“Really.” Shari sounds, as always when I call her at her office these days, a little frantic. “You can have him.”

“Taken,” I say. I’m on Fifty-seventh Street between Madison and Fifth. It’s such a nice fall day—just warm enough that you don’t need a coat, and just cool enough that you don’t feel sweaty—I decide to walk to Monsieur Henri’s, just thirty blocks north, instead of taking the subway, saving myself a whopping two bucks. Hey, every little bit counts. “Chaz got me a job in his dad’s office.”

“A job?” I hear computer keys clacking. Shari is talking and e-mailing at the same time. But that’s okay. I’ll take whatever I can get, it’s so hard to reach her these days. “I thought you already had a job. At that wedding-gown place.”

“Yeah,” I say, realizing I hadn’t been quite as upfront with my friends about my deal with Monsieur Henri as I ought to have been. “That’s not really a paying gig—”

“WHAT?” I realize by her tone—and the cessation of clacking keys—that I now have Shari’s undivided attention. “You took a nonpaying job?”

“Right,” I say. It’s kind of hard to walk down a busy sidewalk like the one I’m currently hurrying along and talk on your cell at the same time. There are so many businesspeople rushing back to their offices, street vendors hawking Prada knockoffs, tourists stopping to gawk at the tall buildings, and homeless people asking for spare change that it’s as hard to navigate as the Indy 500 Speedway during the race. “Well, it’s not easy to find a paying fashion gig in this city when you’re just starting out.”

“I can’t believe that,” Shari says, sounding incredulous. “What about Project Runway?”

“Shari,” I say. “I’m not going on a reality show —”

“No, I just mean… they make it seem like it’s all so easy—”

“Well,” I say. “It’s not. Anyway, I want us to get together to celebrate—you and me and Chaz and Luke. So what are you doing tonight?”

“Oh,” Shari says. I hear the clacking start up again. Which isn’t easy, considering the fact that there are cars honking and people talking loudly all around me. And yet, I can still hear the fact that my best friend is only half paying attention to me. “I can’t. Not tonight. We’re getting slammed here today—”

“Fine,” I say. I understand that Shari’s new job is the most important thing in the world to her right now. Which is as it should be. I mean, she is, after all, saving women’s lives. “How about tomorrow night, then?”

“This week is really bad for me, Lizzie,” Shari says. “I’m going to be working late just about every night.”

“What about Saturday?” I inquire patiently. “You aren’t working on Saturday night, are you?”

There’s a pause. For a second or two, I think Shari’s going to say that she does, indeed, plan on working through Saturday night.

But then she says, “No, of course not. Saturday it is.”

“Great,” I say. “We’ll hit Chinatown. And then Honey’s. On Saturday night the serious karaoke players come out. And, Shari?”

“What, Lizzie? I really have to go, Pat’s waiting—”

“I know.” There’s always someone waiting for Shari these days. “But I wanted to ask you—are things okay between you and Chaz? Because he asked me about you.”

I have her full attention again. “He asked you what about me?” Shari demands, somewhat sharply.

“Just if I thought you were all right,” I say. “I said I thought you were. I guess he misses you as much as I do.” I think about this as I wait for the light to change before crossing the street. “Actually, he probably misses you more… ”

“I can’t help it,” Shari snaps, “if I’m too busy helping victims of domestic violence find safe places to live to worry about my boyfriend. This is part of the problem, you know. I mean, men think the entire world revolves around them. And so when the woman in his life finds herself thriving—excelling, even—in the workplace, a man naturally feels threatened, and eventually leaves her for someone who has more time to give to him.”

I am, to put it bluntly, stunned by this speech. So stunned I actually stop walking for a second, and am bumped from behind by an irritated-looking businessman. “Excuse you,” the businessman mutters before hurrying along.

“Shari,” I say into the phone. “Chaz does not feel threatened by your new career. He loves that you love your job. He just wants to know when he’s ever going to see you again. He isn’t leaving you.”

“I know,” Shari says, after a pause. “I just—sorry. I didn’t mean to lay all that on you. I’m just having a bad day. Forget I said anything.”

“Shari.” I shake my head. “This sounds like something more serious than just a bad day. Are you and Chaz—”

“I really have to go, Lizzie,” Shari says. “I’ll see you Saturday.”

And then she hangs up.

Wow. What was that about? I wonder. Chaz and Shari have always had something of a stormy relationship, full of bickering and even some fights (the most serious of which was the one stemming from Shari’s decision to kill and dissect her lab rat, Mr. Jingles, even after Chaz had found an identical replacement rat at PetSmart for whom none of us had developed the kind of affection we all felt for Mr. Jingles).

But they’d always made up quickly (except for the two weeks after Mr. Jingles’s death that Chaz wouldn’t speak to Shari). In fact, the fantastic makeup sex was one of the reasons Shari cited for picking so many fights with Chaz in the first place.

So is that what’s going on now? Just an elaborate ploy on Shari’s part to inject a little more excitement into their relationship?

Because, as I’m discovering myself, it’s not easy to keep the flame alive when you’re living together. Mundane everyday things can totally get in the way of blissful cohabitation. Like whose turn is it to do the dishes, and who gets control of the remote, and who unplugged whose cell phone charger to plug in the hair dryer instead then forgot to plug the cell phone charger back in.

Those kinds of things are real romance killers.

Not that I don’t love every minute of living with Luke. I mean, from the moment I wake up to see the Renoir girl’s smiling face above my head, to the moment I fall asleep, listening to Luke’s gentle breathing beside me (he always falls asleep before I do. I don’t know how he does it. The minute his head touches the pillow, he’s out like a light. Maybe it’s all that boring reading for his Principles of Biology and General Chemistry that he does before bed in order to keep up with his homework), I thank my lucky stars that I made the decision to leave England and go to France. Because otherwise I would never have met him, and I wouldn’t be as happy as I am now (worries about finances aside).

Still, I guess I can understand it if Shari is trying to get a rise out of Chaz just to shake things up a little. Because I’ve watched television with Chaz before, and the way he flips up and down the channels instead of just leaving it on one semi-interesting program and then going to the on-screen guide to see what else is on can be almost as annoying as the way Luke, it turns out, considers really upsetting documentaries about things like the Holocaust suitable viewing for a fun Friday night at home.

But I don’t have time to worry about Shari and Chaz—or even Luke’s aversion to romantic comedies—because when I get to Monsieur Henri’s that afternoon and ring the bell to be let in (he hasn’t given me a key, and probably won’t, I fear, until I’ve proved myself capable of doing something other than a cross-stitch), I find bedlam.

An older woman with big hair and the kind of brightly colored clothing that I’ve already learned pegs her as “bridge and tunnel” (someone who lives outside Manhattan, and has to take a bridge or tunnel to get to it) is holding this enormous white box and shouting, “Look! Just look!” while a girl who could only be her daughter (even though she’s more stylishly attired in black and a blowout) stands nearby, looking sullen, and not a little rebellious.