THE JEWELS OF TESSA KENT [020-5.0]

By: JUDITH KRANTZ

Synopsis:

For the first time Judith Krantz has chosen to tell a story rooted in
the shattering emotions of a mother-daughter relationship gone
desperately wrong.  The story unfolds on a classic Krantz background, a
magic carpet of gorgeous entertainment and sumptuous events.  Yet, at
its core, the Jewels of Tessa Kent is an engrossing, deeply moving, and
ultimately inspiring tale of two women bound by blood yet torn apart by
their deepest emotions.

Tessa Kent, an exquisite and precocious fourteen, gives birth to an
illegitimate daughter.  Her parents, devout Catholics, raise the
infant, Maggie, as their own child.  At sixteen ?Tessa is discovered by
Hollywood; by nineteen she's an international movie star.  Maggie lives
for her glorious "sister's" infrequent whirlwind visits.  Maggie is a
captivating, independent eighteen when she accidentally learns the
truth.  Mortally wounded, she breaks all ties with Tessa and starts to
work at the famed Manhattan auction house of Scott and Scott.

Five years later, a life-altering crisis makes Tessa passionately
determined to end this estrangement.  An auction is the only way she
can find to reach her daughter, an auction of the emensely valuable
collection of famed jewels that represents all the love lavished on her
by her late husband.  Tessa promises Scott and Scott the auction on the
condition that Maggie and she work closely together on the sale.  For
Tessa, her entire future now hangs on the hope of an almost impossible
reconciliation.

The Jewels of Tessa Kent deals with the fascinating workings of an
auction house; its a revealing look at the inside of Hollywood stardom;
but more than anything else, it's a story of feelings and family, of
loss, mistakes, joy and redemption.

Since the publication of her first novel, Scruples, Judith Krantz has
been one of the world's best-selling novelists.  Born and raised in New
York City and a graduate of Wellesley College, she and her husband,
Steve Krantz, live in Bel Air and Newport Beach, California.  They have
two sons and two grandchildren.

OTHER BOOKS BY JUDITH KrANTZ Scruples Princess Daisy Mistral's Daughter
I'll Take Manhattan Till We Meet Again Dazzle Scruples Two Lovers
Spring Collection THE JEWELS of TESSA KENT A Novel All rights
reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publisher.

Published by Crown Publishers, Inc 201 East 50th Street, New York, New
York 10022.  Member of the Crown Publishing Group.

Random House, Inc. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland
www.randomhouse.com CROWN and colaphon are trademarks of Crown
Publishers, Inc. Design by June Bennett-Tantillo Printed in the United
States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Krantz, Judith.

The jewels of Tessa Kent Judith Krantz.

1. Title.

P53561.R264J49 1998

813'.54-dc2l 98-12971

CIP ISBN 0-609-60309-4

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition For Andrea Louise Van de Kamp, Chairman of Sotheby's West
Coast Operations, Senior Vice President of Sotheby's, and Chairman and
CEO of the Music Center of Los Angeles County.

Even if Andrea hadn't suggested I write a novel based on the auction
business and given me an opportunity to do my research at Sotheby's, I
would have dedicated this novel to her because she is the most vibrant,
life-enhancing and utterly solid friend one could have.

A multitude claim her and rejoice in her.

Great cities are defined by their great people, and no one defines Los
Angeles as well as Andrea.

Her vast and genuine enthusiasms, her wonderfully inclusive laugh, her
extraordinary generosity and her immense charm are legend.

Only Andrea could work as effectively as she does at her demanding jobs
without ever losing her focus, her sense of humor-or a battle.

Acknowledgments While I researched The Jewels of Tessa Kent, I needed a
good deal of expert advice on the auction business, on medical issues
and on certain details of the Catholic Church.  I'm wholeheartedly
grateful to every one of the generous people who allowed me to question
them and gave me such valuable answers.

Diana Phillips, Senior Vice President Sotheby's, Director of Public
Relations.

Mallory May, Assistant Vice President Press Office, Sotheby's, North
America John D. Block, Vice Chairman Sotheby's, North America, and
Director of International Jewelry, North America.

Tracy Sherman, Vice President, Jewelry Department, Sotheby's, Beverly
Hills.

Carol Elkens, Assistant Vice President, Jewelry Department, Sotheby's,
Beverly Hills.

Elise B. Misiorowski, G. G. Gemological Institute of America.

Dr. Melani P Shaum, M.D. Dr. Mark Hyman, M.D. Dr. Norman Schulman,
M.D. Sister Karen M. Kennelly, CSJ, President, Mount St. Mary's
College, Los Angeles.

Lynn Marie Blocker Krantz Professor Patricia Byrne, Trinity College,
Connecticut.

David W Moreno, Tiffany & Co Beverly Hills.

Prologue

Quickly, Tessa Kent stepped out of the bank and crossed the strip of
New York pavement.  The door of her parked limo was held open by the
driver.  She slid inside, grateful that she'd left a coat on the seat
when she'd entered the bank much earlier in the day.  It had been a
morning of indecisive weather, early fall weather, but now the
afternoon sun had disappeared behind clouds that promised rain before
nightfall on this mid-September day in 1993.

"Where to, Miss Kent?"  Ralph, the driver, asked.

"Wait right here for a while, Ralph, there's something I want to see,"
she answered impulsively, surprising herself, and pulled the coat over
her shoulders.

All through the endless afternoon at the bank, she'd kept going by
promising herself that the instant she was able to leave, she'd return
as quickly as possible to her apartment at the Carlyle, take a long,
lavishly perfumed bath, put on her oldest, softest, most familiar
peignoir, have a great fruitwood fire-the first of the year-lit in the
generous fireplace of her bedroom, and stretch out on the pile of
pillows flung down on the carpet.  She intended to put the past three
days firmly behind her, sipping a distinctly alcoholic drink and
looking straight into the flames until she was so dazzled by them that
her mind would unclench and a pleasant emptiness would take over.

Yet, as soon as she entered the limo, Tessa Kent abruptly understood
that it was still too soon to escape into that peaceful moment.

Something was missing, a sight that would put an absolute punctuation
to the process she had just completed, the witnessing of a three-day
inventory of every last one of her jewels except the few she was
wearing.

She needed to see her jewels actually leave the protection of the bank,
Tessa realized.  She needed to watch them being brought out onto the
street and whisked away in three taxis and three ordinary cars by six
couriers and a twelve-man armed security team that would carry tens of
millions of dollars worth of jewels in the scruffy briefcases and
sturdy shopping bags that had been selected to attract no attention.

If she didn't see that final scene of the drama, she'd still be able to
imagine that her jewels slept in the darkness of their velvet cases,
piled high in their vaults, ready for her to come and pick out those
she would wear to an opening night at the theater or a black-tie party
or dinner in a favorite restaurant.  Something deep in Tessa's psyche
demanded that she recognize, with her own eyes, the fact that her
jewels no longer belonged to her, that now they were gone.  Gone for
good.

Since her marriage, eighteen years earlier, Tessa Kent, the most
internationally adored of American movie stars, had never been seen in
public unadorned by magnificent jewels.  Even in a bikini she wore
ropes of seashells inset with gems.  Jewels, on Tessa Kent, were never
out of place, no matter the year or the hour or the style of the
moment.  They had become part of her persona, in private as well as in
public, a signature as utterly specific to her as the sound of her
voice, the shape of her mouth, the color of her eyes.

Suddenly Tessa saw the first of the couriers, carrying three shopping
bags, appear at the entrance to the bank.  On either side of him,
seemingly busy in conversation, were two of the armed guards, clad in
banker's gray.  One of the taxis that had been circling the block for
hours pulled up beside Tessa's limo, paused briefly as the three men
got in, and then continued up Madison Avenue.

She hadn't watched the process of transfer on any of the two previous
days.  She hadn't felt any need to view it until today, when the last
box had been entered into the inventory and sealed.  Now, as she
watched more couriers and guards walk out of the busy bank and
disappear into their carefully choreographed transportation, she felt
such a complex mixture of feelings that she couldn't sort them out:

loss, excitement, relief, anticipation, disbelief, and nostalgia, all
jumbled together.  Dominating every emotion was hope.

"You can take me back to the hotel, please, Ralph," Tessa told the
driver as soon as she realized that all of the couriers had left the
bank.  Traffic was heavy and the limo had barely covered two blocks
when a heavy rain began to fall.

"Oh, perfect!"  Tessa exclaimed.  "Stop wherever you can."  As her
driver knew, rain was her friend.  With a big black umbrella skillfully
deployed, she could roam the streets of New York without being
recognized.  This liberty was impossible in good weather; even wearing
sunglasses and a scarf over her hair seemed, perversely, to attract the
most attention of all from eager autograph seekers.

Today, after spending so many hours in an air-conditioned strong room,
deep underground, Tessa yearned for a hard, private, cleansing walk
more than for a bath or a drink.

Blessing the foul weather, she pulled a beret down until it reached her
eyebrows, kicked off her shoes, and put on the boots that lay waiting
in the back of the limo.  She shrugged into the light raincoat,
buttoned up the collar, and burrowed into it so that it hid her chin,
and then picked up the umbrella that lay under her coat.

"Let me out at the corner, Ralph.  I'll walk all the way back."

As soon as the limo came to a stop, Tessa hopped out, opened her
umbrella, and strode rapidly across the street in the direction of
Fifth Avenue.  At any time of the year she loved walking up along
Central Park, particularly now, as the lights of the city grew brighter
against the darkening afternoon.

She found herself at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Seventh Street and she
struck out uptown at a fast pace, breathing deeply and freely.

It was wonderful to know that no one could possibly care about her in
this humid confusion of burdened shoppers and people leaving their
offices and seeking transportation home.

Enjoying herself in a way so frequently denied her, Tessa continued up
Fifth Avenue past St. Patrick's Cathedral and was three good blocks
beyond it when she abruptly stopped, and changed direction.  At the age
of thirty-eight, she hadn't been inside a church in years.  She didn't
want to calculate how many it had been, but today... something about
today... drew her back to the great hulk of the cathedral, drew her up
the steps to the doors of the cathedral, drew her inside.  She closed
her umbrella.  Old habit took over as she dipped her fingertips in the
font of holy water, crossed herself, and genuflected before slipping
into one of the pews at the back.

She would just sit here for a few seconds and then flee, back out to
the delicious freedom of the busy, dripping streets, Tessa thought.

Sit and bask in the vast singing hum of busy silence that had a color
and a texture and a scent uniquely its own, so that if she had been set
down here blindfolded she would have known instantly where she was.

Without willing it, Tessa found herself on her knees, her head bent.

She was praying, she who no longer believed in prayer, praying as
ardently as when she'd been a girl, but praying without words, praying
purely for the sake of prayer.

The hope she had felt earlier in the afternoon returned, stronger than
ever, illuminating her heart.  She was safe here, Tessa thought
dreamily, and the tears she had held back for many, many days splashed
comfortingly down the backs of her hands.

1

Agnes Patricia Riley Horvath, whose daughter, Teresa, would become
Tessa Kent, lay in bed at three in the morning.  She had been awakened,
as usual, by obsessive, angry thoughts about her husband, Sandor, and
the way in which he dominated the upbringing of their only child, who
now, in August 1967, had reached the age of twelve.

Her parents had opposed her marriage to Sandor Horvath in 1954 and they
had been right, Agnes told herself.  She was humiliated to the marrow
of her bones as she relived her folly, lying next to Sandor in those
private hours during which she was unable to keep her mind under
control.

If it weren't for Sandor's stern prohibitions, Agnes reflected
furiously, Teresa would be well launched on her career, a career about
which there wasn't the smallest question-a destiny Agnes knew to be as
fixed as the rotation of the earth.

Her daughter had been born a star-yes, a star!-by virtue of her
extraordinary beauty and the unmistakable dramatic talent she'd
exhibited even as a small child.  That wasn't a mere mother's pride
talking, that was the opinion of everyone who'd ever seen her, Agnes
told herself, trembling with frustration.  Teresa should be making
movies, or at the very least commercials-there was no limit to her
future.  But no, her husband, unable to move away from his rigid,
old-fashioned, European ideas of what was correct and proper for a
young girl, had steadily refused to let her take the girl to New York,
where she could meet the influential people who would recognize how
exceptional her daughter was.

Night after night, Agnes Horvath asked herself what had possessed her,
when she was a mere eighteen and far too stupid to make choices, to
insist on marrying a man who was essentially foreign to the tight-knit,
devout, Irish Catholic world in which she had her enviable place as the
youngest of the five sparkling, black-haired, blue-eyed Riley
daughters.  Why had she set her heart on a refugee from Communist
Hungary, a music professor of thirty-five?

Each time Agnes asked herself this question, she couldn't stop herself
from treating it as if it were a newly discovered problem that might
contain some newly meaningful answer.  She'd recapitulate the past as
seriously as if she might still uncover some forgotten fact that would
suddenly change the present.

Sandor had been an amazingly handsome man, a charming and romantic
stranger, who had swept the provincial fool she had been off her feet
and out of what small, unsophisticated wits she had possessed.  The
distinguished man who spoke English with more elegance and precision
than any American boy had been irresistible to her barely formed mind
and impressionable heart.  Savagely Agnes reminded herself that she'd
also been suffering from a bad case of seeing Gone with the Wind too
many times.  Then, and still today, at forty-eight, Sandor strongly
resembled Leslie Howard, but she'd been too immature to realize how 1
quickly his fine-boned, intellectual, sensitive beauty would become
infuriating when she weighed them against the rules and regulations he
imposed on her.

Now she was thirty-one, her marriage was thirteen years old, and Agnes
Horvath had known for at least half of it that she'd made the biggest
mistake a deeply religious Catholic woman could make.

No matter how great her rage against her husband, there could be no
thought of divorce.  But even if the mere idea of divorce had not been
a sin, what training did she have to make a living for herself and
Teresa if they were to find themselves on their own?  Agnes Riley had
been brought up to be a protected wife and a devoted mother, nothing
more, and certainly nothing less, like every other woman of her
generation.

Sandor earned a good salary as the head of the music department at an
exclusive girls' school in Stamford, Connecticut, not far from their
home on the modest edge of the rich community of Greenwich, where they
lived in order to be near their daughter's school.  Teresa was a day
student at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, an aristocratic institution
which they were both intent on her attending.

In all fairness, Agnes reminded herself, turning over in bed, she had
to admit that Sandor worked hard to make his way in his new country.

Her sisters had married local boys in nearby Bridgeport, where she'd
grown up, mates whose status never came close to that of a professor.

Some of these good Irish-American boys made considerably more money
than Sandor in their blue-collar jobs, but the whole family respected
her elegant, learned husband.

Each of Agnes's sisters had produced a sprawling brood of kids,
ordinary, unremarkable, almost indistinguishable kids.  When she took
Teresa to their frequent family gatherings there was no doubt about
whose child, among the dozens of cousins, was the center of
attention.

Teresa's singularity was a subject of family pride rather than any
sniping or competition.  From the time she was a tiny baby she had so
fine and rare a quality that a party would have been incomplete without
Teresa to marvel at.  Her own sisters, Agnes knew, were in awe of the
child she'd brought into their limited world.  Her cousins vied for her
attention, the older ones whisking her away so they could play with her
as if she were some very precious kind of doll.

Teresa was the only one of the cousins who didn't attend a local
parochial school.  At the Convent, one of the many Sacred Heart schools
in the world, she was a "Day Hop," not a boarding student.

Many daughters of millionaires were her classmates, a distinction that
only added to Teresa's exhalted position in the Riley family.

"Your family will ruin her utterly with all that attention," Sandor had
grumbled angrily after the last Riley get-together.

"Teresa's becoming spoiled.  She used to be such a satisfactory child,
docile and obedient, but lately, I warn you, Agnes, I sense that
there's something going on inside her that I worry about... some sort
of rebellion under the surface, something I can't put my finger on.

And I most definitely don't approve of that "best friend" of hers, that
Mimi Peterson.  She's not a child I want Teresa associating with, she's
not even a Catholic, heaven knows what ideas she's putting-" "You're
imagining things," Agnes had snapped.  "Every little girl has a best
friend, and the Petersons are lovely, suitable people.

They may be Protestants but they have the good sense to realize that
the quality of education at Sacred Heart is better than that at an
ordinary school.  And they truly appreciate Teresa, which is more than
her own father seems to do."

"How can you say something so unfair?"  he demanded, stung.

"I love her too much for my own good, but, Agnes, the world's a
difficult place and Teresa's not a princess, whatever you may think.

She doesn't need any more fuss made about her than she already gets
from you.  The way you dote on her is shameless... it comes close to
the sin of pride, if you ask me."

"Sandor!"

"Pride, Agnes, is too high an opinion of oneself."

"Do you imagine I don't know that?"  she asked, outraged.  She loathed
his tone when he started to talk church doctrine, as sanctimonious,
stuffy and hair splitting as if he'd lived hundreds of years ago.

"Too high an opinion of one's offspring, can, like pride, lead to the
sin of presumption."

"When I need a priest's interpretation of sin, Sandor, I know where to
go for it.  How dare you preach to me?"

'Agnes, but you realize that in less than a year Teresa will be a
teenager?  I've seen your sisters go through enough trouble with their
own teenaged children, why should we be different?  If only..."

"If only we'd had more children?  Don't you dare, Sandor!  I wanted
them as much as you did.  Are you saying it was my fault that I had
those miscarriages."

"Agnes, you can't possibly be starting this nonsense again, please, I
beg you.  I was going to say that if only it were ten years ago life
would be simpler, if only there were standards... if only people stayed
the same!  In my country teenagers behaved like the school children
they are.  Please stop talking about fault.  The Blessed Virgin didn't
mean it to be, and we must accept that."

But he did blame her, Agnes Horvath brooded angrily, he blamed her in
his heart of hearts, but never as much as she blamed herself, no matter
how ridiculous and futile and morally wrong she knew it was to use the
word "blame" about a situation that was in the hands of God alone.

But at least she had Teresa, and wasn't one Teresa worth a houseful of
ordinary children?

She wished her parents wouldn't fight about her, Teresa thought in
misery as she tried to go to sleep.  She couldn't hear them from her
room, but she knew from their expressions while they'd listened to her
say her bedtime prayers that another of their quarrels was hatching.

Long ago' she'd stopped listening outside their door; their basic
differences never changed, and yet nothing she did seemed to make it
better for either of them.  For years she'd tried so hard to please.

There were her mother; her father, the nuns who taught her catechism
class on Saturday, the priests who listened to her confession each
Thursday, her teachers, the many Madams of the Sacred Heart, even every
last one of her relatives.  For a long time she had believed she could
change her mother's disappointment, make her father less severe.  But
nothing worked.  Her mother was utterly concentrated on her; her father
was suspicious and disapproving, he corrected her pronunciation,
refused to let her use slang.  Other kids said she sounded "stuck
up."

If her parents knew everything there was to know about her!

They'd die if they knew, die, Teresa told herself, caught up in a
combination of defiance, shame, guilt, and, worst of all, the dreadful
fear that she had lived with for the past year ever since she'd
realized that she wasn't going to get anywhere by pleasing.

It was their own fault!  As Mimi said, the atmosphere around Teresa's
house was enough to make a cat fart.  To Teresa her home life was
maddeningly irritable, so tense that it made her want to scream and
break every dish in the house and rip up her frilly bedspread and take
a sharp kitchen knife to the pile of pretty pillows on her bed so all
the feathers would fly out and cover the floor with a mess that
couldn't be cleaned up.

There was never a time in which she could take a deep breath, feel a
sense of contentment, and, most important of all, feel safe.

Oh how she yearned for a safe day, a safe hour, even a safe minute, in
which all pressure would dissipate and be replaced by easy, loving,
unqualified approval.

Just yesterday she'd caught a glimpse of her mother sitting in a back
row of the darkened school auditorium, while the rehearsals for the
school play went on, sitting so far scrunched down that nobody but she
would have noticed her.

"Mother," she exclaimed furiously, as soon as she got home from her
last class, "you know you promised me never to do that again!"

"Teresa, Mother O'Toole said it was all right with her so long as I
stayed out of sight.  No one saw me, absolutely no one," Agnes defended
herself vigorously.

"Except me.  How do you expect me to concentrate when I know you're
there, watching my every move?  You've been doing that all my life!

Ever since the first part I had in a kindergarten pageant.

I hate it!  It makes everything so much more difficult.  I've explained
that to you again and again, but you won't leave me alone!"

"I see nothing to apologize for," Agnes responded coolly.  "It's
excellent training for you to have to ignore me.  When you start acting
for a living, you'll be the center of everyone's attention, not just
mine.  No one acts without an audience, and at least, in my case, you
know I'm biased in your direction."

Helplessly Teresa had watched her mother head toward the kitchen, with
the self-righteous conviction of someone who hasn't the slightest doubt
that she always acts in your own best interests.

If it weren't for Mimi she didn't know what she'd do, Teresa thought.

She didn't know how she'd manage to keep on pretending to be the good
little girl her father expected her to be as well as enduring the
burden of being her mother's "pride and joy."

But at least she could escape the atmosphere of her home, when she went
over to Mimi's to do their homework together-to Mimi's big, luxurious
house that impressed her mother although she'd never admit it.  She and
Mimi, another only child, were sworn blood sisters, and Mrs. Peterson,
lively, easygoing, and expensively dressed with blond streaks in her
hair, was too busy playing bridge or golf every afternoon to give a
thought about what the two little convent girls were up to.

"Teresa, sweetie, you're a good influence on Mimi," she'd say if she
came in before Teresa had left for home.  "She never got her homework
done before you started studying together."

But Mrs. Peterson had no idea how easy the homework was when Teresa
and Mimi put their heads together and attacked it.

Both bright, they could polish it all off in an hour with a system of
tutoring each other that divided the work in half.

And then, homework done, at least twice a week they'd "engage in an
adult experience," as Mimi called it.  The Petersons' bar was crammed
with bottles of everything any liquor store could supply.

Teresa and Mimi, sharing Mimi's bathroom glass, would pour three
jiggers full of whatever drink took their fancy, replacing what they
took with water, and carry the glass up to Mimi's room.

They'd lock the door and sip slowly, taking turns, giggling like
maniacs as each reported the fascinating alterations they felt in
themselves.

They hadn't yet used the same bottle more than once and they'd never
dared make a second trip downstairs for more, just in case they
couldn't handle more than one generous drink each.  They were always
careful to brush their teeth and use mouthwash before Mimi's mother was
expected home.

The Petersons were a couple in their mid-thirties who, Mimi reported
proudly, still loved a good time.  On their exploration of her parents'
bedroom they easily found a large collection of Penthouse and a
smaller-sized publication called Variations, which contained erotic
short stories and wild letters to the editor.  Two drawers of Mrs.
Peterson's dresser were filled with underwear that it was impossible to
imagine her wearing for anything but sex.  Mimi and Teresa would select
several pieces at a time-tiny, lacy panties; garter belts that attached
to slinky black stockings; dainty push-up bras; or transparent chiffon
teddies-and carry their loot swiftly back to Mimi's room, where they'd
try on everything, using old pairs of her mother's high-heeled shoes to
see themselves at best advantage.

Of course, even Mimi had to admit that, although the two of them were
as tall as most women, at twelve, they were still too young and too
undeveloped to look right in sexy underwear.  But if you squinted your
eyes and lifted your nipples in cupped hands, and stuck out your ass,
you could get a pretty good idea of how you'd look in a couple of
years.

As for Penthouse and Variations, they pored over one issue at a time,
discovering that some of the subject matter was heart-pounding and
passionately fascinating.  Teresa couldn't keep from thinking about all
the forbidden, unutterably exciting things a man and a woman could do
together except when she was brooding on the certainty that she was
going to go to Hell after she died.

It was amazing, Teresa thought grimly, that she was able to lie with
such calm to the priest at confession, producing a normal series of
venial sins as she tried not to breath the stale air in the red-velvet,
padded phone booth of the confessional that the old church still used
in spite of Vatican II.  But she knew the truth.  She was
unquestionably guilty of at least four of what her catechism class had
been taught were the seven deadly or mortal sins.  She was guilty of
lust, the sin of impurity, and of gluttony, the sin of drinking too
much.  When she and Mimi dressed up and admired themselves she was
guilty of the sin of pride... their sessions certainly didn't conform
to the "normal pride in a neat appearance" the nuns talked of.

Every single week of her life, as she left any of these three mortal
sins unconfessed, by name and number of times it had happened, she was
committing yet another mortal sin by not confessing, so her sins were
not forgiven but lay on her heavily and painfully, almost too much to
endure.  Yet, to rid herself of them would have been worse.  If she'd
ever been tempted to make a full confession, she'd be kneeling in front
of a pew doing penance for hours for days!

before she could receive absolution and the sacrament of penance.

Since her mother waited to drive her home from church, praying quietly
in a pew not far from the confessional, any such penance would cause an
inquisition.

Hell waited for her, Teresa never doubted that.  Her weekly catechism
class had started when she was five and a half.  From that time on she
spent all of every Saturday morning being indoctrinated into the rules,
laws, and prayers of the church, by a different nun every year.  When
she'd made her First Holy Communion at eight, she'd been certain that
she'd go to Heaven.  Just thinking of how pure and light-filled she'd
felt walking down the church aisle in her beautifully embroidered long
white dress, a little bride accompanied by a little groom, could still
bring tears to her eyes.

Yes, the forest of fear of Hell she lived in now was a place she'd been
prepared for from the beginning of her memory.  Hell, the certainty of
Hell for a sinner who hadn't confessed and wasn't absolved, had been
seared into her for seven years.  It wasn't knowledge she could
question any more than she could question the fact that she was a girl
or an American.

Hell, actually going to Hell, had only started to be a reality to
Teresa after she met Mimi.  Before that she had been able to confess to
the mortal sins of envy or sloth and anger, as well as all the minor
venial sins, and feel cleansed when she left the confessional.

Now she couldn't give up her lies of omission in the confessional any
more than she could possibly tell a priest that she'd spent hours
looking at pictures of naked men and women and reading vivid details
about people having sex in every way anyone could imagine.

As the year passed, Teresa's confirmation loomed.  "Oh, what am I going
to do?"  she moaned to Mimi.  "I have to make a full confession, a good
confession, before I'm confirmed, and even if I managed to admit-you
know-my mother would know I'd done something very bad."

"What if..  what if you went to a strange church, by yourself, without
your mother, and got it over with before your confirmation?"

Mimi asked, inspired.  "I'd go with you, we could take a taxi, no one
would ever know... it's a perfect plan!  Then you could stop sinning,
except for little stuff like swearing, until you made the official
pre-confirmation confession.  How about that?  Am I brilliant or
what?

I think I could make a living giving advice to bad Catholic girls like
you."  Mimi pinched her companionably.

"I'd still have to intend never to repeat my sins really, truly believe
that I wasn't going to.  Oh, how I wish I'd been born to your
parents!"

"Me too, then we'd really be sisters.  Oops, it's Listerine time, not a
minute to lose.  Mom'll be back in half an hour."

Using Mimi's plan, Teresa got through her confirmation with the eyes of
the entire Riley clan upon her as she walked down the church aisle, a
slender, angelic, dignified young girl, whose long black hair was
plaited tightly and held severely away from her unsmiling, austere,
heartbreakingly lovely profile under her plain illusion veil.  Her
features were eloquent with reverence and her green eyes, under her
smooth, expressive eyelids, were filled with perfect tranquillity.

She walked, restraining her usual stride, with poetry in her steps,
wearing an unadorned dress, as plain and straight a gown as she'd been
able to find, much to her mother's disappointment.  As the day had
drawn near, Teresa had been adamant in refusing to enter the catechism
class's covert competition for the most elaborate, full-skirted
confirmation dress.

"She's not thinking she's got a vocation?"  one of Agnes's sisters
murmured to her in a worried tone as she contemplated her niece,
startling in the unbending line of her marvelously shaped back and in
the stern simplicity with which her long neck rose from a rolled white
collar.  All around her were girls decorated in a garden of billowing,
complicated dresses, worn with smiling, innocent pleasure.

Teresa looked years older than they did, and no smile had crossed her
lips.

"Never," Agnes laughed.  "It's just a matter of her personal taste.

Teresa's buying Vogue these days, with her allowance.  Does that sound
like a vocation to you?"

"Vogue?  Good heavens, that's for rich women, society women.

It's much too old and fancy for her.  What's wrong with Seventeen?"

"She says it's silly.  Oh, Millie, I think she's growing up too
fast."

"It's always going to be too fast from now on.  Trust me, Agnes, I have
six of them to worry about."

2

In the early weeks of their freshman year at Sacred Heart's high
school, soon after they both turned fourteen, Mimi and Teresa grew
closer than ever, a clique of two who never trusted others to share
their secret activities.

In the course of the past year they had worked intensively on their
looks.  Both girls had falls of fake hair that reached halfway to their
waists, styled in a long flip.  Both of them were adept at applying
mascara, eyeliner, and eye shadow in shades from dead black to
turquoise, and they owned a dozen lipsticks in colors ranging from deep
red to frosted pale pink, as well as lipstick brushes and lip liner.

They had practiced walking in the fashionable shoes they bought and
kept in the back of Mimi's closet, until they felt totally at ease in
them.  They had fishnet stockings and tights in every color and they
had used their sewing instruction to make themselves dark,
micro-miniskirts which they wore with clinging little sweaters.

Their breasts had grown large enough to fill out the bras that Mimi's
mother owned, and they bought cheap versions of them with some of
Mimi's generous allowance.

"We look like absolute whores," Teresa said one Saturday night in
mid-September when she had been allowed to sleep over at Mimi's.  Her
voice was filled with admiration.  The two girls had groomed themselves
to perfection and now they were alone in the house, for Mimi's parents
had gone out to what promised to be a long night at the country club.

"You're absolutely wrong.  We're divine.  You look like a dark, more
beautiful, much more classy Jean Shrimpton, combined with Vivien Leigh
at her best," Mimi said assessingly.  "I could pass for Verushka if she
weren't a giant."

'And the reality is that I'm still not allowed to go out on dates, not
till I'm sixteen, my father says, not that anyone's ever asked me,"
Teresa said gloomily, flinging herself down on Mimi's bed.

"I have an idea," Mimi said, inspired.

"Spare me," Teresa sighed.

"No, listen, for heaven's sake!  We're going to Mark O'Malley's
party!

It was meant to be, don't you see?  It's tonight, we're dressed, and my
parents will never know if we're back in time.  Oh, Teresa, I triple
dare you!"

'Absolutely not."

"Come on, it's only going to a party, not another of your dreary mortal
sins."

"Correction, it's crashing a party, and not even you, silver-tongued
one, can convince me that's the same thing as "going" to a party.

"What's the worst thing that can happen?"  Mimi demanded.

"We'd be asked to leave?  Oh, I don't think so, my lovely one.

There's no question in my mind that when Mark O'Malley lays eyes on us
he's going to be very glad that we've favored him with our presence.

He'd have asked us himself if he knew we existed."

"Maybe," Teresa said with a shrug.  "Sure, maybe the captain of the
football team at Greenwich High would be so overwhelmed by our charm
and beauty that he'd have begged two convent girls to be his guests,
that's not impossible, but somehow we've escaped his eye, even though
we've never missed a game he's played in.  So forget about it, and stop
bugging me."

"Teresa, pay attention.  I'm going to that party and so are you.

You've got a crush on Mark O'Malley that's as obvious as a big red wart
on the end of your nose!  You've had it for years and I'm sick of
listening to you carry on about him.  You're just playing hard to
convince so this is going to seem like my fault when I'm actually doing
you a huge favor.  Do you think I don't know you well enough to
understand that much, you hypocrite?"  Mimi drawled.  'All we have to
do is put on panty hose instead of these fishnet stockings.  They're
too old for even the seniors' dress code.  After that, it's simply a
matter of projecting the right attitude.  We've trained for this for
years, dope!"

"Even if I agreed to this crazy idea, there's no way we could get there
and back."

"Have you forgotten the uses of a taxi so quickly, my little
confirmation girl?"

"You are such a pure, true-blue, honest-to-God bitch!"

"Isn't that why you love me?"

"It must be.  I can't think of a single other reason."

A careful hour and a quarter after the party had started, Teresa and
Mimi slipped casually into the large crowd at Mark O'Malley's house.

They were more quickly absorbed than they had imagined in their most
optimistic moments, blending perfectly with all the other girls.  Their
hem lengths, their shoes, their hair and makeup worked to add years to
their true ages.  Anyone who didn't recognize them would assume that
they were dates from another school.

"Let's have a drink for courage," Mimi murmured.

"Darn it, Mimi, we decided we wouldn't drink so we'd keep our wits
about us.  Remember we have to phone for a taxi home."

"Oh, for Pete's sake, all they have is some kind of fruit punch, and
you're an experienced Wild Turkey girl.  At least carry a cup so you'll
have something to do with your hands."  Mimi sipped in a lady-like
way.

"It's mostly pineapple juice, Teresa, try it at least."

"All right, but we can't just stand here, we have to mingle... but
don't go so far away that I don't know where you are.

"I'll keep my eye on you-oh, Mark, hi!  This is a great party!

You invited the world."

"I guess I must have."  Their host smiled down at both the girls, fully
aware that he didn't know them, but who cared with girls this cute?

Wrong, the blond one was cute, the dark-haired girl was flat-out
gorgeous.  No way he could ever have seen a girl so beautiful and let
it slip his mind.

"Anyone for a dance?"

"Thanks," Mimi said quickly, "but I'm waiting for my date to get out of
the john.  Teresa, why don't you dance with Mark?"

"Teresa," he said.  "Nice name.  Come on."  He took Teresa's glass of
punch and put it down, grasped her firmly by her upper arm, and led her
away.

"Do you talk, mystery guest?  Or do we need your little friend to
interpret for us?"

"I can speak for myself," Teresa said hardily, summoning all her
reserves of dramatic power to get the words out.  Mark O'Malley up
close was far more devastating than he was from a distance at a game.

He was as tall and muscular as any fully grown man, his curly dark hair
as long as the school regulations would permit, his eyes bright and
blue and smiling, with a man'S confidence.  She could feel nothing but
the warmth of his hand on her arm.

"How old are you?"  he asked suddenly, stopping in mid-stride.

"Eighteen, why?"

"I thought you might be older.  You make the other girls look like
kids."

"No, just a simple eighteen."

"But experienced?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"There's something about your eyes."

"Maybe I'm what they call an old soul," Teresa said, smiling
slightly.

This wasn't so hard, after all.

"In a young body.  I've never met a sexy old soul before... good
combination."

"Aren't we going to dance?"  Teresa asked.

"Oh, I don't think we really want to, do we?  It's noisy and crowded
and everybody's doing his own thing and sweating up a storm.  You can't
talk when you dance, and somebody might try to grab you away from me.

I think what we want to do is get some more punch and find a place to
get to know each other..  I know just the place."

"But Mimi...

"Your friend can take care of herself, can't she?"

"If anybody can."  Teresa laughed and relaxed.

"She's the one who talked you into crashing my party, isn't she?"

"Oh!"

"Don't be embarrassed, I'm glad you did.  Where do you two go to
school?"

"Oh, just a little private school in Stamford, you wouldn't have heard
of it."

"Where'd you see me?"

"At a football game."

"Well, I'm flattered my party lured you here.  Or have you broken the
hearts of all the boys in Stamford already, when it's ten times the
size of this place?  Are you on the prowl for new victims, old soul?

What's your last name, lovely mystery girl?"

"Carpenter."

"Well, Teresa Carpenter; come on upstairs with me so we can chat
without interruptions from this horde of bandits.  I want to find out
more about you... I'd like to see you again, take you out on a real
date."

"I don't think so," Teresa said slowly as they mounted the stairs.

"Don't think you want to see me again?"

"I don't think I want to go into a room alone with you."

"Don't want to or don't think you should?"

"I don't think I should."

"I'll be good, I promise."  Teresa looked up at Mark's face and saw
nothing there but lively interest and a touch of amusement at what he
thought were her flirtatious wiles.  He didn't realize that she'd never
been alone with an older boy in her life, or a boy of any age who
wasn't a first cousin, she thought.  Any believable eighteen-year-old
girl would know how to handle the situation.

"I thought you wanted to get more punch," she temporized, as he opened
a door.

"I have my own private stash.  I'm the host, remember?"

"Oh-it's your bedroom!"  Teresa said as she walked in.  She stopped
dead and looked around at the football trophies and banners on the
wall.

"What did you expect?"

"I wasn't thinking.  I'd better go down."

"Teresa!  Sit down on that window seat and stop being silly.  You act
as if I'm going to attack you."

"How do I know you're not?"  she asked lightly, repressing the tremor
in her voice.

"I've never attacked a girl in my life.  To be frank, I've never had
to, never wanted to.  Yeah, that's better, sit down and get
comfortable.  Now, did you break up with your boyfriend?  Is that why
you're here, to make someone jealous?  Because you could, you know, you
could so easily, just by looking at me the way you're looking now."

"Looking?  There's nothing special about my look."

"You look... let's see... sort of as if you might take to me if you
knew me better."

"You seem... likable enough," Teresa said, gulping her warmish drink as
she tried to make herself realize that she was alone with Mark
O'Malley, the boy she'd been in love with for years, an agonized,
passionate first love, a hopeless love for this boy who was the hero of
the entire high school, the boy who had always been the focus of her
fantasies.  She could never have imagined this, she realized, the two
of them talking easily on a window seat in the moonlight, not if she'd
lived a million years.  It was too real to be a fantasy.

She felt the wild beating of her pulse in her forehead and the thumping
of her heart and the sweat under her arms, and she couldn't make
herself stop looking at his mouth.

"Could I have some more of that?"  she asked, holding out her glass.

It tasted harmless, and her mouth was dry with excitement.

"Sure thing.  My dad made it and then he and my mom took off for the
country club.  They said they'd be back by the stroke of midnight to
make sure that every last rotten kid was out of the house.  I'll be
glad when college starts and I get out from under their eagle eyes."

"My parents are the same way.  I can't wait to be on my own."

"Where did you apply?"

"Oh, the usual places."

"With a fallback, right?  Somewhere you're sure you can get in?"

"Naturally," Teresa said with nonchalance.  What college would be a
good fallback, whatever that was?

"Which one?"

Smith."

"Very funny.  Come over and sit closer.  For an incredibly beautiful
girl you're an awful liar.  Did you know that?  Or else you've got a
great sense of humor.  Or a genius IQ.  Which is it?"  He leaned toward
her and kissed her lightly on the lips.  "Oh, nice.  Nice.

Here, give me another kiss..  wasn't that nice?"

"Oh my God..  oh, Mark, yes!"

"You've got to stop crying, Teresa," Mimi hissed as soon as they
reached the privacy of her bedroom, after a taxi ride during which
Teresa shook with silent sobs.

"I can't.  I can't, oh God, Mimi, I can't stop.

"Teresa, damn it, you terrified me!  One minute you were there and then
you'd disappeared and so had he.  I looked everywhere for you, I didn't
do anything else all evening.  I don't know what I would have done if
you hadn't shown up eventually.  Where the hell were you?"

"Oh, Mimi, I can't..  it couldn't have happened, tell me it couldn't,"
Teresa pleaded through her unstoppable tears.

"What couldn't?"  Mimi whispered, cold with fright.

"I can't tell you, I can't talk about it, I can't."

"You'd damn well better or I'm going to tell my mother that Mark
O'Malley did something awful to you.  Your hair's a mess, you've lost
your bra, you're in shock.... Mom knows his mother and they'll get to
the bottom of this!"

"No!  You'd never..."

"The hell I wouldn't.  I'm not going to end up in the middle here.

What happened?  Did he rape you?"

"No, no, please Mimi, stop!"

Mimi pulled Teresa's chin up with all her strength and inspected her
devastated face.

