CARRIE STUMBLED THROUGH the obstacle course that was her bedroom. When she'd finally left her mother's apartment in her late twenties, she'd been determined to create a cozy space for herself, and she'd splurged on several large, cushy pieces of furniture. Unfortunately, she had not measured the size of the rooms in her small home. The monster bed ate up almost all of the floor space in her bedroom, so opening the bottom drawer of the bureau was impossible unless she was squatting in the closet. For bedding, Carrie had purchased eight white pillows and a white down-filled comforter. She'd been going for Sensuous Luxury; her best friend, Zoe, said she'd achieved Marshmallow Blob.

In the living room were more puffy oversize chairs, ottomans, and a sofa. Someone had told Carrie that putting a mirror on the wall above the sofa would make the room look bigger, and she had dutifully done so. The bottom of the mirror frame jutted out from the wall, so when guests sat on the couch they had to slouch or risk losing a piece of scalp.

Carrie carefully threaded her way to the bathroom. She looked at herself in the tiny mirror. She was not the beauty her mother had been, but that was not something she obsessed about. As Zoe once said, who the hell was as beautiful as Rose? Even in a time when any woman with enough cash could buy the nose and boobs of her dreams, Rose had been in a class by herself. On the other hand, Zoe had continued kindly, Carrie wasn't exactly a disaster. At five-four, she was cute rather than regal, but she was endowed with fairly impressive cleavage, and her legs were truly fine. Her nose might have been a little too long, her dark brown eyes were probably too deep set, and her curly hair—also dark brown—was always a mess by three in the afternoon. But her smile was fabulous. When she unleashed it. “Which you don't do often enough,” Zoe had said, wrapping up her assessment. “You can't get away with your mom's ice princess act. And it wouldn't hurt if you used a little makeup.”

Carrie searched around in her medicine chest and finally unearthed some seldom used blush and mascara. She found her lip gloss in her purse, managed to stall another minute or two with it, then went into her kitchen and dawdled over her breakfast quotient of sour-cream-and-onion-flavored chips. But it still wasn't six o'clock yet. For some reason she didn't want to go to her mother's apartment before six o'clock. On the other hand, staying in her own apartment was out of the question. There was only one person Carrie knew—except for poor Howie—who'd be awake at this hour. Carrie put on her coat and headed out the door.