No news flash here: My sister wasn't a screener. If the guy was single and under fortyand on his way to becoming a doctorthat was all she needed to know.

"Even a seemingly bad date isn't a waste of time," she'd said after the last fix-up ended with the guy getting back together with his ex-girlfriend in the middle of our date.

I wasn't making this up. Joea normal name!my depressed date, had been pining for his ex. At least we had something in common. Suddenly there his ex was, by fate or stalking, I wasn't sure. A few sobs later, they were embracing at the bar, and then apologizing to their respective datesmyself and a tall, confused-looking guybefore leaving the restaurant hand in hand. When I told Lucy this, she chastised me for not going over to the confused guy's table and introducing myself.

"He was obviously single!" Lucy said. "You could have just sat down, had the waiter cancel her order and bring yours over instead."

Deep, deep sigh. This was what my life had come to. Was I furious that Joe, whom I'd sort of liked in a platonic way, had left me before our entrees had even arrived? Was I mortified? Completely and utterly dejected about dating? Au contraire. I was thrilled. Because if it could happen to good old Joe, it could happen to me. I could be, say, having brunch with a doctor-to-be named Phineas, listening to a plot synopsis of Around The World In Eighty Days, awaiting my country omelet, when my own ex-boyfriend, Gabriel Anders, could come walking in alone or on a date, take one look at me, radiant at a corner table in my borrowed cream cashmere sweater and brown suede jeans, my long and wildly curly blond hair looking particularly Pre-Raphaelite instead of a frizzy mess, and yadda, yadda, yadda, we're leaving together, hand in hand, lip on lip. Miranders!

In the midst of this fantasy, I checked in on Phineas to see if I was being rude yet by tuning him out and dreaming of another guy. Nope. He was off Jules and on to the Bible.

As his mouth moved this way and that for forkfuls of his omelet and to drone on, I fantasized that Phineas was Gabriel. Mmm...instead of Phineas sitting across from me and waxing boring about diseases of the small intestines (something called Crohn's disease ran in his family), Gabriel was sitting there, waxing mushy about how much he'd missed me, how much he wanted me back...

"You have to stop thinking about him," Lucy had said numerous times. "Every time he comes to mind, think of your toilet bowl after you've used it."

That was easy for Lucy to say. Lucy, who'd gotten married twelve years ago when she was twenty-two. Larry Masterson had been Lucy's first boyfriend. First everything. They'd been college sweethearts. That's how much Lucy Miller-Masterson didn't know about moving on.

Anyway, most guys I dated were only too happy to talk about their ex-girlfriends or ex-wives, especially with a little encouragement. By the end of most of my dates, the guys were generally close to tears, and I'd had a great time.

"Stop talking about Gabriel on your dates!" Lucy had yelled. "And stop asking them about their exes!" she'd demanded the last time a guy reported in that he'd left our date feeling vaguely suicidal. "Talk about books. That's a good neutral subject that you know a lot about."

"So, Phineas," I said, between bites of omelet. "I don't know much about small intestines, but we definitely share a love of books, despite the Jules Verne thing. I'm an editor. I'm sure Lucy mentioned that."

"Aren't you just an a.s.sistant?" he asked, chomping on a slab of bacon.

"Yeah, so?"

"And you work for the romance novels editor?" he added.

I repeat: Yeah, so?

"So now's the time to make a move," he barreled on. "You don't want to get pegged as a romance novel editor. Can't you get an interview at Random House orwhat was the name of the publishing house that Jackie Ona.s.sis worked for?"

"Doubleday," I said. "And news flashthey publish romance novels too."

He didn't look convincedor sorry. "Um, a little defensive? Anyway, you don't have to work on them. You could work for the editor of literary fiction. I'm sure Jackie Ona.s.sis wasn't editing cheesy bodice rippers."

Jerk face! "I like romance novels. A lot," I said through gritted teeth.

He wrinkled his too-small nose. "Oh come on. How could you? I mean, you went to college."

Did I have permission to get up and leave? Who was this snot bag?

So did I say, You know what, Phin? You're a pompous, obnoxious sn.o.b, and I don't want to spend another second in your dreadful company? Or did I press my hand to my forehead and complain about a terrible headache?

