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She saw him glance over at Laurel, then he cut his gaze back to her. What was going on?

“Good,” she told him. “Still a little tired. Sort of like the hangover you get after drinking too much vin ordinaire.”

“You look wonderful.” He was staring at her. She stared back. “You let your hair grow.” “You cut yours.”

Her hand crept selfconsciously up her neck. “Do you like it? I almost cried when I first saw it. Only the hairdresser didn’t speak English. I was afraid she’d think I was having some kind of nervous breakdown.” “No. You look fantastic. I mean it.” “Can I get you some champagne?” She could feel herself running out of small talk. Her voice had a funny, overbright ring-like a young stewardess chirping, “Something to drink, sir?”

“What happens if I say no?” Joe seemed to have picked up on her nervousness and was trying to put her at ease. It worked … a little.

She smiled. “As soon as Dolly notices you don’t have

a glass in your hand, the waters of Babylon will flow.”

“In that case,” he said, seizing her hand, his long

cool fingers wrapping about hers, “we’d better get out of

here.” He tugged her toward the dining room.

There were a few people standing around the dining-room table—a monumental slab of bevelled glass resting

atop a single marble pedestal. The table seemed to float

above the blue Chinese carpet like an ice floe on an Arctic sea. Here, the old walnut panelling had been left intact,

but stained a sort of silvery white. A chandelier hung over

•the table, a great bouquet of electrified candle holders,

each with a ring of dangling cut crystals that shimmered

like dappled sunlight on water. Young waiters in crisp

white shirts were briskly laying out platters of food for the

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buffet supper, and she saw one of them look at Joe and touch a hand to his forehead in a jokey little salute.

“I see you got the B๊lons,” Joe addressed a short, pitted-faced young man with dark hair scraped back in a ponytail, pointing at a tray of half-shelled oysters on a bed of chipped ice. “Good. I wasn’t sure they’d get delivered in time.”

“Close call,” the youth replied with a shrug, heading back into the kitchen.

“You’re catering this?” Annie whispered. “Dolly didn’t tell me.”

“She wanted it to be part of the surprise.”

“I’m impressed. It’s wonderful… what I’ve tasted so far, that is.” The truth was she’d been too nervous to do more than nibble at one crab cake.

“Things are really taking off with the catering. Only problem is the kitchen’s too small to handle the extra volume, so I’m expanding.”

“You’ve been talking about that for a while, but won’t it cost a mint? You don’t even own the building.” Falling back into their familiar habit of talking shop was like slipping into an old pair of loafers. She felt herself relaxing. This doesn’t have to be hearts and flowers, she reminded herself briskly. Let’s just be friends for now.

“I was getting to that part.”

“Joe! You didn’t! You actually own it?”

“Well, mostly it’s the bank that owns it, but the deed’s in my name. I was pretty lucky. My landlord was in a hurry to unload it … he needed the cash for some other investment. I would’ve written to tell you, but I only closed last week. And I didn’t want to say anything before that, in case it fell through.”

Annie did some quick calculations in her head. “But even so, the mortgage payments will be a real stretch … plus building on …” She saw Joe’s forehead start to crinkle in a frown, and she caught herself. She was doing it again, trying to run the whole world singlehandedly. “Well, I guess you know better than I would,” she finished weakly.

“Believe me, it’s time. We’re bursting at the seams.”

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He took off his glasses, which were still a little misty, wiping them with his handkerchief. Annie fought an absurd impulse to reach up and stroke the pink indentations on either side of his nose. “What about you—when are you going to strike out on your own?”

“As soon as I can get the bank out in L.A. to release my trust.”

She’d had two letters from Wells Fargo out in Los Angeles, and it was still there, twentyfive thousand, plus the interest that had been piling up over the years. And since she was only months away from turning twentyfive, her trustee, Mr. Crawford, had agreed to release the money early, as soon as the paperwork had been completed.

He cast a glance at Dolly, who was flitting through on her way to the kitchen. “You wouldn’t be moving in on anyone’s territory?”

“Dolly’s given me her blessing. She says the cornpetition will keep her on her toes.”

