out or freezes, either way It is gone.

Nothing to eat, and I'm hollow, ravenous, needy.

Maybe she wasn't hollow, ravenous and needy, but she was hungry. She tore off the top sheet of her pad and tucked it into the hip pocket of her black jeans, then cleared off and wiped down the table where Anna and Rick had been sitting. Once it was spotless, she sauntered into the kitchen. Pots simmered on the stove, filling the room with the blended fragrance of Romano tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and basil. Susie liked to imagine that Italy smelled exactly like Nico's kitchen.

She spotted Nico hovering just outside the back door, enjoying a cigarette with Orlando, a Puerto Rican kid fresh out of high school whom Nico was trying to turn Italian by revealing for him the mysteries of pizza and pasta preparation. They smiled and nodded at Susie, who returned the greeting before yanking open the heavy aluminum door of one of the industrial refrigerators. She grabbed a handful of pitted black olives from a tub, tossed them all into her mouth and chomped down on their flimsy flesh, letting the salty juice bathe her tongue. While she was still chewing, she tore a chunk from a large, knotted wad of mozzarella. Chocolate would have satisfied her more than cheese and olives, but Nico didn't keep desserts in that refrigerator, and she wanted to stuff her face quickly and get back to the front room.

Detouring to the sink, she wedged the cheese between her jaws, freeing her hands so she could rinse the olive juice from her palms. Once she'd dried them, she carried the cheese back to her post behind the counter in the front room. No one had come in, so she picked up her pen, grabbed a to-go paper plate and scribbled: Now the lobster is gone.

Red, ugly, chipped, hard shell, cheap plastic.

In the end, the lobster is gone.

In the end, the end of love.

Two tottering old men with matching duck-head canes entered the restaurant. She hid the plate on a shelf below the counter and shaped a welcoming smile for them. The men were adorable, one a few inches taller than the other, one sporting a faded Yankees cap and the other hatless, his fuzzy gray hair circling his freckled scalp like a laurel wreath. Both had age spots on their hands and wore cardigans, even though the afternoon air had reached the midseventies. The men bickered for a few minutes about meatballs versus sausage. "We buy only one hero and split it," the taller one explained.

"It's too much, one of those sandwiches," the shorter one said. "I can't finish it myself."

"My grandson could finish it," the taller one noted. "My Danny, he can eat everything. And does."

"He's the monster that ate Pittsburgh, your Danny."

"Oy. Fifteen years old and almost six feet tall, and he eats all the time."

"So we'll get the sausage?" the shorter one said.

"I hate the sausage. It makes me fortz."

"Everything makes you fortz," the shorter one complained. "You're an alter fortzer."

"If you'd like," Susie offered, just because these men amused her and she didn't want to give the taller one gas, "I could make two half sandwiches, one with meatballs and one with sausage. How would that be?"

The men looked stunned, then ecstatic. "You would do that for us?" the shorter one asked.

"It's not a problem."

Their expressions changed from ecstatic to transported. Smitten. They were in love with her because she could make two half sandwiches with different fillings. And neither of them appeared like the sort who would force her to change her life for him, to move in and settle down and marry him.

She went into the kitchen to assemble their two-part sandwich. Slicing the roll was therapeutic; she pretended the hard crust was Casey's thick skull as she sawed the knife blade through it. She filled each half with the requested filling, slid the sandwich into the pizza oven for a minute to warm it up, then wrapped each half separately, glancing behind her to make sure Nico wasn't watching. He'd probably have a fit if he knew she was going to so much effort for a couple of geezers.

They tipped her generously, even though they'd ordered the sandwich to go. Once they'd shuffled out of the restaurant, she grabbed her pen and a napkin and continued her poem.

It felt good to write, she realized. Rick and Anna had spoken the truth. Whether or not Susie went to the slam, she needed to write something real, something deep, something that exorcised her pain. Something that didn't entail finding a rhyme for stroganoff.

The lobster, she wrote, is all. The lobster is gone. The lobster is red and chipped and hiding within its shell, like my heart.

