The Round-Up

         There are Chelsea and Colby, my roommates, who between them embody all that is confusing and awful about living with chicks. Chelsea mostly isn't so bad, but there's a lot to remember, with her. How to launder the guest towels, how to sort the bills in this little wooden thing she made for that obscure purpose. How to tread lightly around her unbelievable timidity. How to read her mood, whether she means the things she says. Et cetera. Colby, meanwhile, is a caricature of herself, so moody and explosive I sometimes pity her, trapped in such a shitty personality—except I'm stuck, too, until the lease runs out.
         Both hypersensitive to noises, smells. Both dating womanish, indulgent paralegals. Both model-thin with nice tits but no hips and big, vacuous eyes. Both into stripping down to boy shorts and tank tops after work, which was exactly what I envisioned when I first decided to chance girl roommates, only things never worked out quite the way I thought.
         Both pissed this morning. At me, per usual. Chelsea and Colby, drinking coffee in men's pajamas, form a tense little tableau at our kitchen table when I stumble in. Grunting, in unison: "You forgot to pay Pepco."
         "Again," growls Colby, thrusting the red-trimmed disconnection notice toward me.
         Chelsea's eyes are downcast, fixed on some point inside her coffee cup. "I took care of the late charges," she mumbles. "So we wouldn't miss the deadline. But—"
         "But you need to pay her back today." Colby, snarling. "And not let this happen again. This is really getting kind of unacceptable." Speaking as if to a child, as usual, her ice-chip eyes glinting nastily.
         I've kissed them each once. Chelsea last summer, on her yoga mat, both of us tense with second thoughts and dreading the sound of Colby's footsteps at the door. Then Colby a few weeks later, wasted on the rooftop: a sweaty ten seconds up against a ponderous banister. It was stupid, and nothing is the same since. Chelsea shrinks away by the minute. Colby has never been bitchier.

         Besides which, Melanie hates them both, passionately and unequivocally. Her words. This seems strong to me, but then, I've never engaged Colby in a screaming match over kitchen lighting. (Melanie has.) After months of contentious trial-and-error at the beginning of the lease, Melanie finally offered up the obvious solution. "I'll just never, ever visit you at your place again," she vowed. "And they can both screw themselves."
         Really, Mel? You don't mind letting them win this one?
         She laughed then. "Spoiled brats always get everything they want. It's like universal law. Even if this were worth dragging out till your lease is up, and it isn't, somehow they would still get their way. And besides, you have to live with them. You'll be miserable whenever they're not happy."
         This was in April, and we were at the harbor. Wind rising off the water, making her jewelry tinkle.
         "So no," she finished. "I don't mind letting them win this one. Yielding to the universal law, and all that." Smiling, silver bangles babbling like windchimes on her wrist. Melanie likes silver better than gold.

         There's Grace, who shares my cubicle at work because of an administrative mistake over the summer. That first day, I wasn't happy to walk in on a total stranger unpacking at my desk, but I held off complaining for weeks because of Grace's pencil skirts, her waist-length hair straight as flax and so blond it's almost white. Grace was levity and light personified all summer: friendly, jokey, deeply in love with the husband who called at least twice a day.
         Only since have I learned the incredible toxicity of an unhappy woman, what fumes she can release into a tiny workspace. Grace, now in the beginning stages of her divorce, is positively noxious, these days. Always sniffling behind her computer, melting down over the tiniest particles of inconvenience.
         I am late this morning, and Grace is angry. "You are late," she huffs, her pale skin blotchy and crimson. Grace is at her absolute aesthetic worst today, damp hair a sloppy stream of dishwater over one shoulder. "Did you forget about today?"
         I suppose I did.
         "Because," she rants, "you said, you said you would cover for me today so I could go meet my, my, so I could meet Alex for coffee. At nine." She swivels her monitor, jabs a chipped fingernail at the digital clock display in the corner. "You're walking in now, and it's already nine forty-five." Her voice breaks, and here are the tears. "I had to call him and cancel."
         Beneath Grace's chair are her most comfortable shoes, brown slip-ons with no feet in them. She is crumpled up in her chair with her knees to her chin, a trembling parcel of angst. If it helps, I don't say, you look like hell today anyway. Alex may have married the Grace of before, the human daffodil I met this summer, but forget reconciling with this new Grace, the Grace who can't be bothered with a hair dryer and who, honestly, is rapidly dieting away her perfect pencil-skirt curves.