“Well, of course, you have my blessing. Though I doubt you’ll need it. You could take on the national debt and come out ahead.”

Annie felt a flicker of annoyance. What was that supposed to mean, that she was some Superwoman? Because she was determined and capable, did that mean she couldn’t ever feel weak or scared? Didn’t he know that she worried? She worried a lot. And she got scared sometimes … so scared that her stomach knotted up and she felt like staying in bed all day with the covers pulled over her head.

She was scared right now. Couldn’t Joe tell? Couldn’t he hear the way her heart was pounding?

Tears filled her eyes.

Then suddenly he was pulling her off to one side, through the swinging door into a narrow closet that once upon a time had been a butler’s pantry. It was empty except for deep built-in cupboards, above and below, where in the old days dishes and tablecloths had probably been kept, but where Dolly now stored her woolens in the summertime. Except for the light filtering in through the thick-paned

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porthole window, it was dark. It smelted of mothballs and silver polish, but Annie scarcely noticed. In the close darkness, she felt overwhelmed by Joe’s nearness, his crisp, outdoor smell and the heat of his body so close to hers.

He touched her cheek, and his touch was so tender that Annie had to fight to keep from breaking down into real tears.

“This isn’t how I imagined it would be,” he said softly. “I guess you can look forward to something so much and so hard that when you finally get it, you’re too paralyzed to make a move.”

“Oh, Joe.” She tried to say more, but her throat clicked shut. She could feel tears pressing like hot nickels against the backs of her eyes. Finally, she tore loose with a ragged laugh. “Don’t say you missed me or I’ll cry. I really will. Buckets. You’ll think you never came in out of the rain.” Then she grabbed a crisp handful of his clean white shirt, and whispered with desperate urgency, “No, say it. If you don’t say it, I’ll cry when I get home … and I don’t know which is worse. I’ll even say it first. Joe, I missed you. I missed you so much I thought it’d eat a hole right through me.”

He gripped her upper arms tightly, but he didn’t kiss her. She was relieved, glad even, because she knew that if he did she wasn’t going to want him to stop. She saw that there were tears in his eyes, too.

“Listen, I guess you know by now I wasn’t making it up when I told you I was lousy at writing letters. If I’d told you how much I was missing you, it would’ve come out sounding like I’d cribbed it from Now, Voyager.” He gave her that funny downturned smile of his, adding softly, “I wanted to see you first, find out if you …”

She began to laugh, soundlessly, as she leaned against the wall behind her, weak with relief. “And all that time I was thinking-“

“What?”

“It’s just … oh, it seems so silly now … but I thought… well, that maybe you’d met someone while I was away …”

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His eyes cut away from hers. “What gave you that idea?”

“I don’t know … just me, I guess.”

“There’s no one, Annie.”

Was he telling the truth? There had been something in his voice just now … and in his eyes …

She felt a stab of jealousy, but told herself quickly, Okay, so what if he went out with someone, maybe even went to bed with her? Who am I to judge, after Emmett?

“I love you, Joe.” There. It was out. She’d said it. Annie felt her face grow tight and hot, as if she’d crept in too close to a fire and had gotten burned.

Joe’s grip loosened, and his hands slid down her arms, finally capturing her wrists, gently … so gently. She felt as if her heart might burst like a glass unable to withstand an exquisitely high note. He brought her hands up and held her palms to his cheeks. His face felt rough, as if he hadn’t shaved in a while, and very warm … no, hot… as if he, too, were burning up.

She had fantasized about this moment for so long that even now it didn’t seem quite real—as if she were in some kind of a dream. Then she became acutely aware of his body tensed against hers, his long fingers stroking her spine, that faintly spicy smell of Joe’s Place he wore against his skin, like something good left warming in the oven. She felt a stirring in her lower belly that was becoming almost painful. She drew closer, pressing against him, fitting her hollows to his angles. Her need for him was so intense, she thought she might die if she couldn’t have him.

“I thought a lot about how it would be when you got home,” he said in a low, thick voice. “I thought about this.” He brought her palm to his mouth and kissed it … and Annie thought, yes, it was possible to die from too much happiness all at once.

