BRIAN FITZGERALD’S CAR IS FILLED with stars. There are charts on the passenger seat and tables jammedinto the console between us; the backseat is a palette for Xerox copies of nebulae and planets. “Sorry,” hesays, reddening. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

I help him clear off a space for me, and in the process pick up a map made of pinpricks. “What’s this?” I ask.

“A sky atlas.” He shrugs. “It’s kind of a hobby.”

“When I was little, I once tried to name every star in the sky after one of my relatives. The scary part is Ihadn’t run out of names by the time I fell asleep.”

“Anna’s named after a galaxy,” Brian says.

“That’s much cooler than being named after a patron saint,” I muse. “Once, I asked my mom why stars shine.

She said they were night-lights, so the angels could find their way around in Heaven. But when I asked mydad, he started talking about gas, and somehow I put it all together and figured that the food God servedcaused multiple trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night.”

Brian laughs out loud. “And here I was trying to explain atomic fusion to my kids.”

“Did it work?”

He considers for a moment. “They could all probably find the Big Dipper with their eyes closed.”

“That’s impressive. Stars all look the same to me.”

“It’s not that hard. You spot a piece of a constellation—like Orion’s belt—and suddenly it’s easier to findRigel in his foot and Betelgeuse in his shoulder.” He hesitates. “But ninety percent of the universe is made ofstuff we can’t even see.”

“Then how do you know it’s there?”

He slows to a stop at a red light. “Dark matter has a gravitational effect on other objects. You can’t see it, youcan’t feel it, but you can watch something being pulled in its direction.”

Ten seconds after Campbell left last night, Izzy walked into the living room where I was just on the cusp ofhaving one of those bone-cleansing cries a woman should treat herself to at least once during a lunar cycle.

“Yeah,” she said dryly. “I can see this is a totally professional relationship.”

I scowled at her. “Were you eavesdropping?”

“Pardon me if you and Romeo were having your little tête-àtête through a thin wall.”

“If you’ve got something to say,” I suggested, “say it.”

“Me?” Izzy frowned. “Hey, it’s none of my business, is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

“Right. So I’ll just keep my opinion to myself.”

I rolled my eyes. “Out with it, Isobel.”

“Thought you’d never ask.” She sat down beside me on the couch. “You know, Julia, the first time a bug seesthat big purple zapper light, it looks like God. The second time, he runs in the other direction.”

“First, don’t compare me to a mosquito. Second, he’d fly in the other direction, not run. Third, there is nosecond time. The bug’s dead.”

Izzy smirked. “You are such a lawyer.”

“I am not letting Campbell zap me.”

“Then request a transfer.”

“This isn’t the Navy.” I hugged one of the throw pillows from the couch. “And I can’t do that, not now. It’llmake him think that I’m such a wimp I can’t balance my professional life with some stupid, silly,adolescent…incident.”

“You can’t.” Izzy shook her head. “He’s an egotistical dickhead who’s going to chew you up and spit youout; and you have a really awful history of falling for assholes that you ought to run screaming from; and Idon’t feel like sitting around listening to you try to convince yourself you don’t still feel something forCampbell Alexander when, in fact, you’ve spent the past fifteen years trying to fill in the hole he made insideyou.”

I stared at her. “Wow.”

She shrugged. “Guess I had a lot to get off my chest, after all.”

“Do you hate all men, or just Campbell?”

Izzy seemed to think about that for a while. “Just Campbell,” she said finally.

What I wanted, at that moment, was to be alone in my living room so that I could throw things, like the TVremote or the glass vase or preferably my sister. But I couldn’t order Izzy out of a house she’d moved intojust hours before. I stood up and plucked my house keys off the counter. “I’m going out,” I told her. “Don’twait up.”

I’m not much of a party girl, which explains why I hadn’t frequented Shakespeare’s Cat before, although itwas a mere four blocks from my condo. The bar was dark and crowded and smelled of patchouli and cloves. Ipushed my way inside, hopped up on a stool, and smiled at the man sitting next to me.

I was in the mood to make out in the back row of the movie theater with someone who did not know my firstname. I wanted three guys to fight for the honor of buying me a drink.

I wanted to show Campbell Alexander what he’d been missing.

The man beside me had sky-eyes, a black ponytail, and a Cary Grant grin. He nodded politely at me, thenturned away and began to kiss a white-haired gentleman flush on the mouth. I looked around and saw what Ihad missed on my entrance: the bar was filled with single men—but they were dancing, flirting, hooking upwith each other.

“What can I get you?” The bartender had fuchsia porcupine hair and an oxen ring pierced through his nose.

“This is a gay bar?”

“No, it’s the officers’ club at West Point. You want a drink or not?” I pointed over his shoulder to the bottle oftequila, and he reached for a shot glass.

I rummaged in my purse and pulled out a fifty-dollar bill. “The whole thing.” Glancing down at the bottle, Ifrowned. “I bet Shakespeare didn’t even have a cat.”

“Who peed in your coffee?” the bartender asked.

Narrowing my eyes, I stared at him. “You’re not gay.”

“Sure I am.”

“Based on my track record, if you were gay, I’d probably find you attractive. As it is…” I looked at the busycouple beside me, and then shrugged at the bartender. He blanched, then handed me back my fifty. I tucked itback into my wallet. “Who says you can’t buy friends,” I murmured.

Three hours later, I was the only person still there, unless you counted Seven, which was what the bartenderhad rechristened himself last August after deciding to jettison whatever sort of label the name Neil suggested.

