With perfect timing, she takes the usher's waiting arm, and he leads her to the far right side of the Communion rail as Monsignor Max sweeps down to meet them. Sheba kneels and he places a Communion wafer on her tongue. She takes it, prays, makes the sign of the cross, then lets the usher lead her out a side door as the entire congregation watches the drama unfold before their eyes. Then the platoon of overstarched ushers begins to invite the front rows to partake of Communion as a flock of sparrow priests enters, their chalices overflowing with the ivory-white wafers.

Mother presses her mouth against my ear and whispers, "Our monsignor is an egomaniac. That was disgraceful and unnecessary."

"Great theater," I whisper back.

"This is a temple to praise God, not Sheba Poe's plastic tits," Mother says. We walk to the altar and receive the host from the priest who married my parents and baptized me. Then we follow the crowd out to Broad Street. My mother still cannot let the subject of Sheba go. "That girl's the whore of Babylon. Her birthplace is at Sodom or Gomorrah."

"She sure is cute, though, isn't she?" I cannot help teasing my mother, who is always volatile when aroused.

"I find interior beauty far more attractive. Spiritual beauty, I'm talking about, like Saint Theresa, Saint Rose of Lima, or Saint Francis of Assisi."

"Not me," I say. "I like plastic tits."

When she punches me on the arm, we both break down laughing on the steps of the cathedral. Though it is nice to see my mother laugh, I am positive it is for all the wrong reasons.

CHAPTER 12.

Niles and Fraser.

The 1974 marriage of the mountain boy Niles Whitehead to the Charleston debutante Fraser Rutledge, with her lineage unimpeachable and her bona fides in order, shook Charleston society with the force of an earthquake that went off the charts on the city's inflexible Richter scale. The shock waves that rippled through the drawing rooms of my mannerly city lent proof that the tumultuous era of the sixties had managed to breach the city limits of Charleston: when a penniless orphan born in anonymity could win the heart of a bride whose ancestors included one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and whose grandfathers on both sides served as presidents of the St. Cecilia Society, the rules of order and civility had taken a direct hit. Though there was nothing in Fraser's background to suggest either a revolutionary or a contrary leaning, she recognized the incomparable nature of Niles's character on the night they met. As one of the best female basketball players in the state, Fraser knew all she needed to about establishing a strong position and holding on to it for dear life. Her decency and fineness of spirit had floored Niles, who had never been to a dance when I introduced them the summer before my senior year.

Worth and Hess Rutledge mounted a fruitless campaign to break up the couple, but the clumsiness and meanness of their attempts only strengthened their daughter's resolve and Niles's ardor. Even Charleston families began to discover that when a young man and young woman fall in love, and that love proves rugged and fire-tested, all the social rules and laws of heraldry are flung aside. Niles and Fraser needed only the laws of their own uncommon passion. Fraser took his hand and together they crossed that line of distinction called South of Broad. He carried his bride across the threshold of the Thomaston-Verdier house, which her mother and father had presented to them as a bridal gift. In their hearts, both parents hoped that the marriage would be brief and childless. It would be years before Fraser's mother, Hess, could admit that her daughter's love affair with Niles was the kind that could not be washed out or towed away with the morning trash.

From my house on Tradd Street, I walk west to Church Street as the Charleston heat hits me with a body blow that is part humidity and part horse latitude. The houses along Church are set like gemstones against the sidewalk; the honeybees are working overtime in the flower boxes overflowing with lantana; the scents of jasmine and lilies of the valley catch me off guard, but the lush fragrance of a mock orange makes me happy to be alive.

I arrive early at the Thomaston-Verdier house to help with the preparation of the meal and to try to find out if Fraser has heard the rumors about her brother. I find her deveining shrimp in her spacious kitchen, which looks out into a garden perfectly composed and tended.

"Hey, Fraser, you look scrumptious in lavender. Can I make love to you before the others arrive?" I ask, kissing her on the cheek.

"Talk, talk, talk." Fraser smiles. "All you ever do. Never any action behind your words."

"It'll have to be a quickie."

She says, "Then a quickie it will be."

"I heard that, woman," Niles says, coming in from the den, where I can hear a baseball game playing on the television. He lifts me off the ground in his strong embrace, spins me around once, then lets me down gently to the floor. It is Niles's way of saying hello, and he performs the gesture with both men and women.

"Hey, kid," I say. "Did you catch any fish last night?"

"Enough red drum to feed everybody. Also, the kids pulled up a couple dozen crab."

"What's my role?" I ask the hostess.

"If you'd make your she-crab soup, that would be lovely."

"Let me go clean the crabs now," I say.

"I already did that, and gutted the fish while I was at it," Niles says.