The headache. Under normal circ.u.mstances I'd tell him off, but given how Lucy looked this morning, I didn't want to add to her headache. And trust me, Larry loved reporting every bit of my bad behavior from previous dates to Lucy. The only reason he continued to set me up was because Lucy told him it would keep me too busy to hang around their apartment and drink all his precious Diet c.o.ke.

And, right now I hated romance novels because they spanned a weekend yet ended with the hero proposing marriage to the heroine, whereas after an entire year of a relationship with the guy of my dreams, there was only an it's-not-you, it's-me speech. A problem, considering I reported to Wanda Belle, senior editor of Romance. Occasionally Wanda handled other types of books, an unauthorized celebrity biography, or a disaster novel about an avalanche. But mostly, it was all romance, all the time.

Lucy got me the interview at Bold Books. (Unfortunately, my life not going according to plan mattered to Lucy.) That was four years ago. FOUR YEARS AGO. And I was still Wanda Belle's editorial a.s.sistant. I was considered a great a.s.sistant because I was fast and thorough and had absolutely no ambition, which meant I never bothered her about a promotion to a.s.sistant editor. I just didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.

What I did know was that one day Gabriel would come back to me, and I'd wear my dry-cleaned gown. What was that old poem about setting something free and if it came back to you it was yours? Although I technically hadn't set Gabriel free. And there was that last part about if it never came back to you, then it never was yours in the first place, or something incredibly negative and pessimistic like that. Ugh. Bad example.

Anyway, Gabriel Anders wasn't going to magically appear in this restaurant and carry me off in his arms, away from Phin Or maybe he was! Because there he was! Gabriel. In the flesh. Standing not five feet away from me, being led to his table by the hostess!

There was a woman trailing after him. Shoulder-length, straight, light blond hair. Vivid blue eyes. Tall and willowy. She looked like a cross between Paris Hilton and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. She dressed like Paris.

Because I was staring at him, he looked over and his eyes popped, then he sat down and held the menu in front of his face. Paris, clearly clueless to the presence of Gabriel's ex-girlfriend not thirty feet away, yanked the menu away with a smile and then laid a hot kiss on him. I could see him turning slightly red. He eyed me for a quick second, then the menu went back up again, only to be pulled down once more as Paris, clearly clued in, glared at me.

I looked away fast, pretending great absorption in Phineas's explanation of the differences between major pain relievers.

Gabriel's preparing to come over and tell me he can't live without me. Really. Any minute now.

I wasn't that big of an idiot. And I didn't want to cry in front of Phineas, who was still debating the painkilling effects of acetaminophen versus ibuprofen. I excused myself to the bathroom so I could burst into I-have-to-get-over-him tears in private.

So much for private. The restroom was a two-staller and both were occupied. I stood in front of the huge mirror above the sink, willing my reflection not to lose it. My eyes were glistening and my lower lip was trembly. The restroom door opened and I told myself to pull it together.

It was Gabriel's date. She planted herself next to me and slicked on some raisin-red lipstick.

"Stalking is against the law," she said, not even eyeing me in the mirror.

Huh? "Excuse me?" I asked. "I was in here first."

She blotted her lips, then turned to face me. "Listen to me closely. I can have you arrested for thisand trust me, I will. My cousin is a Manhattan A.D.A. You've sent your letters and cards, you've made your calls, you've accidentally b.u.mped into Gabriel a few too many times for the pathetic-meter, and now you're tracking down where he's having brunch with his girlfriend? Enough is enough."

Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

"For your information, I'm on a date," I said, so mortified I was surprised I could even speak. "This happens to be my favorite restaurant." So there!

She turned back to the mirror and tucked a piece of her perfect hair behind her ear. "Whatever. Just keep on moving on, sweetie."

b.i.t.c.h!.

I grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser on the wall and dabbed under my eyes, willing tears. "I probably shouldn't tell you this," I said, sniffing. "Gabriel will kill me." I shook my head and threw the crumpled paper towel away. "No. Just forget it. You're rightI need to move on." I sniffled again for good measure, then reached for the doork.n.o.b. If she was stupid enough to take the bait, she deserved what was coming.

She grabbed my arm. "What. Just tell me."