Her cell phone started ringing as she climbed the stairs to her apartment, but she couldn't answer it because her hands were full. She carried a large pizza box filled with paper plates, napkins, order slips and a straw wrapper, all with bits and pieces of her poem scribbled onto them. This was a huge poem, an epic, one that required assembly. Once she got upstairs and emptied and unfolded the box-which had several fervent stanzas written inside the lid-she could put it all together and figure out if she'd created a masterpiece or dreck. She was a little worried about whether she'd be able to read her handwriting on the straw wrapper, but despite that concern, she was pretty sure what she'd created was magnificent.

She'd left Nico's early tonight-ten-thirty-because she'd worked the lunch shift. Even lugging her poem-in-a-pizza-box, she'd arrived at her building only ten minutes later, so the chirping of the phone in her purse at this hour didn't alarm her. She wasn't going to stop halfway up the stairs to her apartment to put down her box and answer it, though. Whoever was calling her would have to wait until she got inside.

Balancing the box while she unlocked the three bolts on her door was tricky enough without the damn phone nagging at her to hurry. She shoved the door open with her hip, nodded toward Caitlin and Anna, who were both seated on the sofa simultaneously polishing their nails and watching a VH1 rerun about the Milli Vanilli scandal, and set her box down on the dining table near the window. The kitchen was too small to contain a table. It was practically too small to contain a refrigerator, which was one reason they had such an undersized refrigerator, the other reason being that their landlord was a cheap bastard.

"Did you bring us leftovers?" Caitlin asked, motioning toward the box with her nail-polish brush.

"No," Susie said, tugging at her purse's drawstring to get to her phone. "It's a poem." She found the noisy little gadget and pressed the Connect button. "Hello?"

"Susie, it's me," Julia's voice came through the phone. "I'm sorry I'm calling so late. Are you at work?"

"It's not that late and I'm not at work. What's up?" Something was, if Julia's tense voice was anything to judge by. Susie stepped inside the cramped kitchen and opened the fridge, hoping to find an open bottle of wine in it. Life was sweet; a screw-top bottle half full of Chablis stood on the top shelf. Caitlin's, probably; her palate was about as discriminating as that of the guy Susie often found sleeping it off in the alley behind Nico's. Screw-top Chablis was probably Susie's least favorite wine in the world-it tasted like water with a few mild pollutants mixed in-but wine was wine.

Tucking the phone between her ear and her shoulder, she poured some wine into a tumbler and returned to the table. "I need to kill Mom," Julia said. "Will you help?"

"Sure." What were sisters for? Susie sat on one of the chairs and kicked her tired feet up on another. She used her toes to pry off her sandals, leaned her shoulders back and decided that the dining set she and her roommates had bought for fifty bucks from their upstairs neighbor three years ago, when he'd decided on a whim to quit his job as an auditor for the Transit Authority to work on a salmon boat in Alaska, was just barely worth what they'd paid for it. The back of the chair didn't conform to her back at all, and the seat was hard and unmolded, making her uncomfortably aware of her hipbones. "Why are we killing her?" she asked before sipping from her glass.

"I told her Ron and I were going to have our wedding reception in Grandma Ida's apartment."

"You are?" Susie nearly choked on her wine. She nudged the pizza box to one side of the table and put down her glass, then swung her legs around to a different chair so she would have her back to Caitlin and Anna. She didn't care if they overheard the conversation, but seeing them hunched over their feet, with wads of cotton protruding from between their toes, was too distracting. Susie couldn't afford to be distracted when her sister was telling her something so bizarre. "Why?"

"We weren't planning on a big reception with a huge invitation list," Julia explained. "And Grandma Ida's apartment is spacious. We can fit everyone in. We figured the musicians could set up in the foyer, and we could do a buffet in the dining room, and everyone could mill around."

"What did Grandma Ida say about this?"

"She said yes. So we decided to go for it. I want my wedding catered by Bloom's, and we were really struggling to find a place where we could bring our own caterer in. Of course, Grandma Ida has no objection to letting Bloom's cater the wedding."

