At least the dread holiday season was past. Somehow, Camille had managed to endure it. She'd never quite realized how onerous the burden was to be, or to pretend to be, happy; to keep up a brave, stubborn pretense of happiness because it's that season. Marcy and Kevin came to visit, glum and embittered, jealous of the dogs. "How can Daddy come home, if these dogs are here? You know he's allergic," Marcy said peevishly. Camille tried to explain, "But your father isn't home, dear. And in the meantime these poor animals deserve a home, too." Marcy said, in a voice heavy with sarcasm, "Mot her! Next thing we know, you'll be building a kennel out back."

But why a kennel, Camille thought, when there's the guest house? A useless luxury, under these changed circumstances.

T was worsened by the cloudy presence of Marcy and Kevin. Both complained to their mother that they'd had to cancel holiday plans in order to be with her at such a sensitive, painful time; both tried repeatedly to make telephone and e-mail contact with their elusive father, with no luck. She heard them declaring grimly over the phone to friends that "Poor Mom needs us, she's in a permanent state of shock" and "Daddy needs us, he's having a nervous breakdown." They went to Manhattan, to Hoffmann Publishing, Inc., and to the apartment on East 6*st Street, in vain. At Lionel's office, his secretary swore that Mr.

Hoffmann wasn't in, but had left the country for the holidays; and when Marcy strode past her to boldly open the door, there was no one at her father's desk. "It's like black magic. Dad's a magician, and he makes himself disappear," Marcy said, disgusted. At the apartment, they discovered to their chagrin that their keys no longer fit the lock. Their father so distrusted them, he'd had the locks changed! "It's like Kafka," Kevin said.

"The shame of the father outlives the son."

Still, Marcy and Kevin were childishly adamant, as Christmas approached, that Lionel would, Lionel must, return to the house on Old Mill Way for Christmas Eve, at least! Camille, who'd pondered such a fantasy earlier in December, then gave it up, tried to warn them; most likely Lionel was out of the country; he and his new, young friend seemed to travel a lot, especially to lush tropical places. Marcy said derisively, "This 'new, young friend' of Dad's, know who she is? Know what she is? I know." Kevin said, "Yes? What do you know? Who told you? " "I know she's Third World," Marcy said smugly, "and she wouldn't be confused

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with a Caucasian. That's what I know." Irritated, Kevin said, "So who told you? This sounds like bullshit to me." "I know what I know," Marcy said, thrusting her bulldog face dangerously close to Kevin's, "I ran into a certain Salthill divorcee in the village, whose ex-husband 'double-dated' with Dad, both of them with Third World hookers, and-" Kevin began to shout at his sister, and Camille deftly intervened, daring to thrust herself between them. Exactly as she'd done nearly two decades ago. "Children, please," she said, resorting to the pitiful stage gesture of actually wringing her hands, "don't do this to me, not at Christmas. I beg you." Both children sneered.

Apollo was barking, and Shadow was close to baying, locked in another part of the house and fearful their mistress was being attacked.

Marcy, a big girl with a tendency to lurch, went about the house singing in a mock-sugary voice, "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas-NOT." Kevin, obsessed with combing his wan, thinning hair in such a way as to minimize its thinness, or to maximize its rapidly diminishing thickness, took Camille aside and told her he was worried about his sister who was "clinically depressed" over their father's disgusting behavior and close to "burning out" with her "fiercely competitive job." Another time, Marcy took Camille aside to confide in her she was worried about her kid brother, who was "in a crisis of sexual identity" exacerbated by his dad's disgusting behavior and by his mother's "failure to deal decisively."

Camille smiled weakly and promised to do what she could.

When it became embarrassingly clear that Lionel wasn't coming home for Christmas Eve dinner, had no presents to heap upon them, nor even a mumbled telephone apology to transmit, it fell to Camille to placate, or to attempt to placate, Marcy and Kevin. Marcy said tragically, "This is the first time in my entire life that my father I believed I loved, and I believed loved me, won't be spending Christmas with me." Kevin said vehemently, "This scene sucks. It isn't even Oedipal, where you could explore it as myth. It's just-shit." "The first fucking time! In my fucking life! Fucking Christmas! Sure it's materialist, our culture is sick with material things, but how the fuck else do you communicate your love? Name the ways."

Just then the telephone rang, and Camille hurried breathless to answer it.