         Melanie met Grace before the divorce, before the transformation, and pronounced her totally fine. They laughed about it together, Melanie pantomiming an inkpad, pressing her invisible stamp of approval to Grace's pale forehead. "No, no," she explained as they both dissolved into giggles. "It's just because, like, when he was telling me he's sharing his office now, I thought, you know, universal law—most obnoxious person imaginable. But you, you're, he's going to love sharing an office with you, I think."
         What followed was a split second of intense silence, Melanie's eyes snapping down to Grace's lean calves and back up to her feathery coil of whitish hair, stopping midway to the diamond gleaming brightly on Grace's left hand. Melanie's record-breaking once-over, Melanie's eyes catching mine. A flash of a wink.
         Dropping in on me for lunch, that day. A few minutes later, walking to the restaurant, Melanie looped an arm through mine and squeezed. "Oh," she said, pretending to just think of it. "By the way, I really do love her. You got really lucky."
         Grace? I, yeah. She's all right.
         "That hair, too. Oh, my God."
         It goes down to her, it, yeah. It's nice. She's okay. Staring, meanwhile, at the crown of Melanie's head, the curl creeping into her vivid roots. Alex left Grace three days later. Melanie's hair is prettier than Grace's.

         There are the coffee girls, a revolving-door string of twentysomething duos who can't hold their jobs at the little shop adjoining my office building. When I started here, it was Sloan and Abby, two sluggish college students with lips tinged black. Then a black girl named China and an Asian girl named Kenya. Then a pair of frazzled, gullible British twins.
         Today, it's Io (black curls, perfect ass and telltale sub-apron ridges to suggest nipple rings) and Elle (fat, grouchy). Both new and very slow, as evidenced by the line crawling toward their registers. Waiting to advance, I study them both and recognize Elle as the friend of a friend, realize I have fucked her. The details are fuzzy, but I place the memory sometime in September, right around the time of the bad thing with Melanie.
         I decide against buying Grace an apology coffee.

         During the China-and-Kenya era, I was at the coffee shop pretty much every evening. Most often with Sasha, killing the painful, slow pre-sundown hours, squashed together in a claustrophobic armchair made for one. Talking about nothing. China refilling our cups every so often, and in between, whispering with Kenya, overtly gossiping about the pair of us.
         One night in June, Sasha working late at The Gap, I met Melanie after work, dragged her in. She stifled giggles the whole time we stood in line, crossed her bare legs one over the other when we perched on opposite stools at a corner table. "Did you see their name tags?" she whispered.
         I know, it's funny, right?
         Leaning in conspiratorially, glancing over her shoulder: "So...if you had to do one of them?" She inched forward on her chair, pulling the hem of her sundress taut across her knees. It was her favorite game at the time, posing tough sexual this-or-thats, guessing what I'd say.
         I don't know, both of them? They're both kind of rectangular. Yeah, I'd do them both together and hope they added up to one decent figure.
         Melanie squealed with delight, her sunbrowned shoulders bouncing. "I knew that's what you'd say! Or, well. Actually, I guessed you'd say neither. but I was close!"
         You were close. Her halter tie was coming loose, her round little breasts sliding aloft. Your dress, babe. Fix it before you flash everyone.
         She reached over her head and pulled everything back into place, unconcerned.
         You're lucky I'm a gentleman.
         She rolled her eyes. "You're not a gentleman. If they were bigger, you'd let me flash everyone. You just don't feel a pressing need to see them."
         China wandered over with her tray, took our empty cups. "The other girl couldn't make it tonight?" she asked casually, tossing me a vulpine smile. She wandered away without waiting for an answer.
         Melanie rolled her eyes. "What a bitch," she giggled. "She thinks she just blew your cover, you know."
         She sees Sasha in here all the time. Maybe she feels loyal to her.
         "Loyal, pfft. Maybe she likes you. She wants me to storm off in a huff 'cause then you've suddenly got a free night."
         Too bad she's a rectangle.
         "Too bad she wasted her cleverness when you're not even trying to get into my pants."
         Your, well. Your sundress, anyway.
         Her halter tie came loose again at one point. That time I didn't tell her right away.

