"You think?"

"The guy adored you," Andy said. "That wasn't an act."

"But how can he not even want to talk to me now? How can it just be so completely..." I sliced one hand through the air to indicate a violent and absolute ending.

Andy sighed. "For some guys, it's just like that."

"For you?" I asked.

He paused, then nodded. "For me, when it was over, it was always over."

Over his shoulder, I could see our waiter approaching... our waiter, plus two other waiters, trailed by an anxious-looking dark-haired man with an ap.r.o.n tied over his suit. The manager, I presumed. Which could only mean the one thing that Andy dreaded most- namely, someone had figured out who he was.

"Monsieur!" the man in the suit began, as our waiter set down our entrees, another one poured us fresh water, and a third waiter carefully decrumbed our not-very-crumby table. "Is everything to your liking?"

"Just fine," said Andy weakly, as Waiter One set fresh silverware beside our plates, Waiter Two whisked fresh bread and b.u.t.ter to the center of the table, and Waiter Three hustled over with a lit candle.

"Please let us know if there's anything else we can bring you. Anything!" the manager fervently concluded.

"I will," Andy said, as the three waiters lined up and stared at us, looking anxious and vaguely resentful, before finally retreating to the corners of the restaurant where they watched our every mouthful.

I didn't even care. "I just think that I made a mistake," I said. "Did you ever break up with someone and think you made a mistake?"

Andy shook his head, wordlessly offering me a bite of his crepe.

"What should I do?"

He munched, looking thoughtful. "I don't know if these are actual wild mushrooms. They taste kind of domestic to me."

"You're changing the subject," I grumbled. "You're... oh, G.o.d. I'm boring, aren't I?"

"Never," said Andy loyally.

"No, I am. I've turned into one of those horrible people that just talks about their ex-boyfriend all the time, until n.o.body can stand to be around them and they don't have any friends..."

"Cannie..."

"... and they start drinking alone, and talking to their pets, which I do anyway... oh, G.o.d," I said, only half-faking a collapse into the bread dish. "This is a disaster."

The manager hurried over. "Madame!" he cried. "Is everything all right?"

I straightened myself up, flicking bits of bread from my sweater. "Just fine," I said. He bustled off, and I turned back to Andy.

"When did I become a madame?" I asked mournfully. "I swear, the last time I was at a French restaurant they called me Mademoiselle."

"Cheer up," said Andy, handing me the last of the pate. "You're going to find someone much better than Bruce, and he won't be a vegetarian, and you'll be happy, and I'll be happy, and everything's going to be fine."

EIGHT.

I tried. Really, I did. But I found myself so preoccupied with Bruce misery that it was hard to get anything done at work. This is what I considered as I sat on an Amtrak Metroliner bound for New York and Maxi Ryder, famously ringletted and frequently dumped costar of last year's Oscar-nominated romantic drama, Trembling, in which she'd played a brilliant brain surgeon who eventually succ.u.mbs to Parkinson's disease.

Maxi Ryder was British, twenty-seven or twenty-nine, depending on which magazines you believed, and had been known, early in her career, as something of an ugly duckling until, through the miracle of rigorous diet, Pilates, and the Zone (plus, it was whispered, some discreet plastic surgery), she'd managed to transform herself into a size-two swan. In fact, she'd been a size two to start off with, and a beauty to boot, but had gained twenty pounds for her breakthrough role in a foreign film called Advanced Placement, playing a shy Scottish schoolgirl who has a torrid affair with her headmistress. By the time that film had reached the States, she'd shed the twenty pounds, dyed her hair auburn, ditched her British manager, hooked up with the hottest agency in Hollywood, founded the inevitable production company (Maxi'd Out, she'd called it), and been featured in a Vanity Fair spread of homes of the stars, wearing only a black feather boa, curled seductively beneath the headline "Maxi's Pad." Maxi, in other words, had arrived.

But for all her talent and her beauty, Maxi Ryder kept getting dumped, in the most public ways you could think of.

