Let's set aside the global recession for a few moments of distraction via my serialized comic novel  "Four Bidding For Love."  (Those who find absurdist humor and adult situations offensive, please read no further.)


     Alexia entered the boutique she shared with her friend Katy, "Well-Heeled Etc." in a rush and with visible anxiety waited for a chic young Asian customer to leave her alone with Katy, who was clumping around the small store in heeled sandals which accentuated her waif-like slimness and five-foot height.
     If she hadn't known Katy long before her recent marriage to a worldly, wealthy, sickeningly youthful investor who adored her—if any more reasons existed to hate her, none came directly to mind—Alexia's envy would have doomed any possible friendship.
     But having known Katy when she was a sobbing, abandoned wreck—the guy had oozed desire to meet her Mom and Stepdad, only to vanish the next weekend—Alexia had written off her own loneliness and her friend's newfound marital bliss as either Fate with a capital F or Karma with a capital K.
     Though they shared a similarly tawny color of hair, even this resemblance was deceptive, for Alexia wore her hair shoulder-length and loose while Katy kept hers in a neatly trimmed pageboy. Other than hair color, they shared little but a history of romantic dissatisfaction—that is, until Katy nailed down Mr. Dreamboat, Alexia thought; and that's a gulf between us that I'll never ford.
     As she'd waited for the young Asian customer to either buy something or leave, Alexia recalled her own marriage to Viggy. It was doomed from the start, she signed inwardly, and we both knew that; but I was pregnant and we were supremely confident marrying was the right thing.
     Her