"That bastard!  He won't get away with this.  Shit, it's all my fault,
I was the one who triple dared you.  I could kill myself."

"He didn't rape me!"

"Then you'd better tell me exactly why you're carrying on like this."

"We..  made love.  I think..."

"Teresa!  You're nuts!  You never made love, that's crazy.  You've got
it all mixed up.  Tell me exactly what happened, don't leave out
anything.  No way you "made love," please, credit me with some
intelligence."

"We started out just kissing, nicely, just kissing, you understand?

Sitting in the window seat of his room.  We had a couple of glasses of
punch... two, maybe three, it must have been stronger than I thought.

And then, little by little it got more... hot and heavy and we ended up
lying on top of his bed and we were necking, you know, and then, I
guess we were petting... heavy petting... he took off my dress and my
bra and kissed my breasts and sucked on my nipples and then.."

"I knew he raped you!"

"No, Mimi, I wanted him to, I helped him do it, I took off my panties
myself, I couldn't stop myself.  I can't tell you the crazy way I felt,
I just wanted to finally find out, and then I had to see...

I had to see what it looked like in real life, not just in photos, so I
let him take it out and put it on my stomach."  She fell silent.

"So that's the reason you're crying like crazy?  He put his cock on
your stomach?  What next?"  Mimi demanded.

"I touched it... a lot.  I couldn't stop touching it.  he was so hard
and he got even harder... and the harder he got, the more I wanted to
touch it... and then..  .and then..  .he put the tip of it in."

"He put it in!  Jesus Christ, Teresa!  Didn't you put up a fight?"

"No... I mean I didn't tell him not to when he asked me if I was okay,
if he could..  .I wanted to feel it..  .you know..  inside.

Just the tip of it.  Mimi, just the tip.  I had to know how it felt,
more than anything.  It was so big and I wanted it so much.  I was
so... it was like being out of my mind, nothing else existed...."

Teresa whispered."... And then, oh God help me, then, after just a few
seconds, with only the tip in, oh, Mimi, he came.  Inside me.  Without
even moving.  He just gave this shudder and made this sighing noise and
he came.  He didn't pull out, he didn't wait!"

"Shit!  That's not rape, that's pure stupidity.  What an asshole!

But you're a virgin, so there's nothing to worry about.  What did he
say?"

"He said he was sorry and if I'd wait a little while he'd do it again,
only much slower so I'd enjoy it.  Can you imagine?  Again."

"He didn't know you were a virgin?"

"He never got in far enough to find out.  He thought I was eighteen, he
thought I'd been around.  Oh, Mimi, what am I going to do?"  Teresa
cried out in anguish.

"Stop that crying, take a hot bath, I'll give you two of my mother's
tranquilizers and a sleeping pill, and you'll go to bed and never think
about it again.  It didn't happen.  It was a bad dream.

Does he know how to find you?"

"I lied about my name and I said we were from Stamford."

"With any luck he'll never see you again and he'd never recognize you
anyway without makeup.  The whole thing is over.  Over.  It did not
happen.  Do you understand?  And I don't want to hear anything about
sin, you didn't know what you were doing, he got you drunk, it wasn't
your fault.  Do you understand that, Teresa?"

"I understand what you think, Mimi.  But I know what I did.  I didn't
have to do it, but I did.  I sinned.  I sinned against God the Father;
the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  I sinned against our Heavenly Mother and
there's nothing you can say that will ever change that."

3

"Mimi, I think I'm pregnant."  Teresa was so pale, almost blue, with
panic that Mimi's heart skipped a beat.  Hastily she rose and locked
the door to her room.

"You're a virgin, how could you be?  You're late, that's all," she
said, taking Teresa's cold and shaking hands and rubbing them to bring
some blood into her fingers.

"I've never been late since I got the curse a year ago, and now it's
been three whole weeks since that party.  I finally made myself look up
sperm in the encyclopedia at school.  They swim, did you have any idea
that they swim incredibly fast and they can live for a few days inside
the vagina?"

"But you're a virgin!  It's simply impossible!"

"A hymen isn't a solid barrier-where does the blood come from when you
have the curse?  Your womb.  Remember we read all about it in the book
your mother gave you, so she wouldn't have to tell you the facts of
life herself."

"Shit.  Shit.  SHIT!  No, I won't believe it.  It can't happen."

"Mimi, it can.  Face it, it has happened," Teresa said through
trembling lips that belied stoic words.

"You'll have a miscarriage or whatever it's called.  Tonight, tomorrow,
you're only just fourteen, you can't have a baby," Mimi babbled in
brute fear.

"That's what I've been telling myself," Teresa said wearily.  "I've
been praying on my knees for hours and hours every night, praying for
God to take the baby.  It's His decision, He can stop a pregnancy.

I've been going to the john at school between every class to see if
there was any blood, I've been kidding myself that I felt a cramp.

The truth is I'm pregnant and I can either tell my mother or I can kill
myself, I don't know which would be worse."

"Three weeks!  That's all it is.  If it is.  You don't have to do
anything for months and months!  Anything could happen!"

"I know.  That's what I'm counting on.  It's too early to have to deal
with it.  I waited as long as I could to tell you but I couldn't keep
it to myself any longer."

"If only..."  Mimi said, and stopped.

"What?"

"Oh, damn it, Teresa, if only you weren't such a Catholic!  My mom
knows a doctor; he's a perfectly good one"Don't even say it, Mimi.

Never; absolutely never.  As bad as I am, that's the one thing I cannot
do.  Never.  Ever."

"I know," Mimi sighed deeply.  She'd been sure from the beginning of
this conversation that if Teresa were really pregnant, she'd never
consider abortion, but she'd had to say something, just in case there
was a chance that she'd see reason.  My God, to ruin her future, to
wreck her life over religious conviction!  Mimi couldn't make herself
accept it, although she understood that for Teresa there was no other
way.

"What are we going to do?"  Mimi asked after a long silence.

"Pray.  If God decides to stop a pregnancy, that's His decision, and
not my fault, not anything I've done to cause it.  I'm allowed to pray,
pray and wait.  There's nothing else."

"If I pray too, will it help, or do only Catholic prayers get
through?"

"Pray.  "Pray without ceasing," as Saint Paul recommended."

Teresa tried to smile at her friend, but tears rolled steadily down her
cheeks.  "You're such a pagan, it might be good for God to hear from
the likes of you."

Agnes Horvath had not been the youngest in a family of five sisters
without absorbing a great stock of female lore.  She had never
experienced morning sickness when she was pregnant with Teresa, but
when she heard, three days in a row, the smothered sounds of vomiting
coming from Teresa's bathroom before her daughter finally appeared,
pale and red-eyed, late for breakfast, unable to eat, and mumbling
something about stomach flu going around the school, she began to
suspect.  When Teresa arrived home from school each day the stomach flu
miraculously cured until the next morning, her heart was speared by the
truth.

But Teresa was a virgin, to her knowledge.  Teresa was absolutely a
good girl, to her knowledge.  Teresa had never been alone with a boy,
to her knowledge.  Teresa, to her knowledge, had never yet been
kissed.

But Teresa must be pregnant.  Teresa her daughter; perfect and adored,
for whose future she had lived, was a stranger to her; immoral,
unclean, evil, cunning, lying, and damned to Hell Fire for Eternity.

On Friday morning Agnes lay in wait outside Teresa's bathroom.  As the
girl emerged, staggering and deathly pale, her mother gripped her by
one arm and slapped her with all her strength across her cheek.

"How could you do this to me!"  she spat, and slapped her again, on the
other cheek.  "How?  How?  You filthy slut!"

Teresa burst into tears and would have fallen to the carpet if Agnes's
clutching hand hadn't been keeping her upright.

"Oh yes, cry, that's going to make a difference, that's going to make
you a decent girl again, you fool, you criminal little fool.

Go to your room.  I'll call Sacred Heart to say you're sick.  Wait for
me."

A minute later she returned to find Teresa huddled in an armchair;
sobbing so hard that she was getting hysterical.

"Shut up!  If you don't, I'll hit you until you do!  Do you think you
have a right to those tears?  I'm the one who should be crying," Agnes
panted in rage.  "I'm the one you put aside because your lust was
stronger than your love for your mother."

"No... no... it had nothing to do with you," Teresa wailed.

"It has everything to do with me.  You know that lust is a mortal,
deadly sin and yet you choose it, just as you chose the influence of
Mimi Peterson rather than mine-she must have had a hand in this, how
else could you have met a man?  But who has watched over you all your
life, who has given you everything she could, who managed to find the
money to send you to Sacred Heart, who has believed utterly in your
future, who has nourished your talent?  Look at how you've repaid my
love.  You are beneath contempt.  I have no words to use for the kind
of girl you are.  All my pride and love was folly.

I never knew you.

"Mother!"  Teresa cried in anguish.

"Don't call me mother.  No daughter of mine could do what you've
done.

Who is he?  No, don't tell me!  I don't want to know any of the vile
details, they'd make me sicker than I am.  Have you confessed your
sin?"

"How long did you intend to go without confessing a mortal sin?  So
that you could repeat it and repeat it?  You disgust me!

But you're caught now.  We're going to see Father Brennan this
minute.

After you confess, we'll talk to him in his study.  He'll know where to
send you."

"What?"

"You don't think this is the first time this has happened, do you?

There are places for evil, godless, shameful sinners like you, places
to stay until the baby is born and adopted."

"But it'll be months, months!  I can't just disappear.  The Madams of
the Sacred Heart, all the family, they'll know, and they'll guess
why."

"Teresa, you've ruined my life.  I've lived for you, the person I
thought you were, a person who doesn't exist.  But if anyone else ever
knows about this you will have killed me.  I have only one thing left,
our position in my family.  Can you hear what my sisters would say
about you?  Do you think four women, even if they are family, will stay
silent forever?  Are you too stupid to imagine how the stain, the
gossip will spread, how your life will become a dirty joke?

Pregnant at fourteen!  Don't you see that no decent man will ever have
anything to do with you?  I'm giving you a second chance, don't you
understand?  Not because you deserve it.  You deserve nothing but
punishment, and you will be punished, Teresa, trust in that."

"But..  .why?  Why are you giving me a second chance?"

"Because I can't let my daughter become a neighborhood scandal, a dirty
joke.  The daughter of whom I was so proud, the girl I raised, never
realizing what she really was."

"I still don't see how I can vanish and then come back here without
people guessing," Teresa persisted.

"It means all of us moving, as far away as possible, someplace where no
one knows us.  Your father will have to sacrifice his job and find work
in another school.  I'll tell him tonight."

"He doesn't know?  Only you?"

"It's not a man's business to know until he has to," Agnes said
grimly.

"Go get dressed for church now, don't forget your hat.

And your rosary.

"Help me to understand you clearly," Sandor Horvath said to his wife
that night, after she'd told him everything.  "You expect me to give up
my position and find another job?"

"You have to.  There's no other way.  I've thought of everything and
it's the only way we can hide what's happened."

"And Father Brennan will arrange to send Teresa to this place in Texas
to wait for the birth and the child will be adopted by strangers?  And
then she'll come home and forget all about it?"

"Adopted by a good Catholic family.  We can be sure of that."

'And you can be sure I refuse!"

"Sandor!  You can't refuse!  You can't let her go away for six or seven
months and then come back here.  Everybody would be counting on their
fingers, everybody would know.  We might as well take out an
announcement."

"Agnes, this child is our grandchild.  This child may be my grandson.

I will never consent to give up this child.  This is my flesh and
blood."

"We can't afford to be sentimental.  Teresa's future-" "I don't give a
damn about her future!  I don't give a damn about your sisters!  Or
your sacred reputation as mother of the family beauty.  What you ask
goes against everything I believe in and I simply will not do it.  And
you can't do it without my consent."

Agnes looked at him and realized immediately that nothing she could say
would move him now, unless, unless... he'd agree to the plan of last
resort that she'd made during the four days she'd spent thinking.

"Sandor, if we moved, if you got another job, somewhere where nobody
knows us, I could... bring up the child as.... my own.

I'm only thirty-three, it would seem perfectly natural."

"The baby would become our child, Teresa's brother?"  he asked
slowly.

"Or sister; but yes, our child, yours and mine."

"And how would Teresa feel about that?"

"How she feels doesn't matter.  She's given up any right to be
considered.  Do you think that the penance Father Brennan gave her
wiped away her sin?"

"Did he give her absolution, did she receive the Sacrament of
Penance?"

"Yes."

"Then God has forgiven her.  Can you do less?  I'll start inquiries
about another position tomorrow."

"Thank you, Sandor."

How typically male, Agnes thought in strangled, furious silence.  Men
thought it was just that easy.  Confess and be absolved.

Act like a loathsome, lewd, impure whore, destroy your mother's
rightful joy and pride and hope, force your father to give up a
position of prestige-and still be forgiven, forgiven because you've
told the priest what you'd done and said hundreds of rote prayers.  No,
she could never accept that, not even if it went against all the
teachings of the church.

Secretly thrilled by the prospect of a grandson, a grandson to continue
his name and his blood, Sandor quickly discovered a teaching position
in the music department of the Harvard School, a well-known private
boys' school in Los Angeles.  It didn't pay as much as his present job,
but it answered the problem of putting distance between his family and
everyone they knew, and it was available immediately.

Within weeks the Horvaths moved to a small rented house in Reseda, a
ranchlike section of the San Fernando Valley that was still so rustic
that the streets had no pavement.  The house had the additional
advantage of being surrounded by an acre of scrubby land.

Agnes had made her family believe that the move was prompted by an
offer so magnificent that she couldn't ask Sandor to turn it down.

Only Mimi Peterson, of all the people in Greenwich, knew the truth.

She and Teresa parted in tears, knowing that they'd never be allowed to
be together again after this stolen moment in the locker room of the
Sacred Heart gym.

"Can't you at least send me a message when the baby's born, so I'll
know you're okay?"  Mimi asked.

"I'll try, but don't write back, whatever you do.  I'll know how you
feel, I'll know you're thinking of me."

"I'll tell you one thing," Mimi sobbed, "I'm not going to have sex
until I'm married."

"I'm not going to have sex ever."

"Don't be such a dope."

"Oh, Mimi.  I'll never forget you."

The months in Reseda passed more slowly than Teresa would have believed
possible.  She couldn't go to school, nor could she walk around window
shopping on any of the main streets of the nearby small towns where a
decidedly pregnant teenager would turn heads.

Throughout the long winter months of her pregnancy she was a prisoner
at home, with only the few uplifting paperbacks her mother grudgingly
bought her, the local newspaper, and daytime television to keep her
company.  She was allowed to walk back and forth in those areas of the
backyard that were screened from the neighbors, but otherwise there was
nothing to do but wait, often alone, since her mother had bought a
small, secondhand car and distracted herself by driving around the
never-never land of Beverly Hills, on the other side of the Mulholland
pass.  She never asked Teresa to go with her on these drives and Teresa
didn't dare to suggest it, although, once in the car, she wouldn't have
been noticed.

Teresa's most lonely moment of each week came on Sunday morning when
her parents got into her father's car and left her alone while they
went to mass in the Reseda Catholic Church.  She longed to be allowed
to go with them, parched for the human contact and warmth of the
service, aching for the consolation of communion, but of course it was
impossible to show herself and arouse curiosity.

"Isn't it a sin for me to miss mass, especially on the Holy Days of
Obligation?"  she asked her mother, still permitting herself a crumb of
hope.

"You're sick with the baby, you're allowed to miss it," her mother
snapped.  "You know that perfectly well.  You're a hypocrite to worry
about such minor sins under the circumstances."

Teresa lived for the single Friday or Saturday night each weekend when
her father took her out for a drive after dark, stopping at a place
that served ice cream sodas at the car.  He would touch her hand gently
from time to time, but, silent man that he was, he had become even more
reserved.  Teresa wanted desperately to throw herself into Sandor's
arms and be held there and comforted, as she had been, from time to
time, when she was a little girl with a little sorrow, but she felt his
deep reluctance to touch her because of her swollen breasts and her
swollen belly.

She sat quietly by his side, her head turned away, so he wouldn't see
the tears of wishful need that filled her eyes.  Her only experience
with friendly touch was what she could extract from hugging herself
tightly in her own arms or patting her stomach gently as she lay in bed
at night and whispering to the dark room, "It's going to be all right,
little baby, it's going to be all right."

Teresa tried to attract as little of Agnes's attention as possible,
since her mother's rage had only deepened with the isolation and the
strangeness of California.  Once Teresa's morning sickness had passed,
she felt her robust health return.  Neither mother nor daughter
mentioned the need to see a doctor until Teresa felt the child move
within her.

"Oh!  It just kicked me," Teresa exclaimed, with excitement and
wonder.

"Isn't that nice for you."  Agnes turned away, shaking her head in
disgust.

"Shouldn't I go to a doctor; just to see if everything's all right?"

"You look fine to me."  She was twice as beautiful as ever, Agnes
thought, the lines of her features were immaculate, exquisite and
composed, above her disgusting body.

"But, Mother, I've never been to a doctor.  Don't you think I should?

If I'm too sick to go to mass, aren't I sick enough to need a
doctor?"

"Nonsense.  You're sleeping well, you're eating like a horse, you're
getting exercise, your ankles aren't even swollen, you say you feel
fine, why do you need to see a doctor at this point?  Having a baby is
a perfectly natural process."

"But shouldn't I find out if the baby's all right?"

"Of course it's all right.  A baby is always all right when it isn't
wanted, every woman knows that, the only ones you lose are the ones
you're dying to have," Agnes said with a bitter laugh.  'Don't you
realize that there's a good reason why you can't have medical
records?

A doctor would only ask questions you must never answer, starting with
your age.  Any doctor will remember your face and your youth.  This
baby is going to be born in the county hospital under my name and the
less trace there is of it in connection with you, the better."

"You still have hopes for my future, or you wouldn't bother being so
secretive," Teresa said, suddenly illuminated with knowledge.

"Of course I do.  As far as I'm concerned, they're more important than
ever.  Look at all I've done to give you an intact future, to provide
you with a blank slate so you can make something of yourself?  Do you
realize how much you have to thank me for?  Do you?"

"Yes, Mother.  I do.  I always will."

The baby born on June 15, 1970, to Agnes Patricia Riley Horvath and
Sandor Horvath, was a girl.  One busy intern remarked to a busier nurse
that the mothers were getting younger every year, but otherwise it was
an unremarkable birth of a healthy baby on an unremarkable morning
after an unremarkable labor.

The patient known as Agnes Horvath was discharged from the hospital two
days later and returned to Reseda with her parents.

No one at the county hospital gave a thought to the whereabouts of the
father.  The baby's birth certificate gave her name as Mary Margaret
Horvath, daughter of Agnes Patricia Riley Horvath and Sandor Horvath.

A week later the baby was baptized.  Sandor Horvath had made no
intimates at Harvard School, but he had struck up a friendship with one
of the history teachers, an unusually friendly chap named Brian Kelly,
who, Sandor discovered, was both a good Catholic and a married man.

Brian Kelly and his wife, Helen, were surprised but flattered to be
asked to become the child's godparents, to make the act of faith in the
child's name and promise that the child would renounce the devil and
live according to the teachings of Christ and His Church.

"How could I not have realized you were expecting this happy event,
Sandy," he said.  "You're a dark horse, never telling me.

"My wife is superstitious; she asked me not to talk about it until it
happened," Sandor answered.  "She's had two miscarriages since
Teresa."

"Mary Margaret is a splendid baby," he said, carefully touching one of
the few hairs on her head.  "Now it's our duty to make sure she's
brought up to be a good Catholic."

"Only if the parents don't do it," Agnes laughed.  "Isn't she
beautiful?"  She snatched the wailing baby away from Helen Kelly as
quickly as she decently could.  "No, darling, don't cry," she crooned,
"don't cry, your mommy won't let anything bad ever happen to you.

No never, my own, sweet little Maggie will never, ever have anything to
cry about."

"Maggie?  Is that what you're going to call her?"  Teresa asked her
mother in amazement.  Throughout the ceremony she had stood to one
side, watching quietly, wearing the best of her old Sunday dresses
firmly belted around her waist, her breasts still aching dully.

The worst pain of the milk that had made her breasts rock-hard and hot
for three days was mercifully gone.

"It's my grandmother's name, you know that, Teresa," Agnes said
impatiently, too engrossed in the baby to look up.

"I guess I missed that part of the discussion," Teresa said, feeling
even more out of touch with anything to do with the baby than she had
before.  From the moment they had arrived home from the hospital, her
mother had attended to every need, every cry, every sign of discomfort
the baby had made, ordering Teresa to leave the baby alone, stay out of
her way, and stop bothering her.

"Teenagers," Sandor said indulgently.  "We know about their attention
span, don't we Brian?"

"All too well."

4

November 15, 1971

Dearest Mimi, I hope you still live at your old address.  Even though I
always write "Please forward if necessary" on the envelope, it's like
putting a message into a bottle and throwing it in the ocean since you
can't answer me and it's been just over two years since we came here.

Everything's changed for the better since my last letter.  We've moved
to Santa Monica because my mother decided that Maggie should be brought
up on this side of Los Angeles.  It's so pretty here and about fifteen
degrees cooler than the Valley.  You can easily get to the beach on the
weekends, and that's the place I feel happiest.  When I take a long
barefoot walk right in the edge of the water, until I fall into the
rhythm of the waves, I get a blissful feeling of peace and happiness.

I adore the Pacific!

We've rented a cute little house and my father got a promotion, so now
he's head of the department again.

My big news is all about school.  I'm on a full scholarship at
Marymount, where the nuns belong to the Religious Sacred Heart of
Mary.

It's a really good school with a terrific drama department.  Sister
Elizabeth, who's in charge, is a ball of fire, and I think she likes
me.

The other girls, most of them anyway, are pretty snooty.

They all seem to have known each other all of their lives, lots of them
are very rich, and the big deal here is all about which girls, two
years from now, will make their debut at a ball, with their dads in
white tie and tails!  Lots of them are all members of "old California
families"-how old can a family be in such a new state, I'd like to
know!-and their mothers and their grandmothers all went to Marymount
too.  The fact that I went to Sacred Heart gives me a little standing
in spite of my lowly scholarship status.  Luckily we all wear uniforms
but you wouldn't believe some of the dreamy cars with chauffeurs that
come to pick them up after school, while I wait for the bus.

There have been a lot of sweet-sixteen parties lately, for the
in-crowd, but when I turned sixteen, I didn't say anything about it to
anyone, since my mother would never have given me a party and anyway I
didn't exactly know who to ask.  Did you have a party?  I like to
imagine that you did and that it was absolutely wonderful.  And that
you missed me a little.

The amazing thing about California is that when you're sixteen you can
get a driving license.  Lots of my classmates are driving!  Can you
believe it?  My mother doesn't trust me enough to let me get a job
after school, but I bet I could earn a secondhand car in a couple of
years.  I still have to come home immediately after my last class
unless there's a rehearsal.  And I'm not allowed to go to anyone's
house to study.  So, naturally, it's hard to make new friends.  You and
your big "bad influence" are never far from my parents minds!  Ah,
well, I guess I can't complain.  But if I can't complain to you, who
can I complain to?

I'll bet you're wondering about Maggie.  Well, you shouldn't worry.

She's got my mother hanging over her every waking minute and lots of
her sleeping minutes.  My father too, when he's home.

They absolutely adore her.  There's no question in my mind that they've
truly convinced themselves that she's their very own baby.

As I wrote you last time, my mother has never let me feed her or diaper
her because I was "too clumsy" and now she's decided that I'm "too
busy" with my homework to even be allowed to play with Maggie... as a
special treat every once in a while I get to tell her a story!  I guess
they think that I'll contaminate the poor little thing.

But Maggie's a very sweet, loving little girl who's growing smarter and
more fun every day.  Remember how we used to talk about the power of
positive thinking and how we could grow big breasts if we concentrated
on it hard enough?  I must be using this technique on myself, without
realizing it, because I feel that Maggie truly is my sister.  Maybe
I've been brainwashed because of circumstances, but the whole maternal
thing, I just don't feel it, Mimi.  Nothing.  I guess it's just as
well, because otherwise I'd be too sad to stand it.

Maggie's fat and bouncy, and whenever she falls down she laughs as if
it's a big joke.  She has the best-natured perpetual grin on her round
face-kind of like a gap-toothed jack-o'-lanternunless she's hungry, in
which case she just falls apart and screams bloody murder.  She has a
mop of jet-black curls and very pink cheeks and my mother's bright blue
eyes.  Riley blue, right from the Old Country.  She sort of looks like
an old-fashioned doll, with long, blinky eyelashes, and my mother
dresses her in fancy dresses she gets filthy and grows out of in a
couple of months.

She calls me "Tessa" because she can't pronounce Teresa.  It used to
break my heart when I came home and she was still taking her nap and I
had to go straight to my room to do my homework, when I knew she was
going to be waking up any minute, all smiling and smelling heavenly and
warm and squashy with that wonderful baby softness and divine baby
stink.  But that was my mother's favorite time to be alone with her;
and anyway I really needed the time to concentrate on my schoolwork.

After all, I have my scholarship to keep up, which pretty much means
getting all As.

Maggie is my mother's baby, that's the way it is, and one day when I'm
married I'll have one of my own.

Are you finally allowed to go out on dates?  And why am I asking, since
I can't get an answer?  Needless to say, I've never met any boys who
would ask me, and if, God forbid, one did, I wouldn't be permitted to
go, because we all know what THAT could lead to (as if I'd ever do THAT
again!  You'd think they'd finally realize that I'm not completely
crazy.). Actually I'm such a boringly good girl that I almost have to
make up sins to confess, like, "Father, I took the Lord's name in vain
three days ago when I burned my finger on the frying pan."

Although you're supposed to feel absolved after you completely confess
a sin and truly repent and have the firm purpose of never sinning
again, which I did, believe you me, it hasn't worked the way it's
supposed to.  The Sacrament of Penance didn't make me feel better, yet
I was absolved, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit.

The Big Three.  Shouldn't that be enough, Mimi?  Maybe it's because my
parents treat me like a highly potential sinner, but I can't get rid of
the guilt.  I bet you're not one tenth as screwed up as I am, but then
you never were, my bad little Mimi.  You enjoyed your sins!

This is all for now.  If anything amazing happens, I'll write again
before next year, but I have a feeling that life is just going to go on
like this until I'm eighteen and go to college.

Probably Mount St. Mary's, a great education but awfully close to
home.  More nuns.  Not that I don't like nuns, but it'll be fun to have
a man teacher for a change.  Maybe my parents will go bananas, give up
entirely on me and let me go off to wild, wicked Berkeley, where I'll
become a flower child or a hippy, or is that as over as the Swinging
London we used to talk about so longingly?

With all my love, a million happy, slightly belated returns on your
birthday, have a wonderful year, and have a lot of fun for me, but not
too much.  Remember, THEY SWIM!

I'll never forget you.

Teresa 5

"Teresa, I'll be picking you up at school tomorrow afternoon," Agnes
said, opening the door and looking in on her daughter.

"Don't tell me it's time to get my teeth cleaned again," Teresa
protested, peering up from her homework.

"No, as a matter of fact I'm driving you into Hollywood to an audition
for teenaged girls.  Paramount is doing a remake of Little Women and
they're looking for young actresses.  You're as ready as you've ever
been, and your father's agreed at last.  Be sure to wash your hair
after dinner."

"No!  Really?  You're not kidding?"  Teresa jumped up in flying
excitement.

"Certainly not.  Why would I be kidding?"  her mother said coldly.

"But it's been years... you never said anything more about... I
imagined you'd given up on that idea."

"Give up?  After all I've done for you?"  Agnes's eyes flashed in anger
and a clear edge of unmistakable contempt.

"Why did you wait till the last minute to tell me?"  Teresa asked,
ignoring her mother's familiar look, a deeply wounding look she tried
not to let herself dwell on.  "I could have reread that book!

It was so old-fashioned I don't think I ever got through it."

"I have no idea what part they're reading for," Agnes replied.

"This isn't something you can study.  In any case, I found out about it
only two days ago in the L.A. Times they're holding auditions all week
at a casting director's office.  I have a sitter for Maggie."

"Oh, Mother, Mother, thank you!"

"There's only one way you can thank me, Teresa, and that's by doing
well.  I have no illusions that you'll get a part in the first movie
you audition for, but there's no reason why you shouldn't eventually
justify the sacrifices we've had to make for your sake."

"What should I wear?"  Teresa asked, trying to head off the well-worn
subject of sacrifice as quickly as possible.

"There won't be time to change, and in any case you're better off
wearing your uniform.  It doesn't hurt to let people know you're a
Marymount girl, and something classic looks better than trying too
hard.  Anyway, they won't care about your clothes.  Just sit down and
finish your homework, Teresa.  Stop looking in the mirror."

"Couldn't I at least borrow your tweezers and pluck my eyebrows a
little bit?  They're too thick," she begged.  Anything she did would be
better than nothing.

"There's absolutely nothing wrong with your eyebrows.  I knew I
shouldn't have told you until tomorrow, but I wanted to be certain you
had clean hair and it takes forever to dry."

"Yes, Mother."

As soon as Agnes closed the door, Teresa resumed her study of her face
in the mirror over her bathroom sink.  She was allowed to use no makeup
except a small tube of colorless ChapStick, but like every other girl
at school she had a stash of forbidden cosmetics, which she, unlike
most of them, knew how to use, thanks to her adventures with Mimi.

Stealthily, with quick but shaking hands, she applied lipstick and
eyeliner and, turning her head from side to side, tried to judge the
results.

She looked far too bold, she decided, to play any of the girlish
Victorian parts she remembered from the book she'd read years ago.

She hadn't used makeup in so long that she hadn't realized how very
mature it would make her look now.  Teresa scrubbed her face and
considered it in its nakedness.  Clear, very white skin with a faint
rosy blush over her cheeks, as if she'd just come in from cold, crisp
air, a blush she'd always had no matter what the weather.  Her nose was
straight and long enough, it seemed to her, to be in proportion with
her other features; she had her father's high cheekbones and his extra
width of jawbone at that special point under the ear where the jaw
meets the neck; her eyes had always been a color she could never quite
figure out, an odd shade of green with a hint of gray; her mouth was as
wide as ever, her neck as long.  Teresa flashed herself an experimental
smile.  No question but her teeth were her best feature, she thought.

Thank God you couldn't see her gums-that would have been a misfortune,
considering the size of her smile.

People had always thought she was beautiful, Teresa reflected; she'd
often heard them say so, either to her face or when she wasn't supposed
to be listening.  Not just relatives, not just Mimi.  Even Sister
Elizabeth, the ancient but extraordinary English teacher and drama
coach, had once cautioned her that it wasn't "enough to be beautiful"
to play Joan of Arc.  She honestly couldn't see what they meant, dearly
as she'd like to.  Her face was just the face she'd grown up with.  She
wished she could manage to convince herself that she was beautiful.  It
would make the audition so much less frightening.

If she really were beautiful, wouldn't she have made more friends at
school?  Wouldn't her mother have forgiven her by now?

And, by sixteen, shouldn't she have stopped asking herself such utterly
self-pitying and useless questions?

Peggy Brian Westbrook, the veteran casting director, and her young
assistant, Fiona Bridges, opened fresh Cokes.

"How many does this make today?"  Peggy inquired wearily.

"Cokes or girls?"  Fiona asked.  She was a twenty-six-year-old sprig of
a large London family that had made its living in and around the
theater for two hundred years.  Fiona, ambitious in a way that belied
her blond, placid, classically Anglo-Saxon, riding-to-the-hunt
features, had been in Hollywood for three years, having apprenticed
herself to Peggy to learn the art of casting, one of the most important
parts of show business.

"Either.  They all taste the same and produce the same results.

Too sweet, and they make me burp."

"About five Cokes, rough estimate, fifty-six girls, fifty-six.  Not one
more or one less."  Part of Fiona's job was to keep detailed notes for
Peggy, who saved all her concentration for the actors.

"This is only day three and we don't have anyone at all who's even
vaguely possible.  Not a Beth, not an Amy, not a Meg and obviously not
a Jo.  Will too much Coke make my hair fall out?"

Peggy asked plaintively.

Children, followed by teenaged girls, were her least favorite casting
assignments, but this one was for her favorite director, Roddy
Fensterwald.  Roddy was adored by all women, especially actressesfor
all the good it would ever do them.  How did such an openly gay man
manage to be so maddeningly seductive, she wondered, not for the first
time.

"Rot your teeth first, I'd imagine, before your hair went," Fiona said
cheerfully.  "Ready for the next hopeful unknown?"

"Please, I'm ready for a lovely vacation on Devil's Island."

"Actually I believe Devil's Island was quite beautiful, it was the
conditions that people complained about, all locked up together for the
rest of their lives, with foul food," Fiona replied.  "Lots of buggery
too, you know.  Nasty habit but it probably passed the time.

"At this point it sounds good to me... at least it didn't involve
teenaged girls."

"Oh, my, you are leaning toward a case of burnout, Mrs. Westbrook, my
dear.  Perhaps I should send the next lot away till tomorrow?"

"Bitch.  Don't you dare."

"If you didn't love your job you couldn't do it," Fiona said smugly.

She could always revive Peggy's vital juices by threatening to send
actors away.  Peggy lived to see actors, to listen to actors, to smell
actors.  She was like an animal that lived on one sort of food
exclusively: actors, good, bad, or indifferent.  She had to have her
daily ration of actors to survive.  She was a thespianivore, if such an
animal existed, as well as one of the most highly regarded casting
directors in Hollywood.

Fiona buzzed the receptionist.  "Right, please send in the next girl,
Ginger."

Outside in the reception room, Teresa sat stiffly, torn between
studying the pages the receptionist had passed out to her and to all
the other girls in the room, and observing the other hopefuls.  She was
the only girl accompanied by her mother.  Not only that, but there
wasn't another girl who wore a school uniform, Teresa thought
miserably.  Her pleated gray skirt, severe starched shirt, and navy
blazer, with the Marymount crest, suddenly seemed as childish as a pair
of Mary Janes.

Many of the girls, as they bent over the pages, had the crisp
professional demeanor that indicated that they were accustomed to
auditions, and almost all of them were dressed in a version of the
latest look, slim sailor pants with a bell-bottom flare, and ribbed
"poor boy" clinging sweaters in colors that matched their pants.  At
least half of them sported the shag, Jane Fonda's hairdo that had swept
America, and all of them wore makeup that enhanced their natural
prettiness.

She'd never dreamed that it was possible to see so many pretty girls in
one place.  But, of course, they were the pick of the crop from all
over the country, Teresa told herself.  These were the girls who had
been heading toward this casting office, or one like it, all of their
lives, and although they didn't chat with each other, there was a tacit
communality that bonded them clearly as they read the pages over and
over.  They belonged here just as clearly as she did not.

How, she wondered, could her mother sit so calmly, reading the magazine
she'd brought with her?

"Teresa Horvath, please," the receptionist announced, opening the door
into the inner office.  Agnes rose with formidable composure.

"Come along, Teresa," she said, leaving her magazine on the chair.

Consigning herself to the good offices of the Sainted Mary, Mother of
God, Teresa followed her, standing as straight as possible, her
shoulders back, her head high.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Horvath, but Mrs. Westbrook prefers mothers to wait
outside during an audition," Ginger said with a pleasant smile.

"What!"  Agnes said in the beginning of outrage.

"She doesn't make exceptions."  Ginger's smile never wavered.

"Go on in, Teresa."  In a rush of sudden gratitude, Teresa walked past
her mother and closed the door to the office behind her, hesitating
once she was inside the fairly small office.

"Hello, there," Peggy said, from behind a table littered with cans of
Coke and sheets of photos.  "Thanks for coming.  This is Fiona Bridges,
my assistant.  Teresa, that's right isn't it, or do you have a
nickname?"

"Yes," Teresa heard herself say.  "Yes I do.  It's Tessa."  She stood
still with amazement, caught up by a powerful and unexpected sense of
selfhood, as she made this claim.

"Lovely."  Peggy's jaded attention was immediately jerked into life by
the clear, distinct melody of Tessa's voice.  "Now, Tessa, why don't
you tell us something about yourself, come on over here where we can
see you."

Tessa moved forward and stood in front of the table, her hands firmly
clasped behind her to hide their trembling.  They had such friendly
smiles, these two women.  What was the worst thing they could do, after
all, except send her away?

"I'm sixteen," she said, "and I live in Santa Monica with my parents
and Maggie, my baby sister.  We moved to California more than two years
ago from Greenwich, Connecticut.  My mother's from a big Irish family
and my father came here from Hungary back in the 1950s.  Now he's head
of the music department at the Harvard School.  There's nothing
particularly exciting about me, except that I've always wanted to
act.

No, that's wrong.  I have always acted."

"Do you have any professional experience?"  the casting director
asked.

As Tessa recounted the simple outline of her life, Peggy had felt
unexpected chills racing up her arms and crisping the nape of her
neck.

"I've never been in anything but a school play," Tessa answered.

"This is my first real audition, unless you count the ones at
school."

She spoke with a simplicity that was as strong as her sudden sense of
fearlessness.

"I see," Peggy said slowly.  "So you wouldn't have any head shots, any
eight-by-ten glossies?"  Good God, a schoolgirl without an agent or
experience or even pictures... but those chills... how long had it been
since she'd felt chills when an unknown spoke?

"I have snapshots in the family album, but my mother didn't bring
them," Tessa answered.  "I didn't know I needed glossies."

"Actually you don't.  It's just that some of the girls leave them
behind so we'll remember what they look like."

"Just think of the girl in the dumb uniform."  Tessa laughed with an
utterly spontaneous sense of the ridiculous, a wonderfully affirmative
sound that rang through the little room.

Peggy and Fiona looked at each other swiftly.  Normally, at a first
audition of an inexperienced unknown, they'd just chat, make notes, and
send her on her way, after getting her phone number in case they
decided to reconsider her.  But neither of them would have dreamed of
letting Tessa go without a reading.

"Take off your blazer and sit down, Tessa.  Let your hair out of the
ponytail so we can see it, and undo the top buttons of that very
well-ironed blouse, so you can breathe a bit," Peggy continued, writing
a note to Fiona.  That laugh!  Trained voice???

"Have you had voice lessons, Tessa?"  Fiona asked.

"No, I haven't, but I've sung in the choir all my life-I'm a
contralto.

And my father's very insistent on proper speech.  He learned his
English from an Englishman at school in Budapest."

"Choir?"

"At the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Greenwich and now, at
Marymount."

"So you're a very, very good little convent girl, are you?"  Peggy
asked on a teasing note.

"I feel like the original model, from day one," Tessa answered, shaking
out the gleaming tumble of her hair and trying, without success, to
make its lively waves fall neatly with her fingers.

"But I can't answer for the good part," she continued thoughtfully.

"It's really hard, almost impossible, to be good, because it's so
surprisingly easy to commit a venial sin."  She'd forgotten herself
while she tried to respond as honestly as possible to these women who
seemed so interested in her.

"So all your acting has actually been done in a Catholic school?"

Peggy probed gently.

"I haven't been to any other kind of school, or to summer camp
either.

But the Madams at Sacred Heart put on a wide range of plays, and so do
the Sisters at Marymount.  Of course I've had lots of chances to play a
boy, since I used to be taller than most of the other girls.  I think
I've stopped growing now.  Last year's uniforms still fit."

"You've been given the four pages-sides-we'd like you to read.

The context of the scene is that Jo March, the part you're reading, is
having an argument with her older sister, Meg, who's dignified and
proud and proper.  Jo is independent and tumultuous and rebellious.

You don't remember the book by any chance?  No?  Well, it doesn't
matter, we're just looking for a rough idea.  Fiona will give you your
cues.  You read the lines that are underlined.  I think you should read
the scene over again first, several times, to feel a little familiar
with Jo."