         Paris, Sydney, Geneva, Cheyenne. I swear those are their real names. I met them in a bar, and bars remain the anchor of our affiliation. Whenever I am instructed to call up some girls, I call Paris, who shepherds the others. They live together in Chinatown; they are amazing dancers, horrific card players.
         Paris has the name of every person she's ever slept with tattooed onto some part of her body. Michael on the nape of her neck. Khalid on her lower back. Ariana in a half circle to one side of her navel. Et cetera. She and Sydney tend bar at a dive on seventh; Geneva and Cheyenne wait tables.
         Paris is on duty when I enter the empty bar, reading a magazine on a stool behind the counter. Slouching, her pointy breasts bound up in a tight bandeau. February-cold outside, boiling hot in here. When she looks up and notices me, there's a film of sweat across her forehead. "Hey," she intones, frowning. She slides to her feet and begins rinsing a beer glass. "You're drinking at lunchtime these days?" Not smiling.
         Geneva and Cheyenne wander in from the kitchen, chewing, wiping yellowish grease on their aprons. Spotting me, they freeze in the doorway. Geneva regards me coolly; Cheyenne openly glares. "What are you doing here?" accuses Cheyenne in her shrill whine of a voice.
         "He's drinking at lunchtime," repeats Paris, positioning the tap over my glass. I haven't actually come for a drink, but she's already filling it with pee-colored liquid. "It's either work or the Lasik princess bothering him. Something."
         "So you're a full-fledged asshole alcholic now," snaps Geneva. She spins on one spindly, boot-clad leg and marches back into the kitchen.
         "She, yeah." Paris starts to apologize for her, stops herself.
         I should leave. I produce a five for the beer I haven't drunk and take a quick inventory. Paris at the bar, taking my money; Cheyenne busying herself setting tables to hide her sneer; Geneva in the kitchen, crying, probably. Three of the four. Where's Sydney, I don't ask, because they hate it when I do that, regard them as four parts of a whole.
         Before I leave, steeling myself against the chilly outdoors, I cast a final glance at Paris. In her constant state of near-nudity, you can see them all, the inked-on names at various stages of the healing process. In the instant before she catches me looking, I find my name on her inner thigh in an alarming red.

         Back in August, twelve of us playing spades at the girls' apartment in Chinatown. Set pairs, rise-and-fly tables, virginal Melanie bidding so abysmally we couldn't hold a seat anywhere.
         Geneva in my lap, giggling. "She sucks," she stage-whispered, watching Mel deliberate over a play on the other side of the table.
         This was during the sweet spot of that particular night, everyone pleasantly drunk but no one black-out just yet. On a couch in the corner of the room, Cheyenne and Sydney's four hands were fussing over one barrel-chested male neighbor of theirs. At the table, Paris murmured come-ons wetly into my left ear as Geneva criticized my spades partner in my right. If Melanie heard Geneva, she ignored her.
         People started clearing out around one-thirty, I remember. Melanie hovered. "Are you thinking of leaving soon?" she asked gently between games.
         Don't know. Maybe. Tired, but not quite ready to relinquish the feel of one girl purring into each ear.
         Melanie frowned, consulting her watch a dozen times in the space of two minutes. "I should go," she said finally. "I think I'm meeting someone and it always takes forever to find a cab down here."
         I don't remember when she actually left. Maybe I rested my eyes for a moment, waiting for a table to open up. When Paris roused me, Melanie and the rest of the guests were gone. Cheyenne disappeared into her bedroom with the barrel-chested neighbor. Sydney and Geneva staggered off to bed, and Paris and I had sloppy, dispassionate sex on the couch. Kicking over left-behind drinks, et cetera.
         Afterward, I couldn't focus my eyes. I watched the ceiling spin for an hour, trying to remember whether I had walked Melanie to a cab.
         Paris shifted and snored. I got up, wandered into Geneva's bedroom and fucked her, too. Still thinking, well. A green light is a green light. Or not thinking. Just too drunk to anticipate, still, that the girls with the matching names would someday express their displeasure at being regarded as four parts of one whole.

