She shook her head to clear the memory.

Tonight she was making up with him, or trying to, so she decided to go with the china. She could feel his dissatisfaction… it got worse every time before he blew up… and she was trying to keep the explosion off for a few more days if she could.

So she'd fixed his favorite – the special veal kidney chops that you had to go get at Little City Meats in North Beach. And the December asparagus from Petrini's at $4.99 a pound. And she'd gotten Matt down early to bed.

She looked at herself in the mirror, thinking it odd that so many men thought she was attractive. Her nose had a hook halfway down the ridge. Her skin, to her, looked almost translucent, almost like a death mask. You could see all the bone structure, and she was too thin. And her eyes, too light a blue for her olive skin. Deep-set, somehow foreign-looking, as though her ancestors had come from Sicily or Naples instead of Milano, as they had.

She leaned over and looked more closely. There was still a broken vein, but the eyeshadow masked the last of the yellowish bruise. As she waited for him to come home, checking and rechecking, she had been curling her lower lip into her teeth again. Thank God she'd noticed the speck of coral lipstick on her tooth, the slight smear that had run beyond the edge of her liner.

Quickly, listening for the front door, she stepped out of her shoes and tiptoed over the hardwood floor – trying not to wake Matt – to the bathroom, where the light was better. Taking some Kleenex, she pressed her lips with it and reapplied the pencil, then the gloss. Larry liked the glossy wet look. Not too much, though. Too much looked cheap, like you were asking for it, he said.

She walked back to the front of the house. When she got to the champagne rug, she slipped her pumps back on.