"We sent the kids over to their grandparents' pool, Leo," Fraser says. "Did you talk to Chad? Ike said you would."

I look over at Niles, unsure of how much Fraser knows. He says, "It's all over town, good buddy. Fraser was the one who told me about it. I was not surprised that both you and Ike had gotten wind of it."

"I think Chad and Molly are coming today," I say. "Have they called?"

"They haven't canceled," Fraser says. "Chad must have listened to you."

"I didn't say that," I say. "He sure as hell wasn't pleased that I knew so much."

"We're sick about it," Fraser says. "I think Molly's gone if she hears about it. I don't think she's going to take it sitting down this time."

Niles says, "I'm thinking about cutting his pecker off and using it as bait for a billfish or a mako."

Fraser, still working at the shrimp, says, "I didn't tell you this, Niles, but I went to Chad's office and had a talk with him last week."

"I bet he wasn't thrilled by that sisterly visit," Niles snorts.

Fraser laughs. "I thought he was going to throw me out his window onto Broad Street. He denied everything, of course. He was working hard for the good of his family. The same old shit he always says."

"How'd Chad react to your visit, Leo?" Niles asks.

"Like I was a horse turd someone had shoveled into his room. But, to give Chad his due, no one would like to have such a conversation."

When the guests begin to arrive at five, all we have to do is grill the fillets and serve the meal. Ike and Betty bring a salad large enough to feed the Citadel football team, which Ike carries in, pretending to stagger under its weight. Sheba dances in wearing tight shorts, a yellow blouse with the top three buttons undone, a jade-colored belt, and ballet shoes. Un able to enter a room without some degree of showmanship, she whirls through the kitchen doing an impromptu and improvised ballet. When she kneels in homage to our small crowd, we play our part and cheer her performance.

We walk to the second-story piazza as a group. A delicious, unexpected breeze springs up from the harbor as we watch a cruise ship moving through the channel, riding low on the incoming tide. Niles and I serve gin and tonics all around, and we clink glasses and make toasts, all of us aware that each toast pays some commission of reverence for Sheba's return to our midst. Under our lavish attention she grows animated and tells us privileged insider gossip about the fey and nutty world she inhabits in Hollywood. She tells us which actor has the largest penis in the world of cinema, and the macho action star with by far the smallest. Though all of us find ourselves riveted, we all lack the guts to ask how she was sure of the accuracy of those measurements.

A horn sounds in the driveway, two gentle taps that denote familiarity. We rise up and see Chad and Molly, both nattily dressed, getting out of the blue Porsche with its top down. Both wear rakish hats and fashionable sunglasses-they are well groomed, combed over, and oiled down as they make their way through the wrought-iron garden gate. They enhance each other's good looks by the refinement each brings to the other, the rightness of their union, as though they are a matching pair of candelabra.

When Molly appears at the top of the stairs, she is regal yet self-effacing in her carriage. She is soft-spoken and reserved, so her loud infectious laughter always comes as a surprise. Molly possesses a lush head of hair, close to the hue of an Irish setter. Chad appears beside her, and I think they look more like brother and sister than husband and wife. But it is not unusual to think that in the rarefied, inbred corridors of Charleston.

"Chad!" Sheba cries out. "I haven't seen a hair on your head for over twenty-four hours. You've been hiding from your one true love."

"The damn law's my one true love these days, Sheba," Chad says as Sheba runs into his arms. "You can ask Molly about that."

"Amen," Molly agrees.

From a large purse, Sheba then pulls out a director's beret and a pair of sunglasses and throws a showy ascot around her neck. "The show has just begun," she says in a peremptory voice. "Everybody down to the lawn. Move double-time, extras. If we have to pay you union fees, you can sure as hell double-time to your next marks."

"C'mon, Sheba. Just let us get drunk," Ike sighs.

"Silence the Senegalese prince," Sheba barks.

Grumbling, we make our way down to a small swatch of lawn the size of an average putting green. Sheba claps her hands in a commanding manner and orders us to line up, women in front and boys bringing up the rear, saying, "Now, with brio and gusto and great savoir faire, we are going to perform the great 'Renegade Love Call.'"

There is a moaning in the choir, but Sheba halts it by bringing up an imaginary baton, then force-marches the women to the far side of the lawn. She separates them in intervals of three feet, then poses them all in the provocative stance we recognize from the beginning of football games when an unseen announcer named our starting lineup. With a brush of her hand, Sheba sweeps a wing of hair over the right eye of each woman and then she positions them in the sexiest cheerleader stance of all-the love call of the Renegade girls for the Renegade boys of Peninsula High. Sheba invented the choreography and the words of the cheer as one of the gifts she brought to our school life when she appeared out of nowhere for our senior year. The packed stadium always went into a zone of scriptural silence when those pretty girls brought the players out onto the field. Sheba starts things by slinging out her hip and pointing her finger directly at me. She flicks her head, tossing the wing of hair behind her, then begins her loud, passionate chant: "I champion Leo, can all of you hear-I call him forth for the victory cheer!"

