I would never take a man's name. I knew that, in the deepest part of me, even though I also suspected that the women who did take their husbands' names understood something about marriage that I didn't. Me? I would never even let a man drive.

I tried not to think about my life. I did not have any good solid plans at all--and the lostness of that, compared with the clear ambitions of my friends (marriage, children, law school), sometimes shamed me. Other times in my mind I defended such a condition as morally and intellectually superior--my life was open and ready and free--but that did not make it any less lonely.

The catalog showed a man sleeping peacefully while his model-wife read a book in soft but focused light. In real life, however, the light was so intense that that same man would have had to wear sunglasses. He would have had to set up a little pup tent on his side of the bed. The lamplight was as bright as the noon sun, and as I studied next to him, Reynaldo could not sleep. Yet another pretty picture of love I'd not questioned, just bought. I turned off the light and fell behind in my reading.

I would tug the paper slip from the stiff clutches of the cookie and save it for a bookmark. All my books had fortunes protruding like tiny tails from their pages. You are the crispy noodle in the salad of life. You are the master of your own destiny.

What would be so wrong with arranged marriages? There the coldness was put in the parents' hearts right up front rather than grown later, so unpleasantly, in the hearts of lovers.