“Yes, but talk anyway.”

“Okay,” she said, flicking a strand of her long red hair away from her face. “So I went out with this John person last night. The one from the Starbucks? Who got the last oat scone?”

Jessica remembered. Poor Marla. Shy as a butterfly, and so lonely. She was the best assistant Jessica had ever had, completely on top of the job, no nonsense, but also generous and funny, and she had the absolute worst luck with men. “He’s the tall one, right? NYU?”

Marla nodded. “Lookswise, scrumptious. Datewise, disastrous.”

“No.”

“Yes. He took me to a play. Off-off-Broadway. More like performance art, really, with this one woman complaining about her period while this other woman pretended to masturbate. It was very high on the yuck factor.”

“It wasn’t his fault it was terrible.”

“True. Very true.”

“So?”

“So it turns out the woman pretending is actually his ex-girlfriend, only by the time we’re backstage schmoozing with the cast and fans, they’re not so ex, if you know what I mean.”

“What?”

“Complete with kissage. I mean, they moved behind a poster of The Vagina Monologues, but I could still see them all over each other.”

“Oh, God.”

“He didn’t even pay for the taxi home.”

“Bastard. He deserves someone who pretends to masturbate onstage.”

“My sentiments exactly. Only…” She looked down at her lap, to the hunter-green skirt she loved so much. “…he made me laugh at dinner. And I was so…I don’t know.”

“Yeah.”

Marla smiled purposefully. Adamantly. “No big. I’ll just keep, you know, trying. Never give up. That’s my motto. Not till you’re old and toothless and have all the cats that can fill an apartment.”

“I’m sure it won’t come to that.”

“Probably not. But it’s good that I’m not allergic. To cats, I mean.”

Jessica shook her head, and wished she had something akin to a social life where she might be able to meet someone right for Marla. But since her entire entourage consisted of Glen, who was gay, her mother, who lived in Cincinnati, and her landlord, who made an art out of complaining while not actually doing anything, there didn’t seem to be much hope.