I burst into tears.

Colin looked at me for a moment, awkwardly rubbed my back for two seconds, then got up and went to the closet and put on his coat. "Miranda, you're clearly not over this guy, whoever he is, and to be honest, I've been there and done that with a woman before, so I'll just let myself out."

But I heard his boots thudding down the stairs and then the downstairs door slam.

Buzz! Buzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

Who was that? I'd just managed to drift off to sleep. I opened an eye and glanced at the bright red numbers on my digital alarm clock11:58 p.m. Who the h.e.l.l was at the door at midnight on a Sunday night? Maybe it was Colin. Maybe it was Gabriel. Maybe I was on drugs.

When I opened my bedroom door I heard singing. Off-key. Worse than a contestant Simon would rip to shreds on American Idol. Roxy was already by the window in the living room, a hand pressed over her mouth as she stared down toward the street.

"Roxy? What's wrong? Is someone trying to break in? I'll call the police"

"No, it's nothing like that," she said. "It's Robbie. My ex-fiance. Wow, that sounds weird."

"The ex-fiance part or the singing?" I asked.

"Both."

"Why is he singing?"

"I think he's attempting to serenade me," she said, staring down at the street.

I glanced out the window, and there was a guyquite good-looking as far as I could tell, with curly blond hair, both hands on his chest, well, on his navy-blue down jacketbelting out "Unchained Melody."

"Shut up, you lunatic!" screeched someone from a nearby window.

"I'm going to call the cops!" someone else shouted.

"Roxy! Let me up! I love you!" He strained his neck to look up four flights. "Roxy! Please!"

There were tears in her eyes. But she backed away and sat down on the sofa, her arms braced out on either side of her.

"Are you going to let him in?" I asked.

"I don't know what to say to him."

"You can't just let him suffer out there," Miranda said.

Her eyes filled with tears again. "If I'm not back in ten minutes, call nine-one-one."

As she grabbed her jacket and cloppety-clopped down the stairs in her boots, I watched the ex-fiance pace, then strain his neck to look up, then pace, and then finally drop down on the stoop, his hands on his knees, his body shaking. He was clearly crying. He jumped up suddenly, and there was Roxy. She sat down next to him and handed him a tissue.

I was trying very hard to identify with Roxy, to understand her, but all I could feel was Robbiebrokenhearted, dumped Robbiewho'd come all the way from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to the Upper East Side of Manhattan (an hour's drive or subway ride) to serenade her, to try just one more time to change her mind.

But just like Gabriel, Roxy wasn't going to change her mind. I could see it in everything she did, how happy the stupidest things made her. This morning I had caught her holding her apartment keys in her hand and smiling like an idiot. She wasn't going back to Robbie. Just like Gabriel wasn't coming back to me.

I peered down at Roxy and Robbie on the stoop. He was shaking his head; she was talking. Then he was talking and she was shaking her head. And then she put her hand on his shoulder and shook her head again, and he bolted.

I know just how you feel, guy.

Chapter seven.

Christopher Four people hated my guts: 1) My wife.

2) My mother-in-law.

3) My coworker Wanda Belle.

4) My coworker Lucy Miller-Masterson.

Numbers 1 and 2 hated me for being a disappointment. Numbers 3 and 4 hated me for being a threat. Talk about a dichotomy.

Recent example of how I was a disappointment to my wife and mother-in-law: Four months ago, my wife (holding Ava on her lap), my mother-in-law and I were sitting on hard-backed chairs in Ava's pediatrician's waiting room. I was staring at a Reading Is Fundamental poster while my wife and her mother argued over whether you were or weren't supposed to flatten a goose egg on a baby's forehead with a quarter. Apparently, in my mother-in-law's day, you were.

"We wouldn't even be having this stupid argument if your husband actually watched Ava while he was watching her!" my mother-in-law, Dina, had snapped. "And thanks to you," she added with a glare at me, "now she'll get sick from all the germs in this place!"

A few sets of waiting room eyes glanced from Ava's black-and-blue b.u.mp to me. Then there was the head-shaking and then the flipping of magazine pages and Jodie alternating between, "Who has a big, bad boo-boo on her forehead? That's right, you!" and "Christopher, how could you have been so careless!"

