"I don't get it," Grandma Ida added. "What's with the lobster? Lobster's trayf."

"It's a leitmotif," Rick explained, rising from his seat and crossing to the VCR. He hit the Rewind button, switched off the wide-screen TV and turned to face his audience. He looked close to ecstatic. "It's a metaphor, Grandma. This movie is about the primordial-"

"Soup, I know, I understand. But what kind of soup doesn't have knedlach in it, or at least lokshen? What is it, borscht? Lobster bisque we don't sell at Bloom's."

"I was talking about the primordial urges within us all," Rick explained calmly. "The innate yearning to eat the food our ancestors ate. That was in the narration. The lobster is like some prehistoric-"

"Primordial, okay," Grandma Ida cut him off. "It's a big red fish inside a shell. It looks like a bug."

Someone at the back of the room twisted the dimmer switch on the wall near the door, bringing the lights back up. Susie blinked but kept her face forward. She didn't have to see her relatives to know who was talking.

"I think it's brilliant," Aunt Martha declared. "The allegorical through-line was magnificently handled."

"I think it could work," Uncle Jay added with a little less certainty. "We find a slot on local-access cable, I hype the movie on the Web site, it'll generate interest. Bloom's is a patron of the arts. I like that."

"It was supposed to be an infomercial," Julia reminded him.

"So Rick approached the subject with some originality."

"And wit," Aunt Martha chimed in. "Astonishing wit."

"Bloom's got mentioned a lot in it. How many times does Bloom's get mentioned, Rick?" Uncle Jay asked.

Rick shrugged. "I never counted."

"A lot," Uncle Jay insisted. "We can broadcast this the way PBS broadcasts Masterpiece Theater, you know, with the British voice intoning that this broadcast was made possible by some oil company. Only we say, 'This film was made possible by the generous contributions of Bloom's.'"

"Masterpiece Theater," Martha echoed. "For once we agree, Jay. This movie is a masterpiece."

Susie wasn't sure what she herself thought of the movie, other than that it wandered, just as she herself had wandered through Maine and Boston and the Catskills, just as her thoughts had been wandering ever since Casey had asked her to move in with him. Just as her heart had been wandering from fear to love to regret.

"I thought it was good, but it could have used a little more action," came a voice from the back of the screening room-a voice that didn't belong to any of her relatives. Susie almost jumped out of her seat. And out of her skin.

What the hell was Casey doing here?

"You think so?" Rick asked.

"A little Jackie Chanstyle action," Casey said. "Maybe a kickboxing scene between Susie and the lobster."

Linus would have won any bout with Susie, hands down. Or claws down. Was that what Casey wanted? For Susie to get beaten to a pulp by a fake lobster?

She stood and spun around. Casey lounged against the wall at the back of the room, his hands in the pockets of his khaki cargo slacks and a clean white T-shirt reading Casey's Gourmet Breads covering his chest. His hair hung in loose blond waves around his face, and his gaze zeroed in on her. He smiled.

He had plenty to smile about. He was opening a new business, he had something good going with the Halle babe and he was probably spending his spare time teaching Linus all the tae kwon do moves he knew.

Who'd told him about this private screening, anyway? It was supposed to be for family only.

She glared at Rick, who seemed not the least bit startled by Casey's presence. A glance at Julia indicated that she also wasn't surprised by his invasion of a Bloom gathering. Grandma Ida squinted at Casey as though uncertain where she knew him from, Sondra scowled and Uncle Jay appeared too elated by his son's cinematic feat to care. Wendy was busy setting up disposable plastic champagne flutes on the lid of the cooler chest.

Susie turned back to Julia, who smiled apologetically and answered her unasked question. "He asked if he could come. I checked with Rick, and he said he thought it would be a good idea."

"A good idea?" Susie snapped. "This screening was for family-Elyse excepted. Casey doesn't belong here."

"I'm not so sure of that. Go talk to him." Julia reached over the back of Susie's seat and gave her a nudge. "He's so knowledgeable about kickboxing."

Susie flinched. She couldn't recall the last time her sister had teased her, but it had been a while. She'd been so moody lately Julia must have been afraid to push her too far.

Now Julia was pushing her literally. Another nudge, and Susie had to walk away from Julia just to escape her prodding fingers. Walking away from Julia meant walking toward Casey, but Susie didn't see any alternative.

At the rear of the room, Casey took her arm. She deftly wriggled free of his clasp but left the room with him. She felt her mother's glare following her. The possibility that her leaving with Casey would piss her mother off improved her spirits slightly.

She halted outside the door, but Casey kept walking, and Susie reluctantly continued behind him, even though she felt ridiculous trailing after him like a loyal dog. "Where are we going?" she asked tensely.

"I want to show you something."

