Anthony glanced around the bar. “What are you doing, Shelly?” he whispered uneasily. “Are you reading my palm?”

“Yes! Look at mine.” She opened her hand. “My left line is higher, which means I prefer a passionate or fiery kind of love. Let me see yours. Put your hands together, Anthony. Line up your little fingers.”

Anthony put his hands together and lined up his little fingers. Shelly frowned and studied his hands. He couldn’t believe he was indulging this. He needed to leave, to hunt down Joy, but he felt bewildered, adrift, and completely incapable of moving out of the way of the whirlwind that was Shelly Salazar.

“How do you know all this?” he asked.

“I read it online. You know, when you’re looking for some random thing, like the weather for some vacation you’re about to take, and then all of a sudden you’re clicking links that say ‘Top Ten Ugliest Celebrity Public Fights’ or ‘This Man Cured His Toenail Fungus with This Ancient Chinese Remedy’? Well, I came across a link that said ‘Become a Palm Reader in Ten Minutes.’ So I did.”

“Wow,” he said. “Ten minutes. So fast.”

“Anthony,” Shelly said. “I know you’ve split with your wife. But I have to tell you, your love line is really strong. Very active. So . . .” She looked at him meaningfully.

“I’m not interested,” he said quickly. “I mean, I think you’re a really pretty girl, Shelly.”

“Girl?” She sat back. “I am twenty-eight years old, Anthony Puckett. I am practically an old maid.”

“Woman,” Anthony corrected. “I think you’re a really pretty woman. I’m simply not looking for that right now.”

“Looking for what?” Shelly rested her chin in the palm of her hand and studied Anthony.

“You know what I mean. For that.” He nodded significantly at her other hand, the one that had been on his groin. “I’m not looking for that,” he repeated.

“Ohmygod,” she said, sitting back. “You all take everything so seriously.”

“Who is we all? Men?”

“Your generation. I dated a guy your age—what are you again, like forty-five?”

“Thirty-nine!”

“Whatever. This guy was forty-five. Forty-six, maybe. Divorced. Just like you.”

“I’m not divorced,” he said. He had, in fact, been honest with Joy about that part. It was just everything else he’d held back on. He wished he could walk the summer backward, all the way to the day the Le Baron broke down and the Jeep pulled up beside him. If he had to do it all over again he’d tell the truth right from the beginning.

She shrugged: same difference. “He had a couple of kids, I don’t know, two, maybe three, I’m not sure, I never met them. Anyway, everything was Let’s talk about where this is going, Shelly, or I need to know what you’re thinking about, Shelly. It was exhausting. I was just in it for some good sex, and also he had this amazing apartment on the Upper West Side, and this was when I was living with a completely psycho roommate down in the East Village in a total shithole. I would have slept with almost anyone to get out of that place.”