Bingo. I let go of the doork.n.o.b, sniffled again and bit my lip. "It's just that it's really hard to move on when Gabriel calls in the middle of the night and tells me he misses me and then comes over. My friends tell me I shouldn't keep sleeping with him while we're broken up, that it's just a booty call, but"

Ah, the look on her face was just delightful. There was really no need to go on.

She stalked off to her table; I headed back to Phineas. At Gabriel and Paris's table, there was a slight scene. A commotion. She threw her napkin at him, then ran away. Gabriel looked over at me, then shook his head and chased after her.

Now I really did have a headache.

Chapter three.

Christopher "Waaah! Waah-waaaah! Waaaaaah!"

Was that a short cry? Or a long cry? A my-foot-is-stuck-in-the-slats-of-the-crib cry? Or a my-diaper-weighs-five-pounds-come-change-me-now cry?

On the way to Ava's bedroom, which was really a converted walk-in closet, I consulted The Modern Dad's Handbook. Chapter Two, "Learn Cry Language," was bookmarked, as was Chapter Four, "Diaper That Tush Like a Mom." I was already getting better at being a weekend father. Last weekend, I'd raced into Ava's closet whenever she so much as peeped, holding The Modern Dad's Handbook with one hand and Ava with the other. This afternoon, I walked, flipped to the right dog-eared chapter, determined her cry to be a short one, and knew the possible cause before I even got to Ava's crib.

A short cry generally means your baby wants your attention. Time to wake up from nap or time to eat or time to change my diaper, buddy!

I checked my watch. Ava had napped for an hour and a half, which according to Ava's Checklist, a five-page, single-s.p.a.ced detailing of all things Ava, auth.o.r.ed by her mother, was typical. The last item I checked off was: 12 p.m.: Naptime. Change Ava's diaper, dress her in footsie pajamas, put her down in crib. Kiss her forehead, say "night-night, Ava, Daddy loves you," then blow kiss, smile, and slowly retreat backward, shushing the entire time, and leave door slightly ajar.

Note: Please do not deviate from Ava's schedule, as it will upset her routine.

My wife Okay, hold on there. I had to stop calling her that. Not that Jodie wasn't my wife, technically. But to think of her as my wife when she was living an hour and a half away in her boyfriend's four-bedroom brick Colonial, a dream of hers for as long as I can remember (the house, not the boyfriend), was just plain f.u.c.kING STUPID.

Addendum to Checklist: Please do not curse in Ava's presence. I don't care if you drop a brick on your big toenot one expletive.

The addendum was an entire page, double-sided. I couldn't curse, drink an alcoholic beverage, including a single beer, smoke (not that I did), use free weights within one hundred feet of Ava, boil water for any purpose, put Ava in her bath without testing the water temperature with my wrist, use any product other than her approved list on page three...

Ava was standing up in her crib, holding up her arms. She stopped waah-ing the moment she saw me.

"Hi, sweetsies, Daddy's here."

"Da," she said. "Da."

I hadn't known I had magical powers until Ava was born. I couldn't make my wife happy, but I could make Ava stop crying. It was my thing. When Jodie and I were still living together, I'd come home from work and hear Ava shrieking the moment I stepped out of the elevator onto our floor. In our apartment, I'd find Jodie, exasperated, blowing strands of hair out of her eyes, bouncing a crying Ava in her arms with a frustrated, tearful, "She won't stop crying!"

And then I'd take Ava, cradling her carefully in my arms, and I'd gently rub her belly while shushing her with a "Daddy's here." She'd peer at me, curious, her changing blueish-grayish-almost-hazelish almond eyes alert as she studied my face. She'd just lie there, staring up at me, and I'd press a finger to her lips, her forehead, then raise her up to nuzzle her belly. Jodie, relieved yet resentful, would disappear into the bedroom, but not before muttering, "Well at least you do something around here."

Buzz!

That wasn't a strange noise of Ava's requiring The Checklist or The Modern Dad's Handbook. That was the doorbell. Which meant it was Ginger. Which meant I had to pretend I wasn't home. She'd wait a few seconds for me to respond, and when I didn't, she'd press her ear against the door, strain to listen, then gnaw her lip and head back down the hall to her apartment, 3C.