"Great." Grandma Ida's apartment gave Susie the creeps, but that was mostly because it was filled with so many memories of Grandma Ida criticizing her, Grandma Ida telling her to calm down, Grandma Ida complaining that she shouldn't jiggle her legs so much while she was eating because all that jiggling made her drop crumbs on the floor. She probably wouldn't be able to jiggle much in a bridesmaid's dress-God only knew what Julia had in mind for her to wear-and she'd hardly be the only guest to drop crumbs on the floor. If Grandma Ida was okay with it, Susie had no objections. "So why are we killing Mom?"

"She went ballistic when she heard the plan. She wants me to have the wedding at the Plaza."

"Big deal. It's not her wedding."

"It's her daughter's wedding, which she thinks is the same thing." Julia sighed. "I told her the wedding was going to be at Grandma Ida's, and she went whining to Norman."

"Norman?"

"Ron's father. Her boyfriend. Only, he's not her boyfriend anymore, because he told her it was up to Ron and me where to have the wedding, and she should stay out of it. At which point, I gather she blew up at him, and now they haven't talked to each other for days and she claims it's all my fault."

Their mother had a boyfriend? Where had Susie been?

Up in Maine, communing with Linus and the potatoes. In Boston, standing ankle deep in decaying lettuce leaves at Haymarket Square. At Pine Haven, sitting on a rickety cabin porch and staring at the muddy water of Pine Haven Lake and convincing herself that home and family were wonderful, and perhaps marriage wasn't the absolute worst thing in the world.

And all that time, while she was starring in Rick's movie and rethinking her life, her mother was dating Ron's father?

Apparently, her mother wasn't dating him now, because he refused to meddle in Julia's wedding plans. He sounded like a nice guy. "Look, Julia. It's your wedding. If I've got to wear a gown, Mom can survive a party in Grandma Ida's apartment. After a few drinks, she might not even know where she is."

"I can only hope," Julia muttered. "Meanwhile, she's making me crazy. She was so happy with Norman, he was so intelligent, he was such a gentleman-by which I think she meant they weren't sleeping together, thank God-and now they're not talking because he refuses to support her in her mishegas."

"So they're not talking," Susie said, then took a sip of the wine and tried not to cringe. It tasted like piss water with a finish of tin. "It's her mishegas, not yours."

"Right. I'm going to have a wedding where the mother of the bride isn't talking to the father of the groom."

"Well, the mother of the groom isn't talking to the father of the groom, either, is she?" As Susie recalled, Joffe's parents were still fuming over their divorce, which had occurred twenty-something years ago. "It's your wedding, Julia. Have it wherever you want, and serve whatever food you want. If Mom doesn't like it, tough shit."

"You don't work two doors away from her office," Julia pointed out. "She spent most of today giving me grief. Even Uncle Jay intervened. He told her to leave me alone. Who would have guessed that Uncle Jay, of all people, would come to my aid over something like this?"

"Uncle Jay loves you." More than that, Susie thought, Uncle Jay hated their mother. However the family dynamics shook out, Julia should grab whatever allies she could find and hang on to them.

"Listen-could you come up to the store tomorrow? I know it's not your usual day to be here, but I was hoping maybe you could talk to Mom."

Susie shuddered, and not just from the wine's metallic aftertaste. Julia was the sane sister, the mature one, the one who kept the rest of the family on an even keel. She was the fixer, the peacemaker, the minister of logic in a family that embraced rational thought with all the enthusiasm of French royalty facing the guillotine. If she couldn't calm their mother down, Susie certainly wouldn't be able to.

"How about Adam?" she suggested. "Maybe he can get through to her."

"Adam is out of it," Julia muttered.

"Out of it? What, is he getting stoned? While he's living with Mom?"

"I don't know about that. I doubt it. He's just...in love." Julia put enough ironic spin on those two final words to cause Susie's head to buzz. Or maybe it was the bad wine creating that unpleasant hum inside her skull.

"Sure, but isn't the lady he's in love with out in Seattle eating tofu and braiding her leg hair?"

"No. He's in love with Elyse, the ballerina, and she's in New York, and she seems to shave her legs on a regular basis."

"Really? What about Tash?"

"I think he sent her a kiss-off e-mail."

"Ouch." Susie had no great fondness for Tash, but breakups were often painful and sometimes tragic. If anyone should know, it was Susie. "Geez. It's going to get ugly when they both settle in West Lafayette this fall. Or was Tash only planning to move there because she expected to be with Adam?"

