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for which aspect of her world can fall apart quicker. Alongside her ill-fated job opportunities have been several unfit boyfriends. There was Michael, a dentist, the son of a dentist, who apparently hailed from a long line of dentists. He was obsessed with floss and told Lexi she had the sexiest molars he had ever laid eyes upon. Lexi had been in ‘like’ with him for a short while. He knew how to cook Moussaka and he didn’t appear to be gay. But she left him after one year because she was bored.
    “It’s very normal to be bored by a man,” explained her exasperated mother. “I’ve been bored by your father for decades!” But Lexi hadn’t felt quite ready to be permanently bored, so she paused for a little while before dating the opposite extreme. She met Hank in the check-out line at Whole Foods. Hank had his pilot’s license and was halfway through writing a seven hundred page novel. He flew her to Catalina and asked if he could paint her toenails on the beach. He had a mind like a marble maze and after a year, Lexi found it an effort to keep up with his wayward thoughts. Since Hank there had been numerous guys, some who had lasted for months at a time. She’s never short of men being interested, it’s her own lack of interest in return that concerns her.
    “You just haven’t met the right guy yet, Lex,” says Meg encouragingly. “He’ll come along.”
    “That’s just it, Meg. He might not come along and I’m going to have to accept that. And so are you. And so is my mom.”
    “I don’t know, Lex. Maybe it’s like these guys are choosing you rather than you choosing them. You could be more proactive, go online, make a checklist, be assertive. I mean come on, you’re not even on Facebook yet. Ryan Glazer might get back in contact with you! I was friended by that bitch, Penelope, from grammar school. She’s a yoga teacher now.”
    The girls had shared a crush on Ryan Glazer in the third grade and he’d been the first boy to come between them. Meg cried for two straight days after he offered Lexi a bite of his peanut butter and banana sandwich.
    Lexi groans, “No thank you, Meg! The computer is so unromantic,” although Lexi has lost a true sense of what romance even is anymore. It used to be straightforward. The Prince
had
shown up. The glass slipper
had
fit. But now the Prince was out clubbing in boys town and the slipper had cracked into hundreds of pieces, leaving Lexi still picking up the tiny shards, all these years later.
    “It might be unromantic but it
is
effective. Hey, Jack! Jack!” Meg suddenly yells at her four-year-old, “hippos DO NOT punch their sisters!”
    “I wasn’t punching her, Mommy. I was stroking her,” says Jack innocently.
    “With your fist?”
    “But she likes it. Very, very much.”
    “She does, does she? Let’s ask her. Annabelle, do you like it when Jack punches you?”
    “Yes—me like it… punching is fun!” sings two-year-old Annabelle, jumping up and down.
    Meg rolls her eyes. “She’s got a great future ahead of her. I give up. If I get involved—I’m overprotective. If I don’t—I’m neglecting their needs. Can you watch them while I get a drink? Is it too early for alcohol?”
    “Yes!” says Lexi, as Meg disappears into the kitchen.

GEORGE
7 th November, 2009
Maida Vale, London
    It’s three in the morning. George sits on the side of his bed wearing only boxers and plucking the strings of his oldest and most loved guitar. He saved up for it when he was a boy, washing his neighbors’ cars and taking their dogs for walks. When he’d finally earned forty pounds, he’d cycled to the local charity shop and handed over the money. The guitar had been balanced in the window for months, next to a leery garden gnome and a pair of scuffed pink stilettos. He’d named it Stardust, in honor of Bowie, and had grown up talking to the instrument the way other kids conversed with imaginary friends. Stardust knew all of George’s hopes and fears and