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  The cat jumped up on the bed and padded across to her. “Hey,” she said as it curled up by her side. She petted it, feeling its skinny little body under its fur, and it opened both eyes. They were different colors, one of them stained with a blotch that matched the blotch of its fur. “Patchwork cat,” she said, and it snuggled next to her, incredibly comforting. She turned on her bedside stereo and listened to Elvis sing about how lousy life had been since his baby left him. The cat pricked up its ears for about a verse, and then relaxed into the comforter again. “Moving into Heartbreak Hotel, are you?” Min said to it, and scratched it behind the ears. It lifted its head to press closer to her fingers, and she looked at its weird little face, screwed up in ecstasy with both eyes shut, and felt a rush of affection for it. It began to purr, and the sound was more comforting than she could have imagined. “It would not be sensible to keep you,” she told it, and it opened its eyes slowly and then closed them again, and she kept petting it as it curled close, warm and peaceful and comforting. No wonder all those single women kept cats. They certainly beat charming, lying, compulsive gamblers who kissed like gods and had hands like— “Oh, I’m so lonely, baby,” Elvis sang, and Min reached over and punched the UP button. The cat picked up its head, but it seemed to like “Don’t Be Cruel” as well as “Heartbreak Hotel” and curled up again, warm against her stomach. “You can stay,” she told it, and they lay together in companionable silence, listening to Elvis, until they both fell asleep.

  “There’s a real babe waiting in your office,” David’s assistant said when David came in on Wednesday. “Very nice.”

  Min, David thought and then realized with disappointment that it couldn’t be. Nobody described Min as a babe.

  When he opened the door, Cynthie was sitting across from his desk, looking phenomenal in a red suit.

  “There you are,” she said, standing up.

  “That’s a great suit,” he said, closing the door behind him. He walked around her, impressed by the way the skirt curved under her tight little butt without hugging it.

  “David,” Cynthia said. “Forget the suit. Why is Cal still dating the woman you love?”

  “Dating?” David lost interest in Cynthie’s suit and sat down behind his desk.

  “He took her to lunch on Monday, which meant he couldn’t go with me. He took her dinner last night at her place.” Cynthie leaned closer, her lovely little face tense. “I thought you were going to call Greg. Why is he still with her?”

  “I did call Greg.” David moved some papers around while he thought fast. “I don’t know why it didn’t work. Maybe Cal had a good time when he was with her.” Maybe he wants to win ten thousand dollars.

  “But no sex,” Cynthie said.

  “No,” David said, praying Min was still frigid. “They will not be having sex.”

  “I think you’re right.” Cynthie began to pace. “She doesn’t sound like a woman who would do it that fast, and he wouldn’t push it. He has great instincts.”

  “Well, hooray for him,” David said. “Is there anything else you wanted?”

  Cynthie leaned over the desk. “I want you to call Min. Ask her to lunch, ask her to dinner, pay for it, and get her back.”

  David looked down the neckline of her suit and revisited her cleavage. “You do this on purpose, don’t you?”

  Cynthie took a deep breath, her jaw rigid. “David, I am a dating expert who is losing the man she loves. This isn’t just about my private life, this is about my public life, it’s about my whole life. I have a potential bestseller on my hands, my editor wants to put our wedding picture on the back cover, everything is riding on this, and I am not going to see it go down the drain because you’re too spineless to get your girlfriend back.” She leaned closer. “I’ll go away when you promise me you’ll call her for lunch, and you tell me who her best friends are. I saw two in the bar on Friday. A little blonde and a tall redhead. Are they close to her?”

  Her perfume wafted toward him, very faint, a whisper of a scent that made him dizzy. “What perfume are you wearing?” he said, trying to ignore the “spineless” crack.

  “It’s a special blend made just for me,” Cynthie said, her voice lower now. “It’s made of the scents that most strongly activate a man’s libido. I put it on for you, David. Who’s her best friend?”

  David shook his head to clear it and slid his chair back, away from her. “What’s in that stuff?”

