“Sounded pretty exciting,” Kaylie said. She loosened her grip on her hair just long enough to gnaw a hangnail on her right index finger. “What happened?”

Brooke was so relieved to see the girl smile that she said, “Yeah, actually it is really exciting. My husband is a musician. He just got a call from Leno’s people inviting him to be on the show.” Brooke could hear her voice surge with pride, and although she knew it was both unprofessional and even silly to be sharing the news with her teenage patient, she was too happy to care.

Kaylie’s head snapped to full attention. “He’s going to be on Leno?”

Brooke nodded and shuffled some papers around on her desk in an unsuccessful attempt to hide her pleasure.

“That is the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever heard!” the girl exclaimed, her ponytail bobbing as if to underscore her point.

“Kaylie!”

“Sorry, but it is! What’s his name and when’s he on? I want to make sure I see it.”

“Next Tuesday night. His name is Julian Alter.”

“That is so fuck—freaking cool. Congratulations, Mrs. A. Your husband must be pretty awesome if Leno wants him. You’re going to go to L.A. with him, right?”

“What?” Brooke asked. She hadn’t had a second to think about the logistics, but Julian hadn’t mentioned them either.

“Isn’t Leno in L.A.? You, like, have to go with him.”

“Of course I’ll go with him,” Brooke replied automatically, although she had a nagging, uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach that Julian’s omission of an invitation wasn’t just a detail that got lost in all the excitement.

Brooke still had another ten minutes with Kaylie, then a full hour afterward with a Huntley gymnast whose coach’s weigh-ins were having disastrous effects on the girl’s self-esteem, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate for one more second. Figuring she’d already acted inappropriately by oversharing and using their session time to talk about her personal life, Brooke turned back to Kaylie.

“I’m sorry to do this, sweetheart, but I need to cut our session short this afternoon. I’ll be back on Friday, and I’ll notify your sixth-period teacher that we didn’t get a chance to finish so we can reschedule another full session for then. Is that okay?”

Kaylie nodded. “Hell, yeah, Mrs. A. This is big news for you. Say congratulations to your husband for me, okay?”

Brooke smiled at her. “Thanks, I will. And, Kaylie? We’re going to continue talking about this. I can’t condone you losing weight, but if you want to talk about eating more healthfully, I’m happy to advise you. Does that sound good?”

Kaylie nodded and Brooke thought she may have even detected a small smile before the girl walked out of her office. Although she didn’t look the least bit fazed about cutting their session short, Brooke was overcome with guilt. It wasn’t easy to get these girls to open up, and she actually felt like she was starting to get somewhere with Kaylie.

Pledging to set things right with everyone on Friday, Brooke sent a quick e-mail to Rhonda, her principal, claiming sudden sickness, threw all her stuff in a canvas tote bag, and jumped directly into the backseat of an idling taxi. Hell, if Leno wasn’t sufficient reason to splurge, nothing was.

Despite the fact that it was rush hour, the park crossing at Eighty-sixth Street wasn’t unbearable and the West Side Highway was moving at a brisk twenty miles an hour (downright dreamy for that time of night), and Brooke was delighted to find herself standing in her apartment by six thirty. She got down on the floor and let Walter lick her face for a few minutes and then gently replaced herself with a thickly braided, extra-smelly bully stick—Walter’s favorite. After pouring herself a glass of pinot grigio from an open bottle in the fridge and taking a long, deep swallow, Brooke toyed with the idea of posting Julian’s news as a Facebook status update but quickly dismissed it; she didn’t want to announce anything without running it by him first.

The first status update on her homepage was, unpleasantly, from Leo. Apparently, he had linked his Twitter account to his Facebook page, and despite the fact he usually had not one redeeming tidbit to share, he was taking full advantage of the constant-update feature.

Leo Walsh. . . PUMPED JULIAN ALTER WILL BE ROCKING THE LENO SHOW NEXT TUESDAY. L.A., HERE WE COME. . . .

The update’s mere association with her husband made Brooke feel queasy, as did what it pointed out: that Julian was definitely planning a trip to Los Angeles, Leo was definitely joining him, and it was only Brooke who had not yet received an invitation.

She showered, shaved, brushed, flossed, and toweled dry. Was it weird to assume she’d accompany Julian to Los Angeles for the taping? She had no clue if Julian wanted her there for the support, or if he figured that this was a business trip and he should be traveling with his manager, not his wife.

As she slathered a Julian-approved scent-free moisturizer on her freshly shaved legs—he couldn’t stand the smell of scented products—Brooke watched Walter watch her. “Did Daddy make a bad call hiring Leo?” she asked him in a high-pitched voice.

Walter lifted his head from the fluffy bath mat that always made his fur smell like mildew, wagged his tail, and woofed.

“Is that a no?”

Walter woofed again.

“Or a yes?”

Another woof.

“Thank you for that insight, Walter. I will surely treasure it.”

He rewarded her with an ankle lick and sank back into the mat.

A quick time check revealed it was ten to eight, so after taking a minute to psych herself up, Brooke pulled a crumpled pile of black fabric from the back of her underwear drawer. The last time she’d worn this getup had been over a year before, when she had accused Julian of not being interested in sex anymore and he had gone straight to that drawer, pulled out the jumpsuit, and said something to the effect of “It’s a crime to own this and not wear it.” It had immediately broken the tension and Brooke remembered putting it on and dancing exaggerated stripper moves around their bedroom to Julian’s loud cheers and catcalls.

Somewhere along the way, that jumpsuit began to symbolize their sex life. She’d bought it in their first or second year of marriage, after a discussion where Julian confessed, as though it were some scandalous, shameful secret, that he just loved women in tight black lingerie . . . and maybe didn’t love all the brightly colored boy shorts and striped racerback tanks that Brooke wore each night to bed and would’ve sworn were sexy in their teenage girlness. Although she couldn’t remotely afford it back then, Brooke immediately set out on a lingerie-buying spree and, within two days, had acquired a super-soft black jersey chemise with spaghetti straps from Bloomingdale’s; a babydoll-style, ruffled black nightie from Victoria’s Secret; and a short black cotton nightshirt with “Juicy Sleeper” splashed across the bum. Each one, in succession, had been met with barely tepid enthusiasm along the lines of “Mmm, that’s cute,” before Julian turned back to his magazine each night. When not even the babydoll nightie elicited a modicum of interest, Brooke called Nola the very next morning.