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were meant for parchment and quills and pots of ink, to be sealed off with wax and hand delivered by men riding desperately through the night. Yet there they were, looping characters written in ballpoint in the margins of Lady Chatterley’s Lover .
    I gathered the explosion of pages toward me, tenderly returning them to where they belonged. Whoever Henry and Catherine were, they were in my care. I don’t remember how long it took for me to go through and reorder all those pages. I only remember the sounds of Hugo’s party seeping in through the closed window, and how I tried to ignore them as if they were the sounds of lovers in the next room.

Chapter Two
The Silver Needle
    This is a book of passion. She sheds her skin. She is reborn through desire.
    —Catherine
    Thank God for the UPS man. If it weren’t for the doorbell, I’d still be asleep. When it woke me up, I found myself halfway sliding off my sofa with a loose page drool-glued to the side of my face. I scrambled to the door, signed John Lennon’s name on the pad the UPS guy handed me, and held the door as he wheeled the box inside. Then I looked at the clock. The SVWEABC meeting started in an hour. Dizzy would be here any minute to pick me up. I dove into the shower and then ran to my closet. I could either go for the Cisco marketeer look in an outfit a saleswoman at Nordstrom picked out for me, or I could go for the T-shirt and jeans look of a Googler. I chose the latter, pulling on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that said Schrödinger’s cat is dead on the front and Schrödinger’s cat is not dead on the back. I was sure Dizzy would be in his usual cargo shorts and T-shirt, too. We are geeks. Best everybody know that up front.
    Just as I heard Dizzy’s biodiesel convertible pull up outside, my cell phone rang. Mama.
    “Did you get the package I sent you?” she asked. “I just got a text from UPS that it was delivered. What do you think?”
    There was no point opening the box now. I knew what it was. Another piece of furniture. There was never a problem in the world my mother didn’t think could be solved by a Tiffany lamp. Before I moved to California, I didn’t have a place of my own for her to redecorate. But she’d had no problem driving more than thirty miles to my college apartment, charming one of my roommates into letting her in, and replacing my T-shirts and torn jeans with linen skirts and Ann Taylor sweater sets anytime she wanted. Now that I was three thousand miles away, she could only send stuff, and furniture was her stuff of choice. Bulky, cumbersome, pain-in-the-ass-to-get-rid-of furniture. In my working days, I’d speed-dialed the Salvation Army to haul away marble-topped kitchen carts, leather wing chairs, and baroque console tables that Marie Antoinette would have considered a bit over-the-top. Lately, I’d turned to Craigslist and managed to pay my Internet bill for several months thanks to Mama’s largesse.
    “I can’t talk right now,” I said. “I’m on my way to a meeting.”
    “You can’t be on your way to a meeting. You’re unemployed.”
    In the world I grew up in, only people of a suspicious nature were asked to leave a job. When I told my parents about my layoff, they insisted I return home and live out my unemployment shame under their careful watch. If I were only to come home, marry, and have children, then the Lord would provide. There was a time, I suppose, that I thought the same would be true of ArGoNet. If I were only to do everything I was asked, ArGoNet would give me a wealthy and secure future. But no matter how much I worked or how good I was, it didn’t matter in the end. It came down to numbers, and the numbers were smaller when they came from India. The sea judges not whom it swallows. Savior or sinner, it’s all the same to the tide.
    “Mama, I can’t explain right now, but I have to go. It’s important.”
    “More important than your family? Okay, go to your meeting. And your father and I