"Yes, please."

As Tessa bent her head over the pages, Peggy and Fiona turned their
swivel chairs away from her and conferred quietly.

"Isn't she much much too beautiful for Jo?"  Fiona whispered.

"Jo isn't supposed to be a raving, tearing beauty, she's a tomboy whose
"hair is her one beauty," remember?  What a glorious kid!

Those eyes!  Have you ever seen a green like that?  Glenda would throw
a fit."

"Glenda doesn't have casting approval," Peggy hissed.  "That
middle-aged love goddess begged Roddy to let her play Marmee so the
Academy members will take her seriously come Oscar time.  If it should,
by a miracle, turn out that Tessa can act, Glenda won't have to worry
about anyone saying she can't be believable in a serious role as the
mother of four.  They'll be too busy looking at Tessa."

"Still, she's not at all the character, except for her height and her
hair," Fiona fretted.

"Miss Bridges, this is Hollywood, not the BBC.  Kate Hepburn played Jo
in nineteen thirty-three and trust me, she was never an ugly
duckling.

Casting to type bores me, anyway.  All the other girls have to be
pretty but Jo has to knock you right off your chair, one way or
another, because she's the heroine.  It would be more constructive if
you'd worry that Tessa can't act, that maybe she's all looks and no
delivery.  That's what you should really be afraid of."

"I'm as ready as I'll ever be," Tessa said.

Fiona started to recite the cues she'd memorized in the course of the
past three long days.  Tessa read without gulping the words, giving
herself an instant to look up from the pages whenever she could, look
straight at Fiona and say the next line as if she'd learned it, as if
she were living it, before having to consult the script again.

In spite of this being a first reading, Tessa's luminous intensity was
immediately switched on.  All the light in the room seemed to condense
around her.  Tessa became Jo March as if she'd been inhabited by an
uncompromising spirit.  To Fiona, the words she'd spoken so often
became new and fresh with meaning as she awaited Tessa's response.

Then, so suddenly that Peggy shivered in surprise, the four sides were
over and the reading ended.

But I want to hear what she says next, I need to hear her Peggy
thought.  That hasn't happened in ten years.  Fifreen!  "Thank you,
Tessa," she managed to say, calmly.  "That was excellent."

"Is that it?"  Tessa asked in evident disappointment, withdrawing from
the character slowly and dreamily.  She struggled to put on her blazer,
the young, arched fullness of her breasts evident for the first time
against her starched white shirt as she wriggled her arms into the
sleeves.

"Oh, no, I doubt that'll be it," Peggy said, blowing her nose
violently.  She had tears in her eyes, another thing that hadn't
happened for fifteen years.  That's not it, not if I know anything
about this damn business, and I do.  This girl is unconditional; it's
all or nothing with her.

She already knows all those essential things you can't teach.  But I
can't make any final decisions, all I can do is point her in the right
direction.

"Ginger," she said, buzzing the secretary.  "Would you please ask Mrs.
Horvath to come in?"

Agnes entered, wearing a resolute smile.

"Mrs.  Horvath, can you bring your daughter back tomorrow?"

Peggy asked without ceremony.  "I'd like to have her read for some
other people.  And there are some more pages I'd like her to study
overnight.  Oh, and be sure she wears her uniform again, if you don't
mind."

"Tomorrow?  Of course," Agnes said, coming forward quickly.

"But, Mother, tomorrow afternoon there's that field hockey match with
Westlake-" Tessa reminded her, unwillingly.

"Sister Elizabeth told me not to bother about it if these ladies wanted
you back."

Her mother would have to confess before communion, Tessa thought with
glee.

"Sister Elizabeth?  Don't tell me she's still at Marymount!"

Peggy Westbrook exclaimed.

"Do you know Sister Elizabeth?"  Tessa asked in amazement.

"She was head of the English department and also coached the plays when
I was there, a long time ago, and she wasn't young then," Peggy
confessed.

"But, you never said!"

"No, I never do... usually.  I've spent more time in that uniform than
you have, Tessa."

"We just did Saint Joan," Tessa offered eagerly.

"What part did you have?"

"Joan."

'And you satisfied Sister Elizabeth?"

"She said I was right for the Maid of France, that's all.  She doesn't
give an opinion if she can help it."

"So I remember.  Thank you, Tessa.  We'll see you tomorrow.

And Mrs. Horvath, please leave your phone number with the
receptionist."

After the door closed behind Agnes and Tessa, Peggy and Fiona sat in
silence for stunned seconds, both of them struck by the sudden flat
dullness of the room as soon as Tessa left it.

"What was that business about Saint Joan and Sister Elizabeth?"

Fiona ventured, realizing that Peggy had gone somewhere she couldn't
follow her.

"Sister Elizabeth never, ever put on a production of Saint Joan
unless..."

"Unless?"

"She'd discovered someone she considered worthy of the part."

'And what's so terrific about this Sister Elizabeth, besides a long
life span?"

"Fiona, she was the best director I've ever worked with.  Ever.  If she
weren't a nun she'd be a Hollywood legend.  To my knowledge she hasn't
put on Saint Joan in twenty years.  Miss Bridges, you've just been
fortunate enough to witness a born actress, a schoolgirl with acting
born in the bone and muscle and the fiber and the throat, the passion
and the pacing, the arrogance and the humility, all there.

And we were the first to hear her!  You should pay me for letting you
be here today!"

"I was over the moon about Tessa before she mentioned Sister
Elizabeth.

And you... you were gone from the minute she said hello in that
marvelous voice.  Must be the Hungarian father, I should think.  Yummy
Hungarians.  Seriously, Peggy, did you really think she wouldn't be
able to act worth a damn?"

"Consider it my form of knocking on wood.  As for Sister Elizabeth, it
never hurts to have a saintly and infallible second opinion when magic
strikes.  Send the other girls away, Fi, I'm much too excited to give
them a fair reading now.  I've just remembered why I chose this
infernal profession."

"Righto.  Want another Coke to celebrate, oh, secret convent queen?"

"You know perfectly well where I keep the Dom Perignon, so stop being
disrespectful to your betters."

"I'm just jealous of that sexy uniform."

'As well you might be.  Now get out the champagne!"

6

The next afternoon, Roddy Fensterwald sat in the casting office
alongside Peggy Westbrook and Fiona Bridges.

Much to his irritation, Glenda Bancroft had insisted on being
present.

She had heard from her assistant, who had been told by the all-knowing
Ginger, that he was reading an exciting unknown for Jo "Roddy, lover,
I'm thrilled that Peggy has found someone she thinks might do for Jo,"
Glenda had said on the phone the previous night.  "There's no way I'd
play Marmee with any of the hot young girls who are already Out there,"
Glenda continued earnestly.

"They've all been spoiled by too many photos of them making the club
scene.  I'm dying to see a fresh face.  Don't be an old meanie.  I
promise I'll be a fly on the wall.  She won't have any idea that it's
me.

I'm aware that might make her freeze.  I can't be good if the whole
cast isn't good, you know that.  After all, it is an ensemble piece."

"You worry me when you make sense, Glenda.  What do you plan to do,
come in drag?"

"Give me credit for more subtlety than that.  I often spend the
afternoon shopping at the Price Club-it's my secret vice.  I've never
been spotted yet.  If you have to introduce me, say I'm your
secretary.

I'll make notes."

"Damn it, Glenda-" "Roddy, you won't regret it.  Till tomorrow,
lover."

He regretted it already, Roddy Fensterwald thought.  Glenda Bancroft
had taken a chair and put it quietly in a corner, as far away from them
as she could sit, a diabolic move that somehow made her a focus of
attention.  She'd made a genuine effort not to be recognizable, he had
to admit, in a truly dowdy pants suit and a head scarf, so that her
signature red hair was hidden.  But she couldn't, in spite of not
wearing makeup, hide her features, and she exuded that certain power
that only a world-famous actress can possess.  Bitch that he knew her
to be, she hadn't bothered to turn it off, as he knew damn well she
could, if she pleased.

He stood up and walked over to her.  "Fly on the wall?"

"You'd walk right past me, Roddy, don't say you wouldn't."

"But this room is a little too small for star power, Glenda.  Lose it,
darling, or I'm giving you the boot."

"But of course," she said, losing it with a small satisfied smile.

She did adore Roddy, he never disappointed her, Glenda thought, looking
vaguely in the direction of her feet.

'Are we all ready now?"  Peggy asked patiently.

"Yup," Roddy said.

When Tessa entered, Peggy introduced Roddy, who stood up, shook her
hand, and smiled at her as if he'd never been so delighted to meet
anyone in his life.  She smiled back at him, thinking how much younger
he looked than she'd expected.  He'd directed a lot of movies she
loved, but she'd never seen a photograph of him.  His thick, messy
hair, already lightly streaked with gray, fell carelessly to his
shoulders, and he wore enormously thick glasses that were a droll
contrast to his slightly monkey-like features.  His skinny, tall frame
was carelessly covered in jeans and a baggy old sweater that had once
been either white or yellow.

Roddy Fensterwald, Tessa thought, would not reassure her mother.

"I know how hard this is, Tessa," he said, "but all I really care about
today is getting an idea of who you are and who you could be, under the
right circumstances.  This isn't about showing me how you'd act in
front of a camera, or about becoming Jo March on screen, even though
you'll be reading lines in the context of the scene.  For the next few
minutes it's not acting nearly as much as being Tessa Horvath, the one
part you've been playing all your life, the one part you can't help but
be perfect in, can you, no matter what you do?  So consider that you've
already got that A in drama."

"Thank you, Mr.  Fensterwald," Tessa said, visibly relaxing.

"Call me Roddy.  Everybody does."

"I'll try, but I can't promise" "Well, as long as you don't call me
"Sister Elizabeth" we're fine."

As Peggy laughed along with the others, she thought that no other name
could possibly be as appropriate, and, of course he knew it and knew
they knew it.

"Did you get a chance to study the new sides, Tessa?"  Peggy asked.

"Yes, I've memorized them."

"Oh, I didn't mean you to do that.  You must have been up all night."

"I had it memorized before dinner.  But I was up all night anyway, too
excited to sleep."

"Well, don't try to do this from memory," Roddy said.  "It just makes
it more of a trial, and I want you to be comfortable.  Would you like
some water?"

"Yes, please."

Fiona poured the water while Tessa gazed nervously around the room.

Why hadn't they introduced the slim woman taking notes in the corner?

Was she someone important?  Even sitting down she had important
posture, straight, alert, commanding.

"Before we start reading," Roddy said, taking the sides from Fiona,
"here's the situation."  Peggy and Fiona darted their eyes at each
other in surprise.  Usually the director would just sit quietly during
an audition, watching with every ounce of his attention and forming an
opinion.  Roddy was known to be a fine actor, but this was the first
time he'd ever read in their office.  It was Fiona's, or, in some
cases, Peggy's job to read with the actor under consideration.  As
Roddy started to speak, both women sat as expressionlessly as if they
weren't in the room.

"All right, Tessa, this is what's happened up till now.  Jo, and Meg,
her older sister, have been invited to an evening party, a New Year's
Eve dance.  They each have only one good dress to wearthey're very
poor, you see, but still ladies.  The problem is that Jo's dress has
been scorched in the back when she stood in front of a fire, and it's
been mended in a way that would show if she were to dance.

She doesn't really care about things like that, but Meg is so
self-conscious that she has made Jo promise to keep the back of her
dress out of sight.  So not only is Jo out of her element to begin
with, but her style is really cramped, because there's no place she can
possibly stand except up against a wall.  She feels absolutely out of
place and pretty soon she finds herself alone, watching other people
enjoying themselves, a total wallflower.  Then, to her horror, she
spots a boy walking in her direction as if he were going to ask her to
dance.

She quickly and bashfully disappears behind some curtains.

"But lo and behold, there's another person there, Laurie Laurence, the
boy who lives next door.  Jo barely knows him although they've met
before when he brought her wandering cat home.  He's hiding in the
curtains because he's been living abroad, at school, and doesn't know
American manners.  As they meet, the scene begins.  Start whenever
you're ready."

Tessa looked around the room as she thought over what Roddy had told
her.  She stood up and started to speak, stammering in surprise.

"Dear me, I didn't know anyone was here!"

"Don't mind me, stay if you like," Roddy said, looking startled but
laughing.

"Shan't I disturb you?"

"Not a bit.  I only came here because I don't know many people and felt
rather strange at first, you know."

"So did I. Don't go away please, unless you'd rather."

As the scene continued, they became more and more friendly, exchanging
confidences and information about their lives, until Laurie asked Jo to
dance.  Jo explained why she couldn't move about in her dress.

"Though it's nicely mended, it shows, and Meg told me to keep still so
no one would see it.  You may laugh if you want to.  It is funny I
know," Tessa said, as she spoke the last line of the pages she'd been
given.

Roddy Fensterwald looked closely into her eyes, judging her ability to
be surprised.  He grabbed the script out of her hand and threw it, with
his own, into the air and swept her into an approximation of a
swinging, springing, breathless polka, with which the actual scene in
the book ended.  Peggy and Fiona continued to sit absolutely still,
although they were both resisting the urge to cheer.

Roddy bowed to Tessa and led her ceremoniously to the office door.

"Wait outside, Tessa, while we huddle, will you?"

"Thank you, Roddy!  I've never had so much fun!"  Tessa exclaimed.

"Oh!  Would you mind--could I just have a second to ask

Miss Bancroft for her autograph before I leave?"

"Miss Bancroft?"

"I was wondering who she was, and then when she caught my eye, just
before we started the scene, of course I knew immediately," Tessa
explained, suddenly shy.  'After all, there isn't another pair of eyes
in the world like hers, is there?"

"Go on, get your autograph and then scoot."

Tessa collected her autograph from a subdued Glenda Bancroft and left
the room as quickly as possible.

"Peggy and Fiona, could you leave us for a minute?"  Roddy asked
quietly.

"Caught her eye"!  he stormed, as soon as they had gone.

"Damn it, Glenda!  Caught her eye!  How could you be such a thundering
bitch?  If there was one thing calculated to throw her off, that was
it.  It's unforgivable, I'll never trust you again," Roddy raged.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, lover, it was an accident.  Did you expect me
not to peek to see what that girl looked like?  She happened to catch
me just when I was looking at her, that's all.  And anyway, don't carry
on as if anything could stop all that tiresome inexhaustible energy.

Jesus, Roddy, what a heap of ingenuous, innocent gaiety.

It's just as well something got her off the ceiling and down to
business.

You're not actually thinking of casting her, are you?"

"That's none of your business, Glenda."

"Roddy, I want this picture to be a success even more than you do.  We
agreed it was an ensemble piece-that great big, nthusiastic girl would
throw it entirely off balance.  I'm not saying she's not beautiful, I'm
not saying she can't act, I'm not even saying I don't wish I were her
age, for the love of God!  But she's too bloody much!

She eats up all the air in the room, she's a stage actress, not a film
actress, she doesn't have the right dimensions.  She's as big a
presence as..  as Ethel Merman!  She's a talent, I admit that
willingly, but not for this particular picture and not until she gets
some experience in acting for a camera.  You know that as well as I
do."

"Glenda, go home before I forget I'm a gent and hit you, will you
darling?"

"What am I seeing here, Roddy, a little tiny crush on a great big
tomboy?  Roddy Fensterwald in love?  Don't tell me that's making you
lose your judgment."

"Perhaps you're right," he grinned thoughtfully.  "Interesting
interpretation-but why not?  We're all capable of anything, under the
right circumstances, I always say.  So this is what love feels like!

Be still my heart.  No wonder people carry on the way they do.  But
just think, if even I could go for this girl, how will every other man
in America feel?"

"Little Women is a fucking woman's movie, Roddy.  And that fucking
girl's too old for me to play her fucking mother!"

"Glenda, as I said before, go home so you can have this particular fit
with your agent.  He gets paid enough to listen to you.  But remember
that your contract isn't signed yet."

"That's unworthy of you," Glenda retorted with dignity.

"I love you when you try to be grand.  And, sweetie, I adore your
getup.  Especially the head scarf.  It's a whole new you.

I've always insisted you had untapped range, no matter what anyone else
said.  Will you send Peggy and Fiona in on your way out?"

7

Tessa woke up one summer morning in 1974 feeling defiant before her
feet hit the floor.  She was going to be nineteen in six weeks, but her
life was three times as full of things she was obliged to do as it had
been when she was still a schoolgirl at Marymount.

Today was Saturday, a day on which, by rights, she should have at least
a few free hours to herself.  But every single minute was scheduled.

Right after breakfast she had a riding lesson, a new skill her agent
insisted she needed to develop; then home to shower again and change
for a talk with her business manager over lunch, a meeting her father
had arranged and sternly told her not to forget.

After lunch she had to go back home again to change once more for an
interview set up by the producers of her new film, Gemini Summer.

The interviewer, a French journalist from Paris Match, would be
accompanied by a photographer who wanted to "follow her around" all
afternoon.  As soon as that major ordeal was over, her mother expected
her home for dinner, here in Santa Monica.  There was no space for her
in her day, Tessa realized, as she brushed the hair that fell in a
drifting cascade of natural waves no studio hairdresser would ever try
to subdue.

Even worse, she thought, she loathed horses; she wasn't interested in
"equity diversification," the subject her business manager was going to
try to explain to her once again; and she was intimidated by the idea
of the interview with the man from Paris Match and his inquisitive
photographer.  She'd rather have a cavity filled.

Novocain and drilling, a mere pinprick followed by an annoying noise
that was over in a half hour, would be better than picking her way
across a tightrope without losing her balance during three hours with a
reporter-photographer combination, particularly when they'd told the PR
people that they wanted to watch her "being herself."  Holy Mother, she
thought, wasn't it just plain crazy to expect her to be herself-whoever
that was, anyway?-when they knew that she knew that the camera was
capturing every move she made and the interviewer was recording every
remark she made, no matter how silly?

Feeling more put upon by the minute, Tessa reminded herself that
tomorrow, Sunday, when she'd finally have a few free hours after mass
followed by the obligatory family lunch, all the stores in Beverly
Hills would be closed.

Yet this past March, on Oscar night, when she'd won the Best Supporting
Actress award for Little Women, Tessa had promised herself a present.

She'd had to postpone buying it because of the demands on her time, and
the longer she waited, the more alluring it became.  She craved it,
this gift from herself to herself, the Oscar present and the major
nineteenth birthday present she wouldn't be anywhere near Tiffany & Co.
to buy on her actual birthday.  Tessa came to a decision.  She was
going to play hooky.  She was going to Tiffany's this morning and that
was that.

She picked up the phone that had been recently installed in her bedroom
and called Fiona Bridges, her just-as-recent personal assistant, and
told her that she thought she might be coming down with a cold and that
her riding lesson had better be canceled.  She hated to lie, but she
didn't want even Fiona to go with her when she bought her present.  It
should be a private moment, a secret delight, with nobody looking on
and giving advice.  She didn't need advice, Tessa assured herself.

She'd know it as soon as she saw it-it would leap out at her.

Tessa carefully considered what to wear.  She wanted to look like
someone who had every right to expect service at Tiffany's and at the
same time she didn't want to risk being recognized, something that was
happening to her more and more often whenever she went out in public.

Hastily she went through all the new clothes that Fiona had helped her
to buy and realized that none of them would do.  They had been
purchased for special events and were all meant for the late afternoon
or evening.  Like every other California kid, her normal wear consisted
of jeans, sweatshirts, T-shirts, and shorts.

Finally, in desperation, Tessa decided to wear her best green linen
suit, with her best white silk shirt, both of which were strictly
reserved for Sunday mass.  She poked and pulled at her hair until it
fell untidily around her face, concealing her features as much as
possible.  She decided not to put on any makeup.

The general effect, she thought, as she glanced with concern into her
mirror, was that of someone with the money for good clothes, someone
who was too hip to care what she looked likea casual, old-money look
she'd noticed was a favorite with the mothers of her former schoolmates
in Greenwich, a look that she hoped would inspire a certain amount of
respect in a jewelry salesman.

She phoned the local taxi company.  As soon as she saw the cab stop at
the front door, she was out in a flash, calling "Bye, Mother, have to
meet Fiona," before her mother could stop her to ask why she wasn't
having breakfast, what had happened to her riding lesson, and why on
earth she was wearing her good suit.

"Tiffany's in Beverly Hills," Tessa told the driver, feeling a sudden
surge of freedom as the cab pulled away quickly.  She hadn't been this
excited since the audition that had won her the part of Jo.

And what if she hadn't talked Steve Miller, her business manager, into
letting her open a little checking account of her own, Tessa asked
herself delightedly.  What if every last penny of the money she'd made
were tied up in those safe investments that Steve told her would give
her financial security when she was too old to work?

"I'm young, for heaven's sake, Steve," she'd told him, amazed.

"I can play ingenues and leading ladies for another twenty years and
I'll still only be thirty-eight.  Wow, imagine, thirty-eight!

That's practically middle-aged!  Then, when it's time, I'll move into
character parts.  You'll see, Steve, I plan to get older in some
wonderful way, maybe a dignified, distinguished way, like an English
actress, or in a sexy, fascinating way, like a French actress.  I'll
play anything-mothers, maiden aunts, teachers, taxi drivers, nuns, you
name itbecause I intend to keep on working until I drop dead from real
old age one day, waiting for my close-up."

He'd laughed at her, but eventually she'd managed to get him to fork
over three thousand dollars, more money than she'd ever believed she
would have in her possession.  Tessa's never-used checkbook lay snugly
in her handbag.

The taxi stopped in front of Tiffany & Co. at the corner of the
Beverly Wilshire Hotel.  She'd never been in the store; she'd hardly
ever been to Beverly Hills, for that matter yet she didn't linger to
gape at the windows but entered eagerly, marching through the door as
if she'd done it dozens of times before.  She moved with her
characteristic walk, coltish yet swinging, both youthful and immodestly
alluring, slightly boyish but enduringly graceful-a walk she was never
to lose.

Swiftly Tessa cruised around the store, her proud head on her proud
neck set at a critical, appraising angle, as if she weren't sure there
could possibly be anything here she'd want to buy.  She took in the lay
of the land quickly.  China and silver to the right; men's watches and
cuff links at one counter; women's jeweled pins, necklaces, and
earrings at another; silver picture frames, clocks, and key chains at a
third.  No, not what she was looking for.  The salespeople all seemed
to be occupied with customers, and for a minute Tessa stood still and
looked around.  At five feet seven inches, she was so perfectly made
that she looked taller, and her disciplined posture was commanding
without her realizing it.  She made a vivid sight in her green suit:
this tall, slim girl with a treasure of almost-black hair tumbling
around her face, a face whose features were instantly translated into
beauty, no matter how little of them could be seen.

"May I be of assistance?"  asked a man's voice.  Tessa turned to see a
pleasantly smiling, reassuringly middle-aged man who had materialized
behind her.

"Yes, thank you.  I'm looking for... for a pearl necklace."

"You've certainly come to the right place," he nodded.  "Let's go over
to the back of the store.  That's where we keep our pearls."

Tessa followed him to a long counter where, under glass, lay dozens of
pearl necklaces and earrings.  She noted that there were many
differences in the size of the pearls and the lengths of the
necklaces.

"Are these for a gift or for yourself?"  the salesman asked.

"For myself," Tessa answered, the normally spontaneous tone of her
voice suddenly tentative as she realized that pearl necklaces came in
more varieties than she had ever imagined, although she'd been
daydreaming about one for over a year.

"Well then, if you can give me some idea of what you have in
mind...?"

He gestured at the abundance of choice.  If it were up to him, he
thought, he'd dip into the case and hand her as many pearls as her two
hands could hold and tell her they were a gift from an admirer.

A genuine pearl necklace I can buy for three thousand dollars,
including sales tax.  Tessa told herself, but she heard herself say, "I
really won't be able to tell you much until I try one on, will I?"

"That's absolutely right," the salesman agreed.  "Each necklace is
different from any other.  Even two necklaces that seem identical to
the naked eye will look different on your skin."  On this girl's very
white, extraordinarily perfect skin, he thought, any necklace was going
to look exquisite.  No necklace would be the best adornment of all.

"Of course," Tessa said, looking down at rows of pearls that all seemed
to be the same color.  Pearl color.

"I assume you're looking for a sixteen-inch necklace?"

"Probably," Tessa said guardedly.

"It's the most useful length, unless, of course, you have one
already."

How could she not, he asked himself?  How could such a splendid
creature, who so obviously came from a moneyed background, not have an
entire wardrobe of pearls?  Of course, she was still so young she'd
probably been borrowing her mother's.

"Why do you think sixteen inches is so useful?"  Tessa asked, not about
to admit that she'd never measured the inexpensive string of artificial
pearls she'd been given for her confirmation.  Years of hard use had
worn off their glossy surface in many places and shown them to be mere
painted glass beads.

"You can wear a sixteen-inch strand with anything from a ball gown to a
sweater," he said, trying to decide whether her amazing eyes were more
green than gray.  Tessa looked up at him.  Far more green, he decided,
a green like early spring in the forest on a day that was touched by a
faint mist.  "When you get to eighteen inches there's always the
problem of the necklace dipping under your collar."

"Then let's go for sixteen," Tessa said, relieved to have one element
isolated from the other possibilities.

'As for the millimeter...?"  The salesman paused tactfully.  The size
of the pearl determined the price.

"The millimeter," Tessa mused, not betraying the fact that she was
entirely at sea.  Was the millimeter the weight of the pearl or the
diameter?  "The millimeter, yes, naturally.  Now what would you buy, if
you were me?"

"For a young woman, I usually recommend eight and a half to nine
millimeters, not too big a pearl, not too small, and it's always
appropriate.  This strand, for instance," he said, reaching into the
case and pulling out a necklace whose pearls were only slightly bigger
than those of the old necklace she'd worn out.

"Is that eight and a half or nine?"  she asked, ignoring a definite
stirring of disappointment.

"Both," he answered.  "A discrepancy of one half millimeter is standard
in a necklace of uniform size."

"Oh, of course, because they're natural," Tessa said hastily, realizing
that pearl divers couldn't be expected to pop up out of the ocean with
a bunch of pearls that were exactly the same size.

"Not natural, no."  The salesman repressed even the hint of a smile.

"These are all cultured pearls.  You can only tell the difference if
you X-ray them.  There haven't been any natural pearls available since
the 1930s, unless you buy them at auction, and then they're fabulously
expensive."

'At auction?"  Tessa said shocked.  "Secondhand pearls?  I'd never do
that.  How would you know what you're getting?"

"Precisely.  Whereas here..."

"They're Mikimoto," Tessa finished his sentence, remembering the name
from the ads she'd seen for Mikimoto cultured pearls.

"Actually, they're not."

"No?  Hmm."  Tessa looked dubious to hide her confusion.

"These come from our special sources.  Mikimoto is a trade name and it
includes many standards of pearls, but only one standard is considered
good enough for Tiffany and Company.  Our experts eliminate all the
others, even if you, or I, for that matter, would never be able to tell
the difference."

It was her mouth, the salesman thought, that was making him ramble.  It
was just enough larger than the mouths of ordinary women to be utterly
fascinating: sharply incised at the corners yet rising to an unusual
plumpness, the deep indentation in the middle of her upper lip
precisely the right distance from the ravishingly high peaks on either
side.  No wonder she didn't wear lipstick.  It would obscure this
natural gift of all the pagan gods and goddesses.

"I think the only way for you to decide," he continued, "is to sit down
in our private room and try on a number of necklaces.  The light is
better in there."

"Fine," Tessa agreed quickly.  Out of the corner of her eye she'd
noticed several people looking at her with the kind of interest that
she'd learned meant that she'd been recognized.

The salesman unlocked the case, extracted three identically sized
necklaces, and escorted Tessa to a small room lined in gray velvet,
where there were a desk, a chair, and a large round mirror on a
stand.

He laid the necklaces out carefully on a square of gray velvet.

"Which one would you like to start with?"  he asked Tessa.

"That one," she said, pointing at random.  He undid the clasp and,
standing behind her, fastened the necklace around her neck.

Tessa fell silent in wonder.  The necklace that had looked so similar
to her old necklace was quite different as it lay on her neck, reaching
just below the hollow between her collarbones.  There was something
softly mysterious about it, as if a light were gleaming from deep
within each pearl, which made them seem slightly larger than they
were.

But the lapels of her suit held her shirt too close to her neck for her
to get the full effect, so she shrugged her jacket off quickly and
flung the silk collar of her white blouse backward, so that she could
see as much as possible.  Still her hair obscured many of the pearls,
so Tessa fumbled in her handbag for the wide elastic band she kept
there and quickly made a ponytail.

'Ahhh, that's better," the salesman approved, with what little breath
remained in his lungs after watching Tessa take off her jacket.

Just a girl, yes, but those breasts... how... how... splendid.

Still Tessa said nothing, too absorbed in the effect of the pearls to
speak.

"Not exactly what you have in mind?  Here, try these," the salesman
said, whisking the necklace away and replacing it with another.  "They
have a slightly more creamy tone.  The others leaned slightly toward
the pinkish."

"Mmm," was all Tessa could manage.

"Not these either?  Now here's a strand with a definite silvery
quality," he said, replacing the second necklace with the third.

"They all look pretty much the same," Tessa commented, finding a crisp
tone from somewhere, unwilling to commit herself to anything until she
found out what they cost.

"I'll go and get a few more strands.  You've just begun to look," the
salesman offered immediately.  As soon as she was alone Tessa examined
the tiny white price tags that hung by a thin string from each
necklace.  Each one was the same price, three thousand four hundred
dollars.  Shocked and dismayed, she sat back, trying to decide what to
say to make a graceful exit.  She wished she'd never let herself get
trapped in a private room.  Oh, what on earth was she going to do?

Especially since she'd taken up so much of the salesman's time?  But
before she had time to find the right words, the salesman was back with
three more necklaces.

"These are between twelve and twelve and a half millimeters each.

Also, they're South Sea pearls, not Japanese.  With your height, the
length of your neck, and the width of your shoulders, I suspected that
you'd probably be happier with something larger, something more
important.  Now," he asked, as he closed the clasp of one of the new
necklaces, "tell me if I'm right or not."

"Oh," Tessa said, fighting down a hysterical laugh, "you're right.

These do more for me, there's no question about that."  And they did,
oh, they did!  These were exactly the pearls she'd had in mind, these
were her dream pearls, gleaming with a pink-white magnificence,
precisely the right size, a size that made the other necklaces seem..

.dinky.

She lifted her ponytail above her head with a recklessly lovely gesture
that made the salesman restrain a gasp, and turned her head from side
to side, preening.  "Do you have hand mirror?"  Tessa asked.

In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought.  "I'd like to see these
from the side."

He produced a hand mirror from the desk and she looked at herself for
long minutes, expressionless.  "How much are they?"  she asked
simply.

That, it had suddenly come to her, was the question any normal woman
would ask.

"Fourteen thousand five hundred."

"But they're only three millimeters larger than the others.

Why should they be so much more expensive?"  Tessa asked, the necklace
giving her the courage to sound as indifferent as a duchess who had
happened to notice a sudden rise in the price of eggs.

"It's a question of time: the years and years it takes to lay down all
those layers of nacre, and then, of course, to find such a perfect
match, such luster."

"There's one problem."

"I know.  You want earrings to go with them.  That won't be a problem
at all."

"It's not that.  I have only three thousand dollars in my checking
account and I don't have a credit card.  So I'm afraid I'll have to
leave these here," Tessa sighed.  She should have known better than to
let him put them around her neck.  She'd never forget how they
looked.

"Perhaps they'll still be here when I come back... or something like
them."

"But, Miss Kent, we wouldn't dream of expecting immediate payment!

The manager is opening a house charge for you as we speak."

"He is?"  Tessa said blankly.

"Yes, he told me who you were when I went Out to get these necklaces.

I have to admit I didn't know... I rarely get to the movies.  I didn't
even watch the Oscars, but please accept my congratulations."

"A house charge?  A charge account at Tiffany's?"  Tessa breathed,
unable to believe his words.

"You can keep them on and wear them right out to lunch.  I'll just
remove the price tag for you," he said, as he quickly snipped the
thread.  "Now, they're yours!  You've made the perfect choice, if I may
say so.  Perfect!  Now, shall I bring you some earrings?  Simple studs,
perhaps?"

"I think I'd better come back later for the earrings," Tessa said,
smiling freely for the first time since she'd entered Tiffany's.

She knew she hadn't needed Fiona.  "I'm having lunch with my business
manager and I don't want him to have a heart attack."  She got up, put
her jacket back on, and took the band out of her hair, combing it with
her fingers.

Tessa Kent walked out of the private room, wearing her first real
pearls, straight into a burst of applause.  Dozens of people had
gathered around the door and were waiting to see her emerge.

Startled, she stopped, but almost immediately she threw her head back
and began to laugh triumphantly.  "Thank you," Tessa said, as she
walked easily and happily through the crowd, stopping now and then to
sign an autograph.  "Thank you all, thank you so much."

8

Agnes Horvath stood by the stove in her kitchen while the water came to
a boil for tea, listening to the confusion of laughter and squeals that
came from Teresa's room, where her daughter and Fiona Bridges were
packing for Teresa's flight to London the next day.  There she would
rendezvous for costume fittings and makeup tests with David Lean and
the cast of his new film, an epic set in sixteenth-century England, in
which Teresa would star as the young Mary Queen of Scots.  Peter
O'Toole and Albert Finney would be playing her second and third
husbands, and Vanessa Redgrave would play Queen Elizabeth, Mary's first
cousin and nemesis.  Or rather, Agnes thought with the ever-deepening
affront she had learned to mask, Tessa Kent was packing for London.

Tessa Kent the phenomenal young star, Tessa Kent, Agnes told herself
with a burst of bitterness, for whom her own name was not good
enough.

Teresa Horvath, that ingrate, her now recently-turned-twenty-year-old
daughter, had allowed herself to be rebaptized by her agent, Aaron
Zucker, an agent handpicked by Roddy Fensterwald.  Zucker had the
audacity to consider himself an expert on finding the perfect names for
his clients, if, like Teresa, they bore a name he didn't consider a
good fit with the actor's persona.  "Kent," for a girl who was
half-Irish, half-Hungarian?  "Kent?"

Zucker and Fensterwald, Agnes thought, provoked almost beyond
endurance-that unholy twosome had been entirely responsible for the
film she'd seen the previous night at a cast-and-crew screening.

They'd been not only responsible, but delighted with themselves.  Again
Fensterwald had directed Teresa-Fensterwald, that wicked, manipulative
creature who had attached himself to her daughter's career.  Agnes felt
only vast suspicion and dislike toward him, although Teresa insisted
that it was entirely normal for him to feel responsible for her success
and to consider her in many ways his creation.

Gemini Summer, it was called.  An occasion of mortal sin, she'd call
it, this piece of filth, hand-tailored for her daughter.

In Gemini Summer, she'd been cast as a temptress born, a shameless,
hot-blooded child-woman discovering the extent of her powers as a femme
fatale.  Teresa played a waitress at a summer colony for distinguished
creative people, who plunged simultaneously into love affairs with two
older men, a great writer; played by Robert Duvall, and a great
painter; played by Robert Mitchum, leading Duvall to kill himself over
her.

In her too-tight waitress uniform and the ultimately seductive shorts,
T-shirts, and bikinis that wardrobe had invented for her to wear during
her liberal time away from the kitchen, Teresa's lush young body had
been revealed more tantalizingly than if she'd been naked.  Agnes had
been so deeply shocked the previous night that she'd been literally
unable to speak after the film ended, and, in any case, Teresa had been
too surrounded by the adulation of the audience to have listened to
her.  Who was interested in the reactions of a mere mother, anyway?

Her feelings were totally unimportant.  The film was made, they weren't
going to remake it because she thought it was as vile and tawdry and
immoral a spectacle as she'd ever seen.  Her position about anything
had ceased to have the slightest meaning from the minute she'd taken
Teresa to that first audition.  From the instant Peggy Westbrook laid
eyes on Teresa, Agnes had become a nonperson.

She wasn't even treated with the attention due the goose that laid the
golden egg, she thought, her rage festering.  She was less than an
inconvenience; she simply didn't exist for them any more than the straw
of a bird's nest, once the bird has flown on its own.

She, Agnes Riley Horvath, who'd given up her own life to make her
daughter a star-a star who owed that Oscar to her mother, not to Roddy
Fensterwald, if any truth still existed-was left without any reward
more tangible than her sisters' excitement, transmitted by telephone
from three thousand miles away.

Her sisters hadn't even been envious of her, Agnes had realized
bitterly.  They'd been glowing with reflected glory, basking in it,
enjoying it thoroughly, just as they thought she must be.  Teresa's
spectacular change of fortune had been far too overwhelming to inspire
any emotions in the Riley family except astonished delight.

It wasn't fair, it wasn't fair!  The thing she'd wanted so badly had
happened, happened beyond her possible imagining, and all she felt was
emptiness and loss.  Her life was so small now, in comparison to
Teresa's, so pitifully minor key.  Utterly diminished, without even her
dreams of the future to keep her going.  Yet she was only
thirty-nine.

There was no justice on the face of the earth.  What was left to her
now?  A pious husband of fifty-six whose career had settled into an
unexciting groove, and a noisy, messy five-year-old to bring up, a
daughter with no touch of the star quality that Teresa had possessed
from the very beginning.  Maggie was just starting kindergarten and was
gone much of the day, a happy, friendly, pudgy little creature who was
as ordinary as a child could be.  True enough, she gave Agnes no
trouble, but no woman who had been the mother of Teresa Horvath could
comfort herself with daydreams about Maggie's future.

Was this life, this barren life, all she'd earned from her years of
planning and sacrifice?  Where was justice?  she cried out to
herself.

Surely there must be some accountability somewhere, some reward for
having behaved with perfect judgment and foresight, some acknowledgment
of all her sacrifice.  Oh, she knew what a priest would say.

He'd blather on about accepting the will of God and not looking for her
reward here on earth.  Sandor, too, would probably tell her to wait for
Judgment Day, she thought grimly.  That was the predictable way his
mind worked.  He'd missed his vocation, more's the pity.

True, Teresa had wanted to buy them a house and a new car and heaps of
toys for Maggie as soon as she'd heard the amount that Zucker had
negotiated for Gemini Summer, but Sandor had refused everything but the
toys, and only allowed a few of them at that.

He'd conferred with Teresa's business manager, Steve Miller, who also
handled Fensterwald's and Zucker's money, and once he'd been satisfied
that the man was highly qualified and honest, he'd informed Agnes that
he had always earned enough to support his own family and he had no
intention of taking a penny from his daughter.  She must invest her
salary sensibly, and as much of it as possible, for who knew how a
career in acting might turn out in the passage of time?

Agnes added sugar to her tea and held the cup so that it warmed her
cold hands.  Still, the laughter came from above, shutting her out,
just as she'd been shut out of everything else.

When Teresa had started working on Little Women she'd become so busy
that she might just as well have left home.  She'd left school abruptly
and against their wishes, but there was nothing they could do since she
was over sixteen.  Whatever little time she wasn't needed on the set
was devoted, under Zucker's decree, to continuing her lessons in fancy
new activities; ballroom dancing, driving a car, horseback riding, and
tennis.

Her own role, Agnes reflected as her tea grew cold, had long ago been
reduced to running a bed and breakfast, nothing more than a necessary
convenience for a daughter who grew more independent, more
self-assured, and more sophisticated every day.  It seemed as if a
glittering scarf of Teresa's triumphs, a wide mantle of sparkling stars
and silvery moons, flashed perpetually about her shoulders.

This image burned into Agnes as she watched the happy girl dashing here
and there on the rounds of her indisputably important life.