Seven stood for absolutely nothing, he had told me, which was exactly the way he liked it.

“Maybe I should be Six,” I told him, when I’d made my way to the bottom of the tequila bottle, “and youcould be Nine.”

Seven finished stacking the clean glasses. “That’s it. You’re cut off.”

“He used to call me Jewel,” I said, and that was enough to make me start crying.

A jewel’s just a rock put under enormous heat and pressure. Extraordinary things are always hiding in placespeople never think to look.

But Campbell had looked. And then he’d left me, reminding me that whatever he’d seen wasn’t worth thetime or effort.

“I used to have pink hair,” I told Seven.

“I used to have a real job,” he answered.

“What happened?”

He shrugged. “I dyed my hair pink. What happened to you?”

“I let mine grow out,” I answered.

Seven wiped up a spill I’d made without noticing. “Nobody ever wants what they’ve got,” he said.

Anna sits at the kitchen table by herself, eating a bowl of Golden Grahams. Her eyes widen, as she issurprised to see me with her father, but that’s as much as she’ll reveal. “Fire last night, huh?” she says,sniffing.

Brian crosses the kitchen and gives her a hug. “Big one.”

“The arsonist?” she asks.

“Doubt it. He goes for empty buildings and this one had a kid in it.”

“Who you saved,” Anna guesses.

“You bet.” He glances at me. “I thought I’d take Julia up to the hospital. Want to come?”

She looks down at her bowl. “I don’t know.”

“Hey.” Brian lifts her chin. “No one’s going to keep you from seeing Kate.”

“No one’s going to be too thrilled to see me there, either,” she says.

The telephone rings, and he picks it up. He listens for a moment, and then smiles. “That’s great. That’s sogreat. Yeah, of course I’m coming in.” He hands the phone to Anna. “Mom wants to talk to you,” he says,and he excuses himself to change clothes.

Anna hesitates, then curls her hand around the receiver. Her shoulders hunch, a small cubicle of personalprivacy. “Hello?” And then, softly: “Really? She did?”

A few moments later, she hangs up. She sits down and takes another spoonful of cereal, then pushes away herbowl. “Was that your mom?” I ask, sitting down across from her.

“Yeah. Kate’s awake,” Anna says.

“That’s good news.”

“I guess.”

I put my elbows on the table. “Why wouldn’t it be good news?”

But Anna doesn’t answer my question. “She asked where I was.”

“Your mother?”

“Kate.”

“Have you talked to her about your lawsuit, Anna?”

Ignoring me, she grabs the cereal box and begins to roll down the plastic insert. “It’s stale,” she says. “Noone ever gets all the air out, or closes the top right.”

“Has anyone told Kate what’s going on?”

Anna pushes on the box top to get the cardboard tab into its slot, to no avail. “I don’t even like GoldenGrahams.” When she tries again, the box falls out of her arms and spills its contents all over the floor.

“Shoot!” She crawls under the table, trying to scoop up the cereal with her hands.

I get on the floor with Anna and watch her shove fistfuls into the liner. She won’t look in my direction. “Wecan always buy Kate some more before she gets home,” I say gently.

Anna stops and glances up. Without the veil of that secret, she looks much younger. “Julia? What if she hatesme?”

I tuck a strand of hair behind Anna’s ear. “What if she doesn’t?”

“The bottom line,” Seven explained last night, “is that we never fall for the people we’re supposed to.”

I glanced at him, intrigued enough to muster the effort to raise my face from where it was plastered on thebar. “It’s not just me?”

“Hell, no.” He set down a stack of clean glasses. “Think about it: Romeo and Juliet bucked the system, andlook where it got them. Superman has the hots for Lois Lane, when the better match, of course, would bewith Wonder Woman. Dawson and Joey—need I say more? And don’t even get me started on Charlie Brownand the little redheaded girl.”

“What about you?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Like I said, it happens to everyone.” Leaning his elbows on the counter, he came close enoughthat I could see the dark roots beneath his magenta hair. “For me, it was Linden.”

“I’d break up with someone who was named for a tree, too,” I sympathized. “Guy or girl?”

He smirked. “I’ll never tell.”

“So what made her wrong for you?”

Seven sighed. “Well, she—”

“Ha! You said she!”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, Detective Julia. You’ve outed me at this gay establishment. Happy?”

“Not particularly.”

“I sent Linden back to New Zealand. Green card ran out. It was that, or get married.”

“What was wrong with her?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Seven confessed. “She cleaned like a banshee; she never let me wash a dish; shelistened to everything I had to say; she was a hurricane in bed. She was crazy about me, and believe it or not,I was the one for her. It was, like, ninety-eight percent perfect.”

“What about the other two percent?”

“You tell me.” He started stacking the clean glasses on the far side of the bar. “Something was missing. Icouldn’t tell you what it was, if you asked, but it was off. And if you think of a relationship as a living entity,I guess it’s one thing if the missing two percent is, like, a fingernail. But when it’s the heart, that’s a wholedifferent ball of wax.” He turned to me. “I didn’t cry when she got on the plane. She lived with me for fouryears, and when she walked away, I didn’t feel much of anything at all.”

“Well, I had the other problem,” I told him. “I had the heart of the relationship, and no body to grow it in.”

“What happened then?”

“What else,” I said. “It broke.”

The ridiculous irony is that Campbell was attracted to me because I stood apart from everyone else at TheWheeler School; and I was attracted to Campbell because I desperately wanted a connection with someone.

There were comments, I knew, and stares sent our way as his friends tried to figure out why Campbell waswasting his time with someon............