In a stage play a ringing phone would signal a possibly happy ending, but in actual life, dogs barking and baying in the near distance, things weren't so logical. Yet her heart leapt like a girl's. Though soberly instructing herself Just remain calm. Calm, Camille! She had time for a quick pleasant rec-ollection of meeting Lionel for the first time, how many years ago, in that Middle Age: A Romance

rowdy smoky fraternity house upstate, and she'd been a calming influence upon him, upset as he was that his date had slipped away with one of his fraternity brothers; Camille, though very young, had been calm, sweet, steadying-and that had made all the difference. But, damn!-the telephone was only just Beatrice Archer, calling to wish Camille a happy Christmas, and to mention casually that she knew of a "beautiful, sweet-tempered, loving dog," a young Doberman pinscher named Thor, in need of an immediate home. Had Camille any suggestions? "Thor is a purebred Doberman, too sensitive to be lodged anywhere impersonal like a kennel or a shelter. He needs a true home, Camille. I wish Avery and I could take him in, but-!" Camille tried to keep the disappointment, in fact the bleak despair, out of her voice. "Beatrice, thank you but I can't take in a third dog. I simply can't. I'm desperate to know what I'll do when Lionel comes home. Please understand!" Upset, Camille hung up on Beatrice's lilting soprano voice.

When she returned to the children, Marcy was loudly singing, "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas-NOT." Kevin said, "NOT Dad on the phone, I guess?" in a voice heavy with adolescent irony.

I * Christmas Eve was endured, and Christmas Day. And Camille Hoffmann and her two grown children exchanged presents, and no more mention was made of the absent husband-father. When, the morning after Boxing Day, Marcy and Kevin departed for their homes, Camille collapsed on a sofa and slept for six straight hours. She was awakened only by the dogs whining and scratching at the door. How happy!- her heart lifted. For a moment she couldn't remember why.

I J , Beatrice Archer again called. "Camille! If you'd just consent to meet Thor. Just let me bring him over for five minutes."

"Beatrice, I can't. I've explained."

"Five minutes, Camille! I promise, no more."

"Beatrice, no."

"Camille, this isn't like you. There's a strange hardness in your voice. If only you'd consent to meet this poor sweet beautiful creature-"

How could Camille say no? How harden her ridiculous heart, that had already been cracked?

In this way, in the New Year, Thor came to live with Camille. "Three

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dogs! I'm becoming eccentric, I guess." Meeting Thor, seeing the dog's shining desperate eyes, Camille had known she couldn't turn him away.

A purebred Doberman pinscher! He'd belonged to the Archers' eldest son Michael, who "wasn't able to keep him," as Beatrice evasively explained. Camille spoke quietly to Thor, and Thor seemed, shyly, to be responding. He was certainly a handsome specimen, though clearly high-strung and anxious; his fine dark-burnished hide rippled with nerves almost continuously, even when he slept. He was timid around the older dogs and frightened of sudden sounds and movements. The protracted noise of a neighboring executive's helicopter roused him to whining and snapping at the air. His teeth were young teeth, and sharp.

(Camille knew! That first week, he'd growled and snapped at her several times, reacting out of fear.) While grooming Thor, Camille discovered to her horror that fur on the young dog's neck was rubbed away, and the skin beneath scarred, as if he'd been tightly tied. On other parts of Thor's body there were suspicious nicks and scars. He cowered in the way of a dog accustomed to being shouted at, or kicked. Camille was naively shocked. How could the Archers' son Michael, a classmate of Kevin's at Salthill Country Day, and now a Wall Street market analyst, have been cruel to his own dog? Camille stroked the dog's bony head gently, and murmured, "Thor, I promise: you will never, never be hurt again."

I J , Thor. In March, Fancy.

"Fancy is my darling, and my orphan-to-be, I'm afraid. Let's speak frankly, dear."

Mrs. Florence Ferris of Lost Brook Farm, a twenty-acre estate bordering upon Old Mill Way, summoned Camille to her enormous Tudor home, and to her bedside. The old, ailing woman was somewhere beyond ninety, and badly incapacitated by strokes and other maladies of age.

