“It’s not about a patient. It’s about you. This is their postponed back-to-school issue and they named you the best pediatrician in Manhattan. Here, look!” She pushed the magazine in front of Frankie’s face.

“God, that’s an awful picture!” Frankie recoiled.

“I don’t think you look so bad.” Rosita peeked her head over Frankie’s shoulder. “You look like someone people could count on.”

“As my stepmother Helen would say, ‘Looking like someone you can count on never found anyone a husband.’ And furthermore they didn’t say I was ‘the best.’ Just ‘the best on the Upper East Side.’” Frankie put the magazine down. “Do we have any tuna fish?”

“Aren’t you going home for dinner?” Rosita asked.

“No, I think I’ll catch up on some things here.” It was an answer Frankie used at least twice a week to savor the calm of being alone in her office.

The staff kitchen was a small closet to the left of exam room five. There was only enough space for a counter, a microwave, and an avocado plant that managed to grow without sunlight or water. Gulping a diet iced tea, Frankie reread her mention in Manhattan magazine. She was angry at herself for being a little too pleased about it. But she was even angrier at herself for still secretly coveting Mrs. Rodman’s Hermès Birkin bag.

Her stepmother referred to her patients who lugged the $8,000 Hermès tote as “Birkin babes.” One year for Christmas, Helen even gave her a thirty-dollar plastic Birkin imitation with a note that said, “God willing, one day your husband will give you the real one.”

There was something almost detoxifying for Frankie about leafing through Manhattan magazine that night. It was the first issue since September 11 in which the magazine returned to business as usual with “Quality Goods” shopping hints and “Buzz-Worthy” local celebrity gossip. But she was caught off guard when she turned the page and saw a picture of a woman posing as a 1930s movie star, in a retro Balmain gown, feeding a seal in the Central Park Zoo. When Frankie looked up to read the headline, “The Fashionable Mrs. Acton,” she immediately recognized Samantha Acton from her seventh-grade class at Spence. As children they hardly knew each other. Even at that age, Samantha was the girl everyone else wanted to be. Samantha was beautiful then and she was obviously beautiful now. Frankie opened another diet iced tea and began to read.

“Samantha Acton, in the style-blazing tradition of Mrs. Astor or Babe Paley, defines the social order. Friends say that her secret is ‘she manages to make perfection effortless.’ Unlike the current flock of sunflower-seed socialites, Samantha has a zany lust for life. In a time when things seem haphazard, Samantha, great-granddaughter of New York legends August Van Rensselaer and Virginia Carnegie, is a true thoroughbred. And on top of that, she knows everything there is to know about modern art, music, and dance. She also single-handedly spearheaded the restoration of the seal fountain in the zoo in Central Park. After 9/11, Samantha made certain that the daily public seal feeding was back on schedule for the children of the city.”