“Congrats about the promotion, Billy,” Hadley said. “You deserve it.”

“Thanks.” But her words somehow failed to register.

As I dialed the Grand Hotel, Chris came into the kitchen, looking handsome in an olive suit and gold tie. I expected him to dash past me with a kiss on the cheek as usual-especially after we’d fooled around half the night, both of us only getting a few hours of sleep-but he stopped and hugged me from behind, nuzzling my shoulder.

“Good morning,” I said slowly, thinking that if I could start out every day with a hug and a nuzzle from my husband, I’d be a very satisfied girl.

Chris growled. “Come back to bed.”

I giggled and pointed at the phone. “I’m trying to find my mom. What do you have going on today?”

Chris nibbled my earlobe, mumbling, “Nothing important,” before he disentangled himself and began taking eggs and turkey bacon from the fridge.

“What are you doing?” I said as the phone rang at my mother’s hotel.

“Making breakfast for you.”

I sat there, surprised. “That’s sweet, but I don’t eat breakfast. I don’t like it.”

“You just think that.” Chris slipped off his suit coat and turned up his shirtsleeves.

“No, I really don’t like breakfast. And you know it, too.” I could eat a big lunch with clients, I could inhale a fat bowl of pasta from Merlo for dinner, I could consume a large buttered popcorn at the movies, but I could not eat breakfast. There was something repulsive about eating first thing in the morning. It was as if my stomach hadn’t yet woken up with the rest of my body.

Chris shook his head and gave me a knowing smile as he went about cracking eggs.

I was about to reassert how much I didn’t want breakfast, but cooking for me was such a kind gesture, so Chris-of-old, that I hesitated, and then a cultured male voice answered with a string of melodic Italian words, two of which were “Grand Hotel.”

“Katherine Lovell,” I said.

“One moment,” the man said, switching to English. “I’ll connect you.”

I listened to the tinny ringing of a phone while I watched my husband sauté onions and some kind of exotic mushrooms. I put my hand over the phone. “Chris, honey, seriously,” I said, shaking my head at his culinary goings-on, but he only winked and waved me away.

“Pronto?” my mother’s voice called into the phone.

“Mom, it’s me!” I sounded like a seven-year-old.

“Baby doll! How are you?”

“I’m great. How are you?”

“Oh, just wonderful.”

“What are you doing there?” I asked.

“Well, the shows are almost over. I was so disappointed at first. I mean, honestly, I missed most of the shows, and do you know how hard it is to get in to the rest? If I hadn’t met Claudia, I’d still be sitting at the hotel bar. But then I did get in, and yuck! The Trussardi stuff was just plain boring. Finally, yesterday, Claudia and I found the most to-die-for suits in this delicious celadon-green from Trevi.”

“Who’s Claudia?”

“Just someone I met over here. She and her husband have taken me under their wing. I swear, they’ve got me out to shows every day and some party or another every night.”

“Oh,” I said inanely. I felt a pang of jealously toward this Claudia.

“So anyway, this celadon is just perfect. I’ve ordered that, and we’re going to the Cavalli and Strenesse shows today. Fingers crossed!” My mother prattled on about a pink coat she’d seen at a Pucci show and a white suit with a fur collar by Lancetti and a party that night on the Canals, while I tried to follow it all and still absorb the fact that my normally reclusive mother had a very hectic social schedule in Milan, of all places.

“Oops, baby doll, I just heard a knock on my door, so that will be Claudia. I’ve got to run, but I’m coming home Monday. I’ll call you, okay? Kisses!”

And she was gone.

I stared at the phone, realizing that I hadn’t even gotten to tell her about my promotion. I looked up then, just as Chris slid in front of me a frittata so big it could have fed an army barrack.

“Thanks, hon,” I said weakly and picked up my fork.

The rest of the week raced by as I tried to master my job. I made notes from Evan’s budget lesson and kept them minimized on my new computer as I tackled other, bigger accounts. The work was as slow and painful as a trip to the DMV. There really was no magic formula, just my own somewhat subjective determinations on how much it should cost to get a baby clothes manufacturer-or an interior designer or a pharmaceutical company-the publicity they needed. My new chair had been delivered, thank God, because I was in my office and on my ass all the time now. Before, I had excuses to leave frequently-visiting the printer to okay the press kits, meeting with a reporter from the Trib-but now such tasks were handled by lower members of the team. I was there to simply oversee it all.

And then there were the personnel issues that had become part of my life. Someone or another was always sticking their head in my office, asking for a chat. Sometimes these talks were truly about work issues-did I have any thoughts on how to get a psychologist on Oprah? Did I know anyone at Cosmo who we could approach about a story? Could I help them with a pitch or a press release? I relished those discussions, because they allowed me to use my old skills, my creative thinking. But more often than not, people wanted to talk about how irritated they were with the new assistant or how they were redoing their bathroom at home and could I find it in my heart to give them Friday off without docking their vacation days?

At first, it was interesting that people saw me as a go-to figure. I liked helping them sort through problems, and I liked the new deference my coworkers gave me. There was a respect in their words, a shy smile on their faces when they said, “Hi, Billy, got a second?”

Eventually, though, I realized that although they could have approached Roslyn or Evan or one of the other VPs, they were trying me out, hoping for the benevolence of someone slightly newer to the job. And the respect they gave me, well I assumed it came with the position, sort of like my new chair, but then I had a talk with Lizbeth on Friday afternoon. She’d been so chatty and kind when I realized I was a VP, but the rest of the week she was skittish with me, wary. I’d noticed it, but didn’t have the time to worry or wonder until that Friday when she came into my office.

“Hi,” she said, tentatively standing. I recalled my first day as VP when she’d immediately slouched on my visitor’s chair.

“Hi,” I said, raising my eyes away from yet another budget. “What’s up?”

Keeping her head down, she moved quickly past my desk, and her hands slipped through some papers on my credenza. “I’m just looking for the Teaken Furniture file.”

“Oh, I think it’s there.” I swung around in my new chair. It was easy now that the chair fit like a glove, and I had no phone book beneath my feet. But as I did so, Lizbeth shied away like a fawn too close to the highway.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. Thanks for looking. But you know I can do that. It’s my job, and I am performing. I do everything I was hired to do.”

I blinked a few times. “Lizbeth, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I really like working for you.”

I frowned. “Can you close the door and sit down, please?”

She did so quietly. Instead of slouching in a chair like that first day, she sat straight, knees together, hands clasped on her legs. Her eyes were downcast, and her body language reminded me of a geisha I’d seen on a PBS documentary.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re acting strange.”

Her eyes shot up to meet my face, then back down again. “Just doing my job.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“What do you mean?”