"Maybe I don't want to see it."

"I think you do."

Damn it, she did. Just watching his graceful strides, observing the sexy contours of his butt and the confident swing of his arms, made her eager to see whatever he wanted to show her.

He reached the elevator and pressed the button. He had hands big enough to palm a basketball, big enough to cradle her hips. She loved his hands-hands that were undoubtedly bringing another woman great pleasure these days.

"Why are we doing this?" she asked.

The elevator arrived and Casey motioned with his chin for her to enter ahead of him. Once the doors slid shut, he lobbed back a question. "Why did you leave me that lobster?"

"Okay, so that was stupid of me." Perhaps a quick confession would put an end to this game.

No such luck. "Why did you do it? You're not a stupid person."

"I had no room for it in my apartment," she said, which was the truth. "Rick had no room for it in his apartment, either. My mother has room for it in her apartment, but it doesn't match her decor. And Grandma Ida would never allow it in her apartment, because it's trayf."

The elevator thudded to a stop on the ground floor. Casey took her elbow again, and she didn't shrug her arm loose this time. She felt that he was her gravity, and if he wasn't holding her she would spin away into the ozone.

"So you arrived at my door at midnight and dumped it on me?" He ushered her down the main corridor while he talked. "It didn't occur to you to leave it on the sidewalk? Someone would have picked it up if you had."

He was going to embarrass her until she spilled the truth. With a sigh, she said, "I wanted to see you. I'd had some insights while Rick and I were roaming around New England, making the movie, and I thought maybe I could share them with you. I didn't know you'd be hosting a party at that hour."

"It wasn't a party," he said, guiding her through the door and out onto the sidewalk. She blinked in the heavy afternoon light, and staggered slightly when he released her arm. He stepped to the curb and waved at every cab he saw until one pulled over. "Get in," he told Susie as he opened the door.

She did. She ought to have resisted, or suffered a twinge of apprehension. But this was turning out to be an interesting adventure, so she went with it. "Where are we going?" she asked.

"You'll see." He got in next to her, struggling to fit his lanky legs into the narrow space, then gave the driver an address on Avenue B.

His store, she guessed. Well, she'd wanted to check it out last night. Today the metal gate would be open and the place would be lit. Casey would rub her nose in the reality that he was about to ruin her old neighborhood by opening his new shop there. Its existence in the East Village would act as a constant reminder of everything she'd lost. She could have been married to the famous bread chef, but no, she'd turned him down because she'd wanted her freedom, and now he would be the toast of the town, and his bread would be the toasted of the town. He'd probably appear on the cover of Gotham magazine, with Halle hanging all over him. Joffe could write a story about his wonderful business triumph.

"The movie wasn't bad," he remarked as the cab headed down Broadway, dodging cars with the flair of a stunt driver on a slalom course. "I don't know how much good it'll do for Bloom's, but the allegory worked."

"What allegory?"

"Stone Soup. Bloom's Soup. You take nothing, add good food to it and wind up with something. You take a situation where people don't realize what they have, and you give them exactly what they have, and they realize what they have is actually valuable."

"You saw that in the movie?"

"It was all there," he said.

She pondered his analysis. Maybe it was all there. She just hadn't been searching for it. She'd been too busy thinking she appeared pale, or worrying that Linus was upstaging her-hell, she'd been upstaged by the collapsing cabin. She'd been upstaged by a potato field. Preoccupied by how well she was coming across, she'd forgotten to pay attention to the overall theme.

"I don't think my sister wanted an allegory."

"She can work it out with Rick. It's not your problem."

That much was true. Her problem was that Casey had abducted her and was dragging her downtown to his store. Her bigger problem was that sitting in the cab's rear seat with him turned her on, and he didn't love her anymore.

The cab dropped them off at Avenue B and Fourth. Casey paid while Susie stood on the corner, arms folded and gaze deliberately angled across the street so she wouldn't see the Casey's Gourmet Breads sign. Once the cab pulled back into the traffic flow, Casey clamped his hand over Susie's shoulder and propelled her along the sidewalk to his store. The sun glared off the front panes, making it impossible to see inside.

He unlocked the door and urged her in ahead of him. The place smelled like flour and dust and disinfectant, not a bad smell but not as good as it would smell once the place was filled with fresh loaves and rolls. She briefly took in the shelves, the display cases, the front counter and the industrial ovens in back, and then Casey rotated her to face Linus.

The six-foot lobster stood front and center, his claws outstretched, a chef's toque perched on his shell head, drooping slightly over one antenna, and a linen apron tied around his midsection. The apron's bib featured the same writing as Casey's T-shirt. "What do you think?" Casey asked.

She wasn't sure what she thought-other than that Linus looked kind of cute in a chef's toque and apron.

