What time was it? Through bleary eyes she strained to see the alarm clock on the scuffed wood nightstand. Eleven-thirty. The morning was nearly over and she hadn’t even gone to the Launderette with the week’s worth of dirty clothes. But it didn’t bother her that much, because since Michael had broken off their engagement and moved to Berkeley, Saturdays had stretched out like long dusty roads on a hot summer day, endless, monochrome, and dull. If she slept most of the morning, it just made the empty weekend go by faster. When she was asleep she wasn’t missing Michael. As her feet hit the carpet she remembered why she had slept so late: she and Kevin had stayed up, talking and sharing funny stories, till four a.m. How could that have happened? She had planned only to do a sociable, just a little ice cream, a little pleasant talk, not more than an hour or so. But they had ended up at the Pruneyard Shopping Center in Campbell, at Marie Callender’s, a local pie shop, enjoying sandwiches and coffee and splitting an enormous serving of coconut cream pie.