"I don't know if he's going to Purdue, either," Julia said.

"What?" Susie felt as if she'd returned not from New England but from the far side of the moon. How could so much have happened in her absence? How could her mother have grown so close to Joffe's father that their falling-out would unhinge her? How could Adam have completely overhauled his plans for next year? How could Grandma Ida have agreed to host a wedding in her apartment?

If Susie was the sanest member of her family, her family was in major big trouble.

"So, will you come uptown tomorrow?" Julia pleaded.

Susie looked at her pizza box. She thought about the words scrawled inside it, the passion, the anger and sorrow, her soulful, lyrical outpouring inked onto paper towels, paper place mats and toilet paper from the ladies' room. Much as she loved Julia and wanted to help her, she had problems of her own. One was how to piece together her poem. Another was how to piece together her heart.

"I can't," she said, ignoring the twinge of guilt at the understanding that she was abandoning her sister. It wasn't as if Julia had no one else to turn to. She had Joffe. For all his curmudgeonly pretense, he was utterly devoted to Julia. If she asked him to slay their mother, his response would be to start sharpening a carving knife.

There was a time, Susie thought sadly, when she'd been certain Casey would sharpen a carving knife for her. There was a time she'd believed he loved her enough to do anything she asked of him-except the one thing she'd ever asked of him, which was to relax his hold on her. She'd never asked him to kill anyone, or to change his habits for her, or to rinse the little blond flecks of hair down the drain in the bathroom sink when he was done shaving. He knew enough to rinse the sink, anyway, but she'd never asked him to do that, or to wear his hair differently, or to skip his regular basketball games to spend time with her. She'd never asked him to treat her mother with deference or change his work hours or sit through a chick-flick with her.

She'd asked him only one single thing: to respect her independence. And when she'd swallowed her pride and placed her independence on a sacrificial altar for him, what had he done? Nothing, other than stare at her as if she were the one with antennae and claws after she propped Linus against the wall of his entryway.

"Susie? Am I losing you?"

Susie could have pretended her phone's reception was fading, but she was too honest for that. "I'm here," she said. "I just can't come to Bloom's tomorrow."

"Why not?"

Because she had problems of her own. Because she was pissed and pathetic. Because she didn't give a rat's ass where Julia held her wedding.

"Because I've got to put together a poem," she said, eyeing the square white box on the table and wondering whether putting that poem together would make her feel better or worse.

"Come," Julia said. "Bring the poem with you."

Eighteen.

Susie strolled through Julia's open office door, carrying a large white pizza box. No aroma emanated from it, so Julia doubted it contained anything edible. That was all right with her; she'd just polished off a sesame bagel and a mug of Bloom's Kona blend, and she wasn't in the mood for pizza.

What she was in the mood for was fulfilling her fantasy by flying to Vegas with Joffe and paying an Elvis impersonator to marry them. Yet seeing Susie imbued her with an inexplicable surge of optimism.

"I'm here," Susie announced, dropping the box onto their grandfather's old desk, which stood idle in the corner of the office. "I'll talk to Mom if you want, but you're going to have to let me spread my poem out in here so I can put it together."

"That's your poem?" Julia eyed the pizza box warily.

"Yup." Susie straightened and spun around to face Julia. Susie looked better than she had in weeks-more color in her cheeks, the shadows under her eyes less obvious and her hair freshly cut into a brisk, breezy style. Along with her standard black jeans she wore an orange tank top-a burst of unexpected color.

Julia smiled. If Susie was coming out of her depression, she might be able to salvage Julia's wedding. Julia wasn't used to having to depend on her kid sister to mend the family's fissures, but at least Susie acted as if she had enough energy to tackle such a challenge.

"Are you going to talk to Mom?" Julia asked.

"Actually, what I thought..." Susie surveyed the office and raked her hand through her hair. Every lock slid back into its precise place. Where was she getting her hair done? Some hip downtown salon-Julia couldn't remember what it was called, other than it was a midwestern city with a French-sounding name. Eau Claire? Fond du Lac?

"Actually, what you thought..." Julia prompted her when her sentence went unfinished for a full minute.