“Perfect casting for the tampon commercial,” his brief e-mail had said. “I really believe that this woman is afraid of leaks. I am frightened for her. Really. Congrats.”

In Hannah’s fantasy of Bee’s wedding, she and Tom wouldn’t speak during the reception. They would glance at each other from across the room. They would make it clear that each had taken notice of the other. But there would be no contact until after the wedding was over, when Tom would come knocking on Hannah’s hotel-room door, begging for a reconciliation. He would take back everything he’d said to her on the night he’d moved out, when he’d told her that he didn’t think she was capable of ever being someone’s wife. He would tell her that he’d been wrong to leave New York and that he no longer believed it was so important to live close to his family in Boston. He would say that New England felt too small and puritanical and that he missed dining with Hannah in pretentious restaurants in the East Village and going to off-off-Broadway theater productions that starred her actor friends, despite the fact that Tom had complained about those outings when he’d lived with her.

Tom would tell her that the worst night of her life—the night he left—had also been the worst night of his, and that after his sister rushed down from Boston to load up her car with his belongings and move him up north, he almost instantly realized that he’d lost his anchor in life and his best friend. He would tell Hannah that he thought about her every day, especially before he fell asleep at night.

In this fantasy, Tom would be played by Paul Rudd, Hannah decided. Paul Rudd was about ten years older than Tom, but he still looked young enough to play a twentysomething. And the casting choice would appeal to all the women Hannah’s age who had been Clueless fans, Hannah thought, totaling the imaginary box office returns.

After showing up at her hotel room, Tom, or Paul Rudd, depending on Hannah’s version of the fantasy, would poke his head through her door once she opened it, tilting his face so that it would be easier for their lips to meet, but Hannah would put her hand on his chest to stop him.

“It’s too late,” she, or maybe Emily Blunt or Kristen Stewart, would say in a flat tone.

“Don’t say that,” Tom or Paul Rudd would respond, almost whim-pering.

On a good day, Hannah could stop the fantasy there. She would give closure to the scene by imagining herself shutting her fictional hotel-room door in his face. Sometimes she would go so far as to invent a new boyfriend, who would be waiting for her on her fictional hotel-room bed. Strangely, in Hannah’s fantasy the new boyfriend was also played by Paul Rudd. Hannah hadn’t quite worked that one out yet.

Of course, sometimes it was difficult for Hannah to be good. Sometimes she didn’t want to end the fantasy with a safe rejection of the college boyfriend who had left her behind. Sometimes, when she imagined this scene, she’d tack on an ending that had her pulling Tom through the door by his tie and making love to him on the hotel-room bed, groaning and grabbing pillows. Usually she’d imagine Tom as himself in those moments. She didn’t see Paul Rudd as the kind of guy who’d groan or grab.