         The unfortunate consensus says I have a girlfriend, and it's Sasha. I didn't intend this; it's a trap you fall into. One unrehearsed move, one goodbye kiss too many and you're stuck till you work up the nerve to unstick yourself. She's younger than I am and kind of lazy, the only child of the most prominent laser eye surgeon in the city, so she can get away with not holding a job. With quitting every retail gig after a few months, leaving her with too much free time and nothing to do but worry about me, about us.
         She's all right, honestly. Her beauty is kind of an acquired taste; the appeal of her face depends on variables like the time of day, how much cleavage she's showing. Protruding, elfin ears; Coke-bottle hair relaxed into a chin-length bob. The best part of her body is the slope of her back just above her ass, the perfect ledge for my hands in a standing position. The rest of her is fine, unremarkable.
         Sasha is bad in bed. Eager, yes, but her joints are rigid, she's angled wrong for doggy-style and she views fellatio as a privilege to be carefully meted out. Also, I can't feel any friction when she's on top, a fact she consistently and knowingly ignores.
         Worse still is the way she expresses herself, in a Sasha-specific dialect you'd think an expensive education would have exorcised out of her. Rainchecks are do-overs, as in, You're canceling dinner on me? Well, can we have a do-over? Ignoring the obvious fact that you can't do over what hasn't been done yet. And she doesn't watch TV, she looks at it, like it's an effortless, passive process, just staring at the monitor, no intake of information.
         I call after work to ask how she is, what she's doing.
         "Looking at TV," is her lethargic, predictable answer. "I quit The Gap today."
         Of course you did, I don't say. This is the job she swore she'd keep, the one I was counting on to fill her afternoon hours so she wouldn't call my office so much. So I could drink my after-work coffee in a chair of my own, in peace.
         "I was just kind of over the bullshit," she expounds around a yawn, her voice sleepy and stretched-out. Draped, probably, across this ridiculous purple velvet-upholstered loveseat her dad bought her, whose presence in her plush genie's-bottle condo earned her the snide nickname by which she's known to all my friends.
         Don't think this means we're spending more time together than we already do, I don't say. I could barely stand the claustrophobic feeling of knowing she'd call the second her shift ended each day. This, knowing she's accessible every waking second, doing nothing but dreaming up ways to get closer to me, will kill us faster than bad sex or a language barrier ever could.
         "Come over later," pleads Sasha. "You haven't been by in two days and I have something to tell you."
         And this, this. This aggravating insistence on telling me she's got something to tell me rather than using that same airspace to tell me what that something is. I'm tempted to break up with her right this second.
         I settle for telling her no thanks. Tomorrow, maybe.

         I only started dating her because of Melanie, because Melanie was seeing some golden child from the financial district. Always busy on weekends, always chattering about things he'd said and done. Ironing her wild hair straight because that's the way he liked it. Et cetera.
         So, fine. I busied myself with other girls, with Sasha. We messed around off and on all summer; I caved in September.
         September. Midnight, lying in bed with Sasha after bed sex, thinking about Melanie.
         "Do you think you'll ever get married?" asked Sasha, staring at me so intently I had to look away, to the ceiling.
         Maybe. Probably. But not soon. Definitely not soon.
         "It's so weird," she droned. "I mean, that men are so much less marriage-oriented."
         Well. Marriage is for women, anyway. That's who it benefits; that's who gets excited about it. That makes sense to me.
         "No, no." She shook her head, flicked my side with one sharp fingernail. "What I mean is, you would think it would be a scarier thing for women because we're so particular. Because, like, the smallest things turn us off. The most random little things. And men don't, they just, they aren't so picky. They'll fuck anyone and anything. Ugly drunk chicks and picnic tables."
         That, wow. That is a truly incredible break in logic, Sasha.
         "What do you mean?"
         Well, because I—for example, okay. One way in which marriage benefits a man is because, honestly, there is something to be said for trusting one woman more than all the others ones. And with her being kind of—well. Not pure, necessarily, but yours. Totally, fully yours. And knowing she's going to carry your babies, and trusting her to do that. And that's something most guys certainly can't say about every woman they'd sleep with. Ditto ugly chicks and picnic tables.
         "Well—oh."
         So if I ever do get married, the fucking notwithstanding, it'll be to someone who meets that criterion.
         Sasha was quiet for a moment, digesting. "So then," she murmured finally, "do you know anyone like that? Do you trust anyone that much?"
         My mind flipped through its file of all my women, their tears and pencil skirts and tasteless tattoos, and stilled, finally, on Melanie's wrist stacked high with silver. I—yeah. I guess I do. Thinking of Melanie's delicate gait, the light that came into her face whenever we passed a stroller on the street.
         Sasha, squirming: "You trust me that way, right?"
         Of course that was what she had meant. Hmm, I said. A noncommittal, nonverbal answer that seemed to mollify her.
         "What would you want to name a baby?" pressed Sasha, giddy from the rare momentum of the conversation.
         Oh, I don't know. For a boy, just something, you know, strong. One syllable. Something like Max, or James.
         "That's funny. I can only ever think of girl ones." She rattled them off, a horrific collection of overstated celestial novelty names. Starcia, Lunabella. Each one uglier than the last.
         Maybe, I said. I think I like them a little simpler than that.
         "Like what?"
         Like, I don't know. Like Melanie, maybe.
         She wrinkled her nose.
         I mean, I don't know. It's just pretty and, you know, feminine. I like the, the soft consonants.
         "Soft consonants."
         I don't know. I like it. It goes pretty good with my last name.
         An hour later, Sasha still pouting beside me, God knows why, my phone rang in the pocket of my jeans on the floor. Sasha was already pissed off, anyway, so I got up to answer it.
         Melanie. Melanie crying. Melanie's words an incomprehensible string of hiccups and hysteria.
         Calm down, slow down. Slow down, baby. Not bothering to censor the epithet for my now-fuming girlfriend. What are you saying? What's the matter?
         He—what? Behind me, Sasha scrambling pointedly into her clothes.
         Are you—are you serious, babe?
         No, no. Oh, my God. No, he didn't.
         Oh, no.
         Oh, my God. Where are you?
         Okay. No, yeah. Yes. I'm coming.
         Hanging up, too crazed to offer Sasha an explanation. To remember the top button when I zipped my jeans. Rushing out the door, my thoughts full of Melanie, ears ringing with her sobs.

