The summer before going off to college she realized that she had a chance to start all over again. The kids in Princeton had never heard her called Pasta. She vowed that none of them ever would. She began a strict diet, no bulimia, no starvation, no trading one problem for another, just low fat and calorie restriction, plus a grueling exercise program. She remembered the constant hunger, the burning lungs, the aching legs as she forced her body to jog one more mile . . .

just one more. By the time she registered at Princeton she was proud to be merely overweight. According to her charts, her weight hit the fiftieth percentile for her age, height, and sex during sophomore year, as a junior she overshot and got too thin, so she backed off. When she graduated she was the person she wanted to be, She had her BS in biology, was on her way to U. of P. med school, and she liked what she saw in the mirror.

She'd maintained that weight through four years of med school and three years of residency. Pasta Panzella was gone.

Well, almost gone. The ghost of Pasta still haunted her, and every so often she'd propel Gin to the chocolate section of a candy store, and Gin would give in and let Pasta have a Snickers. But only once in a while, and only one.

And now Gerry Canney was asking her out. Strange how things come full circle.

She frowned. Hadn't she heard somewhere along the line that Gerry was married? She wanted to get to know Gerry, she certainly hadn't known him well in high school, but she wasn't into games.

Pasta Panzella had been a vulnerable adolescent.

Gin Panzella, MD, was anything but.

'"Sorry I'm late, " Gerry said as he burst into Marvin Ketter's cramped officer on the EYE Street side of the Bureau building. He was puffing a little and he'd broken a sweat on the rush up from the parking garage.