At her parents insistence, Teresa lived at home, but there was almost
no time in her existence for her family, except the meals she ate at
home.

Yet, until a few months after the release of Little Women, Teresa's
life had possessed some element of stability.  Until she won the Oscar
in her first film role, the development of her career; even the
time-devouring lessons, were on a level that could be comprehended.

But after the win, media madness had taken over and Teresa,
unforgivably, had blossomed visibly every day yet maintained her poised
excitement during every second of it, as if all the attention,
flattering as she laughingly admitted it was, were only normal, only
justified, only her right.  She was consumed by the blaze of glory and
the flourish of trumpets that the movie industry reserves for its
newest royalty.

A Town Car and driver were at her beck and call.  Fiona Bridges worked
with the fashion designers whose clothes Teresa wore for her frequent
appearances at premieres and award shows, chose her escorts, directed
the girls who answered her mail, arranged time for journalists and
photographers from all over the world, all with the advice of the
publicity firm Roddy Fensterwald had recommended.

And now Teresa would be off, flying away to England with more brilliant
success in sight... Mary Queen of Scots and Queen of the Isles, that
most tenacious of Catholic queens, that passionately devout Queen..

.just the sound of the words was deeply romantic.

Agnes sighed heavily, unable to bear her own dreary life.

"We're starving, Mother."  Teresa said, bounding into the kitchen.  "Is
there anything to eat?  Packing is hungry work."

"Finished already?  But you'll be gone for months and months."

"All done!  Fiona decided that almost all of my clothes just won't do,
and anyway, I can buy whatever I need over there.  I'll be in costume
much of the time and she can always shop for anything I need.  For big
nights, designers will send me stuff."

"How convenient," Agnes said, glaring at Fiona, who didn't pay the
slightest attention in her bland blondness, her impudent good humor;
the efficiency that nothing blunted.  It was Fiona who'd taken the
place that rightfully belonged to Agnes.  She was the lucky one who had
all the fun and excitement of being intimately associated with a star;
without carrying the burden and expectations of having to be the star
herself.  She, Teresa's mother, could have done anything Fiona did and
done it better; Agnes thought in cold hurt.

"Mother?  Food?  I don't see anything interesting in the fridge, only
boring old leftovers and the stuff you're making for dinner tonight-at
least I guess that's what it is."

"Try calling room service," Agnes snapped and left the kitchen
abruptly.

'Agnes," Sandor said that night, after Maggie had been put to bed,
"What happened with you and Teresa this afternoon?"

"Nothing 'happened."  I barely saw her.  You spent more time with her
than I did before she and that Fiona creature went off together; who
knows where?"

"She told me that you'd been upset with her because she and Fiona
invaded your domain demanding something to eat and she thought you were
absolutely right, that you shouldn't be expected to cater to her when
she's almost never home.  She asked me to tell you that she was sorry
to have been so thoughtless.  She also said that when this next
picture's over and she gets back to Hollywood, she's going to move out,
get her own place, and become responsible for herself the way she
should be at her age.

"High time," Agnes said stonily, refusing to betray her feelings of
rejection.

"I didn't agree.  I believe that it's only appropriate and proper for a
young woman to live under her parents' roof until she gets married, and
I told her so."

"So?"

"She made a case for herself.  She said that first of all, legally now
that she's twenty, there's nothing wrong with her living in her own
home with Fiona to keep her company.  But even more important was the
fact that it doesn't make the slightest sense for us, in this small
house, to be bothered with her constant phone calls.

What's more, she needs space for bigger closets, a guest suite for
Fiona, and space for a secretary to work.  She wants room to entertain
and a private space for business conferences.  Obviously they'd both
talked it all out, every detail.  Finally I realized that Teresa made
sense, much as I don't like it.  We simply don't live in the style to
accommodate the traffic and service a movie star has reason to
expect.

There's every reason why Teresa needs her own establishment and some
sort of staff."

"Establishment'-I imagine that's a highfalutin word she used, or did
she learn it from that degenerate, that pervert, Roddy Fensterwald?"

"Agnes!  What does he have to do with her moving out?  I disapprove
totally of what he is, but I believe that he sincerely wants the best
for Teresa-he's devoted to her-he's used all his skills to advance her
career.  How could she possibly have won an Oscar without his casting
her and directing her?"

"Without me she'd have no career at all," Agnes said savagely.

"And as for Fensterwald, who was responsible for that degrading piece
of pornography we saw last night?"

"Now you know why I wouldn't allow you to take her to New York to be
seen by talent agents when she was twelve, Agnes.  I remember how
frustrated and resentful you were then, but I knew that beauty is
always exploited, even that of a twelve-year-old, and I prevented it as
long as I could."

"So you approve of Gemini Summer?"

"Of course not!  But it's out of our hands.  We have to accept that, no
matter how much we hate it...

"Damn you, Sandor!  For a lifetime you insist that everything in our
lives be as strictly Catholic as if you were the Pope's brother; and
then, when you see Teresa becoming rich and famous, you suddenly turn
into a philosopher!  She's a sinner, Sandor, a sinner; have you
forgotten?  And she'll sin again once she lives in that "establishment"
she talked you into."

"I've forgiven the sin, Agnes, I've told you that before.  Once the
Church of Christ forgave her, once she received the Sacrament of
Reconciliation, who was I not to forgive her?"  Sandor asked, trying to
keep his temper.  "Since that time, Teresa has never been alone with a
young man, as far as either of us knows.  Her "dates" are all arranged
by the publicity people and she's always in a group.

She's never been kissed except on the set with dozens of crew members
watching.  I consider her chaste, even if her film wardrobe was
disgusting.  But you've never forgiven, never forgotten, have you?"  he
said, his voice trembling with anger.  "You've been clinging to your
anger for years, holding and nourishing that anger in your breast, and
that, Agnes, is most clearly a sin in the eyes of the Heavenly
Father."

"Don't you try to tell me how to live in the eyes of God," she shouted,
flooded with fury at the lofty, holier-than-thou voice in which he
spoke, which always showed her so clearly that he considered her a less
devout Catholic than he.  "I'm the one who preserved our family's
standing, I'm the one who figured out what to do about Maggie, I take
care of her every day of every year.  I had the vision to work and plan
to give Teresa her chance, what would she be without me but another
single mother with a kid to bring up..."

"Oh but you're proud, Agnes.  You constantly commit the sin of
presumption, you think you can save your soul without God's help....

Have you ever prayed to stop being angry at our daughter?

Have you ever confessed that anger to a priest?  Of course you haven't,
because it's still with you and you can't let yourself give it up.

Agnes, you're consumed by the deadly sin of envy.  You envy our
daughter her success.  I see it on your face every day.  Envy and
pride, two of the deadly sins, Agnes, the mortal sins, the capital
sins.

Can you deny them?"

"You know nothing about me and you never have," she retorted, drawing
herself up in rage and scorn.  "But you, Sandor; have you looked at
yourself?  Where are your precious spiritual values now?  Drowned in
the sin of covetousness, that's where.  Not for yourself but for your
daughter.  You've become greedy for her; willing for her to flaunt
herself in any piece of trash if it pays well enough."

"Covetousness," he said slowly, shock on his fine features,
"covetousness.... I hadn't thought, but perhaps you're right.  I hadn't
seen that in myself, but yes, it's not impossible... I'll discuss it
with Father Vincent tomorrow, face-to-face in the rectory, the way we
do now."

"Enjoy yourself, Sandor.  Split hairs like a couple of cardinals.

Perhaps Father Vincent will give you a little red biretta for your
qualms of conscience.  I'm going upstairs.  I'll sleep in Maggie's
room.

"Brian," Sandor Horvath said to his friend, Brian Kelly, Maggie's
godfather.  "We've come to know each other pretty well in the past few
years, wouldn't you say?"

"Sure thing, Sandy.  I'm only sorry that our wives haven't managed to
hit it off better.  When that happens it keeps couples from seeing as
much of each other as I'd like."

"But at least you and I don't have that problem.  I look forward to our
lunches more than you realize."

"Same here, Sandy.  Is there something wrong?  You don't sound happy at
the moment."

"Nothing wrong, just a favor I'd like to ask you, in your capacity as a
godfather."

"Ask away."

"I've written a letter I'd like to have delivered thirteen years from
now, if I'm not around to deliver it myself."

"Come on, quit kidding."

"I'm perfectly serious."

"Delivered to whom?"

"Maggie."

"You're not talking about a will?"

"You don't need a godfather for that, Brian."

"All right, assuming that you're not around, which isn't going to
happen, what about Agnes?"

"It doesn't concern her.  It's between me and Maggie.  That's why
you're the one person I can count on to make sure this letter gets to
her; wherever she might be, when she's eighteen."

"Give it to me and forget about it, unless you change your mind.  I'll
keep it in my safe-deposit box until she's almost eighteen.

It's not a date I'm likely to forget, is it?  And if, God forbid, I'm
not around myself, I'll have arranged for it to be delivered.  People
with as many kids as I have keep their wills in good shape... every
year or so I disinherit another kid.  Keeps them on their toes."

"You're not curious about what's in the letter?"

"Of course I am, but I know you wouldn't go to this trouble if it were
something you could tell me."

"Thank you, Brian, you relieve my mind more than I can tell you."

"I'm glad to help, Sandy.  We all love Maggie, you know.

Whenever she comes over to play the kids can't get enough of her.

What a funny little doll she is!  Now, let's order and talk about
something important, like my golf game."

9

Yesterday, David Lean had told her that Mary Queen of Scots was the
first woman known to have played golf, Tessa thought, trying to keep
her mind occupied with that bit of trivia.  Was the young queen also
the first woman to have almost frozen to death in a room of the royal
apartments of Edinburgh Castle while waiting for the sun to come from
behind a cloud, or would Tessa Kent enjoy that distinction, she
wondered?

Clad in the elaborate construction of a dressing gown, fit for a
nine-months-pregnant queen, with the great necklace of black pearls
Mary always wore, and a mound of padding on her belly, Tessa stood
motionless, framed by an imposing medieval window.  Every rampart and
sentinel tower of the castle was penetrated by the chill of hundreds of
years of Scottish weather.  The castle's dramatic height above the city
exposed it to the wild wind whistling in from the sea.

Tessa, riveted to her mark by the window, from which there was a
270-foot sheer drop down basalt cliffs, told herself firmly that it was
a warm afternoon in mid-June of 1566 when no woman of the period, much
less a robust, hot-blooded, golfing queen, could possibly have felt the
cold.  Alas, she wasn't royal; she didn't golf; and her blood must have
been thinned by years of exposure to the California climate, Tessa
realized, despite her best attempts at time travel.

After all, Macheth had murdered Duncan not far from where she stood and
what's more, she hadn't been warm, except in bed under two quilts,
since the film company had arrived in Scotland.

Behind her she felt the tension of a unified crew praying for the
precious rays of light to return, all conversation stilled in
anticipation, every technician at the ready, the camera operator ready
to roll film as soon as the director spoke.  There was no question of
her being replaced by her stand-in because of the potential waste of
time.  There were barely ten seconds left to be shot in this scene as
the queen looks through the window into the distance of the Firth of
Forth and speculates aloud about the importance of the sex of her
anticipated child; but they needed those ten seconds to set the scene
for the birth of the baby boy, James VI, who eventually became James I
of England, heir to Queen Elizabeth I. Thank God, Tessa thought, for
the next two days the script called for her to be in labor with
James... that should be warmer work.

She began to shiver; slightly but uncontrollably.  She didn't dare turn
her head or move so much as a fingertip, for that would interrupt the
continuity of the scene.  She could only hope that when the sunlight
reappeared, the shivering would stop as she became Mary Queen of Scots
again.  She should never have allowed her attention to wander during
this pause in the work, it was totally unprofessional, she scolded
herself.  Suddenly Tessa heard the sound of quick footsteps moving
toward her and, almost before she could wonder that anyone would dare
to move on the set, she was engulfed in a heavy garment, deliciously
warm from body heat, held around her tightly and protectively by a
man's strong arms.

"What the hell do you expect from this girl, David?  Death in the line
of duty?"  a voice shouted as the sun appeared.

"You bloody, bloody fool!"  her director screamed.  "Take that thing
off her and get the hell out of my set, you ass!"

"Can't," the strange voice said calmly.  "There seems to be a button
tangled in her wig."

"Wardrobe!"  someone shouted, and Tessa felt quick, familiar fingers
attempting to separate her wig from whatever was enveloping her so
comfortingly.  She stood as still as a mannequin until the coat was
removed.

"Now look at her," the wardrobe woman cried in despair.  "The wig's all
crooked and her necklace is broken!  Hair, props, quickly!"

"Never mind, we've lost the light," David Lean said with immense
frustration.

"Shit, I didn't realize..."  the strange voice said.

"If I thought you had, I'd kill you with my bare hands, you crazy son
of a hitch.  Oh, Tessa, sorry.  You can move now.  Eddie, tell everyone
it's a wrap for today."

Tessa turned, expecting to see the intruder being manhandled roughly
off the set.  Instead, he and Lean were wrapped in a laughing bear
hug.

"Next time you do that, Luke, I'm throwing you headfirst through the
nearest window."

"Just keeping an eye on my investment, David.  You should really have
somebody posted to keep out people like me," her would-be rescuer
replied.  "I didn't know you were shooting; there wasn't the slightest
sound in here."

"You might have asked yourself why we were all standing around holding
our breath, but all you saw was a lady in distress.

I expect nothing less of you.  Tessa, this is Luke Blake, unfortunately
one of my most cherished friends.  Luke, this is Tessa Kent."

"I appreciated feeling warm, even if it was only for a second," Tessa
said, taking the hand he held out to her.  It was the single warmest
object she'd felt in three months, she thought, but she couldn't very
well stand there and slip both her hands into its shelter as if it were
a muff.  Although she'd dearly like to, more than anything she could
possibly think of.  With her hand in this man's hand she felt more than
warm, she felt safe, she thought in confusion safe in a way she
couldn't begin to explain, safe in a way she'd never felt before in her
entire life.

Unconditional safety was not a state of being but a state of emotion,
Tessa realized suddenly, an emotion stronger than any other; and until
this very minute, unknown to her.  A feeling of amazing discovery was
rising in her chest, so powerful that she was afraid she was going to
burst into tears.  Such a thorough conviction...

how was it possible?  Her eyes sought Luke Blake's.  Warmth was in
them, too, a warmth as powerful as any force of nature, not the
physical warmth of his hands but human warmth, telling her that he
approved totally of everything about her and always would.  His gaze
had intelligence and humor, but it was the warmth that was
all-important.  Luke Blake must be the most likable man in the world.

No wonder David Lean had forgiven him for spoiling the shot.

"Here, have my coat back," Luke Blake said.  He was big and burly in
his heavy ribbed wool sweater; with dark red, curly hair; cut very
short; open, weathered features; a dominant nose; and a most
authoritative flash in his blue eyes.  He was obviously an urbane man,
yet he had the look of someone who spends his life outdoors, Tessa
thought, to say nothing of the unmistakably commanding set to his
shoulders and his interestingly firm, imperious mouth with amused
corners.

"Tessa's going right down to wardrobe," the director replied.

"Have it anyway, you don't need to freeze on the way there," Blake
insisted, helping Tessa carefully into his duffel coat, giving her
padded stomach a friendly pat.  "Hello, James, you little rotter," he
said.  "Never even protested when Auntie Elizabeth cut off your
mother's head, did you?  Kids-always looking out for themselves."

Australian... why did it take me so long to realize?  Tessa wondered as
his slight but perceptible accent registered.

"Why, Luke, can you possibly have been reading history?"  Lean asked in
amusement.

"Certainly.  Enough so that I know what happens to Mary after the
film's over.  I don't have tunnel vision, unlike you, David, I get
interested in these characters.  When you're finished with Mary you'll
be roaring off with another script and another bunch of actors,
forgetting that poor girl imprisoned by her cousin for twenty years,
you can't deny that."

"You make me feel like a savage," he laughed.

"All directors are savages, couldn't be such heartless buggers if they
weren't, letting Miss Kent stand there covered in goose bumps.

You're a disgrace.  I'm almost ashamed to know you.  However; in view
of the past, dinner tonight?"

"Of course."

"Good-bye, Mr. Blake," Tessa said, resisting the pull of the wardrobe
mistress.  Maybe he'll invite me too, she thought.  "How should I get
your coat back to you?"

"Don't give it a thought, I have others.  Anyway, aren't you and I
planning on dinner tomorrow night?  We can discuss it then."

"You're staying around?"  Lean asked, in surprise.

"Indefinitely.  If I'm welcome."

"I warn you, one false step and I'll glue you to the floor."

"A small price to pay."

"Tell me about her, David," Luke Blake asked as they sat down to
dinner; without formality or preliminary.

"You might at least ask how I am, and how the film's going, it's your
twenty-five million pounds that's paying for it, as I remember."

"Bloody details.  Tell me about Tessa Kent and stop playing games,
cobber," Luke said, grinning fondly at the great director.

"She's out of your class, boy."

"Who decided that?"

"Everyone.  I've known you too long.  You have a bad record.

Forty-five years old and never married, the man who's kept half the
available great ladies of the last quarter century.  A famous moving
target who, to my knowledge, has never come close to love as we mortals
define it.  You're asking about a barely twenty-year-old kid who's more
innocent than any actress I've ever worked with, a girl who still lives
at home.  Not your kind of material, old friend, not in your wildest
dreams.  Not bedable, not keepable, not obtainable at any price.

"So it would seem."

"Don't even think about it," he said warningly.

"And I thought you were a pal, David."

'As a pal, I'm asking you an important question: Why make yourself
miserable?  There are some things in life, even in the life of Luke
Blake, that not only can't happen and won't happen, but shouldn't
happen, and Tessa Kent is one of them."

"'Shouldn't'?  I don't see where you get the authority or the bloody
nerve-to make that judgment."

"The age difference."

"Besides that?"  he said, waving it away.

"She's a virgin."

"I have to admit that you're never wrong on that score."

"And a Catholic."

"Well, so am I as a matter of fact, lapsed thirty years ago, but still
a cradle Catholic, to say nothing of having been a splendidly efficient
altar boy."

"You'd never set out to seduce a twenty-year-old virgin, Luke, that's
just not your style."  Lean laughed.

"You're right, I'm basically a good sort of chap.  What I can't stand
about you, cobber, is that you know all my weaknesses, all the decent
things about me I try to hide.  They could hurt my captain-of-industry
image."

"Not fair, is it?"

"Not at all.  Where'd the whiskey get to?"

"The waiter's bringing it.  How's the beer business, Luke?"

"Better than ever.  Who would have thought, when my sainted
great-granddad started making the stuff, that Australians would drink
absolutely any amount they could get?"

"Anybody who had brains."

"Yeah, you're right.  Dry, hot, thirsty work, being an Aussie.  It
turned out to be a lot better business move than if he'd tried to find
gold the way everyone else was doing at the time."  Luke laughed.

"Are you the richest man in Australia, Luke?"

"Damn close, David, but not my fault, just born into the right
family.

Beer was so damn good to Great-granddad, David, that the next
generation was able to buy the gold and copper mines other men had
discovered.  Then Granddad expanded into railroads and cattle ranching
and timber; leaving me old dad to move right into the oil companies and
the steel mills-amazingly complicated, a fascinating business.  What's
more, we're still selling beer to the whole world."

"What about that guy they call Bad Dennis Brady?"

"He's probably richer than I am, but he's a loafer, not interested in
making more money, spends all his time on the Riviera gambling, lets
his board of directors make all the decisions.  You'd never catch me
doing that.  I think of myself as the company's chief troubleshooter;
and we have companies all over the world now."

"Don't you consider your investing in pictures gambling?"

"It's my hobby, cobber, Or call it informed risk taking.  With you, the
risk is so substantially reduced that it almost qualifies as another
business."

"Show business is always a risk, trust me.  Your hobby's still a
hobby.

Shall we look at the menu?"

"I'm going to be late," Tessa moaned in agitation to Fiona, who was
helping her get dressed.

"So what, he should understand that you've been having a baby all day
and it takes a heap of cleaning up to look good after that kind of hard
labor."

"I hate being late," Tessa said, frantically trying to brush the last
of the tangles out of her hair.  "The hair stylist sprayed my hair
until it was plastered down, and the makeup artist went overboard-she
made me look as if I were being tortured to death instead of just
having contractions."

"You look gorgeous now, for God's sake," Fiona said.  "You've been
fussing for an hour.  Sit still in front of the mirror; I want to show
you something important."  As Tessa obediently looked at herself in the
mirror; Fiona put her finger on Tessa's nose, just below her eye, and
traced the shape of the bone leading to her eyebrow and her eyebrow
itself.  "This happens to be one of the most bewitching curves on any
face in history, a space unpoetically called an eye socket that you've
grown up with and take totally for granted.  So stop fussing with your
hair; Tessa.  What man would care about your hair when you have those
eye sockets?  And I won't even mention your smile, you know too much
about it already.  What's the matter with you, anyway?  Luke Blake's
got to be more than twice your age, and let me tell you, the man's been
around the block a time or two or ten."

"You're nothing but a common gossip, but since you grew up reading the
English tabloid press, I shouldn't be surprised."  Tessa stared at her
eye sockets with new interest.  Could Fiona possibly be right?

"Hah!  Gossip my ass!  If he dropped dead tonight, his New York Times
obit would start, 'Luke Blake, major Australian industrialist and
world-class pussy-hound, died in Edinburgh yesterday."' "Fiona, why are
you such a spoilsport?  Can't you let me enjoy myself?  I've never
gotten dressed for a real date before and you know it.  All I'm doing
is having dinner with a man who was nice enough to try to keep me
warm."

"I'm trying to warn you, in my own subtle way."

"You think he's going to try to add me to his list of conquests?"

"'Think'?  I haven't the slightest doubt of his motives.  I bet he's
never bought a woman dinner without the intention of getting her into
bed in the back of his mind-no, make that the front of his mind.  And
succeeding nine point nine times out of ten."

"Fiona, have you ever gone out with a man without the possibility of
sex, not necessarily that night, but maybe, just maybe, sex sometime,
entering into the disgusting swamp of your brain?"

"Oh!  Shit!"

"Aha!"

"You're right.  I'm as bad as any man ever born.  That is if we're not
considering obvious noncandidates, like, oh, let's see, the local
minister, or college professors, or my best friends' fathers, men like
that."

"I wouldn't trust you with any of the categories you just mentioned,
except my own father."  Tessa laughed, doing up her black velvet pants
and standing so that Fiona could zip her into her black velvet
Regency-cut jacket, trimmed with a heavy white-lace standup collar, and
cuffs that fell to her fingers.

"Come to think of it... yeah, college professors..."  She hummed
thoughtfully.  "Of course, I never went to college, so I wouldn't
know."

"Neither did I. Never even finished high school.  But there were a
couple of cute nuns at Marymount..."

"Go, meet that man, Tessa, you fool."  Fiona shooed her out of their
suite.  "He's still waiting in the lobby.  Shall I stay up for you to
come home so you can tell me all about it?"

"Goodnight, Fiona.  See you tomorrow."

"Thank you for the thermal long johns and the electrically heated
socks," Tessa said as she sat down to dinner in the small, perfectly
appointed French restaurant with tables set at a pleasant distance from
each other.  "They came this morning first thing."

"Did they help?"  Luke asked, barely able to speak as he looked at her
face framed in white lace.  She was like a portrait of a young
Renaissance princess, so radiantly, luminously beautiful that you could
study the painting for hours, yearning to have been alive when she
existed in real time.

"Actually, I had to take them off after the first half hour.  Mr.
Lean's childbirth scene was messy, sweaty stuff, but the baby's going
to be born tomorrow, thank goodness, and after that they'll be more
useful than you can imagine."

"How does a virgin know how to play a woman having a baby?"

"Exactly how do you know I'm a virgin?"

"Oh."  He fell silent and dropped his eyes in embarrassment.

"Is it common knowledge, does it show somewhere, or did you just assume
it?"  Tessa demanded, her eyes flashing mischief.

"David told me," he admitted.

"Out of the blue?  As if virgins are as rare as unicorns and you had to
be alerted when there's one in the neighborhood, like a special tourist
attraction?"

"Actually he was warning me not to pursue you."

"I hope you told him to mind his own damn business."

"Something more or less like that."

"Does he also think I'm not old enough to be let out alone with such a
hardened sinner as you?"

"Definitely that, at the very least.  Who told you I was a hardened
sinner?"

"Everybody.  It's common knowledge, as famous as my deplorable
virginity."

"Well, that makes us even, doesn't it?  Two of a kind?  Two of an
opposite kind, that is."  I'm babbling, he thought.  I'm not making
sense, except, I don't feel foolish.

"That makes us people who shouldn't even be having dinner together,"
Tessa said serenely.

"Is that why I feel so blazingly happy with you?"

"I don't know."  She shrugged her shoulders in an eloquent gesture of
lyrical, shameless ignorance.  "I don't know you at all, certainly not
what makes you happy.  I just know you're kind and good and I feel
something with you I don't feel with anybody else, not even Roddy."

"'Roddy'?"  he asked, feeling a shaft of jealousy more intense than
he'd experienced in forty-five years.

"Roddy Fensterwald.  He directed my first two pictures."

"I know him, great guy," Luke sighed in relief.  "What is it you feel
with me that you don't feel with Roddy?"

"Safe," she said quietly.  It took all her courage, but she was
determined to tell him.  "Totally and completely safe.  As if nothing
bad can possibly happen to me, as if you'll protect me from all the
frightening, hard, awful things in the world.  It's crazy, it makes no
sense at all, I've just met you, but in my whole life I've never felt
that way before.  It's like discovering that I can be a completely new
person.  It's as different as-as if I woke up and discovered I was six
feet tall and had just won the Olympic gold medal in ski jumping.  It
happened to me yesterday when we shook hands.  I decided I should tell
you because it's too important to keep secret.  I don't mean to make
you feel any sense of obligation, I don't realistically expect you to
take care of me for a single second, that's not what it's about in any
way but I wanted you to know."

"You don't frighten me."

"I wasn't trying to."

"You have to know that what you just said would scare the living Jesus
out of most men."

"I felt you were tough enough to take it, and if I'm wrong, it's better
for me to know now.  I thought about it all night."

"I thought about you all night long, too."

"What sort of things?"  she asked without coyness.

"About the facts that you're very young and a virgin.  I discovered how
amazingly important that virginity is to me, and I never knew that
about myself.  Your age isn't of consequence, you're definitely a
grown-up and that's the essential thing but the fact that you've never
made love with a man-that's different.  Altogether different.  I've
been with a lot of women, but there wasn't one of them who didn't have
some experience.  It's got to be the old altar boy in me-I have
absolutely no right at all, considering the life I've led, to prize
virginity so much.  I'm not absolutely clear on why virginity is
deeply, mysteriously meaningful, and, for me, wonderful beyond words
but it is.  Enormously.  Maybe it has something to do with my mother
and her mother.  They were both virgins when they married naturally in
those days but my mother always told me how important it would be to
her for me to marry a virgin.  I discounted it, I thought she was
simply being a good Catholic, but nevertheless she got to me.  More
than I can say."

Tell him now, Tessa thought.  Tell him now, before this conversation
goes farther.  But tell him what?  She was a virgin, in every technical
way, and giving birth hadn't changed that fact.  The three-second
episode with what's his name didn't count, couldn't possibly matter,
she'd been drunk and not responsible and it wasn't remotely sex.

The only kisses she'd ever experienced had been before a camera.

She'd never even been allowed to go out on an unsupervised date.

There was nothing to tell, except the part she'd confessed and been
absolved of; and that was between her God and herself.  She took a deep
breath and sat back in her chair, glad to forget the ridiculous,
self-defeating idea of telling him the truth.

"Is that what makes you feel happy with me, my all-too-much-discussed
state of virginity?"  Tessa asked with wry curiosity.

"I felt that way almost before I knew damn-all about you except that
you were freezing.  It started right after I put my coat around you.

It's something about your eyes and your smile and your voiceif I'm not
careful I'm going to sound like lyrics to a Gershwin song, minus the
wit and invention."

"All those women you've had, did they make you happy?"

"Not one, not truly, or I'd have married her."

"You don't frighten me, either," Tessa said as lightly as she could,
suppressing a tremor with her actress's skill.  She had to change the
subject or the surprising, inexplicable tears of joy that menaced her
might rise to the surface.  She felt atoms of happiness swirling and
churning and slowly turning into a solid pillar somewhere in her
chest.

"What sort of things do you like to do?"

"Sail a small boat and fly a small plane," he said, thinking of
priorities, "and marinate a rack of homegrown lamb in my homemade
sauce, and dance a samba in Brazil and eat a Peking duck at Mr. Chow's
in London and read until three A.M. and go to auctions and ski the fall
line and, oh, I almost forgot, kiss pretty girls.  And take care of my
business.  What about you?"

"Me?  Not fair!"  Tessa said indignantly, instantly jealous of his
easily produced list of delights that included so much enviable
experience that had nothing to do with her.  "I haven't had time to
choose what I'd like to do because I've been so busy taking the lessons
Roddy and Aaron decided I should take.  I can dance, but not a samba,
whatever that is.  I love to read, but I don't even know what a Peking
duck looks like.  You're overprivileged, Luke Blake.  Where do you
live?"

"Here and there, more or less.  I have a place in Melbourne and another
in Cap-Ferrat, near Monaco, but I rarely spend more than a few weeks in
Australia and a few weeks in the South of France every year.  That's
where I go to sail and unwind.  I have business all over the world, so
I roam about, living in hotel suites most of the time."

"What sort of business?"

"Mining, milling, brewing, finding new ways to dig things out of the
earth."

"Why can't you just leave the earth alone?"  she said, provokingly.

"I often wonder.  My great-grandfather started it and I'm trapped in
the family business.  Now too many people depend on me to even think of
stopping."

"Under the circumstances, with all this rape of the planet you're
hopelessly involved in, in spite of certain philosophic reservations,
for which I give you very little credit, don't you think we might have
something to eat?"

"Did I forget to order?"  he asked in wonder.

"Not even a drink."

"Lord, I'm sorry.  What will you have?"

"I'll try a Blake's, see what all the fuss is about."

"You've never had a Blake's?"

"Never had a beer, actually."

"Why the hell not?  You're hurting my feelings."

"I used to experiment with real liquor when I was a kid, a day student
at a convent, and I was being naughty with my friend Mimi, but
then...

we stopped... and I haven't had a drink since, except for sips of
champagne at family weddings.  I've lived at home, you see, until I
left for location on this picture, and my parents never keep liquor
around, so I didn't drink on dates-well they weren't date dates, just
publicity things."

"Lucky David didn't know about all this.  He'd have locked you in your
room, and me in mine.

"Don't tell him anything!  My reputation's too good as it is."

"Waiter, two Blake's, please."

"I'll try, sir," answered the waiter in the most authentically French
restaurant in the aristocratic, sophisticated old city.

"But I'm not sure we have that particular brand of beer."  Amazing, he
thought, why don't they ask for Coca-Cola while they're at it?

"Shocking.  Well then, bring us a bottle of champagne.  I'm sure you
have Dom Perignon.  What shall we drink to, Tessa?"

"My first real grown-up date," she said with decision.

"You don't mean-you can't mean-me?"

"You.  And about time, I think."

"Good God in Heaven!"

"Yes, indeed."

10

The next morning Tessa was pulling on her jeans and sweaters for her
early-morning wardrobe call when Fiona came in with a note and a bunch
of pallid daffodils.  Tessa tore open the note, read it twice, turned
quickly, and hurled the daffodils into a wastepaper basket.

"He's gone!"

"What?  Let me see that."  Fiona grabbed the slip of paper and
muttered, "Have to leave for London suddenly, hotel florist not open,
hope you like daffodils, keep warm, et cetera, et cetera."

"Do you believe that?"  Tessa raved.

"I still don't know how last night ended," Fiona said, reaching for a
pragmatic tone.

"He brought me back to the hotel, escorted me up to the door to our
suite, looked into my eyes for a very long time, as if he were
memorizing them, kissed me gently on the top of my head, and abruptly
left, leaving me standing there stupidly waiting-I don't know what I
expected but it was definitely not that after we'd both said
things...

things that I thought meant... obviously I was wrong...

meant that we liked each other very much.  More than very much.

Oh, Fiona, we weren't flirting, I was so sure of that.  We were
speaking from our hearts."

Tess a's eyes were full of incredulous disappointment, deception, and
disbelief.  She felt utterly abandoned in a way so basic that she could
barely comprehend what had happened.  How could she ever reconcile last
night's long dinner, and the intimate, serious, revealing conversation
that had lasted until late in the evening, with the note she'd just
received?  Until she'd read it, she'd been plunged into a pool of
tremulous emotion, so new in her experience of life that she'd been up
all night long, alternately examining everything she had said to Luke
and Luke had said to her, reliving every detail, abandoned to her
happiness, her heart so full that she'd wept for joy and laughed at
herself and wept again.

"But Tessa, he doesn't say he isn't coming back," Fiona said, as
briskly as she could, but still sounding only a hollow note of hope.

"When?  The very next time he has business in Scotland.

Between trains in five years."  Tessa abandoned her attempt at brittle
scorn and cried out, "What kind of man could do a thing like this?

What kind, Fiona?  Can you explain it?  You've been around, you know
men.  Is it typical, is it something I should have expected?  He 'had
to leave for London'?  Why didn't he even mention that detail last
night when he was so busy telling me how blazingly happy yes, those
were the words he used-I made him?  Can you think of a single reason,
even one, that makes any sense?  I know that Mr. Lean expected him to
stick around for a while.  He mentioned that yesterday."

"Damn, I was afraid of this," Fiona said viciously.  "A bloody
hit-and-run driver."

"You were so right.  And you can say 'I told you so' as much as you
want to.  I deserve it.  Oh, what a fool I was!"

"At least he didn't get the pearl of precious price."

"That's probably why he left, it's the only thing that I can think of
to explain his running away.  He has a virgin fixation.  I believe that
in his crazy, mixed-up mind I'm too pure, I'm taboo, somebody he
shouldn't possibly have anything to do with.  Not even a kiss on the
lips.  Messing with a virgin is against whatever religion he has left,
he said it as flatly as that."

"Tessa darling, I'm sick that you've been so badly hurt, but Luke Blake
wasn't for you and you knew it all along.  Come on, admit it.

My God, the guy's middle-aged and more than lived-in.  You're ten
thousand times too good for him, too young, too fresh, too talented,
with too many wonderful things that are going to happen to you.

Your life's just beginning.  What did you see in him, anyway?  It's
just one of those location things, happens all the time.  And what's
this virgin fixation all about.  It's utterly ridiculous!"

"He'd heard, as apparently everybody in the whole of show business has,
that I'm a virgin, and he's a lapsed Catholic, thirty years lapsed,
which is plenty lapsed, believe me, but it's still left him with a
major complex about the marvel of virginity.  Sick, that's what it is,
sick!  Oh, I hate him!"

"The bastard's not worth hating.  Don't waste your energy.

You're going to be late as it is and you have a long day's work.

Come on, let's go.  They'll feed us in wardrobe and that's what we
need, both of us.  Daffodils!  Those grimy little things.  It would
have been better to have sent nothing.  It's odd, but I feel personally
insulted."

"You know what's really and truly the worst thing about all this,"
Tessa asked Fiona in a flood of fresh misery as they were driven up to
the castle.  "I can't trust my instincts ever again."

"I don't see why.  You can't trust your reactions to this particular
man, I agree, but instincts in general, why not?"

"I had a feeling, an overpowering feeling about him, as soon as I met
him.  He made me feel, don't laugh Fiona, but he made me feel
completely, wonderfully... ....... safe in a way that changed my whole
life.  That sounds impossible now, but it happened.  I thought I
couldn't be wrong.  You can't imagine how intimately we talked.  I told
him so many things, things I thought, things I hoped, things I believed
in.  In fact, I even told him about how he made me feel in considerable
detail... I probably should never..."  Tessa faltered and stopped.

"If you ask me-" Fiona bit her lip in dismay and wished she'd never
indicated that she had an opinion.  Tessa was so young, so
inexperienced, so protected, such a child in so many ways, God knows
what she'd said to that hardened charmer, words that any other woman
would have learned not to voice long ago.

"What?  Go on, you're older and wiser, what?"

"You're right, you shouldn't have told him.  It wasn't just the
untouchable virgin thing that sent him flying away, it was the idea of
responsibility.  You made him responsible for your emotions, and what
kind of guy can accept such a heavy trip from someone he hardly knows,
no matter how he feels?  He just couldn't take it.

The proof is his history, not even a divorce to his credit.  I hate to
use that awful word 'commitment,' but I'll bet this is a man who's
frightened to even have a dog, much less a woman, in his heart.

Listen, Tessa, you're still in one piece, that's the important thing.

Men aren't as courageous about emotions as women, remember that."

"Or as smart or as sweet," Tessa said, hugging Fiona.

"Too true, love.  I just wish we didn't have those crazy moments when
we forget that."

Three days later, on a Saturday afternoon, Tessa found herself alone in
her suite.  Fiona had just left for the orgy she'd promised herself all
week, a cashmere shopping trip in the heart of cashmere country, but
Tessa was too deeply plunged into depression to feel any temptation to
go with her.  She'd slept only fitfully and eaten almost nothing,
unable to stop going over the fatal dinner in her mind.  Only sheer
discipline had enabled her to get out of bed each morning and go to the
set.  All her energy had bled away, except what she had to summon for
the camera.  Worried, Fiona had threatened not to leave her alone this
afternoon, until Tessa had convinced her that she'd feel guilty for
life if Fiona missed this opportunity.

She didn't want a single sweater or scarf that reminded her of
Edinburgh, Tessa thought apathetically.  She couldn't wait to leave
Scotland next week after the film wrapped and she was free to return to
gloriously warm Los Angeles.  What she needed was a good book.

She all but dragged herself over to look through the large, tempting
stock of paperbacks she'd brought with her.  Nothing seemed remotely
readable, although she'd chosen the books carefully before leaving
California.  Like many actresses, Tessa had learned early the advantage
of having a good book always on hand for the inevitable waiting around
that takes place on even the busiest film set.

"You should learn to play solitaire," she said out loud to her
reflection in the mirror.  Her eyes, in the clear northern light,
seemed more distinctly green than ever, although they never lost their
faint overlay of gray, like the most illusive wisp of smoke through a
tropical rain forest.  "Eye sockets," she said mournfully, "a hell of a
lot of difference they made."

The phone rang.  "Mr. Blake would like to know if he may come up, Miss
Kent," the concierge said.

"No!"  Tessa slammed down the phone, her depression turned into a
lightning strike of pure rage.  What was he doing here?

Come back to feast his eyes on a virgin, like some sort of vampire?

Come up to say good-bye forever, I'm off to fly my plane around the
world, come up to tell her about the delights of the latest Peking duck
he'd gorged himself on in London?  Or the dozen pretty girls he'd
kissed?

She wouldn't bother to spit on his shadow.

The phone rang again.  "What is it this time?"  Tessa asked
furiously.

"Mr. Blake would like to know when it would be convenient for you to
see him."

"Never!  Never, tell him that, tell him I said never, and I mean
never!

And don't call me again.  I've been working all week, I'm trying to
rest and you keep interrupting me, don't you understand that?"

"I'm most dreadfully sorry, Miss Kent, it won't happen again.  I'll put
a 'Do Not Disturb' on your line."

"Do that."

She was so angry she found herself pacing the floor, unable to sit
still.  They say that murderers can't keep away from the scene of the
crime.  Come to gloat, had he, she thought bitterly?  Not if she knew
it!

There was a knock on the door.

"Yes?"  Tessa said neutrally.  It was probably the maid.

