The Next Best Thing. Kristan Higgins

and my stupid mother wants me home at like, eleven.”

      “Sorry, sorry,” I mutter. I need to do this. Aside from hitting a sperm bank, this is the way to get what I want. Find a husband. I glance at my young friend, who could also do with a boyfriend. As always, her hair is Magic—Marker black, her eyes ringed with eyeliner, her eyebrows painfully overplucked. Because she’s been eating, some of her black lipstick has been dislodged, revealing a Cupid’s bow mouth in the prettiest imaginable shade of pink.

      “What are you staring at?” she asks. “Get your butt in gear. The movie’s two hours long.”

      I obey, entering my pertinent information, then click to the next screen and begin the questionnaire.

      “Heard from Ethan lately?” Ash asks with careful nonchalance. She’s had a crush on him for years.

      “Um, not really. I saw him on the water today, though,” I say, looking at her again. “He was sailing.” The truth is, I haven’t really talked to Ethan since that night.

      “So cool.” She blushes, then picks at the sole of her engineer boot to hide her love.

      I hide a smile and look back at the computer. I’m only halfway done. It’s really too bad that I don’t live in a society of arranged marriages. The Black Widows could pick someone out for me…a nice enough man who didn’t have expectations of romantic love. That being fond of each other would be sufficient…he’d take care of me, I’d take care of him, we’d be the parents of the same children, rather than two people crazy in love.

      Fat Mikey heads over to the slider to gaze into the night. If I open the door, he’ll take the fire escape down to the street, then kill something and bring it back to me. His way of showing love, his soul as romantic as Tony Soprano’s. “Not tonight, buddy,” I tell him, clicking “maple” for the If you were a tree question. Finally I get to the screen that offers the available men in a twenty—mile radius. “And here they are,” I say. Ash lurches off the couch and peers over my shoulder.

      “Hey, there’s Paulie Smith,” she says. Paulie and I play in the baseball league.

      “I wonder if his wife knows he’s looking,” I murmur, clicking on the next choice. “Oh, it’s Captain Bob. Nice that he’s at least trying to score with someone other than my mom.”

      “Totally gross,” Ash mutters. “Hey, look at this one.” She taps the screen with her stubby black nail. “He’s cute.”

      I look. Soxfan212. Nice eyes, lawyer, single, no kids.

      “Oops,” Ash says at the next bullet point. “That’s a deal breaker, isn’t it?”

      Soxfan212 likes to sail. Immediately, I picture him clinging to an overturned boat in high seas, rain pelting down, sharks circling, the rescue helicopter waving regretfully as they fly off, unable to make the save.

      “Sorry, Soxfan,” I say.

      This afternoon, the same images of death and drowning were strong in my mind when I saw Ethan as I was piloting for Captain Bob. The wind was much too fierce in my opinion, and Ethan’s sailboat, a two—masted sixteen—footer, sliced through the water, tilting with speed, sails taut. Ethan waved, grinning, and it was all I could do not to radio the Coast Guard so they could tell Ethan to slow down. He’s a good sailor—won a few races and whatnot—but it just seems crazy, going out in the ocean over your head, alone, on a boat, in the wind. Though I guess that is the point of sailing.

      “Okay, let’s move on,” Ash says firmly. “Here. Type in your little message.”

      “Right.” I type dutifully. Thirty years old, no kids, widowed five years ago. Seeking long—term relationship, hoping to meet someone I won’t love a whole heck of a lot but won’t hate, either. Good teeth a plus.

      “What do you think?” I ask my friend. “Will they be lining up for me?” Ash just shakes her head. Fat Mikey rolls his eyes (I swear), then begins licking his privates.

      “You have three minutes,” Ash says, “and I’m starting the movie. And you can’t watch it if you don’t finish this.”

      “Yes, Mother,” I say. I call to mind my tiny niece, the indescribable look on my sister’s face when she looks at her child, the wonder and pride and protectiveness. I remember Nicky’s wriggly hugs, how he danced in excitement yesterday when telling me about finding a woolly bear caterpillar. I look at Ash, the nicest kid I know, though she tries desperately to hide it in her hideous clothes and makeup.

      And so I delete what I’ve written and type something a bit more palatable.

      “Good for you, Lucy,” Ash affirms. “Now grab a Twinkie and come watch the wonder that is Daniel Craig.”

       CHAPTER FIVE

      “SO? YOU WANT TO DATE HER? She’s perfectly nice. A widow. Sure, she was sad when her husband, bless his heart, crashed into that tree, but none of the Prozac, you know what I’m saying? And as you can see, she has a nice figure.”

      Aunt Iris has just dragged me from the kitchen, where I was taking out fifteen loaves of rye. A man in his forties, short, plump, balding, stands in front of the counter, frozen in terror. Was I wishing that the Black Widows would fix me up? I take it back.

      “Sorry about this,” I said. “Can I help you?”

      “Um…I just…I wanted a danish.”

      “And you got a danish,” Iris says pointedly. She jerks her head toward me. “So what do you think?”

      “I need some change,” the man whispers to me.

      “Sure.” I snatch the twenty from where it’s being held hostage in Iris’s hand and hit a key on the cash register. “Just one danish? Anything else?”

      “Nothing else! Uh, I mean, no thanks.” He looks warily at Iris, then back at me. “I’m sorry.”

      Iris bristles, swelling like an indignant and regal toad. “Oh, she’s not good enough for you, is that it? Why? What’s special about you, huh, mister?” She grabs me by my shoulders, gives a brisk shake. “Look at those hips. She was born to have children, and none of this epidural crap. Ask my daughter. She’s a lesbian doctor.” Aunt Iris releases me, folds her arms and stares the man down. “I had two children, not a drop of painkiller for me. Did it hurt? Of course it did. It was childbirth, for heaven’s sake. I made do. I bore it. The tearing…not so bad. It didn’t kill me.”

      I hand the man his change. “Have a nice day. Come again.”

      The man won’t be coming again, I assure you. He scuttles out the door. I’d be willing to bet he never comes to the island again.

      “Iris, maybe you could…tone it down a little?” I suggest.

      “What?” Iris asks, wounded. She snatches up a rag and starts polishing the immaculate counter. “Tone what down?”

      “Well, parading me out here like a farm animal at an auction.”

      “You said you wanted to date someone, so I’m helping, that’s all.”

      “That was more along the lines of pimping, with a crash course in obstetrics thrown in.”

      “So fussy! I thought beggars couldn’t be choosers,” she huffs.

      “I’m not a beggar! I just…I can meet someone on my own. You’re so nice to try, but please don’t harass the customers. Business is bad enough.”

      “Business is fine,” she snorts. “Listen to her. Business is bad. Fifty—seven years of bad business, huh? Put you through your fancy—shmancy baking college, didn’t it? Hmm?”

      “Yes, Aunt Iris. It did,” I admit. “It’s just that we could do a lot more if we put in some tables, offered