Ginger liked me. That way. And though she was very attractive, her vocabulary stank. That probably sounded judgmental, but I wasn't a jerk (though Jodie would snort at that); I was an editor. Words meant something to me, simple words, big words, all words. In the same brief conversation, I'd used the words emasculating (in an incoherent mumble about why my marriage broke up) and imbibing (when Ginger caught me staggering out of the elevator the night I moved in. I wasn't a lush; I'd just needed to obliterate all thought that first night of living without my wife and my child), and Ginger hadn't known what either word meant.

Then again, maybe that was a good thing. Maybe life with Ginger wouldn't be complicated, as it had been with Jodie from the start. Ha. Who was I kidding? All women are complicated. My first crush in first grade, a six-year-old redhead named Julia, was complicated. And a woman with a less complicated vocabulary could list the ways you were a jerk in much faster and simpler terms than a Scrabble champ.

Ginger's name wasn't really Ginger; it was Gertie, short for Gertrude. She'd been named after her maternal grandmother. I knew all this because Ginger tended to open her door when she heard me opening mine, and she'd strike up all kinds of conversations while taking out her (sometimes empty) little wicker trash can to the garbage chute, or while running out for milk "unless you happen to have a little to spare for my coffeeor if you have time, we could just go grab a cup at Starbucks..."

I usually made up excuses and lied about having milk or the time for even a quick cup of coffee, but occasionally I'd say "sure," needing the companyand company who didn't know me and therefore couldn't make a single judgment about my parenting skills or lack thereof. So Ginger would come in for a cup of sugar or a few tablespoons of olive oil and ask me pointed questions, make slightly s.e.xual innuendos, and I'd fantasize about having s.e.x with her on my deskhard, fast, and p.o.r.n-nasty. But then cold water would splash on my face when Ginger would ask something about Ava, how that "darling baby of yours" was. I'd snap out of the fantasy, slightly guilty for my one-track mind when it came to the only neighbor who ever actually said h.e.l.lo.

Not that I said h.e.l.lo to anyone, either. A nod of acknowledgment, maybe. Our building wasn't the type conducive to knowing your neighbors. Ginger and I were the only ones who looked over thirty and were. I was thirty-two. Ginger had never mentioned her age, but I'd give her thirty-five, thirty-six.

Two months ago, Jodie and Ava had moved out of our fourteen-hundred-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment in a high-rise looking over the East River. I could neither afford the rent on my own or bear to stay there anyway, and so I'd moved to a not-so-nice seven-hundred-fifty-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment with a decent-sized walk-in closet/nursery overlooking a brick building across the street.

"Waah! Waah-waah!"

Uh-oh. Shush-shush. Quiet, Ava. You don't want Ginger to know we're here, or she'll ask if she can come to the playground with us.

It wasn't that I didn't like Ginger as a person; she was very nice, ba.n.a.l as that word was, but it was fitting. She was nice. She was a caring, compa.s.sionate, lovely person, but I wasn't looking for anything resembling a relationship of any kinds.e.xual or otherwiseat the moment.

The thought of walking to the playground, pushing Ava's stroller, while a woman other than Jodie walked beside me was oddly unbearable. A man, a woman, a baby. Three words I never thought I'd personally put together in a sentence that included me. But since those words did include me, they were supposed to include Jodie too. Me. Jodie. Ava.

Father. Mother. Baby.

Instead, it was Ian (which for some reason he p.r.o.nounced Eye-in). Jodie. Ava. It was Eye-in pushing the stroller, Jodie's arm wrapped around his, as they walked to the playground in Chappaqua, where they lived and to which Jodie had always aspired (Chappaqua was one of the United State's most affluent towns). My wife and my daughter. And Eye-in.

One day, I had a family, and then one sucky, f.u.c.ky Christopher, we need to talk conversation later, I was completely alone. No wife. No baby.

The silence, as they say, was deafening. To go from family to nothing, from a strong wife and a needy infant, was not to relish the sudden quiet, the sudden freedom. It was weird. Not that I'd ever gotten used to being married in the first placeits demands, its compromises, its high-highs and low-lowslet alone to being a father, which beat marriage's highest highs and lowest lows by a landslide of p.o.o.p.

