"Dated Deirdre, did you?"

"Only once," Max said. "You wouldn't believe what she did to me at dinner."

"Sure I would," Alex said.

"You, too, huh?" Max shook his head. "I believe in safe sex, but not in the middle of the appetizer. Our waiter almost had heart failure."

"Hell," Alex said, "I almost had heart failure."

"So if it's not Deirdre, who is it?"

"Nina," Alex said.

Max raised his eyebrows. "Still Nina? You hadn't said anything for a while, so I thought you'd given up on her."

Alex shook his head. "Nope. Nina is not the kind of woman it is possible to give up on."

Max took another drink. "You've been holding out on me. I didn't even know you'd started dating her."

"I haven't." Alex leaned forward and picked up his second beer. "I'm afraid to ask her out."

Max frowned at him. "I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but if you're afraid to ask her to commit for dinner, how in the hell are you ever going to ask her to move in with you?"

Alex leaned his head back against the couch. "I'm not. At least, not right now. She'd spit on me." He stared miserably at the ceiling. "She was married to Guy Adams."

Max whistled. ''Big bucks."

Alex nodded. "Dad's got an opening in the cardiac unit."

Max stopped with his beer halfway to his mouth. "You told me you liked the ER."

Alex closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to meet Max's. "I do. But as you keep pointing out, cardiology is more money. And as Dad keeps pointing out, it's a real career."

"So's the ER," Max said.

"I know." Alex felt miserable. "I know. But I'm thinking about cardiology anyway."

"Yeah, but you're thinking about it as a way to get the money to get Nina." Max shook his head and took a drink. "Bad idea," he said when he'd swallowed. "Never plan a career around a woman."

"You're probably right," Alex said, and then the doorbell rang.

When he answered it, Charity was standing there, all wild red hair and impossibly long legs in a hot pink dress so short he thought for a minute it was a T-shirt.

"I came to ask a favor," she said, and Alex thought of all the men in the world who would love to be in his shoes, and of how much he'd love it if it was Nina in front of him in hot pink asking him for something. Anything. Preferably something that required him touching her. Lying down and touching her. Lying down naked and touching her.

"Alex?" Charity said, and he said, "Sure. Come on in."

She stepped inside the living room, and Max stood up, looking poleaxed as his eyes made the trip from her ankle-strapped heels and thigh-high black stockings to her tangled red hair tied on top of her head with what Alex thought might be another black stocking.

"This is my brother, Max," Alex said.

Max held out his hand and beamed at her. "More than happy to meet you."

Charity scowled at him. "I'm a lesbian."

Max pulled his hand back. "Did I ask?"

Alex stepped between them. "Can I get you something to drink?" he asked Charity. "Some milk? An Oreo?"

"No." Charity lost her scowl. "Listen, Norma's reading group is going to read my book next Friday." She opened her black vinyl bag, a purse large enough to stock a small country, and pulled out a thick stack of papers held together with a rubber band. "And I thought that maybe you'd read it, too, and come to the group next Friday and give us a guy's opinion of it." She smiled up at him, anxious, coaxing, and Alex thought again what a waste it was for her to be smiling at him. "Nina's coming, too," she told him, and he took the manuscript and said, "I'll be there."

Charity's smile widened. "Thank you. I appreciate it. Truly." Her smile dimmed to about five watts as she looked over his shoulder at Max. "Nice meeting you."

Max nodded. "Give my regards to the rest of the girls."

Charity closed her eyes.

"He's kidding," Alex said. "Knock it off, Max."

Charity ignored Max to turn to Alex. "I'll see you Friday then. And thank you!"

When she was gone, Alex glared at his brother. "Did you have to say that?"

Max shrugged and went back to his chair. "She started it. Boy, that is one scary woman."

Alex followed him. "She's Nina's best friend. If I become a cardiologist, we can double-date."

Max picked up his last beer. "Not in this lifetime. Remember Deirdre? Well, that one would hand you four condoms." He shuddered. "What's wrong with women these days?"

"You should know," Alex said, stretching out in his chair. "You're the gynecologist."


