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job she could do.
    At six-thirty, right on schedule, her mother stood by her bed with a cup of coffee in her hand. The five-foot-five, size-four, hundred-and-fifteen-pound, blond-haired, amethyst-eyed Puerto Rican beauty was trying to get her daughter's attention. As usual, she was full of questions, and her lovely face was set with anger and concern in equal measure.
    "Honey, I worried about you. Where were you last night?" she complained and queried at the same time with not a hint of Spanish in her voice. She was born here, but had a brain from another planet. Allegra had complete contempt for her.
    "I had a date." Allegra turned over.
    "You had a date in the middle of the week?" Her mother pursed her pink lips. "What kind of date?"
    "Shouldn't you be at work, Mom?"
    "No." She checked the clock on Allegra's desk. "I have five minutes for my daughter. What kind of date?"
    Allegra turned over again and sat up. She had a heart-shaped face, black hair, her father's dark eyes, a splattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Her mother and everyone else thought she was pretty, but with a drop-dead gorgeous mother like hers, how could she believe it?
    "Here, take your coffee,"
    Allegra knew her mother's motherly smile was a fake.
    "Thanks. Just put it down," Allegra said.
    Grace studied her. "You don't look very happy for a girl who's had a date. He isn't married, is he?" She set the cup down on the night table, frowning. "Drink the coffee."
    Allegra hated her. Under the sheet, she pulled her nightgown down. "What's in it?"
    "Just milk. Drink up."
    Allegra turned her head to examine it. "Looks like cream to me," she said. She'd rather die than drink cream.
    "Would I give you cream? I wouldn't give you cream. It's milk. You need it for your bones. I love you so much, sweetheart. Tell me about your date. How old is he? What's he do? Is he cute?"
    "He's very cute." And he hates me, she didn't say. "Go to work, Mom."
    "Not until I know who you had a date with. I never hear anything about your life anymore," she complained. "How do I know what you're up to?"
    Allegra stared at the coffee and said nothing.
    "You missed dinner last night. What date could be worth hurting your father?"
    "What?"
    "We both missed you last night, but he was really hurt."
    Allegra made a disgusted noise. "He's always hurt."
    "There was no date, was there? You just stayed out to avoid your father." Her pretty little mother shook her head sadly.
    Allegra felt bad for her misguided mother. "You're wrong. I had a date," she said.
    "Who was it?"
    "None of your business."
    "How can you talk to me like that?" Grace took her hand off her perfectly formed hip and left the room, shaking her head. "I know there's no man," she murmured. "You just want to hurt us, that's all."
    "There is a man. There is," Allegra said softly.
    As soon as her mother was gone, Allegra poured the cream-spiked coffee down the sink. Then she hung around all morning thinking about
The Scarlet Letter.
She brooded about why people did what they did. Why did Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina have to commit suicide because of their love affairs? Why fall for a jerk in the first place? Why not kill the men who hurt them? Why kill themselves? Where was the
sense
in the thing? She couldn't figure life out at all.
    After her mother left for work, she lay there dreaming about Maslow Atkins. She wanted to go on CNN, on
60 Minutes,
on
Sally Jesse
or the
Springer Show
and tell the truth about her "doctor." She wanted to tell the whole world about the fraud he was and the fraud she was, too. She knew it would make a good story.

Six
    D avid Owen was in an excited condition around seven when his mother, Janice Owen, came into his room without knocking and screamed at him for a while. She continued screaming as she left to get in the shower. He pulled the covers over his head to block out the noise. Jesus Christ. He wished she were a bug he could squash.
    There was no sign of his dad, who worked on Wall