The entree arrived, salmon and string beans, served with a local Zinfandel. An extremely successful mystery writer delivered the keynote while everyone else ate. Initially there were problems with the microphone, some rasping, squealing feedback, but this was quickly solved. The keynoter was brief and charming; he was perfect.

After he finished, Mo told Dean that the legal procedures in the extremely successful mystery writer's books were all screwed up. "Lots of people don't care," Mo said. "I'm kind of a stickler for accuracy myself." He began to take Dean through the errors of the other writer's most recent book, point by point.

"Lots of people don't understand how the discovery phase works," he said. He was prepared to explain.

Bernadette leaned in to Prudie and spoke quietly. "I may have shaded a few things. I didn't know Mo was a stickler for accu-racy. I thought he just liked plot. So I added some bits. Sports. Lingerie. s.e.xy little sisters. Guy stuff."

"Drugs. Talking animals," Prudie said.

"Oh, I didn't make up the crows."

Prudie found she felt no immediate need to know which parts were true and which weren't. Maybe later she would. But Bernadette was not her mother; maybe she'd never care.

"My husbands weren't any of them bad men. I was the prob-lem. Marriage seemed like such a small s.p.a.ce whenever I was in it. I liked the getting married. Courtship has a plotline. But there's no plot to being married. Just the same things over and over again. Same fights, same friends, same things you do on a Sat.u.r.day. The repet.i.tion would start to get to me.

"And then I couldn't fit my whole self into a marriage, no matter who my husband was. There were parts of me that John liked, and different parts for the others, but no one could deal with all of me. So I'd lop some part off, but then I'd start missing it, wanting it back. I didn't really fall in love until I had that first child."

The music resumed. Prudie could see the black woman, sans mink, dancing. She'd taken her shoes offas well as her stole. Her partner was a stout, bald white man. Three other couples were on the floor, but this pair drew your eye. There was something deeply incongruous about wearing formal clothes and boogying on down. It took a good dancer to make you overlook this.

Prudie wondered whether they were married. Was she his first wife? Had she lopped off some part of herself to make him fit? If so, she looked pretty happy without it.

Now there were eight couples on the dance floor. Half of these, by Prudie's calculation, were rich men with their second wives. She based her identifications on the differential between the woman's youth and attractiveness and the man's, and on Sylvia's behalf, she disapproved. She had herself married a man much better-looking than she deserved, which seemed to her the way it ought to be done.

Dean saw Prudie watching the dance floor. "Dance with me, baby," he said. It was an obvious plea to miss the detailed expla-nation of search and seizure.

Prudie hadn't danced, even alone in the living room to Smokey Bill Robinson, since her mother died.

Her mother was a huge fan of Smokey Robinson's. But Prudie thought she could do this for Dean. It wasn't a lot to ask. "Okay," she said. She realized she couldn't. "In a minute. Maybe later."

"How about you, Bernadette?"

Bernadette took off her earrings and set them by her plate. "They'd weigh me down," she said, and followed Dean off.

A shadow fell over Prudie. This turned out to be Jocelyn ar-riving at last, stooping down to kiss her cheek. "You hanging in there?" Jocelyn asked. She smelled of sweat and soap-dispenser soap. Her hair was wet and spiked around the edges of her face. Her makeup had been partially and patchily removed.

She fell into the chair next to Prudie, bent down, removed one shoe and ma.s.saged the arch of her foot.

"You missed the soup and the keynote. I was worried," Prudie said. She actually hadn't been, but that was only because Bernadette had distracted her and no thanks to Jocelyn. Prudieshould have been worried. Jocelyn could be deliberately rude, but she was never thoughtless. Jocelyn was never late.

Jocelyn was never-unkempt. How weird was this, that Bernadette would look better than Jocelyn?

"No sign of Sylvia," Prudie told her. "No sign of Daniel, either. What do you think that means?"

"I'll go phone her," Jocelyn said. She put her shoe back on. "I'm surprised about Daniel. Allegra said he'd be here for sure.

"'Scenes might arise unpleasant to more than myself'?" Prudie suggested.

"Sylvia would never make a scene.

"You would."

Jocelyn left. Grigg took the seat by Mo. There were several empty chairs between Grigg's and Jocelyn's. Your love is lifting me higher, the band played. Only without any words. "Can you give Jocelyn a ride home?" he asked Prudie. "Later? After the dancing? I ran out of gas."

"Sure," Prudie said. "But Dean will take you to get gas. Whenever you want."

Jocelyn returned to the table. "They're five minutes away, she said. "Almost here." Grigg busied himself with his dinner. He turned his chair to face Mo. "So. Mysteries. I love mysteries.

Even when they're for-mulaic, I just love the formula."

"Mine aren't formulaic," Mo said. "One time I didn't even have a murder until right at the end."

Who didn't love mysteries? "How do you know Bernadette?" Prudie asked Jocelyn.

"She was married to my G.o.dfather."

"What did she do?"

"Job-wise? Ask her."

"That would take too long," Prudie said.

"I don't know that I can do it short, either. She never finished school, so she was always picking up this or that. Teacher's aide.

Manicurist. I remember she told me she worked a carnival once, getting people to throw rings around stacks of dishes. She was one of the Snow Whites at Disneyland for a while. Pet sitter. Mostly she married. Very Austen-like, except that there were so many of them. I don't mean that to sound mercenary. You know how cheerful she is; she always thought this was the one that would last. I used to worry about her kids, but just on principle. They always seemed fine, and they turned out great.