* * *

Nina grew more nervous for Charity as the next Friday drew closer, but when she and Charity got to Norma's, the reading group turned out to be small: Norma; Rich; Mary Theresa, a lovely young editor; Walter, a weedy plumber; Steve, a burly accountant; and Alex; all sitting relaxed on Norma's bentwood chairs in Norma's airy living room, sipping Norma's mint lemonade.

"I thought you didn't come to these," Nina whispered to him when she'd joined him after he'd patted the chair beside him.

"Charity asked me," he whispered back, and she thought, And when did you talk to Charity? and then shoved the thought out of her mind because it was unworthy and because she had more important things to think about. Like whether Charity would make it through the evening without cutting her throat.

"I told Norma not to tell them I'm the writer," she'd told Nina before they'd walked up the stairs. "I want to hear it all, no matter how bad."

"Good," Nina said, and prayed it wouldn't be bad.

It wasn't good.

First of all, they assumed it was fiction. "Much too episodic," Steve said. Steve looked a lot like a construction worker, bulky and tanned, but Norma had introduced him as "the best damn accountant in Riverbend," so Nina mentally thwapped herself for making assumptions. "Every chapter is a story on its own," Steve went on. "There's no continuity. It makes it hard to follow the story. It's a funny story, but it's easy to put the book down between chapters."

"She needs a through line," Mary Theresa agreed. "A spine to hold the story together until the end. But it's funny, really funny, so maybe the humor will carry it."

"Nope." Walter the plumber looked like an accountant. "It's funny, but it's kind of mean funny. I felt sorry for some of these guys."

Great, Nina thought. This didn't bode well for Charity. Or for Howard Press, for that matter.

"I didn't feel sorry for them," Mary Theresa said. "I've dated guys like these."

"No, you haven't." Rich stretched out his legs and sipped his lemonade. "No guy is all bad. Maybe these guys had limits, but they were human beings, too."

So it was a gender thing. Nina thought fast. Women would understand it, but men would feel defensive. Most book buyers were female, but that didn't mean Charity could afford to offend men. She was going to have to do some rethinking on her male characterization.

Rich was still talking. "I think the author sacrificed character for humor. You know, like she didn't have to make them real as long as they were funny. So they all have one thing that she focuses on and makes fun of. Like they're too anal retentive. Or they're too preoccupied with sex." He looked at Nina and smiled. "Or they're too young."

Nina's face burned, and Rich went on. "So she never sees the real man. She obsesses on this one character trait, and she never sees anything else."

Very funny, Rich. Nina stole a sideways look to see if Alex had noticed, but he seemed to be concentrating on what Rick was saying about Charity's book. Thank God.

And what Rich was saying was important. Charity was going to have to rethink her approach.

Nina, however, was not going to rethink hers about younger men.

Rich went on, dissecting Charity's male characters, and Nina watched Charity, prepared to carry her out the door if she looked as if she was going to scream.

Charity sat on the edge of her chair, frowning as she concentrated. "But won't it ruin the story if the men are nice?" she asked Rich. "Won't that make it boring?"

"No." Rich leaned forward. "Because then there will be some suspense. The way this is written now, you know each chapter is going to end in disaster. But if they're nice guys with flaws-"

"Okay, that's a problem I saw," Steve broke in. "Each chapter is a disaster bit. It gets depressing because, you know, you like Jane when you read about her. She's funny and she's sexy. You want her to be happy. And she keeps dating Godzilla. Over and over and over."

"Right," Mary Theresa said. "It's like, why is she so dumb? I wanted her to be smart. She's so funny and she's so smart about other things, why is she so dumb about these guys? There should be something about them that's attractive so you understand why she's going out with them. She's so blind."

"You're right," Alex said, and Mary Theresa smiled at him. Well, that was good, Nina thought. Mary Theresa was very pretty and a lot closer to his age. See, Rich? He's not nterested in me, anyway.

Alex was still talking to Mary Theresa. "You do expect Jane to learn something after each date. You want her to do better every time."

"Yeah, I wanted her to win in the end," Steve said. "I wanted her to get her act together and end up with some guy, a good guy. I got tired of reading about losers, and then it ends and she's alone and you know she's going to hook up with another loser. So, what's the point?"

Nina couldn't look at Charity. Steve had pretty much just summed up the overwhelming problem of the book, right there. More than that, he'd summed up the problem of Charity's entire life.