“It’s not really a good time,” I told her. Thank God we didn’t have videophones. If she could have seen the mess that I was, unshowered, with hopelessly unruly hair, slightly smeared mascara, and a half-eaten PayDay bar on my desk, there would be no way she would let me get out of a girl talk.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Everything. To start, Dave is getting married,” I quietly wailed into the receiver.

“Yeah, I heard,” she answered

“You heard? How could you not have told me?” I practically yelled into the phone. “When did you find out? When did this happen exactly?”

“I just heard. It’s not like I’ve been carrying it around for weeks. I thought we could talk about it tonight.”

“Well, I can’t. Things are too crazy at work right now. I can’t believe you knew this and didn’t call immediately to tell me.”

“I’m trying not to be such a Frenemy, as you’ve called me in the past,” she said, with a real resentful edge in her voice. “They’re already registered on that wedding site TheKnot.com.”

“They’re registered?” The idea that Dave and Madison were registered made their getting married seem glaringly real.

“You can check it out if you want.” I could hear the shoulder shrug in her voice. Ina was a Frenemy most of the time.

I was listening to Ina tell me it wasn’t so bad, that it was good riddance, and that Larry had gotten a real, temporary job, but my fingers were flying across the keyboard, navigating to the wedding registry site. I had no idea about this concept of registering online. Sure, I’d gone into a Macy’s to buy a gift for somebody’s wedding, but I would never dare stalk someone by doing that. The thought of navigating parking at the Beverly Center, taking the escalator up to the store, and then seeking out a sales clerk to look up the registry with no intention of buying a gift—that seemed desperate and pathetic.

Knowing that I could just access a couple’s registry from my desk computer was sheer opportunity, however. I saw you could register at several different places and have them all managed by The-Knot.com main server. They had everything from Williams-Sonoma to Pottery Barn. The automated site prompted me for the groom’s name, and after entering “David Gallagher” and clicking the return key, I saw everything. Dave Gallagher and Madison Jasper, February 14th of next year.

They’d registered for terrible bedding from Calvin Klein. I thought I had seen the comforter set on an episode of The Hills last season on MTV. One of those bimbette girls on the show had these same linens in her bedroom. This was obviously the young bride’s choice. Scrolling down to the appliance choices, I saw they’d also asked for a Delonghi Magnifica cappuccino maker.