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"The blond guy?" Alexandra asked her.

"With the eternal five o'clock shadow?"

"Yeah. And his sleeves are always torn off?" Jessica said.

"I've noticed him too," Alexandra said to Cassy.

"I have no idea what his name is."

Cassy nodded, writing.

"And then there's creepy Stevie in the mail room," Jessica said.

Cassy looked up.

"I know, I know," Jessica said quickly, holding her hand up in defense.

"The guy lost his arm in Vietnam and all that, but there is something very " she gestured with her hand " strange going on in his head. If Dirk's going to be keeping an eye on people, I'd keep an eye on him. He may not be my stalker, but I'll bet he's up to something down there."

Cassy was studying her carefully.

"What are you trying to tell me?"

Jessica stood up.

"Look, I'm only the hired help. You wanted to know some strange people around here, I've given you three strange people.

So now, please," she finished, walking toward her desk, " let me get back to work. "

Cassy looked to Alexandra, who nodded slightly, and they got up.

Jessica patted her hair in mock provocative ness

"Do give my regards to my fans in the news division, won't you, Alexandra?"

The show, frankly, turned out great. And how could it be otherwise--a celebration of Mother's Day by having mothers like Janet Leigh, Debbie Reynolds and Tippi Hedren on, appearing with daughters Jamie Lee Curtis, Carrie Fisher and Melanie Griffith.

The ladies were great and the audience enthralled and Jessica earned her salary by keeping her personality out of it. One of her greatest strengths as a talk-show host, Jessica knew, was that she never confused the stars with the host. Her job was to be the eternal background, the constant against which the universe was to shine.

After the taping the ladies were gracious enough to stay and sign autographs and spend some time with the audience before leaving. As soon as they were on their way, Jessica went to her dressing room and hit the shower. She changed into blue jeans, a blouse, sweater and sneakers, and with her hair still wet and her bodyguard following behind, checked out of West End and met her driver outside. She had had the same driver for two years now, Abdul, an exchange student from Egypt who was working his way through Columbia Medical School.

They chatted while heading over to Broadway and then uptown. He let her off at Ninety-sixth Street and she walked a few blocks before turning down a side street and entering a stone parish house.

"You have to stay out here," she told her bodyguard in the hallway, pointing to a bench.

"You can see me through that window in the door, but otherwise, you have no eyes, no ears, got it?" When he nodded, she went through the swinging doors and took a seat. She was a few minutes late; the meeting had already begun.

A man was telling his story. Jessica had heard him before. He had been sober about three years, she knew, and was what they called a "high bottom" drunk, in that he had not lost his job or his family before finding his way to Alcoholics Anonymous and getting sober. Jessica's had been a high bottom too. A very high bottom, some would say, since her getting sober had been simultaneous with launching her national TV show.

After the man told his story they had announcements Then the meeting chairperson asked if there were any anniversaries. In less than a month. God willing Jessica would be able to raise her hand and say, "My name's Jessica and I'm an alcoholic and today I'm celebrating seven years," but tonight she said nothing, but applauded other people who announced they had everything from three days to twenty-one years of not drinking.

Seven years.

It was a cliche, certainly, but time had flown. On one hand, it seemed like another lifetime when she had been drinking; on the other, she could remember sleeping in Alexandra's guest room as though it were yesterday, sleeping there because she was too scared to be alone. Too scared that if she were by herself she'd pick up a drink again. Scared that after the success of one whole day of not drinking, she might not be able to make it through another.

And now it was seven years later.

She saw Mr. Terminator watching her through the window and tried to ignore him.

This was her "home" group in AA, the one meeting she always tried to make, where people knew her and she knew them, so that if any of them disappeared for a while, someone would give a call to make sure they were all right. It wasn't nosy, it wasn't pushy, it was simply the loosely constructed camaraderie of people who might otherwise be drinking themselves to death.

After the meeting, a tall black man of about sixty came over to her.