"Let me in, Tessa," Luke Blake demanded.

"I will not."

"What's wrong with you?  Didn't you get my note?"

"It came."

"Then why won't you let me in?"

"I don't want to see you.

"That's impossible, of course you do."

"God damn!  Get away from my door or I'll have you thrown out of the
hotel."

"I own this hotel."

"Is that supposed to be some sort of threat?  It's as unimportant as
everything else about you.  I don't care if you own this whole
miserable city!"

"Tessa!"  he shouted, his voice severe in its demand.

She didn't answer, waiting for him to leave.  Several minutes passed
before she heard his footsteps retreating.  In less time than seemed
possible, Tessa heard the tramp of heavy footsteps and a shout of
warning to stand back, then saw the door to her suite splinter under an
assault from two burly firemen armed with axes.

"It's in the bedroom," Luke directed them.  As they rushed to the
bedroom he looked at Tessa, open-mouthed and immobile in shock,
standing in her old, quilted pink bathrobe.  "I should have guessed
it," he said finally.  "You detest daffodils."

"Are you insane?"

"Probably.  But what does that have to do with it?"

"I have nothing to say to you.  Get out of here, you and those
firemen."

"Chaps?"

"Yes, Mr.  Blake."

"It's okay, Miss Kent managed to put it out herself.  I'll have the
door put right tomorrow."  He tipped them and sent them off.

"Tessa, I'm utterly hopeless at writing to people, I should have
called..."

"There was nothing to say."  She tightened the sash of the bathrobe
around her waist and grew taller in freezing dignity as she looked at
him with biting scorn, her eyes dismissing him as the smallest and
least worthy of any pitifully abject creature that has ever crawled on
the face of the earth.

"But, at dinner-" "Forget that dinner, wipe it out of your mind.  I was
feeling exceptionally vulnerable, I said things I didn't mean..  I was
being actressy.  . over the top, I didn't realize how far over I'd gone
or how ridiculous I'd been until it was too late.  Obviously you're
accustomed to saying things you don't mean, you've been doing it for a
long time, haven't you?  I didn't understand that since I haven't met
your kind of man before, fortunately for me.  Once is more than
enough."

"Tessa, I meant every word."

"Oh, please, Luke, that's not necessary," she said, producing a
marvelously indifferent ghost of a smile.  "I don't need your empty
reassurance, although why you feel the need to repeat your performance
is beyond me.  Does this amuse you in some twisted manner?

I'm tired, and I'd like you to leave at once.

"God, I'm a fool!  You couldn't have known, no wonder you're acting
like an avenging angel."

"Known what?"

"I went to London to get something for you, something important I'd
known existed for years, but the man I thought had it said he'd just
sold it, so I had to go to New York and it turned out I had the wrong
information so I had to go to Geneva.  I got there in the nick of time,
Sotheby's was selling it at auction the next day, so I had to stay
overnight.... Anyway... here it is."

He took a small blue leather box from his pocket and tried to give it
to her.

"I don't want anything from you," Tessa said, recoiling.

"I keep getting it wrong."  Luke hit himself on the forehead in
frustration.  "I've never done this before; I don't have any
practice.

Could I start over?"

"I asked you to leave," Tessa repeated, with no hint of thaw in the
glacial hardness of her voice.

"Tessa, hear me out," Luke demanded, standing foursquare in the middle
of the room.  "Before we even had dinner I knew that you and I were
going to get married.  I'd given up hoping that I'd ever find a woman I
could love, and then, you-you, Tessa, you happened to me.

One word from you and from that second on there was never the slightest
doubt about it in my mind.  I knew, spot on.  My God, that sounds as if
I think this is all about me and what I want, but it isn't.

It's about you, too.  So I decided it had to be something special, your
engagement ring I mean.  That's what's in the box."

"You've spent three days chasing after an engagement ring for somebody
you've never even asked to marry you?  Is this some kind of playboy's
bad joke?"  Tessa asked, so armored against him that she was unable to
recognize the sound of truth in his words.

"Don't you want to marry me?"  Luke asked, surprise in his voice for
the first time.

"Marry you?  How would I know something as important as that after one
dinner?"  Tessa responded, with the first possibility of belief.

She had fought against hope from the moment she'd received his letter;
refusing to let hope enter her mind was the only way she knew to deal
with her deception.

"It was much more than dinner," Luke said relentlessly.  "You said you
loved me and I said I loved you.

"Never!"  she shouted, outraged again.  "The word 'love never passed my
lips, or yours.

"Tessa, it was the subtext of our entire conversation, of every word we
said to each other," he insisted.

"No, it was not!"

"Then listen to the simple text, Tessa.  I love you, you're the only
woman I've ever loved, and I insist that you marry me," Luke informed
her, more commanding than ever, his eyes dominating her eyes, refusing
to let her get away from him, continuing to defy her attempts to build
a safe emotional barrier between them.

"So, you 'insist' do you?  That's irresistibly romantic," she said as
scornfully as she could.  She must not hope.

"Answer me," he demanded.

"I don't have to," Tessa answered, holding on to her grievance as if it
were a bastion that would keep her safe from the future.

"Ah, I knew, damn it, I knew I should have called, but I was running
from one airport to another and I'm sorry you don't like daffodils-" "I
adore daffodils!"

"Don't you love me?"  Luke asked.  "Can you look at me honestly and say
that you don't?"

"I don't know how I feel," Tessa answered, maintaining her dignity.

She could refuse to hope, but she couldn't look at him and say she
didn't love him.

"Will you marry me, Tessa?"  he asked, unsmiling.

She looked thoughtful, considering the situation.  Did a proposal of
marriage constitute a basis for hope, or would she make a fool of
herself again?

"Tessa, Tessa, please say you will."  He was finally reduced to
pleading, something he didn't know how to do.  "You're driving me mad
and I know you're enjoying yourself, damn it.  Don't say you're not,
because I won't believe you.  All I want is a yes.  I don't deserve it,
but love has nothing to do with merit."

Tessa turned away, to hide the fact that her eyes had filled with tears
of joy.  Pushed to the wall, she acknowledged that she'd never been
able to truly get over the hope that he'd return, not even for a
second, not in her lowest minutes.  She finally admitted to herself
that all her life had been spent wandering around the wrong galaxy,
looking, although she hadn't known it, for this one particular man,
this one particular destiny, and no other.  It took her seconds of
intense concentration to be able to speak clearly, but she wanted her
words to be uncompromising.

"I love you totally, and I wanted to marry you the minute you took my
hand."

"Thank God," he said with inutterable relief, stepping forward,
gathering her in his arms and kissing her lips over and over until she
couldn't bear the burden of such confusing, unfamiliar rapture for
another second.  She pushed him away long enough to whisper, "Where's
that ring that's so special that you made me suicidal over it for three
days?"

"It must be here someplace."  He groped around on the floor until he
found the box he'd dropped.  Luke turned on a lamp against the twilight
that was creeping into the room and opened the lid.

Tessa looked at it mutely, as if a piece of a star had materialized in
the room.  It was a perfect heart-shaped stone, cut in facets, as big,
she thought, as a huge chunk of hard candy-and it was green, a
marvelously soft green, the most mysterious, elusive color she'd ever
seen.

"It's the color of your eyes in a certain light," Luke told her as she
stared at it, still speechless.  "It's a green diamond, the rarest of
natural colors after red, and red was wrong.  Except for the 'Dresden
Green,' this is the biggest green diamond in the world.  What's more,
it's a chameleon."

"'Chameleon'?"

"It changes color.  It's the only diamond that does so.  It turns
yellow in the dark.  I thought that would be convenient for finding you
in the middle of the night.  I knew I had to have it for you, instead
of some obvious blue-white rock."

"It's shockingly beautiful," Tessa said, daring to lean a little closer
to the ring.

"It's all right for a beginning, but just barely.  Will you put it on,
Tessa, darling?"

"It will change my life," Tessa said, with a faint, odd feeling of
reluctance.  The ring, in spite of the soft fire of its color; was as
triumphant, as regal as a queen's tiara.  Was she ready to wear it, to
carry it off?  It had implications she couldn't begin to understand,
but she knew they were buried in the extraordinary stone.

"Any engagement ring I give you will change your life, even if it's
just a cigar band."

"True," she replied, gathering the courage to extend her hand.

The ring fit her finger perfectly.  It sat there like a tame butterfly
from a magic planet far away.  Suddenly Tessa exploded in giggles.

"What's so funny?"

"Fiona!  Fiona... she said I was ten thousand times too good for you,
and I agreed..  .now how am I going to explain this?"

"Tell her she's absolutely spot on, but I bribed you."

"Luke, tell me," Tessa asked, hiding her laughter in his strong neck.

"Do you really own this hotel?"

"Not likely.  It belongs to one of Bad Dennis Brady's companies.

I just said I was him when I called the firemen so they'd come more
quickly.  People can't tell one Aussie from another; you'll find out.

Anyway, there might have been a fire, you could have been burning my
note.

"I threw it away.  Don't ever write me again," she commanded, "unless
you learn to express yourself properly."

"I'm never going to be far enough away from you to need to write."

11

"Holy shit, Tessa, you can't do it!"  Aaron Zucker screamed, holding
the phone as close to his mouth as possible-as if Tessa would be
convinced by the sheer volume of his conviction.

"Give me one good reason."  Tessa laughed.  "By the way, you're
invited, too, so get your plane tickets right away, it's only ten days
away.

"One good reason, holy shit, I'll give you twenty.  This is madness!

You have offers for the leads in the three best scripts I've seen in
years, you're the hottest new star in decades since Gemini Summer was
released, you'd be throwing away opportunities right and left that I'd
give my left nut for, you're too young, you've never left home before,
you don't know this man, in fact you don't know diddly about men in
general or, even worse, in particular, don't try to tell me you do
because I've followed every move you've made since Roddy cast you in
Little Women.  You're making a life decision without my guidance-"
"Aha, I thought that was it," Tessa chortled, delighted with herself.

"I'm getting married without my agent's approval, that's your real
problem, Aaron.  Your feelings are hurt.  When I called Roddy, he said
the same thing, almost word for word, if you substitute 'fucking
stupid' for 'holy shit."" "I'll bet your parents don't approve either,"
Aaron shouted.

"I haven't told them yet.  Isn't it any satisfaction to you to know
that I called you and Roddy with my news first?"

"Why haven't you called them?"  he asked suspiciously.  "I bet it's
because you're sure they won't approve either."

"I'm sure they'll be happy for me, so I wanted to get the two of you
fussbudgets over with first."

"And what's the big rush?  Not only don't you know the guywhy do you
have to get married ten days from now?  It's obviously not a shotgun
wedding.  I just don't get it."

"We won't have time for a honeymoon if we don't-Luke has to be back in
Australia in three weeks.  But most of all we don't want it to turn
into a circus, we want to keep it as private as possible.  No
publicity, Aaron, that's the most important thing, and you must help me
on that.  I'm counting on you."

"What did you say this guy Luke's last name was again?"  Aaron asked in
a more normal volume, hearing in Tessa's voice her determination to do
this insane thing no matter what he thought about it.

"Blake."

"Like the beer?"

"He is the beer."

"You're marrying a brewer?"  he asked incredulously.

"His great-grandfather was the brewer.  Luke's basically in mining and
other stuff too complicated to explain."

"He's THAT Luke Blake?  Holy shit!  How?  Where?  When?

What a story!"

"So now you're impressed?  So now it's all right with you, now you're
excited for me?  Aaron, I'm ashamed of you."

"Isn't Luke Blake, Tessa, come on, Luke Blake, a little...

mature...for you?"

"Nope.  We're perfect for each other.  Our ages don't matter one little
bit."

"Okay, whatever you say, but Tessa, what about your career?"

"I'll still make movies, but only one a year.

"WHAT?  Tessa, you can't mean it!  One a year... why not just retire,
turn into a little housewife and get it over with?"

"Now, now, Aaron, don't exaggerate.  Luke and I have discussed the
whole thing thoroughly.  Outside of one film a year; I'll be with him
and when I'm working, he'll stay wherever I am."

"Where will you be based?"  Aaron moaned.

"I have no idea.  Luke's a rover; he goes where the problems are, we'll
be gypsies together, with a place in Cap-Ferrat and one in Melbourne,
for whenever we both have some time off" "One picture a year."  Aaron
said, regaining a little composure.

"So you'd count on three months shooting, four maximum, plus preand
postproduction.  Well," he sighed deeply, "it might not be everything
that it could have been, considering how fast you've become a star; but
one film a year; if it's the right one, will be enough to keep your
career on a steady track."

"You're feeling better already, aren't you, Aaron?  But no scripts, no
matter how good, that need a day more than three months shooting time-I
don't want to hear a word about four-or anything but the shortest time
for hair and wardrobe beforehand, Aaron.  Do you get that?  Only send
me stuff with a predictable normal amount of looping, no location
shoots, no period scripts, no water; no kids, no animals, no
Scotland.

You'll have to be very picky or I won't consider it."

"Picky is my middle name."

"Holy Shit is your middle name.  When are you getting your plane
tickets?"

"Today, today!  But why are you getting married in Monaco?  Is your
intended a tax refugee?"

"It seems that... well, he flew down there for the day to get some
stuff he needed out of the bank and he dropped in on these good friends
who live there so he could tell them he was engaged, and they want to
give the wedding, absolutely insisted on it as a matter of fact, and
since Monaco is central enough for everybody to get to-" "Are they
anybody I'd know?"

"Princess Grace and Prince Rainier."

"Holy... cow."

Agnes put down the vacuum cleaner and picked up the phone.

"Mother; oh, Mother; I'm so glad I got you.  I didn't know if you'd be
home."  Tessa's voice didn't reveal her fluttering heart.

She knew that there would never be a good way or a good time to break
her news to her mother; but she'd nerved herself to make the call
before the news leaked out as it was bound to do, try as they might to
keep it private.  She'd used Roddy and Aaron to rehearse, to warm up,
to get used to saying the words, but hearing her mother's "hello" had
been enough to make her feel like a mistrusted child again.

"And just where did you think I'd be, Teresa?"  Agnes was as dry as if
Tessa were calling from around the corner.  Long distance worked no
wonders on her.

"Shopping, marketing, picking up the laundry, out with Maggie..."

Stop vamping, Tessa told herself sternly.  "It's not important, I'm
delighted that I reached you right away because... well, you'll
probably never believe it, I can hardly believe it myself, but I'm
engaged... engaged to get married."  The telephone air was empty.

"Did you hear me, Mother?  I said I was going to get married."

"The last time you called home, not long ago at all, you said you and
Fiona had been each other's dates for the whole picture, that you
hadn't had any other social life.  How could you possibly be getting
married?"

Agnes's voice was calm and as close as she came to indulgent.

Obviously this was another example of Tessa's impulsive,
overnightmovie-star nonsense.  Would she ever grow up?

"Look, Mother; I simply hadn't met him the last time I called.  I admit
it is sudden, but he... Luke... is so incredibly wonderful, and I'm so
happy.  I'm so certain about this, there's not the slightest doubt in
my mind... oh, you'll love him when you meet him."

She'll probably hate and disapprove of him, Tessa thought.

Just the way she hates and disapproves of Roddy and Aaron and Fiona and
anyone else important in my life, only ten thousand times more.

"Teresa, for heaven's sake, stop carrying on.  You realize, don't you,
that you haven't made any sense up till now?  Can you tell me exactly
who this miraculous stranger is, this man you've decided to marry after
knowing him for no time at all?"

"His name's Luke Blake, he's an Australian, a close friend of Mr.
Lean's, Mr. Lean says he's an absolutely wonderful guy and-" "I wasn't
asking for David Lean's testimony or opinion, Teresa," Agnes cut in.

"And how does your director happen to know about it before I do?"

"I wouldn't have told him until I'd told you but Luke was so excited
that he beat me to the punch, oh, Mother-" "I assume this Luke person
isn't Catholic, Teresa?"

Finally, Tessa thought, finally the one question I can answer in a way
that will please her without qualification.

"Luke was born and bred a Catholic.  He was even an altar boy.

We're going to have a religious ceremony in a cathedral.  That should
satisfy you, Mother, after all the worry I've been to you."

"It's a relief I'll say that much."  Agnes paused.  It was some relief
to know that there would be-presumably-less occasion for sin in
Teresa's life, but there were major drawbacks that the girl naturally
hadn't thought about, bad Catholic that she was.

"I suppose you realize that rushing into an impulse marriage with
another Catholic is much worse than if he weren't Catholic?"

Agnes said severely.  "You don't know this man, you're merely
infatuated with him.  If it's a mistake, and at your age it must be,
you'll be in a terrible situation.  If you get a divorce you could only
remarry outside the church and in that case you could no longer receive
Holy Communion.  A Catholic marriage can only be ended by the death of
one of the spouses, Teresa."

"Mother!  My God!  How can you think that way, why do you say these
things?  You'd turn the best wine into the most sour vinegar if you
could.  You sound like some gloomy old priest, not a mother!  I can't
imagine ever wanting a divorce from Luke."

She'd known it would be bad, Tessa thought, but this was worse than
she'd expected as she had tried to prepare herself for what her mother
would say.

"Of course you haven't thought about divorce.  No girl ever can be
realistic when she imagines she's in love."  She was an expert on that
particular error; Agnes thought bitterly, but it wasn't something she
would ever tell her daughter; and even if she did, Teresa wouldn't pay
attention to her.  "How old is your young man, Teresa?"

"Older than I am, but he's never been married, in fact he's never even
been truly in love before-" "I asked you how old he was, Teresa."

"Forty-five."

"Have you gone stark raving mad?"  Agnes shrieked.

"I know exactly how it sounds, I don't expect you to understand until
you've met him, but I promise you that his age doesn't matter.  We're
meant for each other."

"A man twenty-five years older than you are?  A man you admit you
barely know?  He's a middle-aged man!  'Meant for each other'in what
possible way, Teresa?  Everything you tell me makes this worse and
worse.  Can't you hear yourself?  Can't you see how wrong it is?  At
least consult that agent of yours, consult Roddy Fensterwald, get some
opinions from other people."

"I'm in love," Tessa said, barely managing to keep her voice under
control, "and I'm going to get married.  You don't have to accept it or
like it or approve of it because there's not a damn thing you or anyone
else can do about it."  Tessa was finally angry.  She refused to be
defensive about Luke with a woman as small-minded and unromantic as her
mother.

"I hope you're going to wait until you know him a great deal better,
that's my final word on the subject."

"The ceremony is in ten days.  I hope you and Father and Maggie will
come.  I'm planning on having Maggie as my flower girl.  I'll get a
bunch of dresses ready so there will be something perfect for her to
wear," Tessa announced with the composure that came of knowing that
whatever she said would make no difference to her mother now.

"Teresa, I warn you, this is the mistake of your life, and you won't be
able to count on me to get you out of it this time.  Of course, I
assume he doesn't know about your past, you're not that big a fool.

He'll never learn it from me, if you're worried on that score."

I wondered if she was going to bring it up, Tessa thought.  I shouldn't
have wondered, I should have known.  Her voice grew lilting and easy as
she changed the subject without a pause.

"We're getting married in Monaco, Mother.  Luke has a place near
there.

We've decided on a Low Mass in St.  Nicolas's Cathedral.

Luke is sending planes for you and Father and Maggie and the whole
Riley family, all the aunts and uncles and every single last one of my
cousins who's guaranteed to be toilet trained.  You'll all be staying
as his guests at the Hotel de Paris.  The other guests are all Luke's
top executives and their wives plus his stepbrother Tyler and Tyler's
wife and kids.  Luke doesn't have much family.  We're trying
desperately to keep this engagement secret, so it doesn't turn into a
circus.

"I see."  Agnes paused and allowed a silence to develop.  "Yes, I
understand it now, Teresa.  You're marrying a man with money."

"Not a man with money," Tessa said deliberately.  "Luke is an
enormously rich man, Mother, although he doesn't talk about it.  He
just does things that indicate that spending amazing amounts of money
isn't a problem for him."  Tessa spoke smoothly, twisting her
engagement ring so she could close her hand on the diamond.  She still
smarted from Agnes's unnecessary reminder of the dire trouble she'd
been in at fourteen.  Did her mother think she could ever forget?

"I see."

"Why do you keep on saying that you 'see'?  You can't think I'm
marrying him for his money, can you?  If you don't know me better than
that, you don't know me at all."

"There's no reason on earth why you would, it's not as if you don't
earn lots of money yourself.  But money you have to work for, and pay
your agent a commission on and then pay half of it out in taxes-that's
not the same kind of money as money you marry, is it?

I'm sure even a well-paid girl like you would realize that."

"Mother, when you meet Luke, you'll understand everything," Tessa said,
as patiently as she could.  It wasn't worth getting angry with her
mother about a subject so ridiculous.  "You'll know immediately that
it's not about money, you'll see that the difference in our ages
doesn't mean anything.  You can't make judgments about us now, it isn't
right."

"Why do you care about my judgment?  You're going to do this no matter
what I think, or what anyone thinks.  It's the way you've always been,
Teresa, wild, stubborn, headstrong, and a fool about the
consequences."

"I suppose I must have been hoping that you could be happy that I'm
happy, even if you don't approve.  Is that really too much to ask?"

"I can't lie to you, Teresa, I think this is utter folly.

Unthinkable folly."

"So be it.  I'll send you all the details as soon as I can-what to
wear, when you'll be picked up, how long you'll be gone-so Father can
explain to the school that he'll be away for a few days.

Good-bye, Mother.  Tell Father and Maggie for me, will you?  With the
time difference I won't be able to make the call myself.... Oh, by the
way, Princess Grace is giving the wedding reception, lunch at the
palace after the ceremony.

"Good-bye, Teresa."

Agnes put down the phone and walked slowly into the kitchen, where she
drank two glasses of water.  She walked back into the living room,
unplugged the vacuum cleaner, and, without pausing, threw the heavy
machine into the fireplace with such force that she could hear its
insides shatter.

Marketing, picking up the laundry, that's what Teresa had imagined her
doing when she called, she said to herself, panting in fury.  A drudge,
that's what she was to her daughter, that's what she was to the
world.

She stalked around the living room, not looking for anything else to
break, because she didn't want Sandor to know how she'd acted, but
unable to sit down and consider the news.  All she could see in her
mind was a kaleidoscope of jagged fragments of imagined scenes: Teresa
in the arms of someone who looked like Cary Grant; Teresa covered in a
coat of white mink with a train that dragged on the ground; Teresa
covered with pounds of diamonds, with a private jet and her own
Rolls-Royce and the most beautiful clothes ever designed; Teresa with
houses all over the world and in each one of them, among the large
staff, some unknown, pathetic, dried-up little woman, whose job it was
to vacuum the floors.  Teresa laughing as she moved farther and farther
away into the otherworldly stratosphere of people who were all famous
and rich and beautiful; Teresa adored, heedless, not even noticing that
she was standing and moving in a spotlight that never turned off.

Finally, exhausted, Agnes flopped down into a chair.  She'd lived for
people to appreciate her daughter, she told herself.

She'd fought with Sandor so that Teresa could be exposed to the
opportunities for fame and fortune.  Why did she hate it now, so much
that it was almost literally unbearable, so much that she wanted to
scream and scratch her skin until it bled and pull out her hair?

It was not envy, no matter what Sandor thought.  Who had ever heard of
a mother who envied a daughter?  Outlandish!  If she honestly thought
she was committing a mortal sin, she'd go to confession and get
absolution, but she knew it couldn't be envy.

That would be too unnatural to be true.  She didn't want to marry some
man she'd just met, no matter how rich; she didn't want to be a movie
star, she didn't want to win an Oscar-how could the way she felt be
something the church called envy?

Oh, how she wished that she'd married an ordinary man and never left
Bridgeport, an ordinary man who would have given her a pack of ordinary
kids who would have all been under her maternal rule, living in an
ordinary house in which she would be the queen.

In a home like that, creatures like her daughter would be so alien to
her way of life that she'd either be too busy to read about them or she
could idolize them in a casual void the way people had idolized Grace
Kelly when she got married.  Oh, yes!  The woman she envied was the
simple woman she had not been since the day she met Sandor Horvath.

She envied Agnes, the prettiest, youngest Riley sister.  You couldn't
be accused of envying your own younger self, could you?  That couldn't
possibly be a mortal sin, especially when your younger self didn't want
anything special except what all the other girls she knew had expected
and received.

Agnes fell into a reverie from which she was aroused by one name.

Grace Kelly.  Princess Grace was giving her daughter's wedding
reception!  Princess Grace, who represented the ultimate dream of every
Irish Catholic girl, Princess Grace who was living that dream every
day.  That was it, that was the envy she'd known it was impossible for
her to feel toward her own flesh and blood.  If she envied anyone it
must be Princess Grace, and that kind of envy was too silly to even
mention to a priest.  It would be as ridiculous as telling him you had
sinned in the moment or two you spent scrutinizing a beautiful model on
the cover of a magazine.

As she composed herself, more and more of the details Teresa had given
her in the last minutes of their phone conversation returned to
Agnes.

Private planes; the Hotel de Paris, which must be the best hotel in
Monaco or Monte Carlo or whatever they called it exactly; a wedding
luncheon in the palace.  She'd be at the bride's table with Princess
Grace and Prince Rainier.  The mother of the bride was always the most
important person at a wedding besides the bride and groom themselves.

And her sisters knew nothing yet!

Oh, this would destroy them, this would cap everything, this would put
them away for life, they'd never recover, she thought, suddenly full of
energy.  Her sisters had been thrilled when Teresa won the Oscar for
Little Women, but that was nothing, nothing compared to this!

Who could remember who'd won last year's Oscar for Best Supporting
Actress?  Nobody.  Who could forget that your sister's daughter had
been given a wedding by Princess Grace?  Nobody.  It would be the high
point in the lives of the entire Riley family, the story that would be
told over and over until everyone who had been there was long gone.

Agnes was poised to pick up the phone to call her eldest sister when
she suddenly remembered Teresa saying she wanted Maggie to be her
flower girl.  Oh, no, Teresa, she thought, you're never getting married
in church before a priest with your illegitimate daughter walking
before you, strewing flower petals, with no one in the world to
suspect.  No, my girl, sinner that you are, that's not going to happen
while I'm alive to prevent it.  You're not getting away with that the
way you got away with everything else.  That would be a sin indeed, a
sin in the eyes of the Holy Mother herself.  She didn't have to consult
a priest about something so self-evident.  Yet, what could she do to
stop it?

Hastily Agnes ran over various scenarios.  She knew Sandor would agree
with her about this; he'd think Teresa's brazen plan even more a
defiance of the sacredness of the Sacrament of Marriage than she did.

She'd tell Maggie that it was a grown-up party and children weren't
invited.  She'd get somebody trustworthy to take care of Maggie for the
few days that they'd be away.  Perhaps Helen Kelly.  After all, she was
Maggie's godmother.  Whether she liked Helen or Helen liked her was
unimportant.  Helen would be fine to deal with Maggie for a short
time.

And she'd tell Teresa that Maggie had developed a high fever and
something that the doctor suspected might be German measles the day
before the flight.  There was nothing more terrifying to any group of
women, if even one of them was possibly pregnant, than German
measles.

There was nothing she could do to prevent Teresa from marrying a man
she barely knew in a religious ceremony in front of her entire family
with Princess Grace gloriously, unbelievably, conferring her unspoken
blessing on the whole hasty, misbegotten procedure.

But Teresa wasn't going to be allowed to have absolutely everything she
wanted.  Someone would be missing, someone whose absence would be
noted.  Maggie wasn't going to be part of this... this...

sacrilege.

12

"Promise me it's over," Tessa demanded faintly, out of her haze of
exhaustion as she and Luke drove up the Moyenne Corniche on their way
to Luke's farmhouse just below the high-perched town of Ere-Village,
where they were going to spend their honeymoon.  "Promise me we never
have to do that again."

Luke glanced at her profile.  Tessa's splendid head was thrown back on
the leather seat.  Her eyes were closed, and the faint mauve shadows
that he could glimpse on the tender skin under her lower lashes were
infinitely touching.  Her lips, so ardently, alluringly prominent, were
parted slightly in fatigue.  Only Tessa's flashing waves of hair,
liberated from their elaborate wedding updo and taken by the wind,
still seemed to possess any spirit.  In the light of the approaching
sunset, he thought he could see an occasional red glint in the darkness
of its strands.

"Not unless you insist on repeating our vows on our tenth anniversary,"
he answered her tenderly.  "In which case I'd have to agree.  Of course
I'd try to talk you out of it.  I'll say 'paparazzi' over and over
again until you've changed your mind."

"You'd just have to say it once," Tessa sighed, thinking of the
outrageous mobs of photographers and journalists who had only been held
in check by Monaco's formidable police force.  "We should have eloped,
Princess Grace or no Princess Grace.  I've learned my lesson.  Never
let anyone give you a wedding no matter how generous she is.  No, make
that, especially if she's generous.  I couldn't have taken one more
minute of being a bride.  Is a person supposed to enjoy her own
wedding?"

"Oh, I shouldn't think so, darling, I've never heard of anyone who
did."

"Then why did we do it?"

"It's a rite of passage or something."

Or something, Tessa silently agreed.  Something she should have had the
imagination and good sense to have avoided.  And most of it was her
fault.  The wedding itself, this morning, had been a dreamlike blaze of
white: clustered garlands of white flowers spilling down from large
baskets suspended under dozens of splendid crystal chandeliers, high
banks of white flowers and tall white candles at the altar.  Her
progress down the center aisle of the vast stone cathedral had seemed
like a promenade in a garden, a slow, proud promenade toward her
beloved.  Oh, the wedding was a dream and the only details she could
remember about it were the times she'd peeked at Luke's face as he
knelt on his prie-dieu during the ceremony and the joyful strength of
his voice when he answered that he took Teresa for his lawful wife,
according to the rite of their Holy Mother the Church.

If she hadn't had the idea of inviting all her family, every last aunt,
uncle, and cousin, maybe the three days preceding the wedding might
have been delightful.  Maybe they could have been just a question of
being responsive to everybody, of thanking people over and over again
for their good wishes, unconcerned about what they were really thinking
or feeling-since brides only had to be suitably bridal to fulfill their
role.  But no, she'd been greedy, she'd wanted them all to witness her
happiness, and that's where she'd gone so very wrong.

It had never occurred to her that her relatives would feel utterly out
of place from the minute they arrived in the Principality of Monaco.

Her concept of family gatherings were those of a child or a teenager,
memories of a relaxed clan of giggling, gossipy, warm-hearted women and
beer-drinking, joking men, all good-natured and feeling at home in
their skins.  But during the entire time in Monaco they'd been on their
best behavior, as stiff as if they'd been stuffed, wretchedly
self-conscious in their obviously new clothes, afraid to make any kind
of gaffe, and solemn and careful of speech in a manner more suitable to
a funeral than to a wedding.

They'd all but turned to stone in the presence of the prince and
princess at the rehearsal dinner Luke had given at the International
Sporting Club; they'd danced so sedately at the wedding luncheon in the
palace itself that it was hard to remember them pulling up the rugs at
home and showing off their prowess.  They hadn't even dared to have one
glass too many of the champagne.  She and Luke and even Princess Grace
had worked hard to jolly them up, but it was her own small Hollywood
contingent and Luke's executives and their wives, almost all of them
Australian and not burdened with awestruck preoccupation with the icon
of Grace Kelly, who managed to rescue the rehearsal dinner and wedding
reception and provide some suitable note of joie de vivre.

And even the wedding lunch wasn't the worst of it, Tessa reflected, too
frazzled to open her eyes and look at one of the world's most thrilling
views of the Mediterranean as Luke drove skillfully up the steep,
twisting mountain road to Ere.  The single worst thing of all was the
way her aunts had treated her mother.  It had started when her parents
had arrived without Maggie, on a different plane than the one that had
brought the rest of the family.  Maybe if little Maggie, sick at home,
had been there, too, her humanity would have made her aunts realize
that their sister Agnes had not been transformed into the Queen
Mother.

Much of Tessa's time had been spent at the Hotel de Paris with her
mother and her aunts, and it had grown more and more painful to watch
the... reverence, there was no other word... with which her mother's
sisters surrounded her.  Her mother had been elevated beyond any
sisterly relationship.

Agnes Horvath had become the closest thing to a Grace Kelly that the
Riley family possessed, and oh, how her mother had rubbed it in.  She'd
taken every chance to glorify herself, to position herself on a
different level from the others, to indicate in a dozen ways, both
verbally and with her dignified body language, that she was, quite
simply, better than they were.  More successful, more sophisticated,
and infinitely more blessed, not by God, but by her own hand, her own
will, her own vision.  She had somehow, over the years, caused this
entire event to take place, she was responsible for this
grandness-beyond-anyone's- dreams.  She, Agnes Horvath, was the center
of the wedding as far as her sisters were concerned.

She wouldn't have begrudged her mother a second of her glory, Tessa
thought, if she hadn't known how she really felt.  Luke, in the
unenviable position of a man who was marrying a much younger bride, had
made a special effort with her parents, and she could see her father
taking his measure and judging her choice a wise one, in the same dry,
suspicious way he had finally approved of her agent and her business
manager.  Her mother had not so much warmed up to Luke as she had
cooled down from the anger of their phone conversation.  He was
different from what she had expected, so unpretentious, so charming and
friendly, so attentive to her, that Agnes had finally whispered to
Tessa, "Well, I must say I can see why you made this foolish, hasty
decision."  Those words were as close to a blessing as she was likely
to ever receive from her mother, Tessa realized.

As for her cousins, the very same cousins she used to have so much fun
with, they hadn't managed to feel any comfort with her, Tessa
realized.

It wasn't as if they treated her as someone who was better than they
were, it was as if she had become so different from anybody they could
possibly have a conversation with that there was absolutely no common
ground, no way to be human together.

And all their little children!  The ones she'd so grandly insisted on
including-was that the way kids acted now?  Constant squabbles,
whining, teasing, talking back to their parents, showing no signs of
manners?

There had been too many occasions when she'd been ashamed of her
family, Tessa admitted to herself, ashamed of having been ashamed.

She'd always been the petted baby of the family, but now her cousins
and their spouses and their children looked at her with eyes big with
wonder and awe and too much admiration to be comfortable for them and
certainly for her.

Is that what winning an Oscar did to you, she wondered?  Did it happen
in the families of everybody who'd won?  Or was it because of Princess
Grace giving the wedding?  Or was it her engagement ring, which none of
the women would try on, no matter how much she tried to get them to?

Was it the visible difference between the Teresa they'd known when she
was fourteen, before she'd moved to California, and the way she looked
now, six years later, Tessa Kent grown up, after all, and the product
of the constant polishing process that is professionally imposed on any
working actress?

Families, she thought, families.  They remained the same in your mind,
but you yourself weren't allowed to change more than some predetermined
amount or you didn't belong to them anymore.

They cast you out once you'd left their unspoken but clearly defined
frame of reference, once you'd gone too far up or too far down.

Yet, on the other hand, Tessa reflected, Tyler and Madison Webster had
taken her in with ease and pleasure, delighted to see Luke so happy.

Luke's stepbrother and his wife, a handsome young couple from Essex
County in the New Jersey hunt country, had been the only guests at the
wedding who'd been perfectly natural with everybody, from her father to
Prince Rainier, from a shy wife of one of Luke's executives to the
youngest of her badly behaved second cousins.  They had the kind of
bred-in-the-bone manners that were unobtrusively the same for one and
all.

Of all the guests who'd known her before she'd started making films,
Mimi alone had remained herself, as devilish and free-spirited as ever,
totally unaffected by Agnes's darting looks of incredulous disgust at
her presence.  Fiona, heaven-sent Fiona, was bossily preoccupied with
the amazing number of details that accompanied the wedding dress and
her own maid-of-honor dress (which she and Tessa had purchased at
Harrods' Wedding Salon on a flying trip to London), as well as
everything else Fiona had, in obvious delight, deemed necessary for her
trousseau.  Mimi, unimpressed by Fiona's earnestness, waltzed around in
Tessa's suite wearing nothing but the green diamond, lace bikini
underpants, and high heels.  She was as irrepressible as ever, relating
scandalous gossip about the post-school adventures of their classmates
at Sacred Heart, detailing the pros and cons of her long train of
boyfriends at college, demanding that Luke provide her with an Aussie
exactly like him, ordering improbable things at improbable hours from
room service just to prove that it could be done only Mimi, and Tessa's
small group of Hollywood guests, had the fun that she'd wanted them all
to have.

Oh well, her intentions had been good, Tessa told herself.  She felt
the solid wedge of tension between her shoulders begin to disappear as
the wedding memories stopped occupying her mind.  She could feel the
light of the late-afternoon sun grow dimmer on her eyelids.  Maybe...

maybe, she'd just take a little nap until Luke stopped the car... they
should be there soon...

Tessa woke up slowly, with the feeling she normally associated with a
particularly good night's sleep.  Oh, she thought, without opening her
eyes, why weren't naps more appreciated?  A nap was the only form of
sleep that didn't have any concept of duty attached to it.

A nap wasn't something you "needed" or "shouldn't miss" or "had to
have" to perform the following day.  It was a divine treat, a brief
blessing, in which you had no dreams but only a deep, luscious
blankness that wiped away whatever had been bothering you before you
fell into it.  Churchill took naps, she remembered, every day.  Would
she become like him if she followed his example, or would she have to
add brandy and the cigars to the mix?  She must ask Luke, he knew
things like that.  Luke!

She sat up abruptly.  She was still wearing the dress she'd put on
after the reception, and there was a warm quilt covering her; but she
seemed to have been napping right in the middle of a large bed in a
room she'd never seen before.  Luke must have carried her in from the
car.  There were heavy beams overhead and arched windows were cut into
the thick stone walls.  Tessa hurried over to the nearest window and
looked out.  A long field of still unharvested lavender, its spiky,
concentric clusters planted in strict rows; olive trees; cypress trees;
vines that crept around the outside of the window-nothing unexpected
for a farmhouse in Provence.  Not if you ignored the color of the
light... light the clear color of dawn, not of sunset.

I must have slept at least thirteen hours, maybe more, Tessa thought,
wrapping the quilt around her shoulders, and my God I need to pee more
than I need to find my bridegroom.

Fortunately the first door she opened was that of a perfectly appointed
bathroom.  After her urgent quest had been satisfied, Tessa discovered
that her cosmetics bag had been placed, unopened, by the side of the
sink.  She hastily splashed her face with water, brushed her teeth,
took off her crushed dress, and decided to take a quick shower since
there was no sight or sound of Luke in the bedroom.

Once she had had her shower, she realized that traces of makeup were
still on her face.  She removed it expertly, brushed her hair until it
fairly stood up and saluted, and, looking in the mirror, pronounced
herself ready to meet the day.  Now, all she needed was something to
wear and a husband, in that order.  She searched the closets for her
suitcases without success.  Wrapped in a large bath towel big enough to
fasten into a sarong, Tessa opened the other door in the room and
almost fell over Luke.  He lay there, fully clothed, like the faithful
bodyguard of some paranoid empress, sleeping on a runner in the
corridor, huddled in a nest of pillows and covered by another quilt.

She knelt by his side and scratched the back of his hand gently.

He slept on.  She kissed his earlobe lingeringly.  Nothing.  She pulled
gently and then less gently on various short tufts of his hair.

His breathing didn't even change.  Tessa sat back on her heels and
contemplated the sleeping man.  He might as well be in a coma.  She
didn't want to shock him awake, but on the other hand she didn't want
him to keep on sleeping now that she was up.  Who knew when he'd fallen
asleep?  He could have been up half the night keeping watch over her
before he'd mysteriously chosen to settle on the floor.

But if she allowed him to keep on sleeping now, they'd be out of sync;
one of them would always be sleeping when the other was awake, and that
was no way to begin a marriage.  Anyway, she was chilly in the morning
air.

