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I—I—I—”
    She peered at me more closely. “Ma’am? Are you all right?”
    Of course I wasn’t all right. Ray Devine was dead. Plus the bitch had called me ma’am.
    I didn’t respond in words, but she got her answer anyway—in stunning fashion. I bent over and, in one interminable instant, unleashed a torrent of puke, the bulk of which landed directly inside Renée Devine’s pale pink suede Uggs.
    “Ugh,” said the toddler.

CHAPTER TWO

IDOL WORSHIP
    I t would have been convenient to blame the entire, humiliating incident on my former coworker, but Lark was only partially responsible for my trip to Bay Ridge.
    “I’m in love,” she’d confided over lunch two Wednesdays ago, the day I’d found myself in Chelsea and decided to drop by the gallery where I used to work—ostensibly to see their latest installation, but really to catch up on gossip.
    “I’m happy for you,” I told her, although Lark was so ridiculously stunning and youthful and all-around perfect that it was pretty much impossible not to be happy for the girl every second of every day. “Do I know him?”
    She blushed, so adorably that the German couple at the adjoining table stopped eating and beamed at her. “It’s… Sandro.”
    “Sandro Monte
vecchi
?”
    She frowned. “You look upset.”
    I was upset. Not as upset as I would have been to hear that Lark had fallen head over heels for the Antichrist, but only by the narrowest of margins.
    In short, the man was a snake—an unctuous ogler who made me feellike running home to shower if he so much as glanced in my direction. Plus he was much too old for her—
and
a rotten artist, even if he was the gallery’s biggest moneymaker. The public seemingly couldn’t get enough of his altarpieces designed to mimic the Byzantine style—only his painted panels depicted celebrities, not saints. Naked celebrities, complete with halos.
    And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
    I leaned forward. “Lark, trust me on this. You do
not
want to get involved with a married man.”
    “Oh, Dana. I know you’re right. But—”
    But I already knew what she was going to say. “The time you spend with Sandro is the only time you feel genuinely happy. And he tells you how much he worships you a dozen times a day, even if it’s only over the phone.”
    “But—”
    “You meet for drinks in some crummy, out-of-the-way bar where there’s no possibility of running into anyone he knows, and it feels as though you’re sipping champagne at the Waldorf,” I continued. “And if you can arrange a couple of extra hours together, it’s as luxuriant as a three-day weekend at some cute little B and B in Montauk. Am I right?”
    Her pale blue eyes widened. “How do you know all that?”
    I just sat there, sipping iced tea while she figured out for herself exactly how I knew all that.
    “Oh my god,” she finally said. “You had an affair… with
Sandro
?”
    I would have burst out laughing, or shuddered in horror, but Lark needed guidance, not derision. “Of course I didn’t,” I told her. “But back when I was your age, I got involved in a… similar situation. And I know you don’t want to hear me say it, but these things never work out.”
    “But—”
    “I mean it, Lark. They never, ever do. No matter what Sandro might be promising you.”
    Her eyes welled with tears, and within seconds she was sobbing uncontrollably.
    Swell,
I thought, handing her my napkin and scrupulously avoiding the outraged glares of the German couple.
    “I’m not trying to upset you,” I went on, pretending not to hear the impassioned
ach
s coming from the next table. “But I wish someone had told me what I’m telling you now.”
    Not that it would have made a bit of difference. I would have simply sat there, nodding energetically, all the while thinking, “But you don’t understand. This is true love.”
    Which, no doubt, was exactly what Lark was thinking that very moment as she sat there, nodding