         There's Danae, our edible across-the-hall neighbor. I wanted her for months, inexplicably compelled by the way she always avoided eye contact in the hall. Smooth, milk-chocolate skin, breasts with the shape and heft and reddish blush of overripe mangos. She smells like fruit and caramel.
         Danae is in the mailroom when I stop by on my way home. She is a welcome sight, a multisensory confection in cashmere and corduroys. She affords me a mild smile, steps aside so I can reach the box. "Hey there," she murmurs, honey dripping from her voice.
         I return a casual nod, a practiced, vague tilt of the head. She was coy when we first met, coyer still when I asked her out for drinks once, twice, three times throughout the month of August. Not dating at the time, she said. Recovering slowly from a serious boyfriend, a bad breakup. Still a little leery of men, then, but try again later!
         And now, this. A big diamond solitaire gleaming on her ring finger as she thumbs through her mail, tosses the junk envelopes aside.
         "Nice seeing you," she mumbles without looking as I turn and trudge out, toward the elevator.

         You're kidding.
         Not kidding. Melanie, curled up on her side on a bench in front of my building, one hand drooping listlessly toward the concrete. Late September, then, things just changing colors. Over our heads, a Japanese maple that exactly matched the burnished ends of Melanie's hair. Melanie still in a sundress despite the turning weather and the hour, the hem bunched up to reveal most of the length of her cinnamon-colored leg.
         You—well. You don't have to. You know.
         For the first time in days, Melanie's dark eyes sharpened and fixed crossly on me. "Shut up," she snapped. "Really, just shut up." Crying. Again. More tears from her that month than ever before or since.
         Okay. I—okay.
         Nighttime. We had come outside to take advantage of the late September cool, to honor Melanie's self-imposed exile in deference to my shrewish roommates. Melanie so fragile and beautiful in her seasonally inappropriate yellow sundress, her vivid hair aflame against the white paint. Even amid all that bright color she looked broken, heaped across the bench like a rag doll. Always nauseous or crying; I hadn't seen her smile in weeks. "And don't say that again, please," she whispered, hiding her face with her hands.
         Okay.
         Then a terrible awkwardness. This was during that awful period when I couldn't touch her, when my hands literally trembled at her nearness. Melanie, bound in an impenetrable forcefield of misery, all prickly and ruined. My palms hovered behind her head, hurting to offer her something, anything. We were stuck, both of us.
         Behind us, foosteps. I turned and there was Danae approachig, her beaming smile incongruous with the bleakness consuming September. From behind the behcn, in the dark, she couldn't see a prostrate Melanie, but fixed her eyes boldly on mine. Danae, granting me her first-ever smile after an awkward August. "Hi," she enthused, lifting her fingers in passing. After a few steps, she stopped, turned around. "So," she said slowly, "my schedule's kind of opened up lately."
         Yeah?
         "Yeah. Just recently, it has. I was wondering whether you'd still be up for a drink sometime."
         I, well. Melanie stirred and whimpered beside me, her face going chartreuse.
         "Oh." Noticing Melanie, Danae took a step backward, crossed her arms.
         Now isn't good. Recognizing the face of urgent nausea, I helped Melanie to her feet. I'll have to catch up with you later, Danae.
         Pushing inside, past a surprised Danae. Waiting impatiently for the elevator, Melanie resting her heavy head on my shoulder. Bursting through the door to my apartment, flipping the kitchen switch to light Melanie's way to the bathroom. Melanie stumbled in and retched noisily. I sat outside, listening without wanting to, violence rising in my throat.
         Afterward, we sat at the kitchen table, beneath the oily overhead light, rehashing again. Melanie, dead-faced: "It still hurts. I'm still sore. This much later."
         I wish you'd give me permission to kill him. I swear I'll do it.
         "We'll let them deal with him. Nothing will change this, anyway."