I never felt up to being a husband or a father. I hadn't even been ready to get married. Before I asked Jodie to marry me, we'd been a couple for almost two years, and from day one, she'd been after me to improve. Improvement was the name of the game. At first, I liked it, having someone push me. Jodie cared deeply about my socks. She cared about what time I woke up in the morning so that I could eat well, work out, and read the New York Times before work. She talked tirelessly about my career path, my projected raises, the size of my office, which was always too small for her liking and windowless. She slowly got rid of my rumpled guy clothes and replaced them with similar clothes that were somehow sharper. She let me know when I needed a haircut and dragged me in when I waited too long.

At first, all that attention was welcome. I'd liked how organized my life suddenly was. But then it got annoying. I didn't appreciate having an argument over the fact that I was reading the Daily News instead of the Times. I resented her insistence that I talk to Futterman, my boss, about a ten-percent raise instead of the c.r.a.ppy four percent we got every year. I wanted my clothes and hair left alone.

The problem was that Jodie was a lawyer. She won every argument on basic logic. Will a wrinkled shirt get you promoted to executive editor? No. So why would you wear a wrinkled shirt? After a while there were no arguments. We simply stopped talking.

We'd been on our way to breaking up, but there was something between us, something special, the thing that had kept us together for those two tough years as we negotiated how to have a relationship with each other. I'm not even sure what it was. Chemistry, maybe. The early chemistry that made us work, click. Just when I'd be ready to walk out the door and tell her to go find the guy she wanted me to be, she'd be sitting at the kitchen table, eating her Wheaties or ridiculous scrambled tofu, and I'd just look at her for a moment, overcome with tenderness, with love.

And then she got pregnant. I was almost thirty-one; she was thirty-three. She wanted a baby, was ready for a baby.

"You're not ready for marriage, let alone parenthood," she'd said, "but if you tried, Christopher, if you'd really make an effort, you'd be great."

I said I'd try. I wasn't ready for marriage and I definitely wasn't ready for parenthood, but Jodie was pregnant. And I did try.

"You're not even trying!" Jodie would scream and shut herself behind closed doors.

Her mother, Dina, who never understood what Jodie saw in me but did concede that I actually was trying, used to console me. "It's the hormones," Dina would a.s.sure me. "Once the baby comes, everything else will come together."

It didn't. From my performance in the delivery room (I didn't coach aggressively enough, apparently) to buying Huggies instead of Pampers newborn diapers, to dabbing an alcohol-dipped Q-tip on Ava's healing belly b.u.t.ton instead of around it, to holding her wrong, putting her down for her naps wrong, tiptoeing too hard, singing lullabies too softly ("What's the point if she can't hear you?" Jodie had snapped), I was a dud at dadhood. Once, when she was six months old, Ava fell off the couch on my watch. That was the first time I cried as an adult. Alone, in private, I cried my eyes out. That Ava could have been hurt due to my carelessness was overwhelming, as was my entire existence. We came home from the pediatrician's office (Ava was just fine except for the goose egg on her forehead), and I went into our bedroom and I sobbed.

I loved Jodie even when I didn't like her, but I more than loved Ava. To paraphrase Woody Allen in Annie Hall, love was too weak a word for what I felt for that tiny crying creature who had my eyes, my mouth, my hair. I lurved my daughter, my Ava. I looved her. I lurfed her.

But lurve and two bucks would get me on the downtown number four train to work and that was about it. Loove and my magic ability to get Ava to stop crying wasn't enough to stop Jodie from going back to work after her maternity leave and complaining about me over coffee breaks and then lunch and then dinner to one of the partners in her firm, a man ten years her senior who'd been hot for Jodie since the day she'd started at the firm.

"What you need," he'd told her, "is someone to take care of you for once."

Jodie often told me what Eye-in had to say.

When my mother-in-law was still fighting for our marriage to work, she would a.s.sure me it was sleep deprivation that was the root of our marriage problems. Once the baby slept through the night, Dina said, Jodie would calm down.

By the time Ava was finally sleeping through the night, by the time I was getting comfortable with my new ident.i.ty as husband and father, my wife and then nine-month-old daughter were gone, living with a man who could, and I quote: "make millions on Wall Street and change a diaper. Not many men in Armani suits can say the word p.o.o.pie."

I'd met Eye-in several times. He seemed okay enough as strangers on the street went, but I hated his guts.

And then my mother-in-law began hating my guts for not being what her daughter wanted and needed. "If you were more ambitious, more everything, my granddaughter's parents wouldn't be headed for divorce court!" she told me once.