With determination Tessa removed her towel and crept under the quilt
stark naked.  At first it was enough just to be warm again.

A man who could be counted on for body heat, was Luke Blake, she
thought, light-headed at being naked next to a sleeping man.

Surely he'd feel that she was there and wake up... wouldn't a person
know when someone had joined him under his quilt?  Some bodyguard he'd
make... a troop of rape-minded Cossacks could have stepped over him in
the night, and it had been, officially, her wedding night, at that.

Tessa indignantly unbuttoned Luke's shirt.  At least he'd taken off his
tie in the car, so she didn't have to deal with that.  She put her head
next to his chest and puffed all over it, thinking to wake him with her
breath.  Luke slept on.  Tessa reflected.  She could poke him in the
ribs, she could tickle him under his arms-but she didn't know if he was
ticklish.  She could shake him, but he was too big to shake.  Or she
could unbuckle his belt.  Yes, that would be the next logical thing to
do, now that she had his shirt open.  It would give her a wider field
of operation.  She unbuckled his belt easily and unzipped his fly
easily, considering that she'd never done either of those things before
except on a pair of her own jeans.  Luke rolled his head away from her;
but otherwise there was no change in his sleep.

Tessa followed the line of hair on his chest down past his waistline,
pulling firmly on it at every step.  Wouldn't you think that if
somebody pulled your stomach hair; you'd wake up?  She certainly would,
but there was no hair on her stomach.

Eventually her exploring fingers found a thicker growth of wiry hair
and Tessa stopped abruptly.  You couldn't, you simply couldn't pull a
man's pubic hair.  That must come under the heading of things not
done.

Particularly with a man whose penis you'd never seen.  But, on the
other hand, an unseen penis was not in the same category as pubic
hair.

It was a definite invitation.  An irresistible invitation, which came
under the heading of things you could investigate if you were so
inclined.

Squirming until she could reach lower, Tessa took Luke's penis in her
hand and cuddled it, without moving.  It felt... friendly, she thought,
not at all frightening, like a soft, warm, agreeable, oddly shaped
little animal, a sort of household pet.  A pet with potential, a pet
more responsive than its owner; since he continued to sleep while his
penis showed signs of acknowledging her touch.  Fascinated, she
continued to hold it as it grew larger and longer and harder; losing
its pet qualities by the second, although it still, to her way of
thinking, remained definitely friendly.  Soon it was so big that the
only way she could take its measure was to move her hand up and down
its length.  It had all sort of interesting parts and subdivisions to
it, she thought, breathlessly.  It would reward further exploration.

"Hey!  What the hell!"

So that was the secret of waking him up.

"You were sleeping," she said accusingly, not letting go, in case he
thought this was a particularly vivid dream.

"Stop that!"

"Aren't you supposed to like it?"

"I do, but let go!"

Reluctantly, Tessa abandoned her discovery and raised her head to a
level with Luke's.  "Good morning," she said demurely.

He snorted with laughter at her tone.  "What convent did they teach you
that in?"

"I was merely following my natural instincts."

"Oh, darling," he said, covering her face with kisses, "I hate to
repress your instincts, but not on this floor."

"What are you doing out here, anyway?"

"I brought you in from the car and put you in the middle of the bed
because I was afraid that if you woke up on the side of a mattress in a
strange bed you'd fall off, trying to find out where you were.

Then, when you didn't wake up for hours, I didn't want to move you,
because obviously you needed the sleep.  I thought about going to sleep
on the rug next to the bed, but I was afraid you'd wake up in the
middle of the night and fall over me in the dark.  So this seemed like
the best place to wait, where you'd find me when you woke."

"Why didn't you leave a little light on in the bedroom so I'd see you
on the rug?"

"You weren't thinking straight," she said, forgivingly.

"I've never been in this situation before.  In fact, no woman has ever
been in this house or on that bed before."

"But I thought you'd had a place in Cap-Ferrat for years?"

"I do, that's where I keep my boat.  I bought this when I came down
here after we got engaged-a place just for us.  My God, you're
naked!"

"I wondered when you'd notice."

Luke scooped her up, quilt and all, and carried her back into the
bedroom and deposited her gently on the bed.

"Will you wait here, without going anywhere else, just stay put,
absolutely put, while I brush my teeth and take a quick shower?"  he
demanded.

"May I breathe?"  Now that Luke was properly awake and in charge, she
found herself taking refuge in a sort of silliness that wasn't natural
to her.

"From time to time."

Tessa waited for him, confused beyond measure, overcome with curiosity,
anticipation, and anxiety.  Her mind refused to function as she looked
at the beams of the bedroom ceiling without seeing them.

A short interval passed, a blank time of waiting, almost without
breathing.  When Luke returned he peeled off his towel, and rolled
under the quilt next to her.  Tessa was overcome with a sudden attack
of acute shyness.  She pulled away from him and hid as much of herself
as she could under the quilt.  One of her eyes looked out from under
her hair.

"Darling, Tessa, darling, you're breaking my heart.  Don't look at me
that way," he pleaded.  "We don't have to do anything at all, there are
no rules about this, we can get up and have breakfast and go exploring,
we can spend a week doing nothing at all if you let me kiss you from
time to time."

"No, you won't let me kiss you?"

"No, I don't want to get up and have breakfast."

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know.  You're supposed to know."

"Normally I would.  But you're a...

"I know, I know, don't remind me, just do whatever you'd normally do if
you were in bed with some woman."

"You're not 'some woman,' you're my wife, the love of my life."

"Then make something up."

"First I'll investigate the only part of you I can see," he said,
smiling at her childishness.  He drew closer to her and traced her
eyebrow with his lips.  When she didn't pull farther away, he kissed
her with tiny, soft kisses along the curve of her bone from her eyebrow
to her nose.

"Fiona said that was my best feature," Tessa mumbled.

"I can't tell yet," Luke murmured.  "You could have a better one hidden
away somewhere."  Gently he turned her head so that he could kiss her
lips.  Mutely, Tessa returned his kisses, but Luke could tell, from the
tension he sensed in the trembling pressure of her mouth, that she was
filled with apprehension.  Of course she is, he thought, what could be
more natural?  He modulated his passion to her timidity, keeping his
kisses utterly undemanding, reining in any sign of his desire.  For
long minutes they lost themselves in a chain of soft, almost tentative
kisses, while his fingers were plunged into her hair, caressing her
skull with calm, reassuring movements.  Some time after he felt her
lips grow more confident, Luke allowed his mouth to stray from her
mouth to her ear, holding her bundled up from her collarbone
downward.

He kissed her ear, leaving no fraction of its lobe untouched, and then
he kissed her down the long, firm curve of her neck; and when he
reached her shoulder he kissed her along the fragile skin at the base
of her neck.  Each time he reached her collarbone, his mouth retraced
its journey down from her ear, never venturing lower and never breaking
its rhythm.

Tessa's breathing grew faster with each voyage of his lips from her ear
to her collarbone, until, suddenly, she flung back the blanket and
revealed her high breasts, their small pink nipples as erect as if he'd
been sucking on them without mercy.  "Put your mouth on them," she
panted, "and leave my ear alone, you're driving me crazy!"

"That's more or less the idea," Luke mumbled, as he bent his head
toward the points of flesh whose delicacy had grown so bold.

Tessa reached her arms out blindly for him, but Luke drew the lower
part of his body out of her reach so that she couldn't again tantalize
his rearing penis.  She needed so much more to make her ready, he
thought, so much long and careful preparation, yet she could have no
idea of what her touch did to him.  They lay facing each other while he
cupped each of her breasts in his hands so that he could move quickly
from one nipple to another, using his tongue, his teeth, his lips,
firmly holding back the full force of his passion, entirely focused on
giving her delight throughout every cell of her exquisite nipples that
grew more engorged by the second.  Tessa squirmed under the quilt that
covered her from her waist down, trying to push it off, but Luke's
superior strength prevented her, even as he held her breasts captive to
his sweetly plundering mouth.  She pushed herself forward, trying to
get as much of each breast into his mouth as possible, and when he
switched from one to another, the instant during which he was
unattached to her seemed unendurable.  "Come on, come on!"  she
implored him through clenched teeth.  Oh no, he thought, you won't make
me rush you, you can't make me take you before you're so excited that
it won't hurt.

Suddenly, with a lightning change of pace for which he was unprepared,
Tessa gathered up all her strength, freed herself of the quilt, and in
one swift movement raised herself up off the bed, pushed Luke over on
his back, threw one leg over him, and straddled him.  Stunned, he felt
her grasp his penis and pull it back from his belly so that it stood at
a right angle to his body.

"No!"  he cried, but Tessa was already arched above him, her expression
rapt and isolated in an absolute purposefulness.  Her eyes were tightly
closed as she guided his penis directly between her parted thighs.  She
circled the head of his penis in her fingers and lowered herself until
he was just inside her flesh.  "Oh," she said to herself,
"oh.........

"Darling..."

"No, don't move, don't say anything, I have to do it myself," she
commanded.  He lay absolutely still, disciplining himself with all the
authority of his maturity, fascinated by her intent caprice, as a
fraction of an inch at a time she pressed down onto him with her taut,
quivering body.  Both of them barely breathed, her lips were pressed
firmly together; there was no sound in the room as moment by moment, at
a pace determined by Tessa, she resolutely impaled herself on him.  It
seemed to Luke that she was as ruthless with the pain she must be
feeling as she was ruthless in her insistence on his passivity.  She
looked like a stranger, with the fierceness of an Amazon branding her
brow, her teeth pressed into her lower lip.  From time to time she
paused briefly, all her senses utterly focused on the point where his
flesh met hers, and then she pushed on.

Time stopped until finally Tessa gave a deep breath and Luke became
aware that he was enclosed, up to his hilt, in her warmth.  He looked
up at her face, close to him now, her lips finally parted, her eyelids
fluttering, an expression of relief re-creating her face, familiar
again.

Only then did he dare to fold her in his arms and, making certain that
he didn't move too quickly, gather her closely to him and turn her
over, so that he was above her.  He stayed motionless, watching her
face as a smile came to her lips, a complex inward smile of
accomplishment, pride, and astonishment.

"Look at me," he whispered, but she kept her eyes closed, her smile
suddenly teasing.  "Look at me, my darling," he insisted, and she
opened her eyes and saw his, bright with tears.  "Did I hurt you?"  he
asked.

"Only a little, because I could control it-it's all right nowwhy are
you crying?"

"Because you're my virgin bride and it's more beautiful than anything I
could ever have imagined."

"But I'm not a virgin anymore."

He drew back slowly, until his penis left the cave of her body, and
then, with infinite care, he pushed it in again as far as it would go,
filling her completely.  "No," he said, "now you're not a virgin
anymore."

13

"I never knew people could be domestic for four whole days in a row,"
Luke said, as he and Tessa cleaned up the kitchen after the lunch
they'd walked into the village to buy: a newly baked baguette, sweet
butter, fresh ham sliced from the bone, and five kinds of cheese.

"Would you like to go out for dinner tonight?

We're invited to a party on board a yacht tonight, it's only a
half-hour drive down to the harbor."

"So love in a farmhouse has already made you itch for social life," she
sighed mockingly, hanging up the apron that Madame Boulet, who owned
the neighboring farm, used each evening when she brought over the
dinner she'd cooked in her own house.

"It's not social life, it's the sheer brutish macho satisfaction of
showing you off to a roomful of people, knowing that every man there
feels desperate envy of me.  I'm basically a disgusting swine, just a
step more evolved than a cavernan about some things, and you might as
well know it now.  No, don't laugh, I'm serious, Tessa.

I'm going to be profoundly jealous and utterly possessive and I'm going
to flaunt you all over this little planet.  Thank God you're much too
young to want children.  By the time you're-oh, maybe thirty-I suppose
I'll be able to face sharing you with them.  I've never felt the
slightest need to reproduce, although I guess you will."

"Why didn't you mention any of this sooner?"

"I didn't truly know it sooner... well, perhaps I had intimations, but
I'd never thought about it for five consecutive seconds until we got
married.  Would you have married me if you'd known the kind of man I
am?"

"I would have married you if... if... I can't think of anything that
would have kept me from marrying you except a wife and six kids."

And even that, Tessa thought, even that wouldn't have been enough to
stop her from doing everything in her power to be with him.  Her
all-important new sense of safety had grown steadily more solid and
established during the past four days they'd been together; long,
unsurpassingly perfect days, consuming days of promise and fulfillment,
brimming with a heavenly green-gold light that had changed her
forever.

Whatever combination of cells once made up her brain and heart had
mutated into a new soul, someone she'd never known, a soul who dwelt at
the heart of a secure fortress of safety and had no fear of
adoration.

Tessa had reached a point at which it was emotionally and physically
painful to be farther away from Luke than the next room, and then it
was only possible to endure this separation for a few minutes at a
time.  She begrudged the time he spent in the shower and shaving, the
way he quickly scanned Le Figaro when they went into the village, the
minutes he disappeared to bring in wood for the fire they made at night
as soon as the sun set.  She couldn't settle in a chair or on a sofa
without her eyes straying to his blunt, powerful fingers and becoming
intensely aware that the quivering, tender flesh between her legs was
growing avid again.  She couldn't fall asleep, no matter how he'd
satisfied her; until he'd drifted off and she could lie in his arms,
remembering each honey-and-fire-filled hour of the safe, safe day.

Even as she felt their breathing merge, she could barely allow herself
to drift into his dreams and waste these exquisite minutes.

"Yes," Tessa agreed, forcing the light words, "by all means, let's go
to the party.  What should I wear?"

'A little black dress."

"But I don't have one with me.  How about a little white dress?"

"Is it plain?"

"Plain how?"

"Unadorned, not embroidered or whatever, just plain white."

"Is this some new fetish of yours?  Another terrible thing I wasn't
warned about?  A plain white wardrobe?"

"Just not decorated," he growled.

"It's as plain as plain can be," she assured him.

"You'll understand it all at the proper time," he said, coming to stand
behind her, his arms crossed in front of her so that each of her
breasts was lightly enclosed in his warm hands.  He buried his face in
her hair as Tessa bent her head in swift, docile delight.  They stood
without the slightest movement, barely breathing, as Luke's penis rose,
under his trousers, and grew, jerking slightly and swelling upward
against the small of her back.

"In the kitchen?"  she gasped, her heart beating so heavily that she
thought he must be able to hear it.

"Bedroom," he groaned.  "Understand now why I didn't want to make the
bed?"

"I knew why.  I didn't think you'd make me wait this long."

All afternoon they lay in bed, making love, dozing, and making love
again, sometimes as playful as animals in a zoo, sometimes deeply
earnest, caught by the voluptuous gravity of a whirlwind of passion
that Luke, for all his experience, had never known before.

Tessa, discovering an untapped well of sensuality that only her dreams
had ever revealed, let herself go freely into her deepest fantasies,
sometimes disarmingly submissive, pliant and willing, urging him, in
deliciously wanton, indecent words she'd never used before, to fuck her
quickly, to fuck her good and hard, to give it to her as if she were a
whore, to treat himself to a quickie.  Sometimes she was as dominant as
he, insisting on her right to make him submit every inch of skin on his
body to her, to lick him slowly behind his knees, under his arms,
inside his elbows, on the arches of his feet and the balls of his
heels, to tantalize the head of his cock without any fairness, touching
him with nothing but her tongue, holding him off ferociously, listening
with delight to his pleading, and finally, when she could stand it no
longer, grasping his penis and plunging it hungrily and still awkwardly
into her body, while he reveled in her candid lust.  More often they
strove to match their separate passions and more and more frequently
they discovered that their rhythms blended together and that the
miracle of two separate human beings becoming one was achieved.

"I never expected you to be so... inventive," he told her.  "Or have I
fallen into that old cliche' about wild convent girls?"

"I surprise myself," she admitted.  "Mimi and I used to read sexy
stories when we were fourteen-I almost memorized them-and I imagine I
must have been waiting for the right opportunity to present itself ever
since."

"Thank God it was me."

As the sun began to set, sated for the moment, they prepared themselves
for their evening out.  Tessa was glad that Fiona had insisted on her
buying the far-too-expensive strapless white dress they'd seen in the
Couture Boutique at Harrods.  Although it had a matching chiffon stole
with a wide, hemstitched border, it looked like nothing on the hanger,
yet when she put it on, its finely pleated, Grecian shape, cleverly
draped, outlined her body to below her hips, eloquently justifying its
Dior label.  When she whirled in front of the mirror the short skirt,
unpleated, swished around her thighs and kissed her knees.  When she
leaned forward, she could see that the bodice of the dress began no
more than a hairline above the top of her nipples.

Tessa put on white silk sandals and the string of pearls she'd bought
at Tiffany's in Beverly Hills just before her nineteenth birthday.

She'd spent another fifteen hundred dollars for matching pearl studs,
telling herself that they not only would commemorate the film but were
also the only ornaments a woman could wear at any time of the day or
night and be certain that she was suitably decked out.

Even her mother had approved of the purchase, saying dryly that she
supposed that Tessa was looking forward to occasions on which she
wouldn't feel "good enough" in artificial pearls.  She'd worn them with
her wedding gown and they'd been exactly right, Tessa thought, as she
fastened them around her neck.

With a final twirl in front of the mirror, flourishing her engagement
ring at an imaginary audience, Tessa picked up her wrap and presented
herself to Luke, who stood in the living room of the farmhouse, clad in
the unaccustomed formality of a white linen suit, a blue shirt, and a
yellow tie.

"That's your plain white dress," he inquired, "'as plain as plain can
be'?"

"You said a yacht," she reproached him, "and anyway, show me where it's
not plain, just show me one bit of decoration."

"It's perfect," he assured her, "but pearls don't do it justice,
they're too proper.

"I'm afraid you don't appreciate understated elegance."

"Close your eyes.

"Why?"

"Promise to keep them closed, no matter what?"

"Why?"

"Because I said so."

"All right."

Tessa stood with her eyes tightly closed as she felt him unclasp her
pearls and take off her earrings.  What now, she wondered, shivering,
as she felt him fumble at the back of her neck and heard a slight click
as a heavy necklace was settled around her neck.

Suddenly the lobes of each ear were embraced by a weight of cool
metal.

"Yes," Luke said, "absolutely spot on."  He took her shoulders and
guided her steps until she stood in front of her bathroom mirror.

"You can look now.

"Good God!"  From a necklace of five huge, pear-shaped emeralds,
brilliantly graduated in size and mounted in thick crusts of diamonds,
hung a pendant fashioned from a single giant pear-shaped emerald, an
emerald almost the length of her little finger.  It lay on her
breastbone, rimmed in its own diamond setting, a fathomless drop of the
very essence of green.  The earrings were great round emeralds, of a
color perfectly matched to the necklace, set in large diamond domes.

"You're mad, insane, out of your mind..."

"I knew you'd say something like that, darling.  They're your wedding
present, but I didn't want to give them to you until you were ready for
them.  They're utterly inappropriate for a girl."

"But I am a girl."

"No, you're a woman now, Tessa.  Get used to it... it isn't going to go
away.

"But I'd never..."  Tessa turned this way and that, falling into a
reverie as the fabulous emeralds exerted their spell.  "They're so
alive-I always thought emeralds were a hard green with a sort of blue
flash."

"Most of them are now.  But these are very, very old ones, the
aristocrat of emeralds, they have a special radiance that seems to make
them reflect the sun.  Experts use the expression 'honey-like' for
their color."

"'Old' emeralds, what a strange word to use," she said dreamily, moving
her shoulders so that they caught the light in an explosion of
sparks.

"They were mined in the fifteen hundreds, in Colombia, but officially
they're called 'Indian emeralds' because the Indian moguls bought up
all the finest stones.  The pendant comes off so you can use it as a
clip.  It once belonged to Alphonso XIII when he was king of Spain."

"You really are a collector aren't you?  You missed your calling, you
should have been an auctioneer."  she said, fending off the
magnificence of the stones by mocking him.  "Tell me, oh professor,
what does the pendant weigh?"

"Almost fifty carats, give or take... actually forty-eight point nine
five, since you ask, which incidentally isn't considered the most
elegant way to receive a gift from the heart."

"And where am I going to wear an almost-fifty-carat emerald clip?"

Tessa demanded, undaunted by his words.

"Wherever you like, on a belt, on a lapel, on a flannel nightshirt,
even on your bikini, it sure do make a nice touch o' color."

"I couldn't begin to!"

"Then don't, just put them on for me.  Here, do you want me to help you
take them off?  I don't want you to feel uncomfortable."

"Damn you!"  She stepped quickly out of his reach.  "Don't you dare
touch them."

"I always say it's astonishing how quickly a woman can get comfy with
emeralds.  It takes a lot longer for rubies.  Some women never can make
their peace with rubies."

"You took advantage of me, and now you're making fun!"

"Be a brave girl, pretend you're married to a man whose ego can only be
subdued when you wear some of the finest emeralds Harry Winston has
sold in his career or so he assured me, and I promise I won't even
smile sideways at you.  Think you could do that?  You're an actress,
you should be able to forget what you have on.  And frankly, if I were
you, I'd be a lot more self-conscious about letting my nipples show
when I raise my arms."

"They do not!"

"Wanna bet?"

Tessa raised her arms to adjust the thick chain of semicircular diamond
links that held the emeralds around her neck.  Her breasts rose inches
out of the top of her dress.  "Oh," she breathed in disbelief, "no!"

"You won't be able to dance in that dress," Luke said regretfully.

"Wanna bet?"

"What would your mother say?"

"She's just had three days in Paris, maybe she's a changed woman.

Maybe my father took her to the Lido or the Folies-Bergere.

They're supposed to have flown back this morning.  I'll make it a point
to call her sometime this week and ask her if I need to confess a sin
of immodesty that can't possibly be my fault."

"It wouldn't have been your fault if I hadn't warned you, but now that
you know, if you dance in that dress it's certainly a sin of immodesty,
a major sin."

"Stop splitting hairs.  You've already ruined my character with
emeralds and it hardly took a minute.  Oh, Luke, should I be such an
easy mark?  I didn't know I loved jewels until you gave me the ring.

And now these... is there something wrong about feeling so...

thrilled?  So absolutely smitten with excitement and delight?"

"Are you asking me as your spiritual advisor?"

"There's no one else around to consult."

"You're not kidding, are you darling?  Underneath you really mean it,
you really feel that there has to be something wrong with enjoying
them, don't you?"

"Maybe," she said sheepishly.  "Jewels must be the most purely
materialistic enjoyment there is.

"Feeling guilty about something that isn't wrong is a waste of time.

For more than four hundred years these stones have made women happy.

Today it's your turn.  Now listen to me, I won't-I will not allow it!

It's unreasonable.  You're not taking anything away from anybody.  I
bloody well want to feel free to give you jewels and I don't want to be
deprived of that pleasure.  But, if you're really disturbed by it, I'll
stop.  It's your decision, but couldn't you try, at least, to get used
to it?  For my sake?"

"I guess so," Tessa said after a pause for reflection.  "But there is
something that would make it easier."

"Just ask."

"I feel so disoriented, light-headed, kind of wispy.  It must be the
shock.  My arms feel much too bare, as if I might float away.

Shouldn't I be weighted down so that I feel as if my feet are touching
the floor?  I think what I need is a few, not too many, but still
rather... heavy, yes heavy, even massive ... bracelets?"

They were still sleeping the next morning when Luke woke to a repeated
knock on the front door.  Cursing under his breath, he recognized the
voice of Len Jones, his second-in-command, whom he'd left in charge of
the business.  No one else in his empire knew where he was, a state of
affairs that had taken many days to arrange.

Len had been instructed not to disturb him for any reason at all.

Sliding quickly out of bed, he left Tessa tucked under the quilt as he
pulled on his robe and went to answer the door.

"Luke, I'm sorry, but I had to let you know-" "Bloody hell, Len,
whatever it is, couldn't it have waited?"

"I'm terribly sorry, but no, it couldn't have.  It's Tessa's parents.

It's bad news, Luke, the worst.  They were in a taxi on their way home
from the airport... their taxi was sideswiped by one of those damn big
tanker trucks.  The driver and Tessa's father were killed instantly,
her mother's still alive but she can't last long... the people who are
taking care of Tessa's sister called me at the number you sent
them...

"Damn, damn, damn!  Look, go back to the office in Monte and arrange
for my plane to be ready to leave from Nice in three hours.

No, two and a half I'll get Tessa ready."

"Do you want me to send a car to drive you?"

"Not necessary.  You'd better come along to L.A. too.  I'll be busy
arranging the funeral-funerals-so I'll need you.  There's a list of
wedding guests on my desk.  Contact Tessa's aunts and tell them what's
happened.  Alert them to be ready to fly out to the coast, we'll make
the arrangements after we find out how Agnes is.  And call Fiona and
Mimi, Tessa will want them there.  Take care of the press-as few
details as possible.  What else?  Tessa's agent and Roddy Fensterwald,
call them.  Ask them to keep it out of the news as long as possible.

Take two large suites for us at the Beverly Hills Hotel, no, make that
the Bel-Air, it's harder for photographers to get into.  Thanks, Len.

Sorry to put all this on you, but Tessa's my priority.  I'll see you at
the plane."

Slowly Luke walked back to the bedroom of the farmhouse.

He sat on the side of the bed for a few minutes, unable to wake Tessa
to the news.  Everyone's parents die, he thought, but not with such
brutal suddenness, not at the end of their daughter's wedding
festivities.  He prayed that Tessa's deep sense of guilt, a guilt that
he could understand in the context of a very Catholic upbringing,
didn't make her blame herself for having brought them to Europe.

If only they'd returned with the others in the planes he'd chartered.

If only her father hadn't insisted at a look at the Paris he'd loved
long ago.  Luke lifted a strand of her heavy hair and rubbed it lightly
between his fingers.  Suddenly he understood why the Victorians wore
brooches containing curls from the hair of their lost loved ones.

He worshiped her he admitted helplessly.  He would give almost anything
to spare her this, but not a day more of their life together than was
necessary.

With the tip of a cautious finger he caressed the back of her hand,
hoping, at least, to wake her into a moment of brief happiness before
he had to tell her the news.  "Tessa," he whispered, "Tessa, Tessa
darling, wake up.  Wake up, my little sweetheart..."

"Can she speak?"  Tessa asked the nurse as she approached the door of
her mother's room in the intensive-care unit of St.  John's Hospital.

She'd insisted on Luke's remaining in the waiting room, knowing that
her mother wouldn't want him to see her broken and dying.

"She's said your name, from time to time, but that's all."

"Can you leave me alone with her?"

"Of course.  Ring when you need me."

Tessa pushed the door open and forced herself to approach the bed.

Terror and pity brought her to her knees the instant she looked down at
Agnes.  Only a few strands of her mother's hair dark, curly, and still
incongruously alive, identified her as the handsome woman she had
been.

Tessa was too deeply shocked to cry.  Quickly she struggled up from the
floor and sat in the chair by the hospital bed.

It wouldn't help her mother to see her kneeling as if by a grave.

"Mother it's Teresa.  I'm here, Mother."

Agnes's eyelids, under the cast on her forehead, remained closed, but
her lips moved slightly.

"Mother can you hear me?  It's Teresa."

"Teresa," Agnes said in a dry whisper "I'm dying."

"No, Mother no you're not, you'll get better..."  Tessa's voice trailed
off at the expression of faint scorn with which her mother received her
attempt at comfort.

"Listen, Teresa... important, don't tell husband about Maggie ...

never... never... promise me... important... my pride...

my life work... don't ruin..  worked so hard..."

"Mother don't worry, for God's sake don't worry, I won't tell anyone
anything, but don't worry about Maggie.  Luke will take care of
everything, everyone.  Maggie's safe, I'm safe.  Mother I love you."

"Proud of you... good girl... don't spoil your life... I always loved
you best... always..."

"Mother.  Mother!"  Tessa searched her mother's face.  The spark of
fire had suddenly but unquestionably blown out.  She knelt and prayed
at length for her mother's soul.  She looked up at the bed and saw that
she could just reach the fingertips on her mother's right hand where
they protruded from the cast, the nails still bearing the discreet
shade of soft pink she'd chosen for the wedding.  Tessa clasped Agnes's
fingertips in one hand, closed her eyes, and held them tenderly.

"Always loved her best," her mother's last words... why did they
surprise her, Tessa asked herself in desolation.  Hadn't her mother put
her first for as long as she could remember?  Believed in her fought
for her planned for her?  Used all her power to keep her from the
consequences of her mistake?  And how had Tessa repaid her mother?

She'd been angry when she'd crept into school rehearsals, she'd
deceived and mocked her with Mimi, she'd replaced her with Fiona, she'd
taken her devotion for granted or scorned it as meddling-this woman
who'd had such a tiny measure of love in her life.

Suddenly Tessa remembered how her mother had been barred from her first
audition and how nastily superior she'd felt, entering that fateful
room alone.  Even that pleasure, a pleasure that would have meant so
much to her mother a pleasure she'd thoroughly earned, had been denied
her.  Painful tears, tears of shame, filled Tessa's eyes as she took
the meager measure of her mother's life.

Agnes had been a hard mother to love, she had a knack for saying the
wrong thing in the wrong way, she'd never forgiven Tessa for getting
into trouble when she was a teenager yet nothing could change the fact
that for years she'd been the chief joy of her mother's life.

Her mother had been as good a mother as she'd known how to be, as she'd
been able to be, Tessa realized, sobbing for the young, hopeful Agnes
Riley, who'd believed she was making a romantic marriage sobbing for
herself and the understanding she'd reached too late.

Behind her she heard the steps of the nurse returning.  Tessa rose to
her feet.

"Oh, Miss Kent, she's gone.  I'm so very sorry.  Was she able to
recognize you before ...?"  the nurse asked, unable to repress her
curiosity.

"Yes.  She ..... herself... until the end... herself, more than ever
herself."

14

"Is she-?"  Luke asked as Tessa walked slowly into the waiting room.

"She's gone.  She recognized my voice, she said a few words, but then
she..  I watched her die..  one second she was alive and the next she
just... wasn't... she was only thirty-eight... oh, Luke, I wish I'd
been a better daughter but it's too late, too late now, too late
forever."

"Oh my darling, my Tessa, don't say things like that," Luke urged,
pressing her tightly against his shoulder.  "If you could have realized
how proud she was of you, her eyes lit up when she looked at you, you
made her happy.  Nothing can make this accident worse than it is except
thinking like that."

Luke patted Tessa's back as if she were a child who had fallen and hurt
herself, but she made herself draw away from him, knowing that if she
broke down again, she'd never gather up the courage to leave the circle
of his comfort.  In time she'd have to absorb the loss of her parents,
but now she had an immediate duty, a responsibility that couldn't
wait.

"She'd made a little calendar before they left and crossed off each
day.  Mother told me that in Monte Carlo.  Now Maggie knows that all
the days have passed and they still haven't come back.

Oh, Lord in heaven, how-no, what am I going to tell her?"

"The truth, what else is there?"

"A five-year-old child?  This was the first time they'd ever left her
they were her whole life..."

"There's no way to get around it, darling.  Maggie will never see them
again, you'll have to explain it clearly."

"But how?  Mommy and Daddy went to a wedding and then to Paris and then
straight on to heaven?  How could a little girl understand that?"

"You have to tell her about the accident."

"I know."

"I'd tell her for you, if I possibly could, but she's never laid eyes
on me.

"Oh, Luke, Luke, there are some things even you can't protect me from,"
Tessa said.  "What you can do is deal with the hospital administrator
and call Father Vincent at their church-it's St. Charles of the Holy
Savior in Santa Monica-and start making the...

arrangements, while I go and talk to Maggie.  I think it would confuse
her to meet you for the first time at this moment.  I won't be alone,
Mimi's still waiting downstairs in the car.  You were an angel to know
that I'd need her and to get her here so quickly.  Then we'll all come
back to the hotel with Maggie.  Fiona should be there by then."

"Your aunts are waiting to hear.  I can take care of that too."

"Oh, would you, darling?  They know you and I'm not sure when I can get
to a phone."

"Right.  Just tell me something before you leave, is Maggie...

just how emotional and sensitive is she?"

I'm not sure, Tessa thought, I don't truly know her that well.

"I refuse to believe this," Mimi said as they sat side by side in the
limo, the window raised between them and the driver.  "A bride and an
orphan in six days.  No wonder you look so... I can't find any word but
'blank."' "I'm not letting myself feel any more emotion than I can
help, not until I've told Maggie.  At least my mother and I managed to
say we loved each other before she died.  We did, you know, in a
strange and difficult way, I realize that now, Mimi, when it's too
late.

Naturally that's always the case, isn't it?  Funny, I was always
convinced that my father loved me.  In his own severe, upright,
old-fashioned way, I could tell somehow that he cared for me but he
just couldn't talk about it, not really ever.  But with a father, my
father anyway, you don't expect much... you get so you don't mind.  The
only thing that helps is that they knew they didn't have to worry about
me anymore... especially my mother..."

"Was she able to say anything else?"  Mimi asked hesitantly.

"Oh yes, she managed to make herself very plain.  With her last
words.

She was an amazing woman, Mimi.  So strong."

"What does that mean... or shouldn't I even ask?  I have no idea how
I'm supposed to behave now."

"You're supposed to be Mimi and nothing but Mimi and you're the only
person in the world who can ask that question and get an answer.  She
told me never to tell Luke about Maggie, never to tell anyone about
Maggie, never to, I guess she meant 'destroy,' or something like that,
her pride, her life's work, never to ruin-she only said 'ruin' but
obviously she meant the entire story, the whole edifice she'd built up
with her family, her sisters, the way she simply made everything
happen, even starting me in my career.  She kept herself alive to tell
me that, I'm sure of it."

"But-" "What?"

"Well, I mean, you weren't planning to tell for God's sake, were
you?"

"I don't know what to do, Mimi, I just don't know what's the right
thing to do.  After all, she... Maggie... is my daughter."

Tessa began to weep again, not merely tears over the loss of her
parents, but tears of utter confusion.  Her mother's dying words
resonated in her ears no less strongly than Luke's when he'd told her,
over and over, how deeply important it was to him that she was a
virgin.  And she'd tacitly confirmed that lie each time he'd said it.

Over and over.  There had been exactly one perfect chance, one ideal
moment to tell him about Maggie, on their first evening together, and
she'd rejected the opportunity instantly, with every bit of intuition
and instinct and reason she possessed.  If she made herself tell him
the truth now, he'd never believe in her again, never trust her
again.

She would have made him into a fool.  She'd allowed, no, she'd
encouraged him to believe she was a virgin.  He'd know her to be a
deliberate, constant, confirmed liar, and perhaps his love would die.

Or if not die, certainly change.  Consciously or not, she'd used her
technical virginity every minute she was with him.  It illuminated
their love.

But Maggie had a mother of her own, even if that person was on her way
to tell her that her mother and father had gone to heaven.

"Tessa!  Stop it right now!"  Mimi handed her a wad of Kleenex.

"You don't have time to cry!  Now listen to me.  Maggie has only known
one mother in her life, not two.  You're her big sister, the one she's
damn lucky to have, the sister who can make sure that she spends the
rest of her life being happy and taken care of.  If you're thinking of
some damn stupid moment of truth, some need to bring up the past, stamp
on it!"

Tessa blew her nose and listened to Mimi, whose admonishments had so
often shown her the way although, she reminded herself, not necessarily
the right way.

"Remember your mother's last words, Tessa.  You simply can't go against
them!  The truth Maggie knows is that her parents and your parents are
the same people and they're dead.  What on earth would you have to gain
by stepping forward and claiming Maggie now?  What a media orgy that
would be if it ever got out, and how wouldn't it?  Give me a break!

'The Secret of Tessa Kent's Bastard Child!"  Please!  She's yours
anyway, no one can take her away from you, you're her next of kin."

"I know."

"Then where's the problem?  You must have a major self-destructive
streak if you ever dream of telling him.  Shape up, girl!

You're thinking crazy.  Luke doesn't know and doesn't ever need to
know, your mother would die all over again if you told anybody...

or she'd come back and kill you herself... and as far as I'm concerned,
it was a virgin birth and I can swear to that."

"Don't remind me.  Oh Lord have mercy on me, we're here."

"I don't see why a little girl should go to a funeral," Mimi said.

"It's bad enough without seeing the whole thing."

Tessa, Luke, Mimi, and Fiona were having a room-service lunch while
Maggie took her nap in the bedroom next to the sitting room.

She hadn't burst into tears when Tessa had told her.  She'd sighed
deeply, asked one question, and then silently, stoically, and solemnly
thrust her thumb into her mouth and sat passively in Tessa's arms,
refusing to snuggle or talk or ask any more questions.  Later she'd
refused anything more than a glass of milk at lunch, although they'd
all taken turns at trying to tempt her to eat.  Tessa wondered how much
Maggie had been able to take in of the facts she'd been told.

She had no idea how a five-year-old thought about death, she realized,
trying to remember details of her forgotten catechism classes.

Even though Maggie hadn't started them yet, she'd been going to Sunday
mass for years; she'd certainly absorbed the basics.

"I don't agree," Tessa said to Mimi.  "I think there needs to be a
feeling of finality, a visual punctuation mark, a ceremony she can
watch and talk about with us and remember afterward, so that Maggie
understands that her parents haven't merely disappeared for a while.

When I told her about the accident she asked, 'Like on the five-o'clock
news?"

Those were the only words she uttered.  She didn't even ask what was
going to happen to her now-that's an enormous amount of denial.  I
don't know what to do except let her see the funeral."

"I think you're right," Luke agreed.  "We can make the mass as easy as
possible for her, but I don't think she should go to the cemetery and
see the caskets lowered into the ground.  That's too much reality.  I
remember my grandfather's funeral, and the burial part scared me for
years.  I still have nightmares about it."

"That's where I could come in," Fiona volunteered.  "The mass is
scheduled for late morning.  After it's over I'll have lunch with
Maggie here and then we'll watch television or play or she can take a
nap, whatever she wants to do, until you get back from the cemetery."

"I've talked to Father Vincent," Luke continued, "and we've agreed that
the closed caskets will be placed at the altar of St. Charles of the
Holy Savior before anyone comes in.  He tells me that in any case a
Requiem Mass is short.  I've left instructions that somebody should
take the black ribbons off the flowers people send...

silly, I suppose, but it seems less ominous for a little girl.

There'll be the organ music, of course, and I've asked for as large a
choir as possible-I hope she'll be more interested in that than in the
mass.

Tessa and I won't take communion at the end because it would mean
leaving her with people she doesn't know."

"You've thought of everything," Fiona said, "except for the wake."

"Wrong, the wake was easy.  One phone call to the manager.  It'll be
right here, at the Bel-Air.  Thank God for wakes," Luke said, taking
Tessa's hand.  "People will come straight here from the cemetery.

By that time, if I remember correctly, they're all starving and dying
for a drink, not necessarily in that order."

"Amen," said Mimi.  "Will we see all the wedding guests again?"

"Except for my cousins and their kids," Tessa said.  "However, lots of
the people I've worked with will probably come, and Luke's employees
who live nearby, Maggie's godparents of course, and my parents' other
friends, my father's pupils, his fellow teachers.

Lord knows who'll show up."

"Tyler is on his way from New York," Luke added.  "He'll be here in
time for the funeral."

Tessa raised her eyebrows in surprise.  She wouldn't have expected
Tyler Webster, that elegant gent who had talked horses to her in
Monaco, to come all this way for the funeral of people he'd just met
and barely knew.  Still, Luke was Tyler's stepbrother even if they
rarely saw each other.  It was thoughtful of him, but then he'd seemed
to be a particularly sweet man.

