I was also tired of feeling sorry for myself, but I guess that was what Broken Girls did. They sat around feeling sorry for themselves. They broke up with boyfriends that anybody else would have been delighted to have.

I needed some distraction and considered my options. I wasn’t in the mood to fight with my art, either physically or with my paint program on the laptop. I could check my e-mail, but that held no appeal. I could watch TV or a movie, but I’d done far too much of that over the winter. I could read a book, but even that was a chore. Hardcovers wore me out because of their weight. Paperbacks needed to be held open unless I broke the spine, and in this house, that was like a capital offense.

So I plugged the headset into my cell phone. Wendy was working tonight at the paper. Sophie was with her boyfriend Jeck, and Geordie had a gig. But I knew Mona would be home, and even if she was drawing or inking one of her comics, she could still talk while she did it.

I tapped in her number, and she answered before the first ring ended. “Please be someone interesting,” she said.

I laughed. “Oh, right. Put the pressure on me.”

“Oh, hello, Jilly. Sorry about that. It’s just that I’ve been getting telemarketers and crank calls all evening.”

“Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

“Only if you’re a telemarketer.”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Trying to ink a page that I loved this afternoon and now find spectacularly boring. Or maybe it’s just that it’s Friday night and even though Lyle’s out of town, I still feel I should be out doing something.”

“I know the feeling.”

“I thought you had Daniel coming over this evening.”

“I did. But he’s gone now.”

“Why does that sound foreboding?”

“Did it? It wasn’t meant to.”

“What happened? Did he get called in to the hospital?” She paused, then added before I could answer, “Except nurses aren’t on call, are they?”

“I suppose they can be.”

Now I paused. I looked out at the dark garden again, at my faint reflection on the windowpane, a small woman in a wheelchair.

“Except I asked him to leave,” I said.

“Oh, dear.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“I’m coming over,” she said.

“You don’t have to—”

I didn’t get to finish because she’d already hung up.