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on his knife and fork tightened but he did not speak.
    â€˜Now he’s started this new business,’ Garrett said, gulping more wine, ‘which is gambling on the stock market from fancy offices on Main Street. So let’s see how that goes, shall we?’
    I picked up my glass and sipped and smiled. David said nothing.
    Belle twisted her pearls, saying: ‘Is there anything left in that bottle there, Garrett? Maybe Loren would like some more.’
    â€˜I’m fine, really,’ I said.
    â€˜She’s fine,’ said Garrett, touching the napkin to his moustache.
    Coasting home in David’s Porsche that evening, I said: ‘So … I get the feeling that your dad doesn’t approve of Capital Shrine?’
    David had his hands firmly on the leather steering wheel. Never had a car been pointed so determinedly towards home.
    â€˜He approves enough to ask me to make a little more of his pathetic nest egg,’ said David, ‘but I guess he’s going to have to wait, too.’
    * * *
    â€˜You are making what again?’
    Molly was perched on one side of the bench in David’s kitchen. I was on the other side, studying a menu. Molly’s voice was muffled because she had a bag of ice against her lips to try to bring down the swelling from her most recent fillers (none of which, I should add, were flattering, but each to their own!).
    â€˜Engagement Chicken,’ I said.
    â€˜And where did you read about this?’
    â€˜I told you: Glamor magazine.’
    â€˜And whose idea was it?’
    We had been through this.
    â€˜You know the radio shock jock, Howard Stern. It came from his wife,’ I said, placing a plucked, pink chicken on the chopping board. ‘She was dating him for ages and he hadn’t proposed. Then her mom – or somebody – told her about thisrecipe. Engagement Chicken. It’s absolutely guaranteed to make a man propose. And I mean, it must have worked, because they got married.’
    â€˜You think he married her for her chicken?’ said Molly.
    â€˜I have no idea,’ I said, ‘but at this point, anything is worth a try.’
    The recipe calls for a whole chicken with a lemon up its butt.
    â€˜And how do you make it?’
    â€˜As far as I can see,’ I said, peering at the laptop, ‘all I have to do is screw the lemon in there.’ I plucked a lemon from the fruit bowl, scraped it over the cheese grater a few times to loosen up the rind, and began screwing it into the chicken’s cavity.
    â€˜Very glamorous,’ said Molly, eyebrows raised. ‘And can I just say that I can’t believe you’re taking relationship advice from Howard Stern.’
    â€˜I’m not taking advice from Howard Stern,’ I corrected her, wiping my hands on my apron. ‘I’m taking relationship advice from his wife.’
    â€˜You’ve gone nuts.’
    â€˜I’m not nuts,’ I said, placing the chicken on its tray into the oven. ‘I just really want to know where this relationship is going.’
    David and I had been dating for close to two years. I was back and forward between Santa Monica and Bienveneda every other weekend. I had my own beeper to his garage. He’d met Molly. He’d met my dad. I’d taken his side against his parents.
    Why hadn’t he proposed?
    Friends had ribbed us about it. Clients were always asking and I had no idea what to say. I couldn’t work it out. Did he think I was too young? Maybe. I wasn’t yet thirty, but David was coasting towards forty, and it wasn’t as if he was going to marry somebody his own age.
    I was in despair about it, which probably explains why I was doing something so stupid as making Engagement Chicken, and you know what, maybe it worked, because next thing I knew, everyone in town was reading the same headline: THE WEDDING OF THE CENTURY.
    That’s how the local newspaper, the Bienveneda Bugle , broke the