He found a chair and the remote and then sat for a long minute, unable to push the power button. Not a half mile from here some hundred people were converging on Old Roses. Behind the scenes another dozen people would be hysterical, because the groom—probably some of them were still thinking of him that way—was missing. No doubt the Rose girls had sent their husbands and older sons out to look for him, and some of them would come to this very building. Possibly one or more of them was upstairs right now, knocking on his office door. They would be in touch by cell phone, this search posse, and in between calls they would be speculating on where he might be, and with whom, and what punishment he deserved for what he was about to do to Caroline. The fact that she was about to dump him would not enter into it at all; they would want his head on a platter.

John realized he had said that last bit out loud.

“Well, first,” Angie said, “it’s not like it’s your fault. We’ve got Patty-Cake on DVD. That should make it clear that you were stuck here against your will.”

“But not why I was here in the first place,” John said.

“Second,” Angie went on, as if he hadn’t spoken at all. “Second, she’s about to dump you in front of everybody anyway. Look at it like this, all you’ve done is to steal her thunder.”

He thought for a while, weighing the things he might say, the places this conversation might go. Once the disaster unfolding on the screen in front of them had played itself out, he would pursue one or more of those lines of discussion, but right now there was nothing to do but watch and wait.

“This is going to backfire on Patty-Cake, you know that,” he said.

“I’m counting on it,” Angie said. “What I can’t decide is, should I wait for the full force of public humiliation to wash over her before I kill her, or just indulge my fantasies straight off.”

John felt himself flush and stir, and what a mess he was: Angie Mangiamele said the word fantasies and he felt himself stirring. “That’s a question worthy of some deliberation,” he said, and turned the television to channel 12.

He was disappointed when Angie left the room; he was about to go find her to admit he needed her with him through this when she came back with a tray: coffee, milk, a few apples, and a pile of diet bars, the kind made of sawdust and fake chocolate, kept afloat by marketing and Orwellian names: Choco-Mint Extravaganza and Orgasmic Orange.

“Patty-Cake strikes again,” she said. “You can take this as a commentary on my figure.” And then, as she pulled up a chair to sit next to him, she did a double take at the television screen.