“Stop yelling,” she hisses at me, which is weird because I’m almost positive I’m not yelling. “I’m fine,” she says. “Just help . . . just help me up, would you? And don’t attract attention.”

“Okay, here, hold on to me. Can you hold on?” I go around to the other side of her and get down on my knees, but I can’t figure out where to grab on to her, and she’s so big, but just then a man’s large hands show up in my field of vision, and somebody in a white coat is gently grasping my sister under the arms and gradually easing her upright until she’s on her feet, and then supporting her gigantic body against his until she can steady herself. I’m still on the ground, scrambling around to get the contents of her purse, which have spilled everywhere, and I can’t see his face, only that he has dark hair, and she seems to be leaning against him as he walks her inside.

“There,” I hear him say. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she says, which is so untrue it’s not even funny. But leave it to my sister.

I finish picking up all her lipsticks and quarters and a wad of tissues, and then I run to catch up with them. A blast of cold air-conditioning hits my face when I open the door, and I can hear Natalie saying, “Oooh! It’s freezing in here!”

“Ridiculously cold,” he agrees, and that’s when I look up at his face, and it’s Jeremy Sanders holding on to my sister.

Jeremy Sanders! Of course it is! I almost laugh. At first I think this is all an elaborate ploy by my mother to get us together. She is a busybody with mysterious ways. The color seems to leave his face as he lowers my sister onto a bench next to the elevators. Once he gets her situated, he straightens up and looks at me with wide, round eyes.

I must look as shocked as he does.

I hear myself saying, “Hi, how are you?”

“Marnie.” He looks stunned. But then he manages to recover and says, “And oh my goodness, this is Natalie? Hi! Wow. Are you okay? That was quite a spill you took. Here, take my coat. You’re shivering.”

He starts removing his white coat, which I notice says JEREMY SANDERS, DPT embroidered over the pocket. Whatever that means. Something official, from the looks of him.

“No,” Natalie says. She’s back to being her brisk and competent self now, waving him away, thanking him for taking care of her, but saying she’s got to get to the dentist’s office, and she’s fine, really she’s just fine—it was just a little slip is all. Nothing to worry about. She’s just going to rest here for a second, catch her breath, and then she’ll be off.

I keep sneaking looks at him. He seems older, of course—but in a good, mature-guy way. My mind is filled immediately with the memory of his slouchiness, his nonconformitude, his sloppy snarkiness. None of that is left. He’s obviously become a fully invested member of society. Who would have guessed?

“Hey, dude, it’s great to see you!” I say. “So you’re a DPT now! Yay, you!”

“Yes,” he says and smiles at me with even, white teeth. I never noticed how really white and even his teeth were.

“And forgive me,” I say, “but what is a DPT?”

“Physical therapist,” he and Natalie both say at the same time, and then she grabs on to her huge stomach and lets out a yell.

“Um, I’d say your sister seems to be in labor. I think we should call an ambulance. That fall did not look good,” he says in a low voice.

“NO!” roars Natalie, holding up one hand while she clutches her abdomen with the other. We watch her in fascination, and after a moment she straightens up and says, “I’m fine. I’m prepared for this.”

“She’s a warrior,” I tell him. “So you’re still living here? Or did you move back?”

He tears his eyes away from Natalie and looks at me. “Came back about six months ago. My mom’s getting up there in years and needed some extra help . . . and so you’re back here, too? Or just visiting for—?” He gestures toward Natalie.

“The baby? No! I’ve moved back. This is home. Now. Newly.” I shrug and do a ridiculous little dance to show how carefree I am. I am beginning to regret that I’m wearing paint-splattered jeans and that my hair is shoved up into a big messy knot, although he’s certainly seen me looking worse.

“No, totally,” he says, which doesn’t really make any sense, but who cares. He looks back over at Natalie, who is shivering on the bench and breathing hard, and his eyes are round with alarm. “Really. We should call an ambulance.”