She'd done the typical starlet-in-her-twenties thing, popularized by Julia Roberts and practiced by the generation that followed, which was to fall in love with her costars. But while Julia would have them yanking her toward the altar, poor Maxi just got her heart broken, again and again and again. And it didn't happen quietly, either. The a.s.sistant director she'd fallen for on Advanced Placement showed up at the Golden Globes sucking face with one of the girls from Baywatch. Her costar on Trembling- the one with whom she'd played a half-dozen torrid love scenes, where the chemistry between them was so palpable it practically soaked your popcorn- had broken the news to her, and the rest of the world at the same time, during a Barbara Walters' "Ten Most Fascinating People" interview. And the nineteen-year-old rock star she'd picked up on the rebound had gotten married in Vegas two weeks after they met to a woman who was not Maxi.

"It's a wonder she's doing any press at all," Roberto, the publicist at Midnight Oil, had told me the week before. Midnight Oil was a very small, somewhat obscure New York PR firm- leagues below the big agencies that Maxi'd typically deal with. But between Advanced Placement and Trembling, she'd spent six weeks in Israel making a tiny little movie, a period piece about a kibbutz during the Seven Day War... and tiny little movies generally had small-time publicity agencies, which was where Roberto came in.

Seven Day Soldier would probably never even have made it to American art houses, had it not been for the Oscar nomination Maxi had gotten for Trembling. And Maxi would probably never have done any publicity for the movie, except she'd signed on to it before she'd made it big, which meant she'd agreed to be paid bupkes, and to publicize the film "in any way the producers deem appropriate."

So, needless to say, the producers saw a chance to at least have an enormous opening weekend based on the strength of Maxi buzz. They'd flown her in from a shoot in Australia, set her up in the penthouse of the Regency on the Upper East Side, and invited in what Roberto referred to as "a select group of reporters" to enjoy twenty-minute audiences with her. And Roberto, bless his loyal heart, had called me first.

"Are you interested?" he'd asked.

Of course I was, and Betsy was thrilled in the way that editors usually are when plummy scoops fall into their laps, even though Gabby grumbled about one-hit wonders and flashes in the pan.

I was happy. Roberto was happy. Then Maxi's personal publicist got in on the act.

There I was, moping at my desk, counting the days since Bruce and I had spoken (ten), the length in minutes of the conversation (four), and contemplating making an appointment with a numerologist to figure out if the future held anything good for us, when the phone rang.

"This is April from NGH," rapped the voice on the other end. "We understand you're interested in speaking with Maxi Ryder?"

Interested? "I'm interviewing her Sat.u.r.day at ten in the morning," I told April. "Roberto from Midnight Oil set it up."

"Yes. Well. We have a few questions before we sign off."

"Who are you again?" I asked.

"April. From NGH." NGH was one of the hugest and most notorious public relations firms in Hollywood. They were the people you called if you were famous, under forty, found yourself in the midst of some kind of unsavory and/or illegal mess and wanted to keep all but the most fawning and tractable press far, far away. Robert Downey hired NGH after he pa.s.sed out in someone else's bedroom in a heroin haze. Courtney Love had NGH redo her image after she'd redone her nose, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and her fashion, and they smoothed her transition from foul-mouthed grunge G.o.ddess to couture-clad sylph. At the Examiner, we called them Not Gonna Happen... as in, that interview you were hoping for, that profile you wanted to write? Not Gonna Happen. Now, evidently, Maxi Ryder had enlisted their a.s.sistance as well.

"We would like your a.s.surance," April from NGH began, "that this interview will focus exclusively on Maxi's work."

"Her work?"

"Her roles," said April. "Her acting. Not her personal life."

"She's a celebrity," I said mildly. Or at least I thought it came out that way. "I consider that her work. Being a famous person."

April's voice could have frozen hot fudge. "Her work is acting," she said. "Any attention that she gets is only because of that work."

Normally I would have let it drop- just gritted my teeth and grinned and agreed to whatever ridiculous conditions they wanted to impose. But I hadn't slept the night before, and this April was pushing all the wrong b.u.t.tons. "Oh, come on!" I said. "Every time I open People magazine I see her in a slit skirt and big, dark, don't-look-at-me gla.s.ses. And you're telling me she just wants to be known as an actor?"