  “Lavender and pumpkin pie.” Cynthie straightened. “I need to know her best friend. I’m helping you, David. You want the actuary back, right?”

  She stood in front of him, lithe and lean in red wool crepe, smelling like lavender and cinnamon, and it took him a minute to remember who the actuary was.

  “I don’t even like you,” he told her. “Why am I so turned on?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Because you’re male. Who’s her friend?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  Cynthie exhaled through her teeth. “I told you this. Attraction. If I can tell her best friend about Cal’s pathology with women, I can ensure that the friend finds out enough to worry, and then she will tell Min she dislikes him. And that will help to ward off the infatuation stage. It’s all science, David. Nobody is going to get mugged in an alley.”

  “Okay,” David said, still fixated on her breasts. “Are you wearing anything under that jacket?”

  “If I show you, will you give me a name?” Cynthie said.

  “Yes,” David said, knowing he was low and weak and not caring.

  Cynthie popped the two buttons on her jacket and opened it. Her red silk bra matched the lining of the suit, and her breasts were perfect B cups, high and taut and, from where he sat, real.

  “Oh, God,” David said, freezing in his seat.

  “Damn right,” Cynthie said, buttoning back up again. “Now give me the name.”

  “The redhead,” David said. “Liza Tyler. She thinks all men are bastards anyway.”

  “She’s right,” Cynthie said. “Call Min for lunch.”

  Then she left and David watched her go, the afterimage of her perfect breasts imprinted on his retinas, trying to tell himself that he’d done the right thing because somebody had to stop Cal Morrisey. And save Min, that was important, too.

  “Very hot,” his assistant said from the doorway. He sniffed the air. “Wow. Is that her perfume?”

  “Yes,” David said, picking up his phone. “It’s brimstone. Don’t let her in here again.”

  At eight that night, Liza was sitting with Tony and Roger in The Long Shot waiting for Bonnie and Min to come back from the bathroom when Tony said, “Uh oh,” and turned away from the bar.

  “What?” Roger followed his gaze. “Oh.” He shrugged. “She’s clear across the room.”

  “She who?” Liza squinted through the dim light. A brunette lounged at the bar, looking expensive, lean, and bored while the guy next to her made his pitch. “Old girlfriend?”

  “Nope,” Tony said as Bonnie came back from the bathroom. “I don’t date the insane. Well, not until you.”

  “Do you date the insane?” Bonnie said to Roger with interest as she sat down.

  “No, no, Cal, not me,” Roger said, almost falling off his chair. “I hardly ever date.”

  “It’s all right, baby.” Bonnie patted his knee. “You’re allowed to date.”

  “I don’t want to date,” Roger said and Tony rolled his eyes.

  “So that’s Cal’s old girlfriend.” Liza stood. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Wait a minute,” Tony said and caught her arm. “Why do you care about Cal’s love life?”

  “He’s dating my best friend,” Liza said, trying to sound innocent. “I’m curious.”

  “What I meant by the not-dating thing,” Roger said to Bonnie, “was not dating anybody but you.”

  “I really don’t expect monogamy on the third date,” Bonnie said.

  “Okay,” Roger said. “But it’s here anyway.”

>   “Am I going to have to put a chain on you?” Tony said to Liza. He stopped to contemplate that for a moment and then shook his head. “Forget the chains. Stay away from Cynthie. She has psychology on the brain. Probably because she’s a psychologist, but still, she comes up with some very whacko stuff.”

  “Analyzed you, did she?” Liza said, looking back across the bar.

  “The not-dating-other-people is just for me, of course,” Roger said to Bonnie. “You don’t have to just date me. Unless you want to.”

  Tony shook his head. “She has this insane four-steps-to-love theory that she thinks explains all relationships.”

  “Oh,” Liza said, taken aback.

  “Which is dumb because chaos theory explains relationships,” Tony said, tugging her back into her seat.

  “What?” Liza said, trying to pull her arm away.

  “Human relationships, like the weather, cannot be predicted,” Tony said, holding on, and Liza sat down again to relieve the pressure on her arm. “Take, for example, Min and Cal. Cal’s a complex dynamical system who’s trying to maintain stability by not dating.”