Hearing my cue, I jog toward Sheba. In high school, she would peck my cheek, and I would run over to my place, facing the home crowd. But, of course, on this occasion Sheba surprises me with a French kiss that puts her tongue somewhere in the vicinity of my tonsils. So completely has she caught me unaware that I begin gagging and choking, to the high hilarity of my assembled friends. I shoot them all the bird as I stagger to my place.

Then Betty steps forward, also tossing her hair. No one can do sexy like Betty Jefferson as she points downfield to her man and cries out: "I champion Ike, and I feel him draw near-he'll stand by Leo in this victory cheer."

Ike jogs to his wife, they share a nice kiss, then Ike comes slowly toward me. After our foreheads touch, he turns to the crowd that disappeared from our lives nineteen years ago. We lock arms together as Fraser steps out, unsure of herself, a better athlete than any of us boys were, but a newcomer to the cheerleaders' art. She says: "I stand by Niles and I see my man clear; if he's not worthy, there'll be no victory cheer."

Niles runs up and kisses his wife, and they hold the kiss until the rest of us begin wolf whistling and catcalling. Then Niles runs over, and he and I touch foreheads, then he and Ike touch foreheads, and we lock arms together.

Molly begins her chant, "But I champion Chad, and I'll do it all year-if he will stand with us, then all Renegades cheer. We're right in the middle of a championship year."

As I listen to Molly's voice, I am moved by this collision of events that brings back so many memories-some that I embrace with a tenderness that surprises; others that can bring me to a boiling point of the spirit, the very threshold of agony. In high school, the cheer seemed endless and pointless when I was nervous and chafing for the game to start. Now, at this moment, I wish the cheer could last forever so I can have an excuse to lock arms with these essential men in my life and to watch the sensuous movements of those hair-tossing, pretty women for all time. Their voices seem to call out to me in the lostness of all my days; the nostalgia is close to overwhelming.

I watch Chad jog toward Molly when her cheer ends. It is easy to remember that Chad was all style then and is all style now: he seems to make his way across the yard in slow motion, all comfort in every inch of his aristocratic bones. As he approaches Molly, he puckers his lips in exaggerated fashion and throws the guys a conspiratorial wink at the same time. The mood is good and jocular.

All of us are caught by surprise when Molly Rutledge makes a fist and busts her husband's nose with a punch that is astonishing in its ferocity and effect. Drops of blood fly through the air, spattering Molly's face and blouse. The astonished group stands in a frozen, airless tableau. No one speaks until Sheba says, "I guess that's the end of the pep rally."

Then Molly explodes with a rage she has long held in quarantine. "You rotten son of a low-life bitch! You dare humiliate me in front of my best friends, my family, the town we grew up in! You conduct an open affair with a nineteen-year-old girl and flaunt it by inviting her to our parties, paying her rent, keeping a room at the Mills-Hyatt house for when you feel like a quickie. I thought I'd married one of the finest men to ever come out of Charleston society, and I find out I married the worst piece of shit instead."

"This is all a mistake," Chad says, but he directs his voice at us, not at Molly. "This can all be explained."

"They all know about it," Molly screams. "You've been so goddamn indiscreet, I bet the seagulls are talking about it. It's everywhere. Four lawyers in your firm have called, three of their wives. But my best friends-these fine, fine people-haven't said a word to me. And I've been able to tell for a month that they knew something terrible was happening in my life. Real friends would've said something. All of you owed me that much ... at least."

Molly turns and runs out of the garden. She takes a right toward East Bay, and disappears from sight.

"She's imagining things," Chad says to us. "It's something mental. I'm going to have her tested next week."

"Start telling the truth, Chad," Betty says. "After doing that, you can quit humping that broad in your office."

"Molly's having a breakdown," Chad insists, but it is difficult to take him seriously with his nose bleeding. "I guarantee she'll call all of you next week to apologize. She's been having these symptoms for a long time now. I'm going to need the help of all of you."

"Chad, why don't you go after Molly and have a serious talk with her?" Fraser suggests, then she goes over to an ice chest and soaks a dinner napkin in the freezing water. With great care, she begins to wash the blood from her brother's throat and nose. He snatches the napkin from her hand and presses it to his nose. We know from experience that Chad has a temper that is flammable and dangerous when ignited.