         You don't have to keep it, Mel. My last surge of desperation, tragically misplaced. No one would know, no one would judge—
         "Shut up."
         On her feet, her face flaming, Melanie collided blindly with a pajama-clad Colby emerging from her bedroom. "Excuse me," snapped Colby, glaring at me, oblivious to Melanie's distress, "but I am trying to fall asleep on the other side of this door. I don't care how many women you have over here at what ridiculous hours, but can you please, for the last fucking time, keep this light off at night?" She flipped the switch, bathing us in sudden darkness.
         A second later, the light was on again. "Colby," said Melanie evenly, her hand still on the switch, "we aren't bothering you, and we won't be in here long. He's helping me try to figure something out—"
         Lights out again. Colby's silhouette crackling against the rectangular light of her doorway, hands on hips. "You don't live here," she snarled. "He isn't even dating you. You don't have rights here—"
         Lights on. In Melanie's eyes, a sharpness I had until then seen in the eyes of every woman except her. A split second of silence, just long enough for Melanie to collect her thoughts.

         I know Angelina is fucking at least one other guy besides me. In all her adult life, she is known to say, she has never seen monogamy in successful practice, and she can't be bothered to strive for such a failure-ridden standard. She isn't the type you'd want for your everything, anyway. Just not enough; you'd be left wanting more. Smart, but disinterested. Alluring, but principally unfaithful. Pretty, but not so that it's hard to look away. She wants to write novels and adopt African AIDS orphans. Nothing that prohibits her from being someone's (or someones') bit on the side forever.
         The other guy she pretends she's not fucking, he works at a nearby Target, and he stashes his stuff in Angelina's apartment when he's in a hurry. Once it was a pair of size thirteen sneakers, conspicuous among Angelina's tiny sandals and heels. Then a digital watch, forgotten on Angelina's night table. By way of a response, I left my winter scarf looped around her bedpost, knowing she wouldn't notice it. Knowing he would.
         The next time I came over, a pair of boxer briefs peeked out from beneath her bed. I responded in kind: an undershirt balled up behind the bedroom door.
         Today, his most blatant calling card yet: a giant black duffel bag on the living room floor, unzipped partway to reveal a glimpse of men's shirt fabric.
         "My, you know, my friend, who works at Target, he left that here," babbles Angelina, shepherding me quickly past.
         For a moment, I worry: I haven't brought a memento so overt as to compete with that one. Shuffling into Angelina's bedroom, I consider the merits of just leaving a note. Hello, good Sir or Sirs; warmest regards from the other side of Angelina's duplicity.
         Angelina peels off her shirt and sits cross-legged on the bed, watching me expectantly but without much enthusiasm. "I ran into the Lasik princess at the mall today," she remarks, tugging on my tie, drawing me closer. Her fingers glide mechanically down the row of my buttons, working each one open. "Leaving The Gap. And actually, that other girl, too, you know, your friend, the pregnant girl with the hair. What's her name?"
         All traces of heat climb north to my face, and an erection suddenly seems impossible.
         "Melanie," she remembers, tapping my chest for emphasis. "Your friend Melanie, getting off the subway. She's really showing now. She says—"
         Happily, she is interrupted by the chirp of her cell phone.
         "Oops," she says, hopping off the bed. She retrieves the phone from her desk, glances at the display, answers it with a grin. "You left your duffel bag," she tells her caller. "I know! With all your crap in it." She giggles, her countenance going girlish, hair falling over one shoulder.
         While she's talking, I do up my buttons. Resolutely flaccid, thinking again of strangling the bastard who turned my Melanie into an Angelina. The golden child from the financial district who probably couldn't see her rarity, didn't know what he was defiling.