A good example of how I was a threat to my coworkers was occurring right here, right now, a Wednesday afternoon, in my boss's office. A huge corner office befitting the editor in chief of a small though successful publishing house, Edwin Futterman's lair might as well have been a rat hole for how big it felt at the moment. There were only two guest chairs in front of Futterman's desk and three of us waiting for him to get off the phone and to the meeting he'd called with his senior editors. Usually, Wanda Belle would lunge for one of the guest chairs, but today she held back for good reason. One of us was getting promoted today to executive editor. One of us would become managerbossto the other two. And if Wanda Belle wasn't The One, she didn't want to be caught stealing a chair from her new boss.

Wanda, as usual, was dressed to thrill. She was in her mid-thirties and almost beautiful. She was all sharp edges, from her cheekbones to her hips to her eyegla.s.ses. Her hair didn't move, either. She was blonds.e.xy white-blondbut her hair ended severely in two poke-you-in-the-eye points just above her shoulders. She wore tight Edwardian-style clothes all the time. Maybe it befitted the editrix of romance novels, which were her specialty. She liked tiny tight jackets with frilly shirts and long tight skirts and very high-heeled boots.

Lucy Miller-Masterson, on the other hand, was something of a mess, but she was naturally pretty and she really cared about her work. Wanda did, too, but in a different way; Wanda cared in a manner that served her, whereas Lucy cared about the books themselvesthe readers, the authors, the writers for hire, the covers, the marketing plan, the everything. She'd once said she envisioned her daughter as a potential buyer for every single book she worked on. If it wasn't good enough for her daughter (excluding the s.e.xual content, of course) it wasn't good enough. That was Lucy Miller-Masterson.

Lucy looked uncharacteristically pulled together todayas she had all weekas though she were going on a job interview and wanted Futterman to know it. Her expression at the moment was: I Will Kill You If You So Much As Take The Last Cup Of Coffee From The Awful Coffeemaker In The Kitchenette. G.o.d help us all if she wasn't the one Futterman promoted.

I hadn't seen Lucy look this okay since last year's company Christmas party. Lucy rarely dolled up, but for the party (her husband had come with her), she'd gone all out in a little dress and her hair was sleek instead of frizzy. Today Lucy wore a corporate beige suit. She looked like a vice president, right down to her hair, which was brushed instead of pinned back on top of her head with one of those giant plastic hair clips.

"Is there a problem, Christopher?" Lucy whispered to me with her I'm-going-to-kill-you miniglare.

"A problem?" I repeated.

"You were staring at the top of my head," she said.

"No problem. I was just thinking about something."

The three of us stood, our arms crossed over our chests, staring at the floor and out the window behind Futterman's balding head, while we waited for him to get off the phone.

"No, you listen to me!" he yelled, pointing in the air. "You tell him if he doesn't turn in the ma.n.u.script in exactly two weeks, he's in breach of contract and he'll pay us back every penny of the advance! I want that book on my desk by December fifteenth!" He slammed down the phone. "Idiot!" he muttered. Then he looked up at the three of us. "Ah, sit down, please."

None of us moved.

He glanced at his two chairs and sighed, then intercommed his admin to bring in another chair. He did this every time he called a staff meeting of his three senior editors, and after every meeting, he had the third chair removed since it upset the feng shui.

Ben, his admin, appeared with the chair. The moment it touched the ground, Wanda and Lucy rushed to sit on the outside chairs. Which made me the monkey in the middle.

Futterman looked us over. "As you know, I've had a very difficult decision to make. One of you has been promoted to executive editor, and the other two will report to the executive editor, who will report to me. This will streamline the editorial process here at Bold. You are all strong candidateshowever, only one of you can be selected. That person is"

His phone rang. Lucy looked like she was going to explode. Wanda's neck was pulsing. Futterman spent another five minutes yelling into the phone at the production manager while the three of us visibly sweated. Finally he hung up.

"Where was I?"

"That person is," Wanda supplied.

"Ah," Futterman said, clasping his hands on the desk and eyeing us. "That person is Christopher."

Yes!

You could feel the tension, the glares, the what-the-f.u.c.k, the you've-got-to-be-kidding-me, the I-should-have-gotten-it emanating from either side of me.

Wanda turned to me first. "Congratulations. Well, I'd better get back to work, boss!" I could almost see the steam coming out of her ears.

Lucy stood. "Yes, congratulations, Christopher." She gnawed her lip, glanced at Futterman and then fled.

"They'll get used to it," Futterman told me.

The first thing I did when I left Futterman's office was call Jodie.