Along with her late husband the admiral, a golf-playing friend of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mrs. Ferris was known for her charitable works and contributions to such organizations as the Salthill Pro Musica and the County Historical Society. Camille had met the renowned old woman only a few times, at fund-raising events. She was conscious of the honor of being invited to Lost Brook Farm, but uneasy; what did Mrs. Ferris want of her? A curly-haired French poodle, very white, was sprawled across the Middle Age: A Romance *

quilted bedspread beside Mrs. Ferris' shrunken doll-body. Camille thought Not another dog! I will not. Mrs. Ferris said, "My dear, I'm so sorry I never got to know you in life. And now-" Mrs. Ferris laughed sadly, yet forcibly. Camille was moved to protest but Mrs. Ferris continued, "Let me be blunt, dear. I have heard such good things of you. Will you adopt my darling Fancy? I love her so, I'm desperate for her to have a good, loving home not too many miles from here. She is eight years old, no longer young, possessed of a highly sensitive soul, and I don't want her uprooted and traumatized any more than she will be when I . . . depart." Camille smiled weakly, thinking No! I swear, I will not. The previous night she'd had a vivid dream of Lionel, not as the stiff, guilt-wracked man she'd last seen, but as he'd been fifteen or twenty years before, dark-haired, robust, often affectionate; in the lovely Technicolor dream they'd been ice skating hand in hand, beneath an incongruous Caribbean sky, and so innocently happy . . . Mrs. Ferris was saying briskly, "Poodles, you know, are the most intelligent of all the breeds. And Fancy is devilishly intelligent, I must warn you. And yet so sweet. And something of a mind-reader! She will snap, and I'm afraid she will bite, but only if provoked. Don't let fretful children anywhere near her, Camille!" Mrs. Ferris laughed fondly. "And Fancy is an heiress, too. Aren't you, Fancy?"

The curly poodle, with widened watery shrewd eyes, barked at Camille sharply, three times, like Morse code.

Camille said reluctantly, "Mrs. Ferris, I wish I could adopt your beautiful dog. But my husband is allergic to dogs and it's only a matter of time before-"

Mrs. Ferris commanded, "Fan-cy! Stop groveling and cringing and show some spunk. Here is your new, young mistress."

Fancy peeked at Camille over the quilted edge of Mrs. Ferris's bony hip. The Morse-code bark came again, and a growl deep in the throat.

"Mrs. Ferris, thank you so much for your trust. But I-"

"Fancy is an heiress, and it's never been said of the Ferrises that they are likely to stint." Mrs. Ferris winked lewdly. Camille blushed. She said, stammering: "Oh, but I, I-I don't require money, Mrs. Ferris. I have more money than I can use, truly. Except to help out unfortunate animals, of course. In which case-"

"In which case, Fancy will be residing in just the right home, yes? And her mistress can 'retire' in peace."

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Somehow it happened, Camille wasn't certain how, that Fancy was delivered over to her; and Mrs. Ferris thanked Camille profusely, squeezing her hands and weeping. Fancy, too, whined, and squirmed in Camille's arms. "Fancy, good-bye! You will leave me. You will live from now on with Camille, my dear friend and neighbor. You will be a good dog, and you will obey your new mistress. If you think of me, think of me kindly.

Away!"

A uniformed nurse and a uniformed housekeeper helped Camille with the quivering, whimpering dog and its cushioned wicker bed, its wardrobe of little sweaters and coats and booties, and its cans and sacks of special diet food. In protest, and yet passively, Fancy leaked urine onto Camille's clothing, but did not bark hysterically as Camille feared she might on the way home, and did not bite. Not just yet.

A A, ten days before Easter, there came Belle to live in the house on Old Mill Way.

Of Camille's dog-family, as she would come to call them, Belle was by far the most pitiful. She'd been brought into the emergency clinic at the shelter one afternoon when Camille was on duty, a female mongrel, visibly pregnant, with bulldog blood, mud-colored and weighing about thirty pounds, profusely bleeding. According to witnesses who'd brought her to the clinic, the collarless dog had been dragged from the rear bumper of a pickup truck by sadistic boys and left to die by the side of a country highway north of Salthill. The pads of her paws were torn away, her right shoulder was dislocated, several ribs were broken, her stomach, hindquarters, and the contents of her womb a bloody mess.

Of the numerous volunteers at the Rockland shelter, only Camille was eager to work with the badly injured dog during her slow recuperation.

Only Camille was patient enough to feed the traumatized dog, who had to lie on her side, her feet bandaged and her ribs in a cast. Camille fed her by hand, like a baby. Because there was the danger of the dog panicking and biting, Camille had to wear protective gloves to her elbows. She didn't at all mind. She came quickly to love this trembling, courageous dog who, the day following surgery, tried to wag her tail at Camille's approach.

" 'Belle.' That's your name. Because one day you will be belle. Don't be frightened. You're safe now." Camille rocked the bandaged dog. "Belle, Belle! You will never be hurt again, Belle! You will be revenged."