“No! This . . . is . . . false labor,” Natalie manages. “If the contractions were real, then . . . my Lamaze teacher . . . said . . .” Suddenly she can’t talk anymore and her face has turned pale and she slumps against the wall, panting.

Jeremy looks at me. “I don’t know what the Lamaze teacher said, but whatever. She’s not here, and we are. I think we’ve got to do something. So . . . I’m thinking hospital?”

“Definitely.”

“Definitely not,” says Natalie, resurfacing from her breathing debacle. “That’s not the way this works. You have early labor for a long time before you have active labor . . . and I did not have early labor. So these can’t be—”

Just then she looks horrified, and a huge gush of liquid goes all over the floor.

“My water broke!” she says. “Oh my God, this is not what I planned!”

“Ohhhkay. That’s it. Ambulance time,” Jeremy says, getting out his phone.

Natalie, who would still like to be running the world even while delivering a child, is not having it, however. “No. What we should do . . . is clean all this UP,” she says somewhat slowly in her new-normal voice. “When the amniotic fluid breaks, you still have time.” As though she’s reading from some textbook.

“Natalie, honey, Jeremy’s right. Let’s go to the hospital, sweetie.”

“But the birth plan!” she says. “I do not want an ambulance! Take me in your car. And call Brian. Tell him to bring my suitcase and the tennis balls and the lollipops.”

Then another contraction hits, and she has to stop talking.

“Jesus,” says Jeremy. “I’m definitely getting an ambulance.” And he starts to punch in numbers.

My sister holds up her hand, and as soon as the contraction is over, she says, “Take his phone, Marnie! I’ve got this! I have trained and prepared, and I am the warrior-queen, and I am READY. Do not get in my way because I—”

And then she stops. Falls back on the bench. Starts breathing through her mouth. Eyes round with panic.

Right after that one, there’s another.

And another.

Jeremy, looking more handsome and more in charge than I have ever known him to be, gives me a meaningful look and then quietly tells the emergency dispatcher the whole situation, and then when he hangs up, he suggests that I call my parents and Natalie’s husband. So I do as I’m told. No one answers, but I leave messages all around.

While we wait, he tells me it’s going to be okay, and somehow I believe him. Between contractions, Natalie is still screaming about her birth plan and yelling at me to get the car and then she gives us some information she learned in her childbirth class—information that no longer seems to apply, if you ask me.

“The warrior-queen is not going to be happy with you and me,” he whispers.

I am freaking out, but I say the wisest thing I can think of, which is, “When she gets a healthy baby by the end of this, all will be forgiven.”

And then I cross my fingers.

THIRTEEN

BLIX

On the morning of my Irish wake—aka the Blix Out party—I wake up to find the angel of death hanging out in my room.

So, okay.

“Hi,” I say to the angel. “I know it’s time. I can do this dying thing. I’ll die at the party if that’s what I’m supposed to do, although that is probably going to freak some of the guests out. But not me. I’m ready when death is.”

Then I lie back and close my eyes and ask for some white light to surround me, Houndy, and the entire borough of Brooklyn, and then, for good measure, the whole country and the world. I bless the whole planet. Little stars going all over the place.

The angel of death swirls up around the high ceiling, settles into one of the plaster cracks up there, the one that looks like a dog’s nose. That one may be my all-time favorite.

Houndy stirs next to me, moaning a little bit in his sleep. Then he sits up and does that epic throat-clearing thing he does every morning, making barking and snorting noises, so loud that they could stop traffic. It always makes me laugh, like Houndy is composed only of phlegm and old tobacco products from his misspent youth, when I happen to know for a fact that he is made of seawater and strong coffee and lobster claws.

I reach over and rub his back when he’s finished, and he turns and gives me a look I can’t quite read, which is weird because I can read all of Houndy’s looks. Always have been able to. He’s the least mysterious man on the planet, which is why it’s worked so well between us.

He is looking at me. “You’re not going to get well, are you?”