Sam Wyatt was her friend, and, actually, sort of her sponsor all these years. She had never asked him to be her sponsor and he had never brought it up, but since he had taken her to her very first meeting, he had always been there for her in that function whenever she needed him. While AA strongly encouraged sponsors and sponsees to be in an impossible-tobesexually-attracted matchup--heterosexuals with sponsors of the same sex, gays with the opposite--Sam was so very sober and so very committed to his wife and family, it had never been a concern, not even in passing. He had a big-shot job at Elektronica International and Jessica had met him through Cassy; Cassy and Sam were neighbors on Riverside Drive.

They walked down Broadway to have a cup of coffee in the cheerful Key West Diner. They said hi to the waiters and sat in back and drank decaf and caught up on his family news: his wife, Harriet, had a big new promotion, his daughter Althea was working at Warner Records in Los Angeles, his youngest, the "reconciliation" child, Samantha, was a tenth-grader at the Gregory School.

"So," Sam said, turning the conversation around, "are you feeling a little nervous with your anniversary coming up?"

She shrugged.

"Not really. But I'll tell you what is making me nervous--that stupid book I wrote. I got a fantastic review today."

He smiled.

"This is a problem?"

She sighed.

"Why do I still feel so guilty about every thing?"

"Maybe because millions of other people do the right thing just about every day of their lives and they don't end up millionaires and television stars and writing best selling books." He patted her hand.

"Got to take the good with the bad, my friend."

"I didn't realize how much all this book stuff meant to me until I got that review this morning. And then I realized how upset I would have been if it had been bad."

"A lot of the authors Harriet works with don't read their reviews at all."

"I think my problem is that this whole publishing process feels so out of my control."

"It ;'s out of your control," Sam observed.

"Which can't help but be a good thing. So be grateful, stay humble ask your Higher Power every morning to help you stay sober and thank him at night."

"Maybe it's a her," she said, smiling.

"Whomever," he told her, "capital W."

"By the way," she said, "did you notice? I've got a bodyguard."

"I was too polite to mention it," he said, eyes shifting to Mr.

Terminator, sitting at the counter, periodically looking back at them.

"Cassy didn't happen to call you today, did she?"

"As a matter of fact, I think I did hear from the great lady herself."

"Did she tell you about my stalker?"

"Uh-huh." He lifted his eyebrows.

"Interesting how you talked about your book. No, " Oh, by the way, Sam,

I've got a stalker who's penetrated security at West End. "" "Don't be too sarcastic," Jessica warned him, winking, "or I might have you wrestled to the ground and cuffed."

"Naaa, not me," Sam pooh-pooh ed, stretching back to yawn and then hitting his abdomen with a fist.

"Harriet's got me doing double time at the gym."

Jessica smiled. It was so interesting. Everything she had always thought made boring people boring--like eating and sleeping regularly, getting exercise, building a spiritual life and a sense of community, and trying to maintain a sense of wonderment, curiosity and gratitude about life--had become the mainstays of her life. Was she boring? She thought Sam kind of was, sometimes. Interesting people, in the old days, had always been the spiritually distressed, those made so recognizable by their chronic intake of junk food, alcohol, cigarettes or drugs, their aversion to exercise and devotion to weird hours and a tendency to blame all their troubles on everyone else but themselves.

Such people almost always had some interesting daily catastrophe going on of one kind or another.

And now that she was no longer one of those "interesting" people, Jessica had finally figured out that the only reason anyone ever hung out with spiritually distressed people was not because they were "interesting," but because there was sex, money or drugs to be had from them. Otherwise, no one put up with them.

It had come as a tremendous shock to Jessica to realize that sickness only attracted sickness, and never did the rule break. And it was only after coming to this realization that it had finally made sense to her why certain men and women, no matter how much they had cared for her in her drinking days, had ultimately fled.

"Jessica," Sam said, "Cassy did bring up something I think we need to talk about."

"What's that?"