I'd hope that April would take my remarks in the half-joking manner I'd intended them. But I wasn't sensing a thaw.

"You cannot ask her about her love life," April said sternly.

I sighed. "Fine," I said. "Terrific. Whatever. We'll talk about the movie."

"So you're agreeing to the conditions?"

"Yes. I'm agreeing. No love life. No skirts. No nothing."

"Then I'll see what I can do."

"I told you, Roberto already set up the interview!"

But I was talking to a dead line.

Two weeks later, when I finally left for the interview, it was a gray, drizzly Sat.u.r.day morning in late November, the kind of day where it looks like everyone with means and money has fled the city and gone to the Bahamas, or their country cottage in the Poconos, and the streets are populated with the people they'd left behind: pockmarked delivery boys, black girls with braids, scruffy-looking dreadlocked white kids on bikes. Secretaries. j.a.panese tourists. A guy with a wart on his chin with two hairs sprouting from it, long, curly hairs that reached almost to his chest. He smiled and stroked them as I walked by. My lucky day.

I spent the twenty-block walk uptown trying not to think of Bruce and trying not to let my hair get too wet. The lobby of the Regency was huge, marble, blessedly quiet and mirror-lined, which let me appreciate, from three different angles, the zit that had sprouted on my forehead.

I was early, so I decided to loiter. The hotel gift shop boasted the typical a.s.sortment of overpriced bathrobes, $5 toothbrushes, and magazines in many languages, one of which happened to be the November Moxie. I grabbed it and flipped to Bruce's column. "Going Down," I read. "One Man's Oral Adventures." Hah! "Oral adventures" had not been Bruce's forte. He had a little problem with excessive saliva. In a moment of margarita-soaked weakness I'd once referred to him as "the human bidet." It had been that bad at the beginning. Of course, there was no way he'd mention that, I thought smugly, any more than he'd mention that I'd been the only girl he'd ever attempted that particular maneuver upon. And I flipped back to his column. "I once overheard my girlfriend refer to me as the human bidet," read the pull-quote. He'd heard that? My face flamed.

"Miss? Are you planning to purchase that?" asked the woman behind the counter. So I did, with a pack of Juicy Fruit gum and a $4 bottle of water. Then I parked myself on one of the plush couches in the icy-cool lobby and began: Going Down When I was fifteen and a virgin, when I wore braces and the tighty whities my mother bought me, my friends and I used to laugh ourselves sick over a Sam Kinison routine.

"Women!" he'd rant, tossing his hair over his shoulder, stalking the stage like a small, rotund, beret-wearing trapped animal. "Tell us what you want! Why," he'd say, and drop to one knee, beseeching, "why is it so HARD to say YES, right THERE, that's GOOD, or NO, not THAT. TELL US WHAT YOU WANT!" he'd shriek, as the audience erupted, "WE'LL DO IT!"

We laughed without knowing precisely what made this so hysterical. What could be so hard? we wondered. s.e.x, insofar as we'd experienced it, did not involve much mystery. Lather, rinse, repeat. That was our repertoire. No fuss, no muss, and certainly no confusion.

When C. parted her legs and then parted herself with her fingertips...

Oh... my... G.o.d, I thought. It was as if he'd shoved a mirror between my legs and broadcasted the image to the whole world. I swallowed hard and kept reading.

... I felt a sudden and complete sympathy with every man who'd ever pumped his fist to Kinison's lament. It was like looking at a face with no features, was the best thing I could think. Hair and belly and hands above, creamy thighs to the left and the right, but in front of me, a mystery, curves and tucks and protrusions that bore, it seemed, little resemblance to the air-brushed p.o.r.nography I'd seen since I was fifteen. Or maybe it was just the proximity. Or maybe it was just my nerves. Being confronted with a mystery is a scary thing.