  “He’s not dating?” Liza said.

  “No,” Tony said. “Can you believe it? That alone is making him unstable. The man is not good at celibacy. Then he meets Min, a disturbance in his environment. He begins to move at random because of the disturbance, trying to find stability, but he’s caught in the field of her attraction, and starts bouncing off the sides of that field at random, never repeating himself but still caught in her pattern. She’s the strange attractor.”

  “Uh huh,” Liza said. “And what good is all of this?”

  Tony leaned closer. “Cynthie thinks relationships follow a pattern and that you can predict them. But how can you? People are complex, the disturbances in their lives are complex, and the attractors in their lives are complex. People in love are pure chaos theory.”

  “Okay,” Liza said, still confused.

  “That’s why Cynthie is crazy,” Tony said, letting go of her. “She thinks love can be analyzed and explained. It can’t.”

  Liza sat back and considered Tony for the first time. Somehow he didn’t look dumb anymore, and it wasn’t because of whatever the hell chaos theory was. It was because he was interested in what he was saying. When he cared, he was smart.

  “What?” Tony said.

  “Have you ever been in love?” Liza said.

  “No,” Tony said. “I don’t think it’s going to happen.” He grinned at her. “It would cause too much disturbance in my environment.”

  Liza frowned. “So why don’t you like Cynthie?”

  “She tried to pin Cal down. She analyzed him and thought she knew him. He deserves better than that. He should be with somebody who’s willing to face the chaos. No rules, no conditions, no theories, no safety nets. The way Bonnie is with Roger.”

  Liza looked over at Bonnie, laughing with Roger. “You’re right. We all deserve that.”

  “Good,” Tony said. “Then you don’t have to talk to Cynthie.”

  Roger said something, and Tony turned away to answer him, and Liza got up and went to meet Cynthie.

  When Liza slid into a seat and said, “Hi, I’m Liza,” Cynthie looked up and did a double take.

  “Hi,” she said, sounding surprised, almost as if she recognized her. “I’m Cynthie. Do we know each other?”

  “No,” Liza said. “But your ex is dating a friend of mine. Tell me everything you know about Calvin Morrisey.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Liza sat back and thought, Chaos theory, my ass, Calvin Morrisey has a pattern. “I knew it,” she said to Cynthie. “I knew he was going to break her heart. How many times has he done this?”

  Cynthie shrugged. “I was at a party one night after we broke up, and I started talking to a woman who had dated him, too. Then somebody else drifted over. By the end of the night there were four of us, all the same story. A couple of months, life is good, you think ‘He’s the one’ and then he kisses you on the cheek, says ‘Have a nice life,’ and he’s gone.”

  “You’re kidding,” Liza said. “And nobody’s hunted him down with a tire iron?”

  “You can’t,” Cynthie said. “What are you going to say, ‘You dated me for two months, how dare you leave me?’ You’d sound demented.” She sipped her drink. “And he doesn’t do it on purpose,” she added, for what must have been the thousandth time.

  “You know, I don’t care,” Liza said. “I just don’t want him hurting Min.”

  “Maybe they’re not that serious,” Cynthie said. “Do they have anything in common?”

  “Not that I can tell,” Liza said.

  “Are they relaxed together?”

  “No,” Liza said. “Mostly they fight.”

  “Do they have shared secrets? In-jokes?”

  Liza shook her head. “They don’t know each other that well.”

  Cynthie drew her fingertip around her glass. “Do you like him? I mean, have you told Min you don’t like him?”

  “Hell, yes,” Liza said. “Bonnie and I have both warned her.”

  “Hmmm.” Cynthie smiled at Liza. “Does he have a nickname for her yet?”

  “A nickname?” Liza tried to remember. “He calls her by her last name sometimes. Never anything like ‘pookie’ or ‘baby doll.’”

  “How about her?” Cynthie said. “Does she have a nickname for him?”

  “The beast,” Liza said. “I don’t think it’s affectionate.”

  Cynthie laughed. “Then why is she dating him?”