Middle Age: A Romance

T the April morning, shortly after Camille brought Belle home to live with her and the other dogs, when the telephone rang, and Camille answered it expecting to hear the voice of one of her new friends, but it was a hoarse voice she scarcely recognized, with a quaver to it, like a nervous bullfrog at the bottom of a well. "Camille? It's Lionel." There was a pause. Camille's heart beat painfully. "May I come home?"

As in her dreams Camille tried to speak, and could not. She felt herself falling, fainting. The telephone receiver slipped from her fingers. The dogs rushed to her, to lick her face and hands, gathering in a tight, jealous ring about her.

T G R B T here she is:that woman.

Through the fall and winter and into spring the whispering was relentless! pitiless! like dried, torn leaves blown by clouds with manic bulging cheeks! A rustling murmurous mocking sound. Never to Abigail's beautiful mask of a face but behind her back, of course.

There she is: the mother who lost her son. Whose son has repudiated her. She tried to kill herself and him in a speeding car, can you imagine! These were Abigail's friends. Her Salthill neighbors. They knew her soul that was in tatters. They wished her well, as one wishes a convalescent well. Yet they shook their heads in bemused disapproval. Smiled in astonishment that one of their own could so misbehave. Smiled, appalled. And had she been drinking, poor Abigail?

You know the answer to that one.

S in Vermont when the demon hand reached out to yank the steering wheel, to bring Abigail and Jared to their deaths, Abigail hasn't had a single drink. She swears! Not even Salthill's alcohol of choice, dry white wine, and that's one of her problems: "Life, raw and sober, isn't 'life' as we know it. It's something else." What else? An autopsy report.

Continuous traffic news over one of the breathless New York City radio stations. Or continuous MTV, if, middle-aged, not an American adolescent, you had to watch, trussed up like a turkey and your eyes taped open. Forever.

Middle Age: A Romance

And so she planned her suicide for April . With characteristic mod-esty choosing the slack, anticlimactic Sunday following Easter Sunday, which seemed to Abigail, a lapsed Episcopalian, a fitting day, since Easter itself would be too pointedly symbolic, an elbow in the ribs- Got it? No resurrection for this woman! But inevitably something (a persistently ringing phone, her anxiety that the caller might be Jared who hasn't spoken to her in months) happened to deflect it. And the following morning is May *, and maybe that means something? The first morning of my new, posthumous life?

And Abigail is driving into the Village of Salthill-on-Hudson, slowly (shakily!) along Pearl Street, a still young-looking woman in dark glasses wanly glamorous as a recovering-druggie rock star of another era, in her gleaming ghost-colored BMW sedan in a state of suspended animation waiting to feel something! anything! since after all I'm alive, it's spring and I am NOT DEAD. But her mind is blurred like the lipstick-smudged rim of a cocktail glass, since having failed to die the previous day she's obliged to carry on with her absurd and exhausting life, a life that would seem to be enviable to most of the world's billions, basically the life of a forty-three-year-old (yes, Abigail has acquired another birthday, during the winter malaise) suburban divorcee with a busy social calendar and no soul; a life of appointments, social events, and errands like beads on a rosary, and these beads looping continuously back upon themselves, now Adam is gone, now Jared is gone, now Abigail has failed to remarry, Abigail has failed even to stumble away from the wreckage of her marriage to find another man to love, and to love her; and for a weak moment on Pearl Street passing the Old Salthill Cemetery where patriots of the American Revolution are buried, and the Salthill Free Public Library in its restored-historic Neo-Georgian building, and a corner of Shaker Square, her mind has drained so blank she can't recall if she has just driven into town to have lunch with the co-chair of the Friends of the Salthill Historic Society Annual Spring Festival of Flowers, or if she's on her way back to Wheatsheaf Drive, and home; that beautiful house empty of life as a mausoleum; she can't recall if, the day before, lining up her precious cache of barbiturates, painkillers, and Prozac on a kitchen counter, she'd decided to appeal to Jared one final time (just a single telephone call!) before washing everything down with vodka, or whether, with laudable magnanimity, she'd decided to spare the boy, who after all (she's his Mom, she should know!) is only sixteen and wounded by his parents' acrimonious divorce; when at the

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intersection of Pearl and Ferry, waiting for the traffic light to change, Abigail happens to see the girl in the red beret . . .

"She must be lonely. Always, she's alone."