"She was my favourite of all Ben's wives. They lived in this big old house in Beverly Hills with a beautiful garden and a wrap-around porch. There was a pond with goldfish and a wooden bridge. It was the greatest place."

"Not Ben Weinberg."

"Have you heard of him? He was a Hollywood bigwig for a while. He worked on a lot of Fred Astaire pictures."

Easter Parade."Oh my G.o.d," said Prudie. "Too much plot!"

She turned to look at the dance floor. It was night behind the five-story arch of gla.s.s; inside, the balconies were strung with chains of lights, now lit like constellations. The band was small and distant.

She saw Dean-tall, handsome, and kind of jerky when he danced, but in a good way.

Bernadette was rotund, but elastic. She had a serious shimmy in her shoulders, loose knees, rocking hips. She was sugar-footing one minute, buck-and-winging the next. A restrained, ladylike cha-cha. It was too bad Dean was out there with her. He was obviously holding her back.

Sylvia locked the car in the parking garage and waited with Al-legra for the elevator to the street. She was relaxed, relieved. Jo-celyn had phoned to tell her that Daniel hadn't shown. Sylvia had forgiven Allegra for almost backing out on the evening (and now felt guilty for making her come). She'd evenforgiven Alle-gra the serious crime of making Allegra unhappy.

Somewhere around the second floor she said, "You know, I don't think there's anything truly unforgivable. Not where there's love," but Allegra was reading an ad for Depo-Provera on the elevator wall, and she didn't answer.

Jocelyn spoke to Prudie, but pitched her voice so that Grigg and Mo would also hear. "Don't you find that people who dance well don't usually go around telling people they dance well?"

"Any savage can dance," Grigg said. He got up, walked over, held out his hand. Jocelyn's feet hurt all the way up to her knees, but she wouldn't give Grigg the satisfaction of saying so. If he wasn't too tired to dance, then neither was she. She would dance until it killed her.

She ignored the hand, rose without his help.

She didn't look at him. He didn't look at her. Prudie looked at them both, walking off together, angry backs, angry arms, per-fectly synchronized angry steps.

Prudie's mood had been volatile since her mother's death. She'd had a pretty nice evening here, listening to Bernadette's stories, making a mockery of Mo. Now suddenly she felt abandoned by Dean and by Bernadette, Jocelyn, and Grigg. It was silly, they were only dancing, but there it was; they'd left her all alone. She was always being left behind.

"I feel untethered," she told Mo. "As if the rope tying me to this earth had snapped." This wasn't something she could say to Dean. He'd be so hurt to think he wasn't her tether. She could say it to Mo only because she had had too much to drink and would never see him again. Or read his stupid books.

"Then it's time to soar," Mo said. He leaned across the table to say it, so the zinnia centrepiece brushed the bottom of his chin. He came close enough to see that she was crying, then straight-ened up in a helpless, startled way. "Don't do that!" he told her. "Come dance instead. If you think Dean won't mind." The band was playing the Beatles' "Come Together," which, out of all the hundreds of Beatles songs, was her mother's absolute favourite.

"Let's not and say we did," Prudie almost answered, because that's what her mother would have done.

But it was such a nice thing for Mo to have said. It seemed, in its small way, like sound advice. A plan, even.Dance instead. She could stay here, alone if you didn't count Mo, who didn't count, or she could make herself join the party. She wiped her eyes with her napkin, folded it, and set it on the table.

"Okay," Prudie said.

So what if she'd refused an earlier offer from the man she loved? He would ask again. In the meantime there were lights and flowers, gla.s.s rings and bronze fox faces. Rich men and nice men and absent men and men who just liked a good plot. If the music was good, why not dance with them all?

Bernadette told us:

By the end ofPride and Prejudice, Jane, Elizabeth, and Ly-dia Bennet are all married. This still leaves two Bennet girls, Mary and Kitty, unattached.

According to Austen's nephew, she married them off later. She told her family that Kitty Bennet eventually wed a clergyman who lived near the Darcy estate. Mary Bennet wed a clerk from her uncle Philips's office, which kept her close to her parents' home and part of the only sort of soci-ety in which she could distinguish herself. Both marriages, according to Austen, were good ones.

"I always like to know how a story ends," says Bernadette.

PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS.

for a new TERRENCE HOPKINS MYSTERY.

by Mo Bellington

MORE MO!.

In his debut novel, THE DEAD FILES, a case gone hor-ribly wrong sent urban cop, Terrence Hopkins, to the country to devote himself to THINGS THAT GROW.

In Bellington's much-loved LAST HARVEST, Terrence Hopkins hoped he'd seen his last dead body.

But take one small-town politician with big-league ambitions, add one mysterious reclusive cult, and it's that season again.

A MURDER OF CROWS by Mo Bellington

"May be Bellington's best ever."

-STANDARD BEARER WEEKLY.

Author available for interviews, readings, and book clubs.

August SUBJECT: Re: Mom DATE: 8/5/02 8:09:45 am PDT FROM: [email protected] TO: [email protected];

Hey, team Harris- Mrs. Grossman called this morning. She thought we ought to know that our seventy-eight-year-old mother with the new hip was on the second-story roof cleaning the gutters. I told her we'd hired Tony for the daredevil housework, but Mrs. Grossman says Tony has already left for college, because he has soccer camp. So one of us should probably go down and find someone else.

(And what's up with little Grigg? He called me last night with that sc.r.a.ped-paint voice he gets, so obvious he wants me to know something's wrong, but then he won't say what.) Amelia