"The possibility your stalker could be someone who knows you from

AA. "

She was dumbfounded. And disturbed. To drag AA into this paranoia. And yet, it was true, there was every kind of person in attendance and this was New York City and, indeed, some were sicker than others. And it was perfectly reasonable to wonder if in all the meetings Jessica went to, there wasn't a deeply disturbed individual who had fixated on her. It was an anonymous program with no requirement to speak, and many chose not to, so how would she know if someone was a nut unless he raised his hand and outright said it?

"Let's just think a moment if it could be possible," Sam said.

"We both know it's possible," Jessica said, "but I think it's highly improbable. And since AA is the best and purest thing I've ever had in my life, I have absolutely no desire to mess with it, or to have anyone at West End mess with it, either."

"I agree," he told her.

"But still, keep your eyes open."

Jessica went into her apartment and closed and locked the front door.

Then she sighed, dropped her bag, unchained the door, flipped the locks back and opened it again.

"Hey." She was talking to the bodyguard.

"What's your name, anyway?"

"Slim," the big man answered.

"Ah, yes, of course. Slim what?"

"Karlzycki."

"Okay, Slim Karlzycki, why don't you come inside? It's going to be another long night out there."

He looked heartbreakingly grateful. Like a big old stray dog longing to come in from the rain.

She led him into the apartment and showed him around: bedroom, guest room, exercise room, living room, guest bathroom, dining room, kitchen, pantry. She got him settled on the living-room couch with the TV and even fixed him a couple of tuna-fish sandwiches.

Jessica washed up in her bathroom and changed into a New Jersey Giants T-shirt. She crawled into bed with piles of stuff to read for tomorrow's show. She clicked on the TV with the remote and flicked through stations, looking to see what was on--Letterman, Jay Leno, Charlie Rose, "Prime-Time Justice" She dialed Alexandra's apartment farther up the block on Central Park West.

"I feel like a bird sitting in a cat house," Jessica announced.

"Funny, I thought it was only me that felt that way." Alexandra had struggled valiantly to maintain a veil of privacy around her personal life. To a degree she had succeeded, but not without having to spend a fortune on security measures.

"Are you still coming out tomorrow?"

Jessica was supposed to go to the anchorwoman's farm in New Jersey for the weekend.

"The question is," Jessica sighed, "am I allowed to?"

"Oh, you're allowed, and Delta Force can camp out in the barn."

"Delta Force?"

"They'll assign at least two bodyguards to cover you over the weekend. At least that's what they've done with me. And I just stick them out in the barn."

What kind of world was it that bodyguards had to be a part of the household planning? Jessica hated to think about it. The last time she had seriously considered buying her own home in the country (instead of crashing at Alexandra's farm, which she had done with amazing regularity for the past seven years), she had been aghast at what it would cost to insure her safety.

Her eyes had blurred over on the "Nightline" screen in front of her.

"Are you watching " Nightline'? " Alexandra asked her.

"Yes." Long ago Jessica had given up trying to figure out how Alexandra's ESP worked.

"Me, too. I'm sort of interested in it tonight." Translation If you need to talk, get to it, please, or otherwise let me get off.

So Jessica said her good-nights and hung up. But during the next commercial the phone rang.

"I meant to tell you, pack nice for this weekend. I have a little surprise for you on Saturday."

"Coming from a girl from Kansas, one wonders what 'pack nice' means," Jessica said, mulling it over.

"Gingham, perhaps?"

"How about one of those dirty black T-shirts with a pack of Camels rolled up in the sleeve you girls from Jersey favor?" Alexandra said.

"Ha-ha. As a matter of fact," Jessica countered, "I'll have you know that all girls from New Jersey dress just like Christine Todd Whitman from birth. Go to any hospital and you'll see there they are, every baby in pearls and Topsiders, no exceptions, that's always the rule."

"Right. Anyway, very casual, but picnic casual," Alexandra said.

"Shorts and a T-shirt you feel great in."

"This little surprise sounds absolutely horrible," Jessica told her.

"I don't like potato-sack races."

After they hung up again, Jessica tried to settle down and read a book for tomorrow's show, but then she got curious about her bodyguard. She went to peek into the living room to see what he was doing.