Hearing this, Donald smiled, then hugged me, then got down on all fours and pulled his pants down.

I hadn’t seen him that happy since I’d agreed to become his wife.

8

I had only four days to get ready for the big event—my first meeting with Adrienne; the beginning of the end of my life as I knew it. After a cold hard look in the bathroom mirror (clothed; I could never have survived an inspection of my naked body) around three in the morning when I’d gotten up out of bed after tossing and turning most of the night, I knew I could waste not a minute of it.

The following morning after Donald left for work, his briefcase brimming with textbooks and corrected papers and a huge plastic bag of miniature Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Snickers bars (“I’m afraid the parents will complain and I’ll get in trouble if I don’t give their children a choice,” he explained), I called Anne immediately and told her I needed an extension on The Morning After Love: Getting Past Your Romantic Past.

“How long?” she asked.

“A week. Maybe two.” I tried to be as vague as possible, but she was on to me.

“So I see you got sucked into taking those self-tests.”

“What self-tests?”

Clearly, I hadn’t even cracked the manuscript.

“The ones in The Morning of Love. You know, ‘Write down one negative thing about every boyfriend you’ve ever had,’ or ‘List the top twenty reasons why you deserve to be loved.’ ”

I was silent.

“I, of course,” she went on, “ended up with completely inverted numbers: twenty negative things about every boyfriend I’d ever had, and only one reason why I deserve to be loved: how accepting and uncritical I am of the men I date!” She belly-laughed; lit a cigarette. I hadn’t heard her in such a good mood since she’d been fired from Sassy .

“You sound happy,” I noted, then inquired: “Anything—or anyone—I should know about?”

She laughed again. “I have a crush.”

“On whom?”

“Please,” she said, “it’s stupid.”

“No it isn’t. Tell me,” I insisted.

“A new guy started in the art department last week. He’s so cute I want to kill myself and die. But he’s too young for me.”

“No he’s not.”

“Yes he is.”

“No. He’s not.” I was just about to argue with her but she cut me off at the pass.

“And don’t give me that feministic shit about older men dating younger women so older women should be able to date younger men. Because it’s not true.”

“Why not?”

“Because as we both know from our glory days at Sassy, at forty-five I’m old enough to be his grandmother.”

I laughed.

“I wouldn’t get fired for sexual harassment. I’d get fired for being a senior citizen.”

I laughed again, but she was right.

“So instead of fantasizing about some boy-child, I’ll just keep taking those self-tests in Morning of Love.”

“It’s The Morning After Love,” I corrected.