Angela Cohen was in the process of texting one of her good friends on her bright blue cell phone.

Mark chuckled as his daughter's fingers flew across the keyboard of the phone rapidly. "Where's the fire?" he joked.

"Amy just told me Josh got her a rose for Valentine's Day! Isn't that adorable?" Receiving another chuckle in reply, she raised her eyebrows. "What's so funny?"

"Valentine's Day."

"Well, you're the one who got Mom a bouquet. It's sitting in the kitchen in a vase. Don't tell me that it's sappy if you did that." His daughter's attitude was so reminiscent of her mother's that Mark almost laughed again.

"It's not that, Angie. It's just that most Valentine's Days that I've had always end up in absolute mayhem. V-Day changes people."

Angela looked up from her phone. "Dare I ask, Dad?"

He answered her question with another: "Did your Aunt Joanne ever tell you about The Table Incident?"

Andrew poked his head through the doorway of the living room, munching on a chocolate cookie. "Nope."

Mark smirked. "I'm not sure if I should . . . "

"Dad, come on," Andrew muttered, walking over to lean against the doorframe, "We're not little kids anymore."

"No. I guess you're not." A wistful look came over Mark's face for a moment, but it was gone within seconds. "Alright. As long as your mother's working tonight . . . "

Valentine's Day, 1990.

Maureen and Joanne were rehearsing for one of Maureen's many performance pieces . . . at least, they had been. Before any of us knew what happened, Maureen had called us up at the loft, going on and on about how she and Joanne had broken up---for the millionth time in the last couple of months.

Mimi and Roger were fighting on and off, as well. Seemed as if the only happy people around were Angel and Collins and, well, me. Although at the time, I wasn't sure if I was happy at all.

"One of them will come around, like always," Roger had predicted, strumming a few notes on his guitar as he scanned a few pamphlets about Santa Fe, New Mexico, "And then they'll make up and treat us all to ice cream like usual, for putting us through the hell of neither of them speaking to each other. I personally want colored sprinkles on a cone of chocolate ice cream this time."

I hoped Roger was right.

Later that day, I met up with Angel and Collins at the usual Life Cafe for a usual dinner. I guess they felt bad for me because I was the only single one of the group of us. Initially, I'd insisted they spend the day to themselves.

"Oh, sweetie, we'll have all morning and afternoon to ourselves," Angel had said nonchalantly, much to Collins' chagrin, "It'd be no fun for you to sit around on Valentine's Day."
I wasn't sure how fun being a third wheel would be (especially on this day of days), but I went anyway.

As soon as I walked through the scratched brown doors of the Life, Angel came running up to me in her clunky high heels. "Mark!"

I blinked. "Hi, Angel. Where's Collins?"

Angel's eyes darted back and forth nervously as she replied, "Um. We have a bit of . . . a situation."

"What?" I peered around the busy restaurant for Collins, and sure enough, found him, in what looked like one of the most awkward ordeals I'd ever witnessed.

Collins was standing at a table near the bar yelling something or other to the person standing on top of it. My gaze shifted from Collins to the person he was screeching at, and almost had to pinch myself because I thought I was dreaming: It was Joanne.

Now, kids, your Aunt Joanne never had much tolerance for alcohol. This next event only made this fact abundantly clear.

"Oh, my God," I whispered in disbelief. Angel grabbed my arm and led me through the crowd of people that had formed around the table.

As we got closer, I could hear what Collins was saying: "Joanne, please get down from the damn table! People are starting to form a crowd!"

I tapped him on the shoulder and he whirled around. "Mark, man. Thank God you're here. Maybe you can do something."

"What the hell is going on?" I gaped.

"Angel and I came here to meet you and found her completely wasted," he explained, "And clearly . . . she's not taking the break-up well. At all."

I forced my eyes to look up again to find Joanne waving her jacket around like a lunatic. Kids . . . alcohol is bad. Very, very bad. Remember when I told you I threw up on Maureen because of it? Well, this was ten times worse.

"Maureen wants someone more outgoing?!" she cried, stomping around on the wooden table, "Oh, I'll give her outgoing. I'll give her inside-out-all-over-going! I'll give her someone who loves the limelight."

And then, kids, I did what I always do at times like these. My hands instinctively went toward the inside of the brown satchel on my shoulders. ("No, Dad. You didn't. Tell me you didn't!")

I took out my camera, and began to film her extravagant performance that could've rivaled one of Maureen's any day.

Joanne began to dance, shaking . . . well . . . every body part she could, moving her arms every which way, all of that. I couldn't help it. I just couldn't. Because not only was it disturbing to see my friend, a very sharp and distinguished defense lawyer who knew her stuff, practically stripping down on a table in a public restaurant . . . it was also completely and utterly hilarious.

As soon as Angel and Collins caught on, it was hard for them to hide their laughter, as well.

Collins buried his face into the crook of Angel's neck, stifling the chuckles erupting from his lips. Angel had brought a hand to her mouth, shaking her head slowly, her eyes squinted slightly showing she was trying to control her own laughter.

"Yee-hah! Kiss this, Maureen! Look at me! No one breaks up with me on Valentine's Day!"

The crowd was clapping, the manager of the Life was standing near us in bewilderment, and I stood there filming it all.

When the staff of the restaurant had finally had enough, Collins and I literally had to drag Joanne off the table and coax her out of the restaurant (Angel had to pick up the bar tab for her, as well). At one point, she threw a punch at me, narrowly missing my nose. You know your Aunt Joanne, kids . . . she's tough.

"I mean," she slurred, Angel supporting her back as we all walked, "I think I'm pretty damn sexy, considering. She doesn't know what the hell she's missing. Right, Mark? Aren't I sexy?"

"I . . . um . . . " Yeah. You can imagine the awkwardness.

I trudged back to the loft, and when Roger asked how dinner had gone, I was honestly too tired to give him a coherent answer. Practically carrying a grown, angry, hung-over African American lawyer down the streets of New York was not fun. At all.

She ended up crashing at Angel and Collins' place. Angel told me that when Joanne woke up the next day (with a killer hangover, may I add), she wanted to ask what had happened the night before.

"Oh, nothing much," Collins had apparently said, "You just had a few too many."

Well, that had certainly been an understatement.

"So, what'd you do with it?" Andrew asked, "With the tape of Aunt Joanne?"

Mark smirked, getting up slowly and walking over to a box in the corner of the room that the kids recognized as storage for his old film equipment. He reached into the box and pulled out a small roll of film.

"Oh, my God, Dad!" Angela cried, "That's awful! Did you ever show her?"

He nodded. "Once. Told her I'd never show anyone else unless for whatever reason, I needed to, . You know. If Roger or Collins or I got caught with something not-so-legal, we had back-up in the court of law."

"Dad, that's blackmail."

"I know." Mark smiled triumphantly, but then cleared his throat, and added, "Blackmail isn't nice, kids. Don't do it. Anyway, like I said, Valentine's Day changes people sometimes. Joanne's maybe had two or three drinks since then in her entire life, or at least Maureen tells me. Either way, they ended up together again after that, as you both already know."

"Wow," Andrew muttered. "I'm never gonna break up with a girl on Valentine's Day."

Mark leaned against the wall with a grin. "Well, I'm glad I taught you something today, kids. And you know what else?"

"What?"

"One of the people in that crowd at the Life was your mother. I just didn't know it yet."