         Melanie in January. Grace had let her in the office, and she was waiting when I came in, her face flushed from the cold, a splash of grenadine in each toffe-colored cheek.
         I—hi.
         Palpable awkwardness. I hadn't called in weeks, hadn't seen her in longer. Bundled up in her thick winter coat, she was the same Melanie as always, an illusion whose unraveling I wanted to delay as long as possible. "I, hi," she exhaled, wringing her gloved hands. Her eyes were dark with exhaustion. "I was in the, the neighborhood; I wanted to see if you wanted to get—"
         "Can you take this outside, please?" Grace, newly separated and at the very nadir of her bitterness, tossed us a look of profound, almost apologetic misery. With her hands positioned tokenly over the keyboard, eyes wet and red, she was on the verge of the first of many midmorning crying jags.
         Not wanting to be alone with Melanie, but wanting even less to be alone with Grace, I nodded toward the door, placed my hand on the small of Melanie's back to guide her out.
         To the coffee shop, then. Coffee for me, hot chocolate for Melanie. China rang us up together, assuming.
         With the heat on full blast, Melanie had to take off her coat before we could sit on the armchairs in the corner. She hesitated, then shrugged it off and hung it gingerly over the back of her chair.
         Melanie, looking surer and more complete than she had in September, when I'd seen her last. Melanie, straight-backed and cygnine as she lowered herself onto her chair, her vivid hair gathered into a spray of curls behind her. Melanie, curvy and perfectly formed in a clinging blue sweaterdress and leather boots. Soft-faced and superlatively beautiful. Had I always struggled so hard not to reach out and touch her just for the hell of it? Memory failed. I was dimly aware of Kenya and China watching us from the counter, noticing Melanie's changed frame, whispering, assuming.
         They think it's mine, I didn't say, stopping myself just in time.
         "They think it's yours," said Melanie softly, gripping her hot chocolate mug with both hands.
         My eyes left hers, drifted down to her abdomen, a subtle but noticeable half-moon in her lap. You look good. How long is it, now?
         Unexpectedly, she smiled. "Oh, still months off," she sighed. "No one can even tell, still, unless I'm wearing something like this." Fingers skimming the tight knit of her dress.
         And you, you're sure, you're sticking with the same plan, still?
         As quickly as it had appeared, her smile vanished. She averted her eyes, took a long sip of her drink.
         Sorry. Never mind.
         "I can't not be happy about it," she said. "If I'm going to do it."
         It's going to change your whole life. You'll be a different person, afterward.
         "Well. Maybe that's for the better. I'm not, I don't—" She struggled, broke off, pressing a hand to her belly. Seeking strength, maybe. "Well, you know," she insisted finally. "I'm not, like, like your roommates, or those poker girls, or the La—your, your Sasha. I need to be something, too. This is special; it's mine."
         I almost choked on my coffee, on the absurdity of her logic. You made the wrong choice, I didn't say. No one was special except you. And now you've chosen this, and there's no one left. Only a thousand interchangeable women I don't want. I didn't say it. I didn't say anything. I could have made you feel special, I didn't say. I could have been yours, but you were his. And now, well.
         Her hand, a tiny, delicate thing, held her half-moon belly with a painful tenderness. "It is universal law," she murmured, "that the ones we want never want us back. And I'm not blaming you, I'm not, but I should tell you, you should know, that I only ever started seeing him because I wasn't good enough to be one of yours."
         One of mine?
         "You know. One of your women." She winked and downed the last of her hot chocolate.
         This was in January. Soon after began the round-up, my compulsive ritual of taking inventory. They're always fine, all of them—Grace surviving her split gracelessly, Danae snatched up by some patient older guy with a sweet tooth. I don't include Melanie in my rounds, but rather wait for another to climb the vacated pedestal. If Melanie could plummet so swiftly and so randomly, well, with so many contenders—more every day—isn't another sure to ascend to her place? It's only a theory; I can't be sure. I only know I want to be on the scene when it happens.