Had they turned into angels already, Maggie wondered, listening to the
sound of the grown-ups' voices in the next room, as she lay curled into
as tight a ball as possible, clutching her favorite doll, one of the
armload of toys the blond lady named Mimi had hastily gathered up to
bring with her, along with some of her clothes.  How long did it take
to get out of Purgatory?  In church, they never said the number of
hours or days or weeks, but she knew that when Tessa said her mommy and
daddy were in Heaven, Tessa didn't understand about Purgatory.  Nobody
ever told you anything about what Purgatory looked like.  The priests
talked about Hell and Heaven, but Purgatory was a big nothing.  A big
fat nothing.

Anyway, they'd be in Heaven soon, she was sure of that, because if you
were good that's where you went when you died even if you had to go to
Purgatory first.  Died.  That was the right word.

Her best friend, Susan, said that people "passed away," but it said in
the Bible that Jesus died on the cross, not that he'd passed away on
the cross.  They'd have big white wings and wear long white dresses
like her mother's nightgowns and sit at the foot of God.  When the
angels flew around in heaven, did they ever have accidents, did they
ever bump into each other, could they ever die again like in a taxi
accident?  The priests on Sunday said that Heaven was a place of
perfect happiness that lasted forever, but how could her parents be
happy when she was all alone down here?  How could they be happy when
they missed her?  They'd said they'd miss her when they went away for
the wedding but they'd promised her that they'd be back in a week, and
now Tessa said they weren't coming back, not ever, because of the taxi
accident.  So they'd miss her unless she went to heaven too, but she
didn't want to die, not even to sit at the foot of God and fly around
on wings and be happy forever.

It was all mixed up, Maggie thought, tears rolling down her face, and
nobody, not even the grown-ups, not even the priests, could explain it
right, or maybe they really did know but they kept it a secret from
little kids and that wasn't fair.  She wished Susan was with her so
they could talk about it, even if Susan said "passed away" and not
"died."

15

The wake had been in full swing for several hours when Mimi took Tessa
aside.  "Do you think you could split for a few minutes?"  Mimi
whispered in her ear.  "I've got to get some fresh air.

Out of the corner of her eye Tessa saw Patsy, her least favorite aunt,
bearing down on her.  Hastily she turned, put her arm around Mimi's
waist, and headed for the doorway.

"What a brilliant idea," Tessa breathed in relief.  "I shouldn't stay
away long, but this wake is getting to me.  And I'm afraid to have a
drink because I have to remember so many names."

They walked down the stone pathways of the Hotel Bel-Air, inhaling the
rich scents of the flowering bushes and fragrant annuals that were
planted in thick borders everywhere, until they came to a quiet
courtyard with a central fountain and a wooden bench.

"Wow, your family can really drink up a storm," Mimi said in
amazement.

"You're one to talk."

"Maggie seemed to be having a better time than I would have
expected."

"That's one of the things about wakes, people pay a lot of attention to
kids so they get distracted and forget why they're there for a
while."

"She was so composed at the funeral it scared me," Mimi said.

"I know, I noticed the same thing.  More denial?  Oh, Mimi, would you
believe that I can't even think straight about my parents, all I can
think about is what to do with Maggie?"

"I can't tell you what the answer to that is, but I do know the one
thing you can't do, not ever, and that's raise her, you and Luke."

"But that's the natural-" "It would be, if she were your sister, no
matter how complicated it got, but in the circumstances, no, Tessa,
just plain no.  Find another way."

"Why, Mimi, why?  I could carry it off, I'm an actress, he'd never
guess..."

"Maybe not, but I'm thinking of you, living each day fooling him and
fooling her and trying to fool yourself, what is quaintly known as
'living a lie."  You wouldn't make it, Tessa, not for long."

"You can't know that!"

"I've been your friend forever, remember?  You and your crazy sense of
guilt and sin.  Teresa Horvath, the last of the big-time sinners, do
you think I've forgotten, or that you've basically changed?

Sooner or later, as Maggie grows up and gives you the usual problems
kids give, the big sister facade would disappear and the maternal
instinct to tell her what to do would take over.  You'd crack, Tessa!

You couldn't avoid making a slip, or you'd give up and just confess the
truth, but before that happened, you'd be a wreck.  Always nervous,
lways watching yourself trying not to act too motherly, always keeping
an eye on Luke's reaction to the two of you together, always afraid of
doing too much for Maggie, or worse, not enough."

"You've always loved to tell me what to do!"  Tessa protested.

"You wouldn't be the woman Luke married anymore," Mimi continued,
paying no attention, "and he wouldn't understand why, and of course
he'd blame Maggie.  My God, Tessa, you had exactly four days together
before this happened.  You're a couple of barely newlyweds with a lot
of adjustments to make like everybody elseyou hardly know each other
when it gets down to that, to say nothing of the major age difference,
which I've been too polite to mention till now.  Luke's a guy who can
have anything he wants, and children haven't been high on his list.

Don't tell me that's an accident.  Or is there something I don't
know?"

"He's never wanted children," Tessa admitted miserably.  "He said,
maybe in ten years... I'll only be thirty..."

"Well then!  You simply cannot take on the burden and responsibility of
a five-year-old child on top of everything else, not when there are
four aunts, each one of whom made a point of telling you that she
wanted Maggie to come and live with her, each one of whom has plenty of
child-rearing experience."

"My mother was the youngest of them all.  The aunts are in their
forties, some even in their fifties, and their kids are mostly grown
up.

"So what?  Do you imagine that at twenty you'll be better and smarter
about bringing up a kid?"

"They're not her mother," Tessa said stubbornly, seeing Maggie's set,
plump, big-eyed face, the long, dark braids she tugged at, the valiant
way she walked, never dragging her feet no matter how new the
situation.

"Her mother died, come on!  She's already accepted that.

You're her sister, who visits her whenever you can and brings her
wonderful presents and ends up being the person who understands her
best, the person she can really talk to and confide in, the person
whose advice she follows-you're her fairy godmother, instead of the
person who tells her to finish her homework and eat her peas.  You get
to spoil her to your heart's delight!"

"Oh, Mimi, you should have your own advice column.  'Ask Mimi, the
All-Wise One,' circulation one hundred million.  You're so quick to
jump at a decision for someone else, imagining that they think the way
you think.  Hasn't it occurred to you that I know I'm not Maggie's
sister, that I know I'm her mother, that I know I have a duty toward
her?  Don't you understand that I love Maggie?  I was never allowed to
mother her the way I yearned to, but there was never a minute when I
didn't love her.  I gave birth to her, for the love of God, I carried
her for nine months, all the good reasons in the world can't change
those facts.  Oh, Mimi, I'm in agony.  No matter what I do, I'm going
to be wrong, there's no way out of this, no honorable way."

"Will you think about what I said?"

"Naturally, but I can't let you make up my mind for me."

"God forbid."

Tessa wondered angrily why she was still awake.  After the last guest
had left, after Maggie and blessed Fiona, without whose help she'd be
utterly lost, had settled down in the neighboring suite, she'd planned
to go to bed no matter how early in the evening it was, and sleep as
long as she possibly could.  Jet lag, her parents' funeral, followed by
an Irish wake the longest, saddest day of her life surely all that
would put her into a state of immediate and necessary
unconsciousness.

But after trying to let go and relax for a half hour, thinking about
Maggie each minute, she gave up and went to find Luke, who was reading
in the sitting room next to the bedroom.

"What are you doing here, sweetheart?  You look like Ophelia on a bad
day," he said, plunking her down in his lap and kissing her neck under
the tangle of hair she'd been too tired to bother brushing.

"Can't sleep.  I still have jet lag on top of everything else.

Look, that damn old sun hasn't even set yet.  I wonder what time it is
back in Ere."

"Almost dawn."

"I feel as if I've left some hugely important piece of my soul
there."

"We'll go back, darling, I promise, we'll go hundreds of times."

"But when?  And anyway, it'll never be the same."

"Nothing is ever exactly the same, but we'll be there together."

"How long could we have stayed if...?"

"I'd been able to carve out ten days after our wedding.

Counting from the day I met you, I haven't attended to business, and
normally I never take more than a week or two off, maximum.  After Ere
we have to spend a week in Melbourne; there's a major board meeting
that's been planned for months.  Then, we fly to Houston for a few days
and go up to Anchorage to take a look at..."

"So even if we hadn't had to come back here, we'd have had only another
few days in Ere anyway?"

"Four more, but I could be wrong by a day."

"So it wouldn't make sense to go back there now and then have to turn
around and leave for Australia when we're halfway to Australia
already?"  Tessa asked in a forlorn, willfully blind attempt to roll
back events and recapture her honeymoon.

"Is that what was keeping you up?  Impossible confusions of time
changes, the International Dateline, and travel schedules running
through your head?"

"Everything is keeping me up," she said, bursting into tears, pressing
herself tightly into the shelter formed by Luke's lap and chest and
arms and letting herself go completely, weeping as loudly and
unselfconsciously as a child locked away in a closet, wailing and
moaning in a raw wordless lament that went on and on.  Luke did nothing
to stop her, gripping her as tightly as he could without hurting her.

High time, he thought, high time.

After a long while, with a final descent into a diminishing series of
sniffs and whimpers, Tessa started to dab at her eyes with the hem of
her nightgown.  "I need a bath towel," she said in a choked voice, "but
I feel better."

"I'll get you a wet washcloth and a face towel," Luke said.

"No, don't go away, not for a second, don't let go of me yet," she
pleaded.

"I won't," Luke said, picking her up, carrying her into the bathroom,
grabbing a couple of towels and a box of Kleenex, and returning with
her to the chair.  "There, everything you could possibly want.

How about a drink?  Or vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce?"

"Just a kiss.  And another kiss.  God, I love you.  What a honeymoon
you've had.  Aren't you glad you didn't get married before?"

"I'm glad I didn't get married to anyone else."

"Even now?"

"Especially now.  Tessa, I know I told you that I didn't want to share
you with kids for ten years, but darling, that was before and this is
entirely different, and what I said shouldn't count anymore."

He set his lips sternly.  "We'll bring up Maggie."

"Oh, Luke, you just said we have to go to Melbourne, Texas, and Alaska
and that's only in the next few weeks."

"Darling, we'll hire the best nanny in the world to travel with us.

Kids are flexible, Maggie'll have fun seeing so many new things, and
then when she's old enough for school, we'll get her a tutor too,
several tutors if necessary, and by the time she's, oh, eight or nine,
whenever little girls usually go away to boarding school, we'll send
her off, so she could make friends of her own age.  There are some
marvelous schools in Switzerland or England, even in Australia,
wherever she'd be happiest, and she could be with us on vacations."

"But Luke, Maggie's in kindergarten now, she's already had two years of
preschool, and next year she starts first grade.  Children need to be
'socialized' from practically day one, not three or four years from
now.

"They do?"  Luke looked blank.  "Socialized?"

"I honestly didn't remember either, until you started making those
sweet, impossible, mixed-up plans.  I'd forgotten what it was like when
I was little, all those happy hours throwing sand into the other kids'
eyes, playing games, making friends.  Look, all of my mother's sisters
want Maggie to go and live with them."

"How do you feel about that?"

"I think that the most important thing is for her to be brought up in a
family with kids roughly her age, so she has a normal family life.

Each of my aunts assured me that Maggie would be treated like a little
princess, and I know only too well what they meant."

"What, exactly?"

"She'd become a fabulous, glamorous orphan, someone to concentrate on
completely now that most of their own children are grown and out of the
house.  She's the little sister of a movie star, protected by a man,
her brother-in-law no less, who has more money than they can begin to
imagine, a man who naturally would want Maggie-and, by extension,
themselves to have the best of everything.  A new house, a new car, and
all expenses paid for them.  For Maggie, private schools, riding
lessons, ballet lessons, beautiful clothes-" "Well, of course she
should have all those things," Luke said indignantly.

"It would make Maggie the power in the house, the center of everything,
overwhelmed by attention and spoiling, and she'd understand the
dynamics quickly enough.  It would be the worst thing possible for
her.

And any aunt we decided to send Maggie to would queen it over the
others, just the way my poor mother acted with her sisters at the
wedding.  You missed seeing that, but I didn't.  It was ghastly."

"But there's no other answer," Luke said, shaking his head.

"I can't say I liked my cousins at the wedding, but at least some of
them are the right age, with young families.  I think that while you're
in Australia I should take a trip back East, take Maggie with me, and
get to know them better; spend time with each of their families.

There's got to be one family Maggie could fit into happily."

"Hmm," Luke murmured.  "Let's talk this over in the morning.

I promise you we'll find a solution.  It's too complicated to settle
tonight, and anyway, you look so exhausted.  I bet if you went to bed
and I held your hand, you'd be asleep in minutes."

"I'll try," Tessa agreed, yawning.

"What an accommodating girl you are."

As Luke watched Tessa fall into a profound sleep, he thought about her
cousins, a bunch of unfriendly, impolite, classless oafs, in his
opinion, with a mob of ill-mannered, unappealing kids.  Perhaps they'd
been totally intimidated by the whole occasion, perhaps they were the
salt of the earth in their own homes, but he didn't mind admitting to
himself that snobbish or not, he had no intention of letting his wife's
sister be brought up with yobs.

There was, thank God, another solution.

Very early the next morning, Luke got up quietly, leaving Tessa still
deeply asleep.  He called his stepbrother, Tyler Webster, who was due
to fly home in a few hours, woke him, and asked him to meet him in a
half hour in the dining room.

"Good of you to have dressed so quickly, Tyler."

"Least I could do, Luke."

"No, Tyler, it's only the beginning."

"Huh?"

"Tyler, there's something very, very important you can do for me."

"Just ask," Tyler replied, with his sweet and thoughtful smile.

"It's something that won't go unrecognized, in fact, something that
will be most highly rewarded, even by your standards."

"Luke, come on guy, you already do more than enough."

"I'm aware of that," Luke said, concentrating on spreading marmalade
carefully on a piece of toast.

The Webster family lived entirely on Luke's largesse.  Charming Tyler
combined fatal bad judgment with a talent for laziness.  He had never
been able to keep a job for more than two months.  Luke's father had
thrown him out of the family business in less time than that, afraid of
what promises his bumbling, incompetent stepson might make on no
authority but his own desire to please.  However, because Dan Blake
loved his American second wife, Tyler's mother, he had made Tyler a
generous allowance, so generous that Tyler was able to concentrate on
his one serious passion.  Riding horses beautifully was the only
occupation for which Tyler was fit, and horses were the only thing he
cared deeply about.

After his father's death, Luke had continued the allowance, and when an
unresisting Tyler had been married by Madison Grant, a plain Jane of a
good family, a clever girl who saw Tyler clearly and knew that he was
her best chance at a good life, Luke had increased the allowance and
bought them a handsome stud farm near Madison's family's home, in the
New Jersey hunt country.  There Tyler could live as one in that line of
old-fashioned country gentlemen whose gene pool he had too liberally
inherited.  Luke paid for everything, from the children's schools to
Madison's beautiful clothes and the parties she gave so well.  The
Websters' neighbors, horse people like themselves, assumed that they
had a large private income and Tyler's mettle and judgment were never
tested.  The stud itself, even under a qualified manager, just about
broke even, but in years when it lost money, Luke made up the
difference without flinching.

"Luke, what's up?  You look so serious.

"I want you and Madison to bring up Maggie, Tessa's sister."

"What!"

"There's no one else who'll do.  Maggie's aunts are too old and her
cousins aren't suitable.  She's a dear little girl and she needs to be
in a good, stable, loving family environment.  Tessa and I aren't going
to be leading that kind of life-there's a worldwide business to run and
there's Tessa's career; we'll rarely be in one place for long.

How old are your children now?"

....... wait a minute... right, Allison's eight, Candice's ten, and
Barney's, gosh, four and a half."

"Spot on.  Does Barney have a nanny?  Excellent, he can share her with
Maggie.  As I remember you have a guest suite, right?

Good.

Plenty of room for Maggie.  What I'd appreciate your doing, right now
as a matter of fact, is calling Madison and telling her to pack herself
and the kids up and fly out here today.  They can take the company's
New York plane; they'll gain three hours, so they can be here before
dinner."

"Today!"

"The sooner Tessa knows that Maggie's going to be happy in her new
home, the better for everybody."

"Oh, sure, I can understand that.  Gosh, I wonder what Madison's going
to say."

"She'll understand, Tyler.  You won't even have to explain when she
knows how important it is to me.  Essential, as a matter of fact.

Waiter; could you bring a phone to the table please?"

Madison Webster and her three children walked over the bridge in front
of the entrance to the Hotel Bel-Air as unrumpled as if they'd just
driven over from Beverly Hills.  Maggie stood shyly, but holding her
ground, as the introductions were made.

"Well, well, so this is Maggie!  What a dear little girl you are,"
Madison said, bending down to kiss her cheek.  "I'm so glad to meet
you."

"Thank you," Maggie mumbled.

"Barney, why don't you shake hands with Maggie," Tyler suggested
nervously.

"How old are you," Barney demanded, looking Maggie in the eye.

"Five."

"You're older than I am but I'm taller than you.  Much taller," he
announced with satisfaction, a big, warm, friendly grin splitting his
freckled face.  He took her hand in his and squeezed it tightly,
pumping it up and down.  "Wanna play?"

"Play what?"

"Just play, Maggie.  Come on, I'll show you.  I know lots of good
games, fun games, maybe we'll build a tree house, you'll like that."

Barney didn't bother to say hello to his uncle Luke or his new aunt.

Without letting go of Maggie's hand, Barney tugged the little girl away
into the gardens, both of them soon breaking into a run.  Maggie's
laugh rang out as they rounded a corner and vanished from sight.

"Me Tarzan, you Jane," Tessa said, smiling for the first time in
days.

16

Before Maggie Horvath came to live with them, Madison Webster had
formed for herself a number of complicated rules of domestic economy.

All of her singularly expensive, marvelously simple clothes were bought
at Bergdorf's but she took care of them beautifully and wore them
forever.  She'd never indulged in redecoration of their large country
house, but instead cultivated the shabby English look.  If a piece of
furniture was on the verge of becoming too shamefully worn, she
replaced its fabric with the same pattern, remaining consistent to the
style already established.

She bought no jewels at all, contenting herself with those few simple
pieces Tyler had inherited from his mother; she used a third-rate
caterer for her parties, making all the most important dishes herself,
for she had taken several Cordon-Bleu courses and could cook
beautifully, although none of her friends knew it.  She learned to care
for indoor plants so she never had to pay for fresh flowers except for
entertaining.  She could still use her grandmother's invisibly darned,
heavy lace table linen for parties as well as the heavy, old-fashioned
silver she'd inherited directly when her grandmother died, along with a
number of dark, impressive family portraits, which she'd hung carefully
in places of honor.

She made sure that her station wagon and Tyler's Jaguar were regularly
serviced and then washed daily by one of the stable boys, so they could
keep their cars until they became classics.  Her sheets and towels were
bought at white sales, all of her daughters' clothes were bought on
sale, she used drugstore makeup and supermarket generic brands of soap,
toilet paper, paper towels, and canned goods.

One of the maids was delegated to clip coupons, and Madison did all the
shopping herself, never trusting her cook to find bargains.

She kept two fridges, one for the help's cheap food, one for the
family's.

All four of her dogs came from the pound.

However, she spared no expense on certain details.  She made it a point
to have at least one more waiter than necessary whenever she
entertained so that her parties ran with smooth perfection; her cellar
was so excellently stocked that Tyler passed for a wine collector; she
went for a trim every three weeks to the best hairdresser in New York;
she never bought an item of leather that wasn't from Hermes; her
cocktail napkins and guest towels came from Frette; a chipped Waterford
glass was promptly replaced with another; and her daughters both
attended the hideously expensive Elm Country Day School, while Barney
was destined for Phillips Andover.

This combination of invisible thrift and conspicuous luxuries was not
imposed on Madison by the limitations of the allowance Luke made to
Tyler.  She could have spent far more money than she did and still
stayed well within its yearly amount.

Luke didn't know, and Tyler didn't notice, that Madison steadily saved
healthy amounts each year, investing them in a deeply conservative,
no-load mutual fund with a steady performance record.  Her personal
dreaded rainy day would only come if Luke died.  Without him, the
Webster family would have no income at all.

Not a bean.  Unlike her grandmother, her parents could leave her
nothing, and Tyler... well, Tyler was a gentleman, not a businessman,
to put it as gently as possible.

Maggie's arrival four years earlier had been a guarantee that as long
as the little girl lived with the Websters, they could count on
receiving far more money from Luke, or his estate, than they had
before-a guarantee made in writing by the chief partner in the law firm
Luke employed in Manhattan.

Why couldn't she like Maggie, Madison asked herself in irritation.

Why couldn't she feel even a flicker of genuine warmth for the
nine-year-old who had made it possible for her to invest so much more
than ever before?  Maggie's presence in their house had, from the day
she arrived, ensured a minimum of thirteen years of respite from any
rainy day, since she would certainly live with them until she was
eighteen.  Even when she went off to college, Madison told herself,
Luke would unquestionably agree that she'd need a home to come back to
for school vacations, no matter how often she was able to visit her
sister.

It simply wasn't possible that she could be so stupid as to still
resent the imperious, high-handed, arrogant way in which Luke had taken
it for granted that she would welcome a strange child into her home.

He hadn't even had the courtesy to ask her to do it as a favor to
him... yet she could never forget that oversight, try as she had.  To
be perfectly honest, his presumption had, in the most cold-blooded way,
rubbed their noses in their indebtedness to him.  It was not as if
there had ever been any question that they owed him everything...

but could they be blamed for not liking to be reminded of it?  It made
her feel so... powerless, so deeply humiliated, Madison told herself,
as she had done far too many times in the past four years, ever since
Maggie had been dumped on their doorstep.

True, Luke had never asked them to do anything for him before.  Perhaps
those early years of scrupulously hands-off treatment had dimmed her
understanding of the ignominious position her husband was in, a
position which, in moments of gloom, made her feel exactly like the
wife of a worthless remittance man.

But even now, every time she laid eyes on Maggie, she was reminded of
how much she owed Luke, or was it how much she owed Maggie?  One thing
came down to the other; if you considered it with any precision which,
thank you, she would prefer not to have to do, although she couldn't
help being obsessed by it.  God knows, Tyler never gave their position
a thought.  But then Tyler didn't consider anything with precision, and
she'd always known it, so why should she resent being made conscious
all over again of the deliberate bargain she'd made?  She had,
sensibly, preferred marrying an incompetent fool to remaining single.

What woman wouldn't?

But there was no getting away from it: when Maggie called her "Aunt
Madison" she rejected the term in her mind.  When Maggie came to live
with them, they had decided it was the least confusing form of address
for a child of five who was-too ridiculously for words-Tyler's
stepbrother's wife's sister.  Or, to make it more confusing, her own
brother-in-law's sister-in-law.  But she wasn't Maggie's aunt, damn it,
and Tyler wasn't her uncle.  They weren't the slightest relation to
Maggie.  Maggie didn't come from their kind of background, she didn't
come from a family heritage you could respect, and nothing could change
that.  Under normal circumstances she would never have taken Maggie
into her home to live, and she knew her neighbors had raised many an
eyebrow when she'd tried to explain the tragic circumstances that had,
so suddenly, made Maggie a part of their family.

She'd put the best possible face on it, but she knew that many members
of the bridge club, the hunt club, and the tennis club wondered why
Maggie occupied the guest suite, when her own daughters shared a
room.

What would they say if they knew that she'd never dared to severely
reprove Maggie, although the girl drove her crazy with her inability to
keep her blouse tucked into her skirt or her pants, to say nothing of
the way she managed to get spots on clean clothes within minutes of
putting them on.  She was such an unfemmine thing, always dashing
around with Barney as if she were another little boy, her unruly hair
looking as if it had never been brushed, her face as if it had never
been washed.  None of the exquisite, and totally inappropriate, party
dresses or fine sweater sets that she brought back from her visits to
her sister had ever survived more than a few weeks of Maggie's
treatment, but then they were entirely unsuitable for a child in any
case, and infuriating when she had to imagine what they'd cost.  The
money that was lavished on that child!  It was unseemly, in her
opinion, utterly unseemly.

You could always tell when Maggie was in the house: the sound of her
bold laugh, entirely too loud and too frequent, the sound of her
feet-couldn't that child ever walk instead of running up and down
stairs?-and then her boisterous entrance into any room, with the
expectation of a hungry puppy, bursting with observations and
questions.  She seemed to need attention and, worse, long for affection
that Madison didn't, couldn't possibly be expected to feel and would
have to be a skillful actress to produce.  Really, it was too much!

Affection on demand!  Maggie took up more air than any nine-year-old
should be allowed to do.  Didn't she have any decent sense of
self-consciousness?  Couldn't she learn to be less visible?

Maggie acted as if she owned the place, Madison thought bitterly, and
although the child couldn't possibly realize it, in an indirect way,
she did, for every acre of their handsome property belonged to Luke,
and Luke and Tessa had no heirs other than Maggie.

Madison sighed, thinking of her own daughters: Candice, the
exceptionally pretty one, who was now fourteen, and Allison, who might
or might not become the extraordinarily beautiful one, but was now, at
twelve, merely promising.  What satisfactory children they were!  Neat,
polite, modest, ladylike girls with perfect manners, who hung up their
clothes, polished their riding boots, kept their bedroom and bathroom
tidy, and got their homework in on time without her prompting.  If only
some of their breeding had rubbed off on Maggie!

But, one had to admit, breeding didn't "rub off," it was innate.

Tyler came, as she did, from a long line of what she could only term
'American aristocrats," every last one of them Protestant, every last
one of them proper, every last one of them quietly, admirably at ease
in his social environment.  Well, all she could say was that whatever
momentarily fortunate mix of Irish and Hungarian genes had produced the
ravishing Tessa hadn't been in operation when Maggie was conceived.

Everything about her high coloring, with skin so white, and cheeks so
red, with her thick thatch of black curls and the fierce blueness of
her eyes, screamed "Black Irish."

Not that she had anything against the Irish, goodness knows, she wasn't
a snob, Madison assured herself, but there simply didn't happen to be
any living in the neighborhood.  Nor enrolled at Elm Country Day, where
Maggie was the only child who had to be driven to confession every
Thursday and catechism class every Saturday-a thirty-mile trip each
way, with nothing for her to do but sit in the station wagon and read
while she waited for the damn things to be over.  And yet somehow she
didn't dare direct any of the staff to take over those trips.  It was
much..  safer..  .for Maggie to report to Tessa that Aunt Madison took
her.  Thank the good, reasonable Episcopalian Lord that she had the
excuse of going to her own church on Sunday, so that she could send
Maggie off to mass with the cook.

And what an unsuitable to-do last year; when Maggie made her First Holy
Communion!  First she'd been endlessly involved in finding a perfect
dress.  They'd actually had to go all the way into Manhattan to find a
decent selection.  The only saving grace was that the church was so far
away that her friends hadn't been aware of the ceremony.  They all knew
Maggie was Catholic, of course, but some details were best left to the
imagination, such as, good grief, a child of eight outlandishly decked
out in a long white dress, a miniature bride drinking the blood and
eating the body of Christ.

Shaking her head at the thought, Madison decided to shut herself in her
bedroom with the Wall Street Journal.  It had such a calming effect on
her nerves.

"Maggie, do you really have to get up on that pony?"  Barney begged, as
he watched from the rail of the riding ring.  "You know you're not
supposed to ride her without a grown-up around."

"I've got to keep practicing," she said, stubbornly, "or she'll never
get used to me."  Maggie gave her new pony lump after lump of sugar in
the forlorn hope that they might ensure good behavior.

Her mount, Fairy, was a Welsh pony, a recent ninth-birthday present
from Luke, the equivalent of a valuable thoroughbred horse.

Unfortunately, Fairy was smarter, Barney knew, than she should be, an
overbred, neurotic, cocky, smug animal with a well-developed mean
streak.  Maggie should be riding some old school horse that had held
ten thousand kids and wouldn't mind what she did to it, but Luke hadn't
known, and no one had wanted to tell him.

"Maggie, you stink on a horse, why won't you admit it?  There's nothing
to be ashamed about."

"Yeah, well tell that to everybody around here.  If you can't ride, you
might just as well be dead."

"You could at least wait till tomorrow, when your instructor'll be
here."

"He bugs me, all those do's and don'ts, it just makes it harder."

"But the do's and don'ts are what help you control the horse."

"You're such a know-it-all, Barney, rules, rules, rules."

"I'm just trying to keep you from breaking your arm again, like you did
last year.  You know how upset your sister got."

"That wasn't my fault.  The horse was spooked by a bird on the trail,
and around here a broken arm is no big deal.  How can Tessa understand
that?  I'm riding Fairy, Barney.  If you don't want to watch, go back
to the house."

Muttering prayers to the Holy Mother and the Infant Jesus under her
breath, Maggie led the pony over to the rail, stopped her, and
scrambled into the saddle.  She settled herself, adjusting the reins
perfectly, and gave Fairy a gentle nudge to get her started.

The animal walked sedately around the ring.  So far, so good, Maggie
thought, but riding wasn't about walking around in circles.  She gave
her mount the signal for a trot and was delighted and surprised to find
Fairy responding.

Her real problem, one she had thought about long and hard, was that she
was petrified of horses.  Every horse she'd ever seen, except newborn
foals, looked menacing to her.  She hated their rolling eyes, their
slobbering lips, their nightmarish nostrils.

This fear was something that was absolutely impossible to confess, when
everyone in the Webster house, every girl at school, and everyone she'd
met since she arrived in Essex County lived to ride.

It was easier to ride badly, but show courage, than to say she didn't
want to ride.  If she did, everybody would understand her secret.

Fear, Maggie knew, would be recognized instantly as the only possible
reason anyone could have for not riding, and she'd rather die on a
horse than let anyone know she was afraid of one.

"Looking' good," Barney called encouragingly.  Once he'd seen that
Maggie's pony was trotting, he'd mounted his own horse, a sturdy,
trustworthy little mare, and was following her around the ring.

He'd never seen such a bad seat on anybody, he thought miserably.

She just didn't get it.  She had bad hands, she couldn't make a horse
do what she wanted by using the reins, and the last thing in the world
Maggie would ever do was give Fairy a good kick and let the animal know
who was in charge.  She was too tender-hearted, she said.  Bullshit!

She was plain chicken, although he'd never tell her he knew, and she
was too stubborn to admit it, even to him, her best friend.

Barney watched carefully as Maggie somehow urged the pony into a
canter.  This was where she usually got into trouble.  A cantering
Fairy could become a galloping Fairy all too quickly, and Maggie and a
galloping horse spelled disaster.  He watched closely as she tensed up,
pinching the pony with her knees in an effort at control that was
doomed to fail since using her knees meant that she couldn't hold on
firmly with her calves.  Her legs flopped around, her upper body became
rigid as she became conscious of her legs, and soon she was jerking the
pony in the mouth, trying to get it to stop.

Annoyed, Fairy broke into a gallop.  White-faced but silent, Maggie
hung on, pulling harder and harder on the reins.

Barney easily kicked his mare into a gallop and pulled up alongside,
grabbing the reins and gradually slowing the pony down to a snippy
little trot.

"Thanks," Maggie said, biting her lip.

"It's nothing.  Fairy has a mean temper."

"You know that's not why," she said, panting.

"You could do better on my horse, I know you could."

"I don't think so."  Even Fairy was better than getting on a horse she
didn't know, Maggie decided.

"You won't even try.  Come on, let's stop now.

"No," she insisted, setting her face in a ferocious grimace.  "I'm
going to get Fairy to canter properly if I have to stay here all
night."

Oh, no, Barney thought, there went his baseball practice.

17

Four years earlier, when Tessa had agreed with Luke that Maggie would
be happier living with the Websters than with any of her Riley cousins,
she had accompanied Maggie to New Jersey while Luke had gone off to his
board meeting in Melbourne.

For a week Tessa had lived at the Websters' house, sharing the guest
suite with Maggie.  She'd come to the conclusion that Maggie was making
a reasonably quick adjustment to the new circumstances and would soon
feel as much at home as she could anywhere else, considering that the
only home she'd ever known had been swept away from under her feet in a
flash of incomprehensible loss.

The instant devotion of Barney, a pint-size, gallant cavalier who was
fascinated by Maggie and never let her feel alone, had touched Tessa's
heart.  There was an excellent kindergarten in the neighborhood, and in
a year, when Maggie was six, she'd be ready to start first grade at Elm
Country Day.  Candice and Allison were pleasant, kind children and, of
course, Madison and Tyler both had been so welcoming, so full of
assurances that one more child around the dinner table would be a joy
to them, that Tessa had felt comfortable about joining Luke in
Houston.

When she had said goodbye to Maggie, she had finally managed to
incorporate into her heart as well as her brain all the reasons why
this separation was not just the best but the only possible good
solution to a situation that had no absolutely perfect solution.

During Maggie's first year with the Websters, Tessa made as many flying
visits as she could manage, whenever she was close enough to the East
Coast and free from marital or film obligations for several days, but
soon she realized that these visits were fundamentally
unsatisfactory.

They disrupted Maggie's adaptation to her new life, they obliged the
Webster family to surround an unexpected guest with gracious attention
when she was sure that it couldn't suit them to do so, and she wasn't
able to be alone with Maggie in the way she had imagined.  Having
Maggie visit her, on the other hand had none of these disadvantages,
and from that time on, from 1976, the little girl went to visit her
sister when it could be arranged during school vacations or on
holidays.

Although Luke tried as hard as he could to take a real interest in
Maggie, he never could connect with her on any true emotional level.

Tessa soon realized that the visits were more joyful for her and Maggie
when they could be alone together, unhampered by a powerful, demanding
male presence whose entrance into the house immediately, as if in
obedience to a law of nature, switched her focus of attention away from
Maggie, do what she could to prevent it.

During these private, precious days together, days that depended on
Luke's being away in some far part of the globe where he'd be too busy
to need his wife's company, on Tessa's not being in the middle of
making a movie, or on Maggie's being able to get out of school-days
that were possible to arrange at the very most only several times a
year-Maggie was able to bask in her sister's full attention.  Whatever
city they were in, Tessa arranged her days around Maggie, listening to
her stories of the Webster household, sympathizing with the limitations
of Candice and Allison-"all they think of is how they look"-joining in
fond abuse of Barney-"he never leaves me alone, it's like having a dog,
but a nice, friendly old dog"-and fascinated by the details of
Madison's thrift-"we'll have a big rib roast for dinner but everyone in
the kitchen only gets a stew made from the cheapest meat, isn't that
mean?  Of course she thinks I don't know, but the cook's my friend and
she tells me lots of stuff on the way to mass."

Tessa had a collection of dolls and toys she kept for Maggie to play
with, but the little girl lost interest in them as soon as she
discovered the joys of "dressing-up."  "Dressing-up" was divided into
two distinct and very different segments.

The first involved Maggie rigging herself out in bits and pieces she
found in a trunk crammed full of fabulous odds and ends that Tessa
accumulated by becoming friendly with the wardrobe head on every
picture she made.  They let Tessa scrounge around and walk off with
samples of forgotten, packed-away lefrovers of decades of movie making:
spangled satin dancing dresses from the 1930s; fur pieces; feather
boas; pleated velvet capes; rain slickers; embroidered vests; animal
costumes and masks; a score of hats, feathered, veiled, or garlanded
with flowers; sequined high-heeled shoes-all manner of gorgeous and
fantastic stuff they no longer had use for.  All of it found a home in
the special trunk that Tessa had flown across continents when one of
Maggie's infrequent visits was anticipated.

Tessa would leave Maggie alone to create a costume on her own and then,
when Maggie appeared to startle her with one of her ever-changing
inventions, Tessa would create a story to go with the costume, a story
in which Maggie was always the heroine.

The other part of "dressing-up" was a far more solemn affair, for it
involved Tessa's jewelry.  During the four years of their marriage,
Luke had discovered or invented all sorts of occasions that served as
reason to give Tessa jewels: the first and last day of filming on the
one picture she made each year; her birthday; St. Patrick's Day;
Valentine's Day; the anniversary of the day they met, of their
engagement, of their wedding; the anniversary of the founding of
Melbourne; the National Day of Monte Carlo; the auctions of
"Magnificent" jewelry at Sotheby's each spring and fall.  Failing an
occasion, he'd come home with something he'd seen and couldn't
resist.

Tessa invariably traveled with a large and ever-changing selection of
her jewelry.  Luke liked to see her wearing jewels at all times, no
matter how casual the occasion.  Tessa had huge, unfaceted cabochon
sapphires, almost as simple as deep blue glass pebbles, in invisible
platinum settings, to wear with jeans and denim shirts.

She had baskets full of amusing fantasy jewels designed by Verdura and
David Webb in combinations of turquoise, coral, and enameled gold, to
wear with her country cottons and she slept in a fabled string of
Imperial jade, of an intense green, because Luke superstitiously
believed it warded off sickness.  But for all her serious clothes, the
clothes she wore when she entertained Luke's business associates or met
with Hollywood people, or went shopping for the large and varied
wardrobe she needed for her complicated life, Tessa had a vast choice
of extraordinarily important jewels.  She was never tempted, in spite
of her age, to play with the "young Hollywood" sloppy look.

Tessa was a great international star and she dressed like one.  Her
jewels were her signature.

When Maggie visited her, often the two of them would spend an entire
afternoon in her dressing room, as Tessa showed Maggie some of her
jewels, modeling them first and then decking Maggie out in them and
letting her observe herself in the mirrors to her heart's content.

Tessa turned this special version of "dress-up" into a combination of
magic and education.

She had discovered a book called The Power of Gemstones, which covered
"healing powers, mythical stones, superstitions, talismans, and
mystical properties" of every kind of jewel, and she studied the
background of each piece she intended to show Maggie.

"Here's something special," she said on one occasion when Maggie was
eight or nine, clasping a necklace around her neck.

"Can you guess what they are?"

"They look like round gray-black beads," Maggie answered.  "But I can
see green lights and purple lights in them, so they're not really black
at all.  And they reflect all the lights in the room, almost like
mirrors.  And, of course, they're shaped like pearls, really big
ones.

"They are pearls, black pearls."

"Does an oyster make them, too?"

"A special oyster, called 'pinctada margaritifera,' which I think is
almost a name like Maggie, don't you, the pink Maggie oyster?"

"Sort of," Maggie said, trying not to smile.

"Those oysters mostly grow in the waters of French Polynesia, which is
here, on this map.

"Will we ever go there?"

"Someday maybe, why not?"

"Are they always this big?"

"Nope, they usually don't get this size," Tessa said, thinking of the
rarity of the necklace, in which the smallest of the graduated pearls
was two millimeters larger than the largest black pearl normally found
and the central pearl, at nineteen millimeters, was one of the largest
ever offered for sale.

"Are all black pearls this color?"  Maggie asked.

"They come in about seventy different shades of black, which makes it
very hard to match them," Tessa said casually of the necklace that had
cost Luke three-quarters of a million dollars at a Sotheby's auction
two months earlier.  "Do you remember what I told you about how to take
care of pearls?"

"Don't keep them in a very warm place because pearls are two percent
water and they'll dry out and crack; wear them a lot to keep them
glowing and happy; clean them to get rid of sweat by stirring them
lightly in potato flour, whatever that is; have them restrung every six
months; and, oh, never, ever put them on your neck if you have perfume
there, or any kind of lotion, because that can spoil their color.  And
of course, don't spray your hair when you have your pearls on, because
that's the dumbest, it'll ruin their luster for sure...

'Anything else?"

"Hmmm-oh, I remember, don't roll them up when you put them away.  Use
the case they came in."

"You get an A plus in pearl care," Tessa said with a hug.  "Do you know
why people used to think the pearl was sacred to the goddess Diana?"