  “I’m not sure she is,” Liza said. “But I think she’s going to. I think she’s falling for him even though she doesn’t want to.”

  Cynthie stopped laughing.

  “And that worries me,” Liza said. “She’s a terrific person, she doesn’t deserve to be dallied with. Can you give me some pointers on how he works?”

  Cynthie straightened and nodded. “Sure. Has he given her anything yet?”

  “He’s only known her a week,” Liza said. “I don’t . . .” She stopped when Cynthie shook her head.

  “If he’s serious at all about her, he’ll give her something. He’ll find out what she wants most, and he’ll make sure she gets it. He has to, it’s this pattern he’s fallen into because of his mother.”

  “His mother?” Liza said.

  “She’s withholding,” Cynthie said. “He only knows conditional love. So he acts out the same pattern with every woman he meets, trying to win her love. And then when he gets it, the pattern breaks because if she loves him, she’s not a stand-in for his mother, and he moves on, to make somebody else love him.”

  “He’s got an Oedipus complex?” Liza said, appalled.

  “No,” Cynthie said. “She just set up the pattern. He’s not in love with her.”

  “So that means the more Min rejects him . . .” Liza said.

  “The more he’ll chase her,” Cynthie said, all traces of amusement gone. “He can’t help it. He doesn’t even know he does it. Does she collect anything?”

  “Snow globes,” Liza said, and then when Cynthie tried to hide her contempt, added, “It’s not her fault. It was a family thing that got out of hand.”

  “He’ll buy her a snow globe,” Cynthie said. “And it’ll be the perfect one, the one she’s been missing or always wanted or maybe didn’t even know she wanted until he gives it to her. And when he does, you get her out fast, or it’ll be all over but the weeping.”

  “Snow globe,” Liza said, looking back at the table where Cal had joined the group after working late.

  “He’s not a bad person,” Cynthie said again. “He’d never hurt anyone on purpose. He’s just got this . . .”

  “Pathology where he mutilates women because of his mother,” Liza said. “I think that was Norman Bates’s story, too.”

  “He’d never hurt her physically,” Cynthie said, shocked.

  “Well, he’s not going to hurt her emotionally either,” Liza said. “Thank you ve
ry much, I appreciate this.”

  “My pleasure,” Cynthie said. Liza thought, Your pleasure?, and must have looked at her oddly, because Cynthie added, “To help. Out. Your friend.” She looked down at her drink. “I don’t want her to get hurt.”

  “Me, either,” Liza said, and headed back to the others.

  When she got back to the table, Tony was saying to Min, “I don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it,” Min said. “There are ways you can tell.”

  “Tell what?” Liza said, sitting down beside Tony but keeping an eye on Cal.

  “If a guy is worth dating early in the game,” Min said. “We were talking about the old dating tests we used in college.”

  “Tests,” Cal said, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. “I hate tests.”

  “Like what?” Tony asked Liza.

  Liza shrugged. “Like you ask him over to watch a video.”

  “This is good,” Tony said. “Videos are good.”

  “And you show him Say Anything,” Bonnie said.

  “Chick flick,” Tony said.

  “You flunked this test before it started,” Liza said.

  Bonnie went on. “And then you wait until he’s watching the scene where John Cusack brushes the broken glass out of Ione Skye’s path.”

  Liza watched Cal grin at Min, and Min shake her head at Cal. Secrets, she thought, and straightened a little in her chair.

  “And then what?” Tony said.

  “And if you say . . .” Bonnie deepened her voice. “ ‘What the hell? She’s wearing shoes, ain’t she?’ you’re gone.”

  “Well, she was,” Tony said, exasperated.

  “But they were open-toed,” Roger said.

  “You get extra points for noticing they were open-toed,” Bonnie told him.

  “Great,” Tony said. “The guy with the foot fetish gets extra points.”

  “Okay, Minnie,” Cal said to Min, “the guy says that and then what happens?”

  Minnie? Liza thought and waited for Min to savage him.

  “I become ill with something communicable,” Min said, trying not to smile.

  “How ill?” Cal said, grinning at her.