The girl appears to be Chinese, about eleven years old. She's small-boned, with delicate features, a perfect petal of a face; dark gleaming-smooth straight hair to her shoulders, and straight-cut bangs across her forehead; carrying a cello case gripped tightly, and walking as if into a bracing wind. The girl wears a plain jacket, neatly pressed slacks, and the little red beret, a stab of bright color. By chance, Abigail has seen this child several times in Salthill, and her heart is touched . . . The girl is no one Abigail knows. And no one who knows Abigail. Sometimes she's carrying the cello case, and sometimes not. Salthill is a small enough community in which, without wishing to, you recognize individuals without knowing their names. The girl in the red beret is a student at the Salthill Middle School on North Chambers Street; Abigail has seen her walking from the school, alone. Abigail has seen her in the Salthill Public Library, alone.

Surely there are other Chinese-American girls attending the middle school, but the girl in the red beret is always alone, or at any rate when Abigail has seen her, she's alone. The first time Abigail happened to notice her, the girl was trying shyly to make her way through a rude, noisy gaggle of middle-school classmates loitering on the sidewalk outside the library, the diminutive Chinese girl confronted by girls and boys of approximately her own age who ignored her as if she didn't exist, and jostled her as she tried to pass. The unconscious cruelty of young adolescents! Abigail was incensed and would have liked to come to the Chinese girl's rescue, taking her hand and pushing the others aside. Such louts! Caucasians! She felt her face burn with a pleasurable racial shame. Since Caucasians are the majority race, you can castigate yourself with racial shame, and not be held to account in any way. Abigail had lingered on the pavement a few yards away, pondering what she would do if, for instance, one of the show-offy boys snatched off the Chinese's girl's beret; if anyone was actively rude, aggressive. Abigail was a Salthill mother, these kids would shrink before the authority of a mother. (Wouldn't they?) As Jared's mother, Abigail shouldn't have been surprised or shocked, overhearing the language of these bratty spoiled Salthill kids, the casually tossed-off shit, fuck, suck, and the sexual innuendo of their banter blow, eat out, fuck you, man! But she was shocked, and dismayed. These were hardly more than children, after all. Girls of twelve and thirteen sharing cigarettes on the street. Garishly Middle Age: A Romance

applied lipstick and eye shadow and tight-fitting little skirts. The boys in baggy rap-style pants from Banana Republic and Gap, their expensive jogging shoes unlaced. Privileged Salthill children whose fathers were multi-millionaires, emulating what they believed to be the gangsta-street-style of the black ghetto where fathers were likely to be in prison, absent, or dead. At least, Jared had passed through this phase. Abigail hoped Jared had passed through this phase.

So sad! Abigail's son refuses to speak with her, let alone see her. She tries to be brave but there she is carrying the deformity of her shame about with her, in public, a giant goiter growing out of her neck.

That day last autumn Abigail tried not to be conspicuous watching as the child in the red beret managed to make her way through the rowdy group, too shy to speak, her face waxy-pale and masklike and her beautiful Asian eyes deep-set and solemn, downlooking, amid the giddy gaiety of her classmates. Abigail thought fiercely, She is superior to them all. They must know it! Though in fact the white Salthill kids took no evident notice of her at all. Now Abigail sits behind the wheel of her BMW, watching the same child passing within a foot of the car, carrying her cello case, and she feels again a stab of affection, a wish to protect. There's a melancholy precocity about this girl. An old soul, in a young body. Is that possible?

And yes, the girl is beautiful, in Abigail's eyes, though harsher eyes might consider her plain. It's the pure young-girl innocence that quickens Abigail's scarred heart. Why did I never have a daughter! What a blunder. In fact, Harrison hadn't much wanted the first baby, who at least turned out to be a boy. A little DNA-carrier with a miniature penis, and Harry's moaning thrashing tantrum ways. The prospect of a second baby, meaning a bloat-bellied wheezing wife instead of a debutante beauty, and a season of stinking diapers and disinfectant and another "ethnic minority" nanny in the household- No thanks! Abigail sighs. Watching as the child in the red beret walks away, oblivious of the Caucasian woman in the designer dark glasses, behind the wheel of a ghost-colored BMW, gazing with such interest after her. Wondering who the child's mother is. What a lucky woman! Surely the girl is a model of the mother, those delicate features, the shining black hair, the self-effacing way in which she carries herself, but she'll become, by degrees, Americanized, and break the mother's heart. Still, it's worth it. They give us a few years of happiness, it's selfish to ask for more. The thought occurs to Abigail: maybe she should marry an Asian-American man? Are there any Asian-American bachelors over

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forty? She has a vague idea that Asian-Americans don't divorce frequently; they marry young, and remain faithful; if they have adulterous affairs, surely it's within their race and class; as her ex-husband Harry Tierney used to say, after business trips to Tokyo and Taiwan, Asians are inscrutable-"On purpose. To make us look like lumbering assholes."