She shifted her gaze from the lobster to survey the store again. The cash register appeared old-Casey would need to replace it with an electronic one that could handle credit cards. The linoleum floor had been washed enough times to imply that whatever scuffs and stains remained embedded in its surface were permanent. The shelves were attractive, though-polished hardwood. Matching hardwood bins lined the front of the counter, beneath which was a glass showcase.

She turned back to Linus. God, he seemed perfect standing there in his baker's costume.

"This is good," she said, gesturing toward Linus. "He didn't really match your apartment's decor, either."

"You don't mind my using him here?"

"Why should I mind? I gave him to you. He's yours."

"He just seems...I don't know. At home here. Like he belongs."

Susie nodded. Linus looked the way she wanted to feel: at home here. Like she belonged.

She realized that Casey hadn't removed his hand from her shoulder. Instead, he tightened his grip and turned her to face him. "Look, Susie-"

"The other night..." Her words tumbled on top of his, and she silenced herself.

"The other night?..."

"No-you go first."

"No, you."

She sighed. "The other night, I went to your apartment because-well, like I said, I had some insights. Also, I had the van for the night, because Truck-a-Buck didn't open until 8:00 a.m. so I couldn't return it, and I couldn't find a parking space, so I figured, what the hell."

Casey nodded, as if this all made perfect sense.

"But I know you've gotten on with your life-as you should." Her voice wavered slightly and she swallowed. Being a grown-up entailed taking grown-up positions on things, making grown-up pronouncements, accepting grown-up conclusions. "I mean, opening your own business. Leaving Bloom's. Everything."

"Everything?"

"Don't make me say it," she snapped, then went ahead and said it. "You're seeing someone. I don't blame you. She's gorgeous."

Something flickered in his expression, but with only the afternoon sunlight slanting through the front windows to illuminate his face, Susie couldn't interpret it.

"All right," she continued bravely. "I don't want to be bitchy, but she's got the most awful laugh I've ever heard. Other than that-"

"She likes bad knock-knock jokes, too," Casey told her.

Was he going to give Susie a complete inventory of the woman's pluses and minuses? "It's your choice, Casey. You want bad knock-knock jokes in your life?"

"No." His hand relented on her shoulder, his fingers curving gently. "I don't want bad knock-knock jokes in my life. I don't even want good knock-knock jokes in my life."

"I suggest you take that up with her," Susie said, feeling enormously grown-up.

"There's nothing going on between Eva and me," he said. "LaShonna tried to set us up, but it didn't click. At least not for me."

"Because of the knock-knock jokes?"

"And because I didn't want to have to start wearing condoms again."

Susie jabbed him in the stomach. He recoiled slightly, but laughed. Evidently, her best poke felt like a tickle. In a kickboxing bout, Linus would win before the first round ended.

Susie didn't mind her lack of boxing potential. She was too delighted to learn that Casey hadn't slept with Halle. Or Eva, if that was her name. It hadn't clicked for him.

Hope gave her courage. "I love you, Casey," she said. "I don't want to get married-I mean, not yet. Marriage seems so...adult." She could be only so grown-up, after all. "But if that's what it takes, I'm willing to try."

"You're willing to try marriage? What does that mean? You'll give it a three-month run and then decide whether to renew?"

She poked him again. "Come on, Casey! I'm laying everything bare here, and you're giving me shit."

He pulled her close, so close she could no longer poke him. "I wish you would lay everything bare," he murmured before hitting her with one of his nuclear-powered kisses-his lips, his tongue, his arms closing tight around her, his body spreading its heat to her, his hands cradling her hips just the way she loved it. "But there's too much window glass," he groaned after breaking the kiss and dragging a ragged breath into his lungs. "Besides, my father'll be here soon. He's putting in some new outlets for me and making sure the wiring can handle updated equipment." He brushed a lighter kiss on her mouth, then pulled back and peered into her eyes, as if searching for her soul. "I love you, too, Susie. Let's not get married."

"Really?" Joy spiraled through her. "You don't want to marry me?"

"I tried that route and you disappeared."

"I don't want to disappear. I realized while I was away that I like home. I mean, home is important. It's essential. I wrote a long, wonderful poem about it. This is my home. This city. This neighborhood." And your arms are my home, she thought, but saying that would be way too corny.

"Yeah." Casey glanced toward the front windows, then turned back to her. "Speaking of this neighborhood, I'm thinking of finding a place to live around here. I'll have to be in the shop by 4:00 a.m. to get the ovens up and running. Commuting in from Queens would be a pain in the ass. You know of any apartments in the area?"

"Mine isn't big enough, plus Anna and Caitlin live there."

"I was thinking of my own place. Close to yours, so you could drop by without having to rent a van and not find a parking space, or whatever."