“Thanks, Reggie,” I say. Which is not what I want to say. What I want to say is,I wish people would have a little faith in me. I’m not that stupid. But I know everyone is only trying to be nice. So instead I say, “Don’t worry, I’m leaving the investigating to the professionals this time. Anything you tell me that you hear, I’m taking straight to them.”

“That’s good,” Reggie says. And then, seeing a group of typical West Village dot commers, he hastens away from me, murmuring, “Smoke, smoke. Sens, sens,” at them.

I smile after him. It’s always nice to see someone so dedicated to his calling.

When I finally finish undoing all the locks to the front door of Cooper’s brownstone, I can barely get it open because of all the mail that’s piled up beneath the slot. Turning on the lights—Cooper must still be away on his little stakeout—I scoop up the enormous pile, grumbling at all the coupon packs and AOL trial disks. I’m asking myself why we don’t ever get any real mail—just bills and savings offers—when Lucy comes careening down the stairs, having heard me come in. In her jaws is a Victoria’s Secret catalog that she’s apparently spent the afternoon savaging into a droolly mess.

Lucy is truly a remarkable animal, given this special ability she has of singling out the sole catalog most likely to make me feel inadequate, and destroying it before I ever even get a chance to open it.

It’s as I’m trying to wrestle it away from Lucy—to keep her from leaving chunks of Heidi Klum’s torso all over the place—that the hallway phone rings, and I pick it up without even checking the caller ID.

“Hello?” I say distractedly. There is dog spit all over my fingers.

“Heather?” The voice of my ex-fiancé—sounding worried—fills my ear. “Heather, it’s me. God, where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all day. There’s something… there’s something I really need to talk to you about—”

“What is it, Jordan?” I ask impatiently. “I’m kind of busy.” I don’t say what I’m busy doing. He doesn’t need to know I’m busy trying to get my dog to stop eating a lingerie catalog. Let him think I’m busy being made love to by his brother.

Ha. I wish.

“It’s just,” Jordan says, “Tania told me the other day that you RSVP’d no to the wedding.”

“That’s right,” I say. I’m starting to piece together what all this might be about. “I have plans on Saturday.”

“Heather.” Jordan sounds wounded.

“Seriously, I do,” I insist. “I have to work. It’s check-in day for the transfer students.”

This isn’t a complete lie. Check-in day for the transfer students is on a Saturday. It’s just that it was last Saturday, not this coming Saturday. Still, Jordan will never know that.

“Heather,” he says, “my wedding is at five o’clock. Are you telling me you will still be working at five o’clock?”

Damn!

“Heather, I don’t understand why you don’t want to come to my wedding,” he goes on. “I mean, I know things were rocky between us for a while—”

“Jordan, I walked in on you getting head from the bride-to-be,” I remind him. “Which, at the time, I mistakenly thought I was. So I think my indignation was pretty understandable.”

“I realize that,” Jordan says. “And that’s why I thought you might feel… awkward about coming. To the wedding, I mean. That’s why I’m calling, Heather. I want to make sure you know how important you are to me, and how important your coming to the wedding is to me, and to Tania, too. She still feels terrible about what happened, and we’d really like to show you how truly—”

“Jordan.” By this time, I’ve made it into the kitchen with the cordless phone clutched in one hand, Lucy trailing behind me with her tongue lolling excitedly. After throwing away the damp Victoria’s Secret catalog, I flip on the light and reach for the handle to the fridge. “I’m not going to your wedding.”

“See,” Jordan says, sounding frustrated, “I knew that’s what you were going to say. That’s why I called. Heather, don’t be this way. I really thought we’d managed to put all that behind us. My wedding is a very important event in my life, Heather, and it’s important to me that the people I care about are there with me when it happens.All the people I care about.”

“Jordan.” There, behind the milk (I went grocery shopping yesterday, when I heard about the impending blizzard, so the milk carton is full and actually well before the expiration date, for once), it sits: a white cardboard box of leftover bodega fried chicken. In other words, a box of heaven. “I’m not going to your wedding.”

“Is it because I’m not inviting Cooper?” Jordan wants to know. “Because if it is—if it means that much to you—I’ll invite him, too. Heck, you can bring him as your escort. I don’t understand what it is you see in him, but I mean, the two of you are living together. If you really want to bring him—”

“I’m not bringing your brother to your wedding, Jordan,” I say. I’ve removed the white cardboard box from the fridge, along with a hunk of goat’s milk gouda from Murray’s Cheese Shop, a hard red apple, and the milk. I’m holding the phone to my face with my shoulder, and have to kick the fridge door to get it to close. Lucy is not helping by sticking to my side like glue. She loves bodega fried chicken (peeled from the bone) as much as the next person. “Because I’m not going to your wedding. And quit acting like you want me there because you care, Jordan. I know perfectly well your publicist suggested I come, to make it look like I’ve forgiven you for cheating on me, and that we’re pals again.”

“That’s not—” Jordan sounds affronted. “Heather, how can you imply such a thing? That is totally ridiculous.”

“Is it?” I plonk everything I’ve gathered from the fridge onto the butcher-block kitchen table, then grab a plate and a glass and sit down. “Didn’t your solo album tank? And wasn’t it partially because your boy-next-door image got slightly tarnished by all the headlines when it got out that you’d been cheating on me, the Mall Princess, with your dad’s latest discovery?”

“Heather,” Jordan cuts me off tersely. “No offense, but the American public’s memory is not quite that sharp. By the time you and I split, you hadn’t had an album out in years. It’s true you were once beloved by a certain segment of the population, but that segment has long since moved on—”

“Yeah,” I say, stung in spite of myself. “They’ve moved on to wanting nothing to do with either of us. Good thing you’re attaching yourself to Tania’s shiny star. Just don’t ask me to watch you do it.”

“Heather.” Now Jordan sounds long-suffering. “Why do you have to be this way? I thought you’d forgiven me for what happened with Tania. It certainly seemed as if you’d forgiven me that night in Cooper’s hallway—”

I feel myself blanch. I can’t believe he has the nerve to bring that up.

“Jordan.” My lips feel numb. “I thought we agreed we were never going to speak about that night again.” Never speak of it, and never, ever allow it to happen again.

“Of course,” Jordan says soothingly. “But you can’t ask me to act like it didn’t happen. I know you still have feelings for me, Heather, just like I still have feelings for you. That’s why I really want you there—”

“I’m hanging up now, Jordan.”

“No, Heather, wait. That thing I saw on the news just now, about some girl’s head. Was that your dorm? What the hell kind of place do you work in, anyway? Some kind of death dorm?”

“’Bye, Jordan,” I say, and press OFF.

I put down the phone and reach for the chicken. Lucy takes up position at my side, alert for any food that might not make it from my plate to my lips, and instead fall haphazardly onto my lap or the floor. We work as a team that way.

I know there are some people out there who prefer their fried chicken hot. But they’ve probably never had the fried chicken from the bodega around the corner from Cooper’s brownstone—or, as Cooper and I call it, bodega fried chicken. Bodega fried chicken isn’t just for everyday consumption. It’s definitely comfort food on a different scale than your ordinary fried chicken, your KFC or Chicken Mc-Nuggets. I’d bought a nine-piece the day before, knowing today would be hellish, on account of it being the first day of the new semester.