Abigail seems to think that, if she could inveigle an Asian-American man into loving her, and marrying her, this might be the solution to her problems? There's a small Asian-American population in Salthill and its affluent environs, but there are, strangely, no Asian-Americans in Abigail's immediate social circle, as, equally strangely, since Salthill is such a liberal-Democrat community, there are no blacks or Hispanics either. ("We try!

We try constantly!" Salthill hostesses claim, quite sincerely. "We invite them, but they don't come to our parties. Or, if they do, they come only once, and we never hear from them again.") Abigail knows-her brain is awash with affable cultural cliches, like a washing machine churning laundry-that Asian-American children are "top performers" academically, and that Asian-Americans have "strong family ties." Each year there are more Asian-American faces in Salthill and Abigail thinks this is a good thing, on principle. She supposes that the child in the red beret is the beloved daughter of one of the new families, her father an investment banker, or a doctor, or a biotech executive, some of whom have bought million-dollar homes in new subdivisions with names like Lincoln Green, Pheasant Hollow, Liberty Vale.

Abigail is wakened from her trance by a horn lightly tapped behind her (this is Salthill, not New York City) and quickly she drives through the intersection. Where she's headed, she isn't certain, but knows it isn't important, since it's where Abigail Des Pres is headed; like her suicide, it can be deflected. Instead she takes a left onto Quaker Street, and another onto Front, with the intention of circling back to Pearl. (What is she doing?) (Her excuse might be, it's an overcast spring day, mean-looking storm clouds and gusts of wind spitting rain, if the child in the red beret gets caught in a downpour . . . ) But, bad luck, Abigail is slowed down in Salthill's narrow streets, caught in slow, clogged traffic, waiting with mounting impatience as women shoppers (acquaintances of hers, Abigail can't honk rudely) struggle to insert their luxury vehicles into parking places, like hefty women inserting themselves into corsets. By the time she returns to Pearl and Ferry, and cruises along Pearl for several futile blocks, the child in the red beret is nowhere in sight.

Middle Age: A Romance

Now what the fuck are you doing, Mom! Stalking somebody else's kid! You are one SICKO mom, Mom.

" N, I ' that Jared and I rarely speak these days. But I hear his voice often. He's always in my thoughts. I feel that I keep in contact with him, somehow."

A D* P * * not stalking anyone, let alone an innocent child of eleven! Observe how she proceeds dutifully to The Lemon Tree to have lunch with the co-chair of the Flower Festival. (Though it has crossed her mind that she could contact each of the music teachers in Salthill, there can't be very many, and inquire discreetly after a Chinese girl of about eleven who wears a red beret and studies cello . . . But what would she say next? That's tricky.) Abigail finds herself the brunette half of a pair of beautifully dressed, impeccably groomed Salthill women lunching at Salthill's most popular new restaurant, The Lemon Tree. Amid a bustle of white-uniformed young waiters and a clatter of gleaming cutlery and what sounds like an endlessly repeating Bach harpsichord tape and a buzz and murmur like the coursing of blood in one's ears. Before each woman is a plate profusely heaped with gourmet salad greens, vinaigrette on the side.

"The Sunday following Easter, yesterday, seemed like a good idea. But I missed it."

"A good idea for what, Abigail?"

For killing myself. "For rethinking my life. Housecleaning, sorting through my wardrobe and throwing away clothes I haven't worn in the past year. Girl things."

"Excuse me? 'Gull things'? It's so noisy in here."

"Girl, gull." Abigail laughs almost too heartily. "I won't contest the point."

To her chagrin Abigail finds that she's drinking white wine after all.

Since when? She'd promised herself Never again! And in fact she promised Roger Cavanagh, who'd gallantly saved her ass up in Middlebury, Vermont. No more alcohol, ever! Abigail's luncheon companion, Beatrice Archer, is a bronze-highlighted blond beauty of a mysterious age, somewhere between thirty-five and fifty, in a splendid wide-brimmed straw hat like a character in a Merchant-Ivory film, and she's sipping red wine, and

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