"Let me guess," she barked into my ear before I could say a word. "You can't pick up Ava on Friday night because you're meeting a friend for drinks. Or you have a date. Or you have to work late and you want to know if you can just pick her up Sat.u.r.day morning. Well you can't. Eye-in and I have tickets to a matinee and we're meeting friends for brunch beforehand"

A date? Was she kidding?

"Jodie, I called because I have some good news," I interrupted, my parade a little wet.

"And?"

And this woman is not your wife anymore. Why did you call her? Why was she the first person you called?

I swiveled around in my chair and stared out at the overcast gray day. "And I got promoted," I said, my pride returning. "To executive editor. Big raise. Twenty K," I whispered.

"Whoo-hoo, so now you're up to eighty a year," she saidin that tone. "Christopher, Eye-in's Christmas bonus was ninety thousand."

Well whoo-f.u.c.king-hoo for him!

"I just wanted you to know that I plan to increase Ava's child support payments." And that you can come back now. See, I am ambitious. I can make a "decent living." I can be a husband and a father...

"Christopher, don't be ridiculous. We don't need your money. Rent a nicer apartment."

Why had I called her? Why? What had possessed me?

I swiveled back around. "I'll be over at six-thirty on Friday to pick up Ava. And I'm increasing her child support whether you like it or not!" I added before hanging up. Then I picked up the receiver and slammed it down three times.

When I came up for air, Lucy and Miranda were both standing in front of my office, staring at me. Oh s.h.i.t. Would I ever learn to close the door before I called Jodie? When had she and I ever gotten through a phone conversation without making me see red?

"I guess when your wife is living with another man, she shouldn't be the first person you call with your good news," I said. Ba-dum-pa!

They looked at each other in that way people did when they felt bad for you but had no idea what to say.

"Lesson learned and all that," I added like an idiot. I glanced at the cover mechanicals in Miranda's hand. "Need me to sign off on those?"

Miranda nodded.

"These too," Lucy said as they dropped off their mechanicals into my in-box. She looked closely at me for a moment. "I guess I should let you know that I hired an a.s.sistant editor. She starts Monday. Her name's Roxy. Futterman approved the hire."

"Great," I said.

Lucy fidgeted for a second. "Congrats on the promotion, Christopher."

"Yes," Wanda added, poking her face in my office door. "A hearty congrats."

She and Lucy eyed each other with upped chins. This was going to be trouble.

I smiled and willed my phone to ring. It actually did! And everyone dispersed. Of course the call was from a disgruntled author complaining about his low print run; Futterman transferred it to me "now that you're the executive editor."

A few minutes later, when I headed into the kitchenette for a bracing cup of coffee, I heard my name.

"He got it because he's a man," Wanda was whispering.

"Well, at least we won't be sitting in Futterman's office ten times a day, listening to him think out loud," came Lucy's voice.

I got the promotion because I've been working my a.s.s off for the past five years. And because for the past two months, when Futterman was watching our every move, I was here every night till nine and worked every non-Ava weekend, too.

Who knew the best way to earn a promotion was to have your wife leave you with nothing to do but either cry like a weenie or work really, really hard?

On Friday night, when I arrived back home with Ava fast asleep in her stroller, the pom-pom of her tiny pink wool hat a pillow against her temple, Ginger opened her apartment door. She wore a bathrobe. Slinky and red and loosely tied.

"Hi," she whispered. "The little darling's asleep?"

I nodded. "I'd better get her inside and transferred to her crib before she wakes up."

She deflated a bit. "Do you have any bath oil? I was just about to take a hot bubble bath when I realized I don't have any bubble bath. I thought I might borrow some of Ava's. Even bubblegum flavored will do." She smiled and leaned forward a bit, revealing her always-s.e.xy cleavage and a long thigh. I could just make out a sc.r.a.p of lace.

What I wouldn't give for a couple of hours in bed with Ginger. Even a half hour. I could celebrate my promotion, forget the Queen of Emasculation, and lose myself in Ginger's hot body. Ava was sleeping. And she'd sleep till morning, most likely.

Ginger was mine for the taking.

I slapped my forehead. "Sorry, but I'm all out. Last weekend, when I went to give Ava a bath, I was all out of bubble bath and had to use Irish Spring and I forgot to buy more and" Could I ramble on any more?

"Well, I could run to" she began.

"And Ava's got a little bit of a fever," I added fast, "so I'd better just get her inside and into bed." I smiled and unlocked my door as fast as I could and got myself on the other side. I knew Ginger was still standing there, thinking, trying to come up with a reason to knock gently. After a minute, I finally heard her door close.