She wouldn’t let herself think about Laurel, about how hurt her sister would be. Later. There would be time to deal with all that later. Here, now, she wanted this moment all to herself. It seemed essential that she grab

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hold of this before it slipped away from her . . away like all the good things she’d ever known.

“Annie?”

Annie was scrubbing the last of the Noxzema from her face when Laurel came into the tiny bathroom and perched on the edge of the tub. It was the kind with those old-fashioned claw feet that always made Annie think of some old geezer saying, “Yup … they don’t make ‘em like they used to.” And it was true. It took a good fifteen minutes to fill it, but stretching out in that great iron-and-enamel boat was one of her greatest pleasures. Laurel had painted its feet red and gold, and added with tiny brushstrokes feathers and talons, so the feet looked like a medieval griffin’s; on the side that faced out she’d painted a family of mallard ducks waddling along in an unbroken line-not just any mallards, though; these all wore rain slickers and bright red boots. Sitting on the tub’s curled edge, wearing a man’s T-shirt that came down almost to her knees, Laurel looked even droopier than she had coming home from the party an hour ago.

“Hmmm?” Annie answered, turning back to the wide oval pedestal sink where she stood. The medicine chest was partly open, and in its mirror she could see Laurel’s reflection, her face a pale oval set above a pair of thin, sagging shoulders. Under the ceiling’s fluorescent light-bar, the skin under her eyes looked bruised somehow.

“I’m pregnant.” Laurel’s soft voice dropped into the stillness like an explosion.

Annie felt a shock travel through her, like touching an exposed electric wire. She turned to face her sister, sagging against the sink, its cool porcelain pressing into the small of her back. The trickling of the faucet filled her ears, suddenly deafening, like the roar of a waterfall.

“Oh Laurey.” She couldn’t think what else to say. She stared at her sister, feeling a chill that seemed to rise out of her bones.

“You look worse than I do.” Laurel managed a tiny

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smile that only succeeded in making her look more miserable. “Maybe you’d better sit down.”

“I think maybe you’re right.”

In the tiny bedroom she had taken over when Laurel went away to college, Annie, going through the motions despite her shock, slipped into her pajamas, thrift-shop men’s pajamas made of dark-blue satin with burgundy silk twist piping. Now, feeling her senses begin to clear a bit, she sat down on the bed facing Laurel, who was curled up in the flowered easy chair by the window, hugging her knees to her chest.

“How many weeks?” Annie asked, grimly determined to be sensible.

“Three months. Too far along for an abortion, if that’s what you mean.”

“Oh, Laurey, I wasn’t… God, why didn’t you tell me right away?”

“I only found out myself a couple of days ago. I know that sounds really stupid, but you know how irregular I’ve always been. I just kept thinking I’d missed a couple of periods.”

“You’re sure?”

“I saw a doctor.”

“Okay …” Annie took a deep breath, feeling she could handle this if only she could lay all the facts out in front of her, and go through them one by one, like a census taker collecting statistics. “Do you want to tell me how it happened?”

Laurel gave a short, mirthless laugh. “The usual way, I guess. I mean how do these things happen?”

“You know what I mean.”

“You want me to go all the way back to the very beginning? Okay, how about we start with ‘Once upon a time there was a girl named Laurel who loved someone so much she thought she could make him love her back by …’ ” Laurel broke off, and all at once her taut face went slack. Tears welled in her huge eyes and dripped down her cheeks.

Laurel saw the puzzled look on Annie’s white face

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and longed to cry out, I only wanted Joe to love me. And maybe, deep down, I thought that somehow, by sleeping with Jess, I could make Joe see that I was mature enough for him. ซ

But for some reason she didn’t qrate understand, Laurel found herself holding back. … I

Annie longed to go to her sister, to comfort her as she had when Laurel was a little girl. But there was something steely in Laurel’s expression and in the set of her shoulders that warned Annie to keep her distance.

She looked about her room, at the tiny cracks in the plaster walls, at the Salvation Army bureau and nightstand. On the dresser in the corner stood Dearie’s Oscar. She hadn’t dusted it in a while, and now it seemed to glower at her, a dun cousin to the magical, twinkly little man she remembered from when she was a child.