"Tell me what you want," I whispered to her, and I remember how far away her head seemed at that moment. "Tell me what you want and I'll do it." But then I realized that by telling me what she wanted, she'd be as much as admitting that... well, that she knew what she wanted. That someone else had stared into this strange, unknowable heart, had learned the geography, had unfurled her secrets. And even though I knew she'd had other lovers, that seemed somehow different, more intimate. She'd let someone else see her here, like this. And I, being male and a former Sam Kinison listener to boot, resolved to bring her to paradise, to make her mewl like a sated kitty, to obliterate every trace of memory of the He Who'd Gone Before.

Strange unknowable heart, I snorted. He Who'd Gone Before. Somebody get me a shovel!

And she tried, and I tried, too. She demonstrated with her fingertips, with words, with gentle pressure and gasps and sighs. And I tried, too. But a tongue isn't like a finger. My goatee drove her crazy, in precisely the opposite of the way she wanted to be driven crazy. And when I heard her on the phone once refer to me as the Human Bidet, well, it seemed easier to rely on the things I knew I could do better.

Do any of us know what we're doing? Does any man? I ask my friends, and at first they all guffaw and swear they have to sc.r.a.pe their women off the ceiling. I buy them beer and keep their gla.s.ses full, and in a few hours I have my more perfect truth: We're all clueless. Every single one of us.

"She says she's coming," says Eric mournfully. "But I dunno, man..."

"It isn't obvious," says George. "How are we supposed to know?"

How, indeed? We're men. We need reliability, we need hard (or even liquid) evidence, we need diagrams and how-to guides, we need the mystery explicated.

And when I close my eyes I can see her, still, as she lay that first time, furled tight like the wings of a tiny bird, seash.e.l.l pink, tasting like the rich ocean water, full of tiny lives, things I'll never see, let alone understand. I wish I could. I wish I had.

"Okay, Jacques Cousteau," I muttered, and struggled to my feet. When he closed his eyes he could still see me, he'd written. Well, what did that mean? And when had he written it? And if he still missed me, then why wasn't he calling? Maybe, I thought, there was hope after all. Maybe I'd call him later. Maybe we still had a chance.

I took the elevator up to the hospitality suite on the twentieth floor, where a variety of young, larva-pale publicists in variations on black stretch pants, black bodysuits, and black boots sat on couches and smoked.

"I'm Cannie Shapiro from the Philadelphia Examiner," I said, to the one sitting beneath a life-size cardboard cutout of Maxi Ryder in battle fatigues, brandishing an Uzi.

Larva Girl paged languidly through some pages full of names.

"I don't see you," she said.

Great. "Is Roberto here?"

"He stepped out for a minute," she said, flip-flopping one hand toward the door.

"Did he say when he'd be back?"

She shrugged, apparently having exhausted her vocabulary.

I peered at the pages, trying to read upside-down. There was my name: Candace Shapiro. And there was a thick black line through it. "NGH" read the note in the margin.

Just then Roberto hustled in.

"Cannie," he said, "what are you doing here?"

"You tell me," I said, trying for a smile. "Last I heard I was interviewing Maxi Ryder."

"Oh, G.o.d," he said. "n.o.body called you?"

"About what?"

"Maxi decided to, um, scale way back on the print interviews. She's only doing the Times. And USA Today."

"Well, n.o.body told me." I shrugged. "I'm here. Betsy's expecting a story."

"Cannie, I'm so sorry..."

Don't be sorry, you idiot, I was thinking. Do something!

"... but there's nothing I can do."

I gave him my best smile. My most charming smile, which I hoped was underscored with my I-work-for-a-large-important-newspaper steel. "Roberto," I said, "I was planning to talk to her. We saved the s.p.a.ce. We're counting on the story. n.o.body called me... and I schlepped all the way up here on a Sat.u.r.day, which is my day off..."

Roberto started wringing his hands.

"... and I would really, really appreciate it if we could maybe just get even fifteen minutes with her."

Now Roberto was wringing his hands and biting his lip at the same time, plus shifting from foot to foot. Bad signs all.

"Listen," I said softly, leaning toward him, "I watched every single one of her movies, even the direct-to-video ones. I'm, like, the complete Maxi expert. Isn't there anything we can do?" I saw him start to waver, when the cell phone on his belt shrilled.