Fraser says in the softest, most sisterly of voices, "Just go home, Chad. You can make everything okay. It's not too late. Molly wouldn't be so crazy if she didn't love you so much."

"Shut up, Fraser. For once in your life, just shut up," he snarls like a treed bobcat. "You've always taken Molly's side in everything."

"I'm just trying to help," she says. "I love you as much as she does."

"Then show it. Start believing me. Take me at my word," he shouts at her, then makes a tactical error by adding, "piano legs."

If Ike and I had not both lunged for Niles at the same time, I think Chad would have suffered grievous physical damage far greater. Though Ike and I are heavier men than Niles, he is taller and rangier and more menacing when aroused. I slow Niles's headlong charge toward his brother-in-law by catching hold of his belt, allowing Ike to grab him in a bear hug.

"If I get my hands on you," Niles says to Chad, "I'll bite your nose off. I swear I'll bite it right off your face."

Fraser runs between her brother and Niles, shielding Chad from Niles's charge.

"Should I get the cuffs for Niles?" Betty asks Ike, her voice professional and take-charge.

Ike answers, "Naw, honey. Niles'll be fine. Get my nightstick out of the truck and break both of Chad's knees instead."

"My pleasure." Betty walks without haste toward their vehicle.

"Chad," Ike says, "you don't seem to be in the mood for advice tonight, but I've got some for you."

"Bad time for advice, Officer," Chad snaps. The word Officer Officer has never been uttered with such contempt. has never been uttered with such contempt.

"Advice is this: Run, you son of a bitch. Run your ass off. I don't think me and Leo are strong enough to hold Niles much longer."

With those observant words, Niles bursts free from my grip. Ike falls to his knees as Niles tries to kick away from his grip. Niles makes one sprinting gallop across the yard before Ike and I bring him down with an open-field tackle from behind. We tumble to the earth, but it takes us ten long seconds to pacify our formidable pal. By then, Chad has ingested the wisdom of Ike's advice, and he runs to his Porsche, the bloody rag still pressed to his nose. His car roars to life, and he screeches off in dramatic fashion. We are expecting Chad to take a left on Church Street, following Molly, but he hits second gear, takes a right at Meeting Street, then guns it past Tradd at a speed too reckless for Charleston.

Betty says it first. "After all that, he's still going to see his girlfriend."

"Tell you what," Sheba says, a woman who discovers her greatest joy in the center of the most uncontrollable chaos. "You Southerners really know how to give a party."

CHAPTER 13.

Sheba Asks a Favor.

At first, the conversation after dinner is directionless. It wanders from subject to subject as Sheba plays the piano, the show tunes she and her brother introduced to us when they appeared in the dead center of our lives. Then the dancing starts and I pour a glass of Cognac and lean against the baby grand. It is hard to believe that Sheba is only the second best piano player in her family, and that her skill is amateurish compared to her brother's simple mastery. But her voice is a lovely thing.

When the dancing is over, we sit on the welcoming, overstuffed furniture beneath the tiers of books that go floor to ceiling on three sides of the room. Niles is solicitous in bringing glasses of port and snifters of Cognac, the candlelight tossing a jeweled pallor on the room as the evening starts to wind down. The couples sit on couches holding hands with a naturalness I envy. Sheba and I sit on chairs across from each other. She is about to say something to me, but I see her choke back the words.

"There's something poison about me," Sheba says finally, and the room becomes still. "Always has been. I do this to every room I enter. I can never leave my unhappiness behind me. It follows me, tracks me down-it was waiting for me here tonight."

"Nonsense," I say. "Molly and Chad are fully capable of screwing up their own lives. We were all pulled into it tonight. It doesn't change the fact that we've all missed you, darling."

"You haven't missed a thing," she says. "I haven't been worth knowing for the past ten years. True confession time. I'm not just bragging." She laughs, but it is too loud and of the mirthless variety that soon turns to something darker. Then she begins crying softly. The women in the room move as one to surround, comfort, and caress her. As men, we sit paralyzed in our seats, undone by the ninjalike power of a few tears from the eyes of a woman we have cared about since we were boys. Sheba regains a small measure of her composure as Betty hands her a handkerchief from her large purse. "I'm so sorry. So sorry," Sheba sobs.

"You never have to apologize to us," Fraser says. "That's the kind of friends we are. Or that's the kind we'd like to think we are."

"I've been afraid to ask you something," says Sheba. "And it's what I came back to ask you."

"Ask," says Niles.

"Anything," Ike seconds.

"When's the last time any of you heard from Trevor?" she asks. Her crying begins again, but this time there is an opening up, a spillage out, and several moments pass before she can collect herself.

We all look at one another as Sheba puts her face in her hands. Niles is the first to speak.