“I knew this would happen,” he said, scowling. “I swore, after the weight-guessing fiasco, that I would never, ever fall for that trick again. And I just fell for that trick again. Shit. Shit. Shit.”

Shit was right.

“Was she a dancer?”

He sighed loudly, deeply bothered. “No, Adrienne was never a dancer.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Because I could have sworn you told me she had been a dancer.”

He shrugged.

“Well that’s a shame. Given her height and body structure, I’m sure she could have had a brilliant career in the dance.”

He threw his coat, his briefcase, his stainless steel travel coffee mug down onto the table, then slumped into a chair. This is not exactly what he’d felt like coming home to after shtupping ninth graders with candy all day, I knew, and I was sorry I’d started the whole thing. But I was in deep now, and I couldn’t stop to save my life.

“How far off was I?” he asked miserably.

I looked up at the ceiling, picked at a cuticle, tapped my foot. “Far enough.” I was five four. And a half. There was a world of difference—and a world of hurt—between that and five foot three. But seeing Donald’s face fall out of frustration, out of anger and annoyance at his own ignorance (“Of course I should know how tall you are! What if you were in a plane crash and I had to identify your body?”), I felt a sudden wave of compassion and decided to call off the dogs.

“Never mind,” I said. “Let’s just,” and I sighed here for effect, “move on.”

“Are you sure?” he said, getting up from the table and approaching me gingerly, an animal afraid of a spring-loaded trap.

Still too fragile to speak, I could only nod.

“I mean, do you really think you’re ready to surrender to and embrace forgiveness, to achieve closure on this emotionally painful experience?” He put his arms around me, a giant human self-help audio book, suffocating me with the New Age Recovery Movement platitudes we’d make fun of together, sometimes, when he’d come in to my study and see me—crouched over, pencils at the ready—looking far too serious for the task at hand. “Are you certain you feel comfortable about reclaiming your spiritual and emotional positivity and moving on?”

He bent down and I buried my face into his neck and shoulder. The collar of his shirt smelled like shaving cream and chocolate.

And then we indeed moved on.

Up the stairs.

And into bed.

9

Feeling attenuated after my high-priced stretching class (I mean, what is Pilates, really?) the next morning, and as tall as I probably ever would be, I decided it was time to face what I had avoided all week: the question of what to wear.

Briefly considering—and rejecting—a one-day round-trip to New York to go to Barneys (it was too far; the shuttle fare and whatever I would buy too expensive; the whole idea too neurotically indulgent), I resigned myself to the shopping options in the greater Washington area. They weren’t many. Convinced I would find nothing suitably competitive with whatever Adrienne would be wearing (chic, sophisticated, black) at Saks, or Neiman’s, or Nordstrom, or Talbots, or (yuck of yucks) Ann Taylor, I went instead to the one store that was as good (and expensive) as any in New York: Embellish.