The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault

the dictionary. The word had been in the English language since the sixteenth century. As an adjective, and then later as a noun. Use as a conjunction, though, had started in 1950. I looked back at the cit. A conjunction. A somewhat awkward one, actually. Someone was being very careful, it seemed, to keep the 1950 pattern. I’d chat with Mona about this later.
    I played around with my
beauty queen
definition for a while, then checked my email. Nothing. I looked at the clock. Two hours and twenty minutes until I could go home. Way too early to take out a magazine and start research-reading for the remainder of the afternoon. I logged on to the Internet again and did a Google search on
beauty queen
. “Asian Beauty Queens XXX” came up, along with some similar sites. Great idea. Just what I needed right now.
    I logged off the Internet and stared at my sorry definition.
    Reverse the order
, I decided, after a while. That’s it. Start general. Then add the specific sense. I took out a fresh definition slip. “beauty queen
n
:” I wrote carefully, then chewed the end of my pen for a moment: “a beautiful woman:
specif:
one who participates in a beauty pageant.”
    An improvement, at least. I was pretty proud of myself. I made the other changes Dan had suggested and dropped the folder of cits into my out-box. Then I picked up my next pile of cits.
Calibrate
. I looked at the clock. One hour and fifty-four minutes to go.

CHAPTER SIX
    The whole dinner was designed around the Bellinis: cod with a lemon butter sauce, herbed rice, zucchini. All a little light for an October meal, but perfect to go along with champagne and peach juice. I’d even called my dad for advice on his famous fruit tart for dessert.
Real vanilla bean, that’s the only advice you need
, he’d said.
But I don’t know if you can swing that on your salary
.
    I had swung anyway. When Mona knocked, I was dabbing the tart with its final touch: a glaze made from apricot jam. I quickly put away the paintbrush I’d been using for glazing. It hadn’t dawned on me until that moment that the whole spread—with its delicate flavors and fairly elaborate preparations—might look a little gay.
    “Some long-haired freak let me into your stairwell,” Mona murmured to me when I opened the door.
    “That’s just Tom,” I said. “He’s not so bad.”
    “That guy’s your neighbor?”
    “One of them.”
    “Well, be careful with that. That guy reminds me of some people I knew back home that I wish I could forget. You ever seen
Deliverance?”
Mona handed me a plastic grocery bag. “I brought dessert. I hope you like Chips Ahoy.” Shewandered into the kitchen. “This place isn’t so bad. You made it sound like you were living in some dump. Hey. What’s that? Did someone get shot in here?”
    She was looking at the tomato-cream sauce stain. I hadn’t cleaned it up right away. Once I’d gotten around to it, I couldn’t get the greasy orange tinge out of the wall.
    “Oh, that.” I took a bottle of champagne out of the refrigerator. “I’m not sure what to make of that.”
    “Hmm. Gross. Could be anything.” She made a face. “What are we celebrating?”
    I explained to her about my
Bellini
definition, and Dan’s drink-defining tradition.
    “Really?” Mona looked surprised. “That doesn’t sound like Dan to me.”
    But when the time came, she drank down three Bellinis and really seemed to enjoy them. By seven o’clock, we were lingering over dinner and she was telling me about a college friend who had a fetish for postal uniforms. She hadn’t mentioned the citations once. Our citation boxes were still sitting untouched by my front door.
    “Didn’t you have a boyfriend in college?” I said, changing the subject.
    “Not really. Only very briefly. When did I say I had a boyfriend?”
    “I thought I remembered that you did. Maybe I’m mistaken.”
    “Oh. Well, I dated this one guy for a couple of months junior year. That’s all. It’s