"Nope," Maggie answered, tipping her head back to look adoringly at
Tessa.

"Way back, when people worshiped gods and goddesses, Diana was the
deity of the woods and of young girls, and pearls were considered to be
the sign of innocence, peace, and purity.  Pearls were Diana's emblem,
and girls, pure, innocent virgins, wore them to put themselves under
her protection."

"Oh."  Maggie frowned, considering the idea.  "So little girls got
pearl necklaces?"

"Probably earrings more than necklaces.  But the odd thing is that just
as long ago, thousands and thousands of years ago, pearls were also
connected to the moon and the goddess Venus, and Venus and the moon are
connected to lovers, so if a woman wanted a man to fall in love with
her, she'd buy a powder made of ground pearls and get him to drink it
in a glass of wine.  They called that a love potion."

"Did it work?"  Maggie asked, fascinated.

"I don't know.  Maybe yes, maybe no.  Personally I think it takes more
than that or everybody'd be doing it and a cute man might find himself
in love with a dozen women at once, with a terrible hangover.  Doctors
used to put powdered pearls in medicines to cure heart problems, and
ground-up pearls-not the beautiful ones they could sell, but the ugly
ones, about ten percent of what the oysters make were used for ladies'
face powder a few hundred years ago.  Even today there are cosmetics,
creams and powders, that contain powdered pearls and...

"And?"

"Some Chinese used to think that when dragons are fighting each other
in the sky, pearls and rain fall to the earth.  I find that a little
hard to believe."

"It could be true.  How do you know for sure there aren't dragons in
the sky?  There are angels, so there might be dragons."

"In China anyway," Tessa agreed, taking off the pearls and fastening
them around Maggie's neck.  "How do you like them?"

"Hmm."  Maggie inspected herself closely and then from a distance,
revolving in front of a full-length mirror.  "I'm not sure.

Don't you have earrings to go with them?"

"You drive a hard bargain."

"I know you have earrings," Maggie crowed gleefully.  "You have to
have, or what else would go with them?  And you have to wear earrings,
you can't just walk around with naked earlobes, you've told me that a
hundred times."

"You should work for a jeweler, on commission.

"Oh, come on, show them to me."

Tessa opened another drawer in her jewel case and drew out a pair of
pendant eardips, the tops made from enormous round black pearls set in
marquise-shaped diamonds, from which hung splendid black pearl drops,
capped by round diamonds.  The earrings, which had been sold at the
same auction as the necklace, matched its color perfectly.

Carefully, she clipped the heavy jewels to Maggie's small ears.

"That's better," Maggie said.  "But you know what?  I like your white
pearls and your pink pearls better.  These are beautiful, but they're
sort of, well, they're not exactly my idea of pearls."

"You just lost your job in the jewelry business, but I agree with
you."

"So that means you're going to show me something else I've never seen
before."

"Does it?"

"It seems only fair."

"How can I refuse when you start in on what's fair and what's not
fair?"

"Ha!"  Maggie beamed.  She always counted on Tessa's sense of justice,
and she was always honest about what she thought of the jewelry her
sister showed her.  When she had told Tessa that the flawless "Ashoka"
diamond ring Luke had bought from Harry Winston was too long for
Tessa's finger, Tessa hadn't protested, although she adored the
elongated shape of the forty-carat, exceptionally transparent and
limpid diamond that had originally come from the fabled Goloconda mines
of India, and her finger was long enough for her to carry it
perfectly.

No, Maggie liked what she liked and she never made a judgment without
providing a reason, even if she was wrong.

"And wouldn't it be fair if I had a pearl necklace?"  Maggie continued
with hope.  'After all I'm a pure, young, innocent virgin like you were
when you went to Tiffany's and bought yourself that little necklace
that I love best of all."

"No, that wouldn't be fair.  I don't worship the goddess Diana and
neither do you," Tessa said with a laugh.  "But someday, of course, you
will when you're old enough to wear jewelry, as a present from the
goddess Venus."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

In the fall of 1979, when Maggie was nine, she began her fourth year at
Elm Country Day.  However, in the past years, she had never felt truly
accepted there.  None of the other girls had names like Horvath; none
of the other girls was Catholic; none of the other girls lived with
families that weren't really their families; and most of the other
girls had mothers and fathers who knew each other and got together for
dinner parties and hunt balls and bridge games and golf and that sort
of stuff.  Candice and Allison, or the "gang of two" as Maggie now
thought of them, who were both still at school, ignored her as if
they'd never laid eyes on her before, although they were polite enough
in their goody-goody way, whenever they were under Aunt Madison's
eye.

Why, she wondered, bitterly hurt but utterly unable to ask them, why
did they treat her one way at home and another way at school?  Were
they ashamed of her for some reason, or did they hate her because she
lived with them?  They never even invited her into their room or came
into her room.  It was as if they occupied different houses except for
the dinner table.  Other girls with older sisters in the school could
at least count on getting their hair pulled in recognition when they
passed each other in the halls; she'd settle for that, rather than the
blank stares she received, even on the staircase at home when there was
no grown-up around.

One day, passing through the locker room on her way to gym, Maggie
overheard Sally Bradford, one of her classmates, tell a new-corner to
the class that Maggie Horvath was "a mystery girl."

"What does that mean, Sally?"  Maggie asked, stopping and confronting
the two girls.

"Nobody knows where you come from or who you really are," blandly
dainty Sally Bradford answered her, without a sign of embarrassment.

"I come from California," Maggie said fiercely.  "But I live here
now."

"Sure, sure, but who are you really?  You're no relation at all to the
Websters, she's not your aunt and he's not your uncle, that's what I
heard my mother say and my mother knows all about those things.  You're
some kind of mysterious orphan without any real family.  Did they take
you in out of kindness?  Or pity?"

"I do so have my own family, I have a real sister.  She's Tessa Kent,"
Maggie burst out.  She'd never told anybody that before because she
knew they wouldn't believe her.  "And Tessa Kent is so related to the
Websters.  Her husband, Luke Blake, is Uncle Tyler's brother, I mean
his stepbrother, so I'm related too."

"Yeah, and I'm my own grandma.  Tessa Kent!  The movie star?

Do you expect us to believe that?  Tessa Kent's sister!  Why are you
telling such a lie, Maggie Horvath, Horvath, Horvath, and what kind of
name is Horvath, Horvath, Horvath anyway?"

"It's a Hungarian name and it's as good as Bradford, you bitch!"

"You called me a bitch!  Naturally, you don't have any breeding, do
you?  I'm going to tell the teacher."

"Go on, tell her, I don't give a rat's ass, I don't give a flying fuck,
you double triple bitch!"  Maggie retorted in a rage.

"Oh, are you in big trouble now, Maggie Horvath, Horvath, Horvath!"

Several days later, when Tessa made her weekly phone call to Maggie,
Madison asked for a word with her.

"Would you excuse me, Maggie, while I talk to your sister?"

"Excuse you?"

"I mean I'd like to talk to her privately."

"Oh, all right.  I'm going upstairs anyway,' Maggie said, and fled to
her room.  "Rat's ass" wasn't such a terrible thing to say, she told
herself, Roddy said it all the time, and certainly "bitch" was really
bad, but Sally deserved it.  Yet the teacher had never said a word to
her, not even about "flying fuck," which was so absolutely terrible she
still couldn't believe she'd said it, so why was Aunt Madison going to
tell on her?

"Tessa, I hate to bother you when Maggie is doing so well at school,
but Miss Anderson, her homeroom teacher, called me and said that
there'd been a spot of trouble between Maggie and another girl."

"Trouble?  What's going on, Madison?"

"It seems that Maggie got into an argument with little Sally Bradford,
and she told her that you're her sister, which Sally didn't believe, so
Maggie swore at Sally.  It all rather escalated, although no blows were
exchanged.  Anyway, Miss Anderson said that Maggie's getting a
reputation as a liar, it's spreading around the school."

"Oh, no."

"I'm afraid so.  You know how kids are, and with your names being
different and everything, well, apparently Maggie was called a mystery
orphan without any family, or something equally absurd."

"I can imagine.  What little wretches," Tessa said grimly.  "I'm coming
to visit the school next week.  I'd come sooner but I have to work
every day until Wednesday when they shoot the fight scene.

I'll leave right after I'm finished on Tuesday, spend the night at the
Carlyle, drive out to school in the afternoon and then fly back in
plenty of time to show up on the set Friday.  Please tell that
headmistress, Miss Dodd, isn't that her name, that I'll be there after
lunch and ask her to give Maggie time off from class to accompany me on
my inspection tour.  In fact, I think it would be a good idea if I
spoke at an assembly to the whole school.  I'll talk about, let's see,
yes, the truth behind the Hollywood myth, that sounds about right.  But
I'd like my visit to be a surprise, so would you ask Miss Dodd not to
announce it?  Could you arrange all the details, please, Madison?"

"Of course, I'll call the headmistress right away."

"And Madison, I'm going to have to give serious thought about sending
Maggie to a good boarding school if she isn't happy at Elm Country
Day."

"Oh, good grief no, Tessa, this is just one of those little things that
could happen in any school," Madison said, disguising her terror.  The
last thing she wanted was to have Maggie snatched away from her
house.

Tyler would be furious, Luke would... she had no idea what Luke would
do, and that frightened her more than anything else.

"Miss Dodd tells me that Maggie's exceptionally bright and she's very
popular there, it's only that they find it hard to believe that you two
are sisters."

"I'll take care of that.  Do you happen to know what Maggie said when
she swore at Sally?"

"Well..  .she did use the 'F' word."

"She must have been severely provoked, I've never heard her use it...

but of course, hanging around Luke... these crude Australians, and
Roddy, these crude Hollywood types..."  Tessa began to shake with
soundless laughter.  Good show, Maggie, she thought, you have to defend
yourself from the Sally Bradfords of this world.

Tessa was glad that it was a crisp fall day when she visited Elm
Country Day.  Indian summer would not have suited the ultimately
glamorous impression she intended to make.  She put on a breathtakingly
well tailored Givenchy suit in melting shades of beige tweed, adorned
with a sumptuous collar and wide, notched lapels of the darkest Russian
sable.  The cuffs of the jacket were five inches deep in more sable,
and she wore a tiny sable beret, perched on the side of her beautifully
done hair.  Shades of Anna Karenina, Tessa thought as she put on her
perfect dark brown alligator pumps and added the extraordinary,
triple-strand necklace of perfectly matched natural pearls over her
cream silk blouse.  Normally she would only wear them in the daytime
for a meeting with Lew Wasserman.  But no diamonds in the daytime, she
reminded herself, choosing the simplest of the three pairs of pearl
earrings that had taken months to match to the two-million-dollar
necklace Luke had recently given her for her twenty-fourth birthday.

She applied her makeup perfectly, so that it could be seen from the
last row of the assembly room.  Understatement would not be the
watchword today.  She was as well groomed and marvelously dressed as
she'd ever been in her life, she thought, giving herself a final
inspection.  The rest would take care of itself.

To drive out to Elm Country Day, Tessa had hired an enormous dark green
Rolls and a smartly uniformed driver from a New York rental agency, the
sort of equipage she normally would go out of her way to avoid, a touch
of pure Hollywood that would leave girls' mouths gaping.

As Tessa arrived at the school and was assisted out of the car by her
driver, a group of pre teenagers were clattering out of the front
entrance.  As a group they stopped dead and stared.

"Good afternoon," Tessa said to one of them.  "Could you tell me where
Miss Dodd's office is, please?  I've come to visit the school."

"But you're Tessa Kent!"

"Well..  yes, I am, but actually I'm Maggie Horvath's sister."

"Oh, my goodness!"  The girl's hand flew to her mouth.

"Doesn't she even acknowledge me?"  Tessa asked, raising her eyebrows
in amused surprise.

"No... yes... a little while ago."

"Ashamed of her sister, is she, the little devil?"

"No.  Of course not, oh, my goodness."

"Miss Dodd's office?"  Tessa reminded her gently.

"I'll show you the way.  Oh, I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming!"

"Thank you, that's very kind of you."

Tessa chatted calmly with the thrilled, flustered girl until she
reached her destination.

'Ah, Miss Dodd," Tessa said, shaking hands and responding to the
headmistress's greeting, "I know I should have come to visit sooner but
one thing and another has kept me away, and Madison Webster has always
spoken so highly of you that I felt sure Maggie would love it here."

"Oh, she does.  And we love her," responded the lean, gray-haired woman
who looked as if she must have won a title at Wimbleton many years
earlier.  She was used to dealing with the high-powered local socialite
mothers, but the vision of Tessa made her gasp.  She'd never believed
real people could look like this.

"I'm delighted to hear that.  I hope you were able to excuse Maggie
from her classes this afternoon so she can show me around.

And were you able to arrange an assembly?"

"Indeed yes, at four o'clock.  Oh, here's Maggie now."

Maggie jumped into Tessa's arms with a shout of joy and held on
tightly.

"Oh, I'm so glad to see you," Maggie whispered, almost in tears at an
apparition she'd never expected to appear in Miss Dodd's office.  "You
look like a real movie star.

"That's the general idea, darling," Tessa said into Maggie's ear,
giving her a kiss and smoothing her hair.  "Now, if Miss Dodd doesn't
mind, why don't you take me to your classroom and introduce me to your
classmates?"

"They're all in the lab now, we're doing experiments."

"Then let's go there, I want to see everything, but first, your
friends.  You show me the way," Tessa said, taking Maggie's slightly
grubby hand and swinging it playfully.

In the lab all experiments came to a halt as Maggie led Tessa around
the room.  Maggie watched, entranced and grinning widely, as one by one
her classmates mumbled their awed hellos and Tessa easily found
something different to say to each one of them.

"Oh, so you're Sally Bradford," Tessa said, taking the dainty, blond
girl's hand.  Her voice carried to every corner of the room although
she wasn't speaking loudly.  "How interesting to meet you.

I understand from my sister, Maggie, that your mother's an expert in
genealogy?"

"Well, she sort of likes to know who's who, if that's what you mean,"
Sally muttered, turning red.

"That's exactly what I mean," Tessa said with her most charming
smile.

"Would you give her a message from me, Sally, to add to her hobby?

It's a bit complicated but I'm sure you can remember it.

My husband is a man named Luke Blake.  His stepbrother is Tyler
Webster, Candice and Allison Webster's father.  My little sister,
Maggie, is, naturally, my husband's sister-in-law, but since she's so
young, she calls Mr. Webster 'uncle' and Mrs. Webster 'aunt,' out of
courtesy.  They're not blood relations, but they are part of Maggie's
family, and she lives with them because our parents, the Horvaths, were
both killed in an automobile accident four years ago.  Maggie and I
were left orphans.  I'd already changed my name to Kent when I made my
first movie, but my name is really Teresa Horvath, not Tessa Kent.

Now, does that clear things up?  Can you repeat it?"

"Ah, ah..  Maggie's your sister."

'And?"

"Your husband is Mr. Blake and he's also the half-brother of Mr.
Webster..."

"No, Sally, the stepbrother of Mr. Webster.  My husband's father
married Mr.  Webster's mother after his first wife died."

"It is complicated, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"And hard to understand, much less be expert about, especially when you
have the facts all wrong.  But do remember to give your mother my
message and add that I send her my best regards for taking such an
interest in Maggie's family.  Good-bye Sally," Tessa said, turning
away.  Suddenly she stopped and stooped to look the girl in the eye.

"I hope I've cleared up the 'mystery."' Looking at the floor, Sally
nodded her head.

"Good," Tessa said crisply, going on to greet the next girl.

18

What a bloody bore, this Yank institution, these Oscars, this
lumbering, pretentious, blatantly commercial sideshow that had managed
to make itself a source of mindless, gaping worldwide attention, Luke
Blake thought, as he roamed angrily around the living room of his suite
at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles.  The television set was tuned in
to the 1982 Oscars, although the sound was off and had been off since
the beginning of the telecast.

Hours earlier, in the middle of the afternoon, Tessa, dressed and ready
to present the Best Picture award, had stepped into her limo, escorted
by Roddy Fensterwald.

Luke had accompanied her himself the previous year, because then she'd
been up for her second Best Actress award, facing a field of rivals
that included Marsha Mason, Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton, and Jessica
Lange.  Of course he'd been at her side to hold her hand.  He wouldn't
have considered letting her sit there in the audience, waiting for the
results throughout the endless evening, without him, but tonight Tessa
wasn't nominated for anything and her function was purely ceremonial.

She'd be planted backstage for hours, gossiping with the other
presenters, she'd told him, in her most persuasive tones, and there was
simply no reason for him to endure hours of tedium--she knew how bored
he got--just for her brief moment in the spotlight.  "You'll be so much
more comfortable at home, darling, watching me on television, and the
view will be better anyway.

She'd been an utterly improbable vision when she'd left the hotel in
the brilliant spring sunshine, wearing a strapless lilac satin ball
gown, with a wide sash bound tightly around her waist above a multitude
of petticoats that caused the enormous skirt to move as lightly as a
swaying bell.  It was the first time she'd worn the latest present he'd
given her, the entire Faberge' parure he'd assembled of imperial
Russian jewels: the great web of a necklace that had belonged to a
grand duchess, the splendid pendant earrings, the eight bracelets, and
the hair ornaments like giant snowflakes.  The jewels, inspired by
eighteenth-century design, were made with infinite delicacy.  Their
deep garlands, elaborate swags, and extravagantly complicated bows made
Tessa sparkle with every movement of her head, as if she'd been
sprinkled with frost and ice, as if she were a princess who'd just
taken two steps through fast-falling snow in order to enter a ballroom
and dance all night.

She'd turned to him, her face bright, untroubled.  "Don't even bother
to turn the television on until after nine, darling," she'd reminded
him as she kissed him good-bye.  "There's no possibility that the show
will run less than four hours, and I'll be on last."

Did she guess, he asked himself, did she have the faintest idea of the
shameful, grotesque torments of jealousy that afflicted him when he had
to share her with her work?  Was that why she'd spared herself his
presence tonight, so that she'd be free to enjoy herself with her
peers, free to bask in the roar of the crowds as she made her arrival
outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion?

For the past few months they'd been in Los Angeles, abandoning the
ranch they'd bought in Texas, while Tessa made her annual film, this
year a romantic comedy with Dustin Hoffman.  Was it possible that Tessa
suspected the humiliating extent to which he was held captive in a
piercing grid of jealous anxiety, from the moment she left in the
morning until she returned from the studio at night?

He had always exercised all his will to keep it from her, Luke told
himself, and there was no reason to believe he'd been unsuccessful.

As he trod a restless path from the window to the television set and
back again, he examined his behavior with Tessa for the ten thousandth
time and came to the invariable conclusion that during their marriage
he had managed to keep the toxic fumes of his jealousy from escaping
into the air of real life.  But what if Tessa was even more sensitive
than he believed she was?  Could she know what he was feeling, no
matter how he covered it up?

Christ almighty, he wanted all of her, he wanted to possess her
entirely, every atom of her being.  Every one of her smiles should be
reserved for him, she should not be allowed to look into anyone else's
eyes.  The thought of Tessa spending the day surrounded by her
coworkers, meeting new people, perhaps becoming interested in them,
somehow involved with them on a personal level, was just this side of
intolerable.  Didn't she know that her voice, merely asking a question
or making a request, was as romantic as a valentine?

Old friends were almost as much of a threat, old friends with whom she
remembered a life that didn't include him.  It wasn't merely obvious
temptation that his ungovernable imagination invented and then gorged
upon uncontrollably.  He was jealous of every laugh she had with Roddy
or Fiona, of every phone call from her agent.  Yes, he was even jealous
of her phone time with Aaron... who knew when Aaron might find a role
she couldn't resist accepting, a role that would cause her to break her
self-imposed limit on work?

Yet he believed that he'd kept his hideous jealousy from her, a
jealousy that revolted him as if it had been a running sore on his
body.  Luke reflected that he'd at least retained enough sanity to be
sure--almost to be sure--that it was unjustified.  He'd managed to hide
his feelings while she made the film that had won her the Oscar the
previous year, a brilliantly written movie called The Winter of Doctor
Star in which Tessa had been cast as an intern in cardiology who falls
in love with a gravely ill patient played by Robert Redford.

He'd concealed the wild insanity that overtook him whenever he thought
of her kissing Redford.  He didn't give a shit how many technicians
would be around them, how the director would be as much a part of the
kiss as Redford's lips, how it was all in a day's work.  No, fuck it,
no!  A kiss was a kiss and no one could kiss Tessa without wanting
her.

He'd lived through Redford, he'd live through Hoffman, he told himself,
although the damn man had a devilish charm, a wicked humor, a special
quality of nervy, wound-up sexuality that had nothing to do with his
looks.

Since winning for Doctor Star Tessa had refused dozens of scripts
before deciding to work with Hoffman, in spite of the fact that Aaron
Zucker, that persistent bastard, simply couldn't resist phoning her
wherever they found themselves in the world and pointing out that she
was in the red-hot middle of her career and that it was madness not to
work more often.  Her agent never managed to accept her decision to
make only one film a year, Luke thought in repressed fury, as he
listened to Tessa's account of her conversation.  "He said, and I
quote, 'now is the time to sink my teeth into the whole fucking
industry, chew it up, and swallow it for breakfast."  I think poor
Aaron should leave metaphor alone, don't you, darling?"

"Well," Luke remembered saying carefully, "from his point of view he
probably thinks that there should be a statute of limitations on what
you promised me when we got married."

"Oh, he's never been able to accept the fact that I was utterly serious
about my decision," Tessa said indulgently, and Luke had been happy to
let the discussion drop.

Earlier today, he and Roddy had had time to chat while Tessa dressed
and had her hair arranged.  The man was no fool, Luke thought, although
he certainly gave himself full marks for Tessa's career.

"Tessa was inevitable," Roddy had said, "I realized it the minute I saw
her.  Her personality and the public's taste were going to march hand
in hand, she was the girl they were going to adore even though they
didn't know it yet, and the smartest thing she's done has been to limit
her work and choose to play such widely differing roles.

See, Luke, a 'Tessa Kent' type has never developed, a 'Tessa Kent' role
has never been created.  She has no imitators, she's one of a kind.

She was born with a physical presence no one else had ever possessed in
the history of the screen, but it wasn't that alone, it was never just
about beauty, but about a unique personality.  She'll last, Luke, last
as long as she wants to.  Our girl rejects repetition and so she eludes
rejection, even after almost eleven years at the top.  She's like
Katharine Hepburn, a star who has no fade-out factor."

"'Fade-out'?  She's only twenty-six, for God's sake," Luke had objected
in spite of himself, in spite of the fact that if she lost favor with
the public and returned to a totally private existence with him, he'd
ask nothing more of life.

"Luke, you're not in the business, but remember that Tessa won her
first Best Actress award when she was only twenty-two.  I dote on that
picture... Ivy League ... I still think it's my best.  Tessa playing
the little grad student, and big old Clint, you tell me who ever
expected him to be so convincing as a happily married professor,
helpless to do anything while she slowly invaded his life, terrorizing
him, seeming to be perfectly normal while she was going quietly and
murderous insane?  I play that picture once a month at home and I've
never tired of it.  She was brilliant, Luke, brilliant, but you know
that as well as I do.  Any other actress might have been tempted to do
another film in which she showed again how fascinatingly evil she can
be, but not Tessa.  All she thought about was flying off with you to
your love nest in Ere as soon as she'd fulfilled her media
commitments."

"She adores the farmhouse," Luke had responded stiffly.

"Shit, Luke, she adores you.  Where other actresses put their ambition,
their psychological needs for fame, pure narcissism, or any of the
other motivations for what they insist on calling their 'art,' Tessa
puts you.  You're one hell of a lucky guy, Luke, as I'm sure you
know."

"I don't deserve her, Roddy," he'd managed to grin.

'Amen!  No one's good enough for Tessa," he'd agreed.

Luke sat down in front of the television, glancing at his watch and
back to the screen.  There was that quick audience shot, there was
Roddy, sitting far up front with Maggie beside him in the seat that
Tessa had wangled for her.  Maggie, he mused, poor Maggie, she probably
couldn't see well over the head of the man in front of her, but no one
had ever been as excited as she had been at this treat.

He didn't know how Tessa had managed to get her school to let her off
for the trip, but tomorrow they'd put her back on the plane to the East
Coast, all one hundred sixty-five pounds of her, if not more.  How
could a girl almost thirteen years old so thoroughly embody absolutely
everything that was meant by the "awkward age," he wondered, and still
come out of the same gene pool that had produced Tessa?  Maggie wore
braces, both upper and lower, and suffered from a constant plague of
pimples.  Her ridiculously abundant hair was either frizzy, curly, or
limp, depending on the day; and, worst of all, she hadn't stopped
growing.  She was taller every time he saw her, with breasts that
already looked like those of a grown woman.

He tried not to look at her any more than he had to, Luke thought,
because she was so wretchedly self-conscious, but he had to admit that
when she was around, he was jealous of the time Tessa spent with
her...

her own sister!  But when Maggie visited, there was just that much less
time for him, that much less of Tessa's undivided concentration.  Could
that be the reason Tessa usually managed to shoehorn Maggie's visits
into the short periods when he was making a lightning business trip to
an uncomfortable place?  No, Luke thought, shaking his head, there was
no possibility that she could suspect that a sisterly relationship
could cause him real suffering, because if she knew that unthinkable
truth, she'd know everything else as well.

Tyler's regular letter, reporting on Maggie, as he'd been instructed to
do, always told him how satisfactory Maggie's presence was in the
family, but in the same letter he'd usually let something slip that
made Luke doubt if the Maggie he saw could fit so easily into the
outstandingly handsome group of Websters.  His niece Allison was
sixteen now, and, according to her proud father, she had turned into an
out-and-out raving beauty, while Candice, who was about to finish her
last year of school, was a vision of utter prettiness, less beautiful
than Allison, but more approachable.  Apparently coming-out parties
weren't the victim of the 1960s that he'd thought they were, since
Tyler reported that Madison was engrossed in preparations for Candice's
debut.

Tyler's letters seemed to reassure Tessa, yet she always let Maggie
know that if she wasn't happy at the Websters' she could go away to
boarding school.  Ever since that incident when she'd had to fly to the
Elm School to defend Maggie against the little snobs there, Tessa had
worried about Maggie's school experience, but Maggie consistently
refused to entertain the idea.  "No," she'd say, or write, "I don't
want to have to start out all over again at a strange school.

I'm too shy, Tessa, and anyway I've finally made a few really good
friends now and everybody else here knows I'm not a liar or a mystery
without a family.  Don't worry about me."

Well, he didn't worry about her, Luke assured himself.  He'd made the
right decision back when Maggie might have been sent off to one of
Tessa's aunts, and he'd never regretted it.  If she didn't feel
comfortable with the Websters, she'd never hinted at such feelings,
although frankly something about Madison gave him the creeps.

Impatiently-it was not yet near the time he could expect to see
Tessa-Luke flung himself back in his chair and closed his eyes and
drifted into a reverie.  Strange, how Tessa never truly stopped
protesting at the jewels he gave her so often, never understood how
entirely necessary it was for him.  She still thought in terms of
generosity and extravagance, not guessing at the deep, secret pleasure
that compelled him to mark her as his property.  Yes, he thought with
voluptuous pleasure, every new jewel branded her once again as
belonging exclusively to him, every gem she wore was a proof that Luke
Blake, and only Luke Blake, of all the men in the world, had the right
to possess her.

She had so many now.  Jewels without end.  Often there were nights when
he'd whisper to her to take off all her clothes and lie down on their
bed.  She knew exactly what he wanted, lying there with her eyes
tightly closed, her legs pressed together, her arms at her side, while
he slowly covered her from her neck to her feet with the contents of
her jewel cases.  He'd make himself leave her breasts exposed, and the
maddening dark triangle at the base of her belly.

He'd watch her face as she struggled to remain perfectly passive, never
knowing when he would finish laying the jewels, one by one, in a mosaic
over her skin, forcing himself to take his time, to prolong the delight
until it was painful for him.

The only way Tessa could be certain that he'd finally exhausted the
contents of the cases was that moment when, probing as delicately as if
his tongue were a feather, he'd flick at the tips of her pubic hair.

Just the tips, the wispy, silken tips.  Yes, that was the signal that
the game had begun, and what a royal game it was.

Tessa had to keep her eyes closed and remain motionless and mute, a
goddess bound by chains of gems, a goddess who allowed him to make
whatever use of her pleased him that night.  He'd have been thinking
about it all day, trying to decide if he wanted to make her come with
only his mouth, stopping often, oh, so often, to feast on her
expression, to watch her bite her lips to keep back the slightest
sound, too proud to change her aloof expression, to utter the words
that might urge him on.  Or else he'd choose to torture her more
intensely, using his lips and his teeth on her nipples, pausing as
often as he could endure, until her breasts were engorged and her
nipples stood straight up.  Only then was he willing to insert his
fingers into her body, teasing them in and dragging them out with such
a hesitant, brushing, glancing, deliberately indirect touch that he
missed her clitoris far more often than he found it.  He would refuse
to satisfy her, holding back until finally she was unable to endure the
torment any longer and, sweeping all the jewels to the floor, she would
grasp him and press him into her, wordlessly, savagely.  On other
nights he used no refinements, but used her directly, suddenly,
brutally, with no warning, treating her as his prisoner, a prisoner
whose own pleasure was unimportant, meaningless.  But always, after he
came, and he would come with deliberate quickness, so that she had no
chance to become aroused, he would make it up to her with his hands and
his mouth and his cock.  He never, never let her go until she was
satisfied.

Which way would he take her tonight, Luke asked himself, when she came
home from the Oscars?  Which way would make her forget most thoroughly
that any other world existed except the one they inhabited together?

19

The day after her birthday in August 1985, Tessa stopped taking the
Pill.  Luke had said he'd be ready for fatherhood, or at least ready to
contemplate it, by the time she was thirty, and thirty she was.

She decided not to tell him of her decision.  Normally Tessa told Luke
everything important, but she didn't want making love to become a
self-conscious act, with conception in the back of their minds.  And,
she admitted to herself, what if he were to suggest postponing having a
baby for one more year, and then another?

Tessa understood Luke Blake's nature far better than he realized.

Yes, he was as intensely, jealously possessive of her as any man could
be, and she gloried in his possessiveness.  Yes, he was thoroughly,
hopelessly selfish about how she spent every second of her time when
she wasn't actually working on a movie, and she gloried in his
selfishness.  Yes, he wanted all of her attention when he wasn't
working, and she gave herself to him gladly in an undivided way.

She had no time and no need to cultivate friendships with other women;
her only adult relationships outside of Luke were with people connected
to her career.

Tessa knew that in the deepest sense she conspired to join Luke in
their tight, exclusive relationship, one that some, perhaps most, women
might find stifling.  But to her it was essential, for with Luke she
continued to live in the heart of that sense of safety she was still
consciously aware of needing every day of her life, an emotional safety
that no amount of her own success could ever guarantee.

She'd never been able to take her safety for granted, she'd never
forgotten the years before he'd come into her life and transformed it
with just the touch of his hand.

But now she wanted a baby.  Desperately.  She'd waited without showing
her impatience, she'd kept her part of the bargain-well, perhaps it
hadn't been a bargain but just a statement Luke had madebut now was her
time to get what she wanted.  No, what she needed.

Seven months passed and Tessa still hadn't conceived.  She began to
grow concerned that the problem might lie with Luke.  God knows, she
had living proof that she could get pregnant.  Perhaps Luke's
childlessness at forty-five, when she'd met him, hadn't been through
faultless contraception but because he couldn't father a child.

Nevertheless she bided her time.  She wasn't fourteen now, and everyone
knew that it was more difficult to get pregnant when you were older,
and, of course, in one of nature's little ironies, always more
difficult to get pregnant when you wanted to than when you didn't.

In April 1986, Tessa missed her period.  Still she said nothing to
Luke, waiting to be sure.  Every day she expected to experience the
morning sickness she remembered, the horrible bouts of vomiting that
had finally alerted her mother to her pregnancy.  Had they started in
the first month or the second?  She couldn't recall such details now;
so much of that entire period of her life had almost completely
vanished from her mind, leaving only a merciful blankness that demanded
that she not probe too deeply.

To Tessa's relief, Luke's business travel had slackened somewhat in
recent years, as he found more and more good men to work for him in
different parts of the world.  That spring they were able to spend a
long, quiet time at Ere, a time she contrived to make as inactive as
possible, pleading fatigue after the completion of her latest film.

For the next three weeks she cocooned herself as much as possible,
ambling up the road to the village from time to time but otherwise
sitting contentedly on the terrace outside of the farmhouse.

She spent hours reading or merely daydreaming, as she gazed at the
signs of new leaves on the grapevines, watched the circles of lavender
grow taller by the day, listened to the gentle wind in the cypress and
olive trees, and basked like a cat in the sun of the Midi.

All of France, Tessa knew from the newspapers, was in its usual state
of turmoil, but in the countryside of Ere the peace was total, unless
you deliberately went into a cafe in the village and listened to the
retired residents grumble ritually over their card games.  Yet even
that grumbling fell into a predictable rhythm, Tessa thought, reveling
in this respite from their world of travel, acquisition, and
moviemaking, the familiar routines of her life with Luke about which
the only predictable element was that they were ever-changing.

How would they live when they had a baby?  Tessa wondered.

She found it impossible to decide, with all the world open to them.

All she was certain of was that their existence would be very different
from the life they had led up till now.  She would give up work for
years, if not forever.  Luke would simply have to travel much, much
less.  They would stop their nomadic existence and finally establish a
true home somewhere-perhaps the Texas ranch, perhaps Melbourne, perhaps
the villa from which they sailed at Cap-Ferrat, perhaps someplace
entirely different.  They might even buy a house in California, where
they'd always stayed at a hotel during her bouts of filmmaking.  Why
not Santa Barbara, one of the most beautiful places on earth?  But did
it have good schools?  Ah, all she really knew was that they would
settle down, she promised herself, or it wouldn't be fair to the
baby.

And, of course, she thought as she drifted off into a nap, of course
the baby would be born in the United States...

"Now, about this matter of your breasts," Luke said several nights
later, as he pushed the straps of her nightgown down and weighed them
in his hands.

"What about them?"

"They're fuller than they've ever been, and warmer, like two just-baked
loaves of bread.  Heavenly bread.  And your nipples are getting
slightly bigger and just a touch darker."

"Goodness."  The things you notice, honestly, you have your nerve..." 
she protested feebly.

"Darling, when did you plan to tell me?"

"When I was..  sure.

"What would it take to make you sure?"

"Another few days, maybe a week...."

'And if I said I was sure, would that do it?"

"If you said you were happy, that would make me positively sure," she
said in a small voice.

"'Happy'?  That isn't a big enough word for how I feel.  God, Tessa, I
love you so much... how long do I have to wait for our baby?"

"Seven months, or a little less."  She laughed for joy.  "I'm not
really certain."

"Aren't you a little behind schedule?"

"Huh?"

"I thought we'd agreed at thirty.  I've been waiting for nearly a year;
and doing my bit to help, as you might have noticed."

"You remembered!"

"I never forget a promise."

"So you won't mind sharing me?"

"I'm only human-from time to time, I probably will.  But I've had you
to myself for more than ten years, the best years of your life some
people might say, certainly the best of mine."

"What if the best years are ahead?"

"But they are, darling," Luke assured her, trying not to remember that
he'd just past his fifty-sixth birthday and she was still only
thirty.

Thirty, my God, he'd been a kid at thirty.  Nothing but a kid.

"You know I almost never agree with what people say."

Tessa stood outside the cheese shop on the shopping street of
Ere-Village.  Normally she loved to go in and pick out each of the five
cheeses they always bought, four of which they requested, the fifth a
surprise, chosen with glee by the proprietor herself.  The French,
whatever the government's policies, would never run out of new
varieties of cheese, but today the thought of the pungent interior of
the shop was suddenly repulsive and she'd told Luke to go in by
himself.

"We don't need cheese that much," he assured her.  "It can wait."

"No, don't be silly, darling.  I'd rather stay outside, but that
doesn't mean you have to deprive yourself.  I'm fine, honestly," she'd
responded, all but pushing him into the always-crowded store.

But was she fine, Tessa asked herself?  She still hadn't had a minute
of morning sickness, but the feeling of well-being she'd enjoyed only a
week earlier had departed, leaving her nervous and jumpy, instead of
deliciously languid.  It was impossible to know whether she had been
pregnant for two months or several weeks longer; but now, as she
waited, she resolved to drive down to Monte Carlo this very afternoon
and see a gynecologist.

She'd probably waited this long because she hated French doctors, with
their offices in their homes, furnished like living rooms, and their
casual way of telling a woman patient to remove all her clothes before
an examination, without providing a screen or a robe, for the sake of
decent modesty.  It was exactly like doing a strip-tease.  There was
never a nurse present, yet she'd never met a Frenchwoman who thought it
was at all odd.  They even bought especially beautiful lingerie
expressly for visits to the doctor.

She'd bring her own cotton robe, Tessa decided grimly, and wear it back
to front.

What was taking Luke so long, she wondered?  Suddenly the gentle sun
seemed far too hot, the light breeze far too strong, the quiet street
much too noisy.  Was it the first sign of a mistral?

Most likely.  And that would account for her nerves.  She took a step
forward to rap impatiently on the window of the cheese shop and almost
stumbled, grasping the trunk of a chestnut tree.  As Tessa stood
holding on to the tree, she felt a severe cramp beginning in her
abdomen.  She pressed herself tightly against the tree, trying to stop
the pain, to crush it before it could grow, but it mounted rapidly
upward, gaining in intensity.  Unable to remain upright, she bent over;
doubled up, still grasping the tree, and saw in horror that blood was
dripping from the bottom of her slacks, pooling darkly between her
sneakers and dripping onto the cobblestones of the street.

Jesus, she prayed, Jesus, no, no, but by the time Luke had gathered her
up and carried her to the car; driving down to Monte Carlo as quickly
as possible on the dangerously twisting road, she understood that she
was having a miscarriage.  She didn't need a French doctor's opinion to
tell her why the bleeding, the terrible bleeding, hadn't stopped.

Maggie reread the postcard from Tessa she'd received several weeks
earlier, before adding it to the cache of cards she'd kept in a special
drawer in her desk ever since she came to live with the Websters.

There must be dozens of them, she thought, dozens of postcards from all
over the world that had arrived in the course of the past eleven years,
and although she was sixteen and grown up, the contents of the
postcards she received didn't seem very different from those she'd been
sent when she was six or seven.

"Luke and I are in South America or the Arctic Circle or on the planet
Jupiter," Maggie thought, "Luke's working hard"-when didn't he?-"and
I'm keeping him company and entertaining the people he does business
with"-when didn't she?  Or else they'd be sent from Hollywood or a film
location, with news of the progress of one movie or another.  Boring,
boring postcards.  Just enough to "keep in touch," never enough to
really know what Tessa was thinking or feeling.

Maggie had written long letters to Tessa month after month in the past
few years, but she'd never sent them.  Busy Tessa, always traveling,
always the wife, always the movie star, wouldn't want to be bothered
with the absurd problems of a silly adolescent, she thought, when she
reread her letters.  Better to pour it out on paper and then tear it up
than make her sister feel guilty for even a minute because she was
going through one petty, unimportant misery after another.

Now, from the point of view of sixteen, she was glad she'd kept it all
to herself, because all that tortured self-pity about the way she
looked had turned out to be wasted.  Somehow, almost overnight, in some
miracle of growth and change, she'd turned out to be passable, even
fairly attractive, if she did say so herself, Maggie thought, closing
the postcard drawer firmly and returning to the endlessly fascinating
subject of her new assets.

She had grown and grown and then stopped, at a not-too-tall,
not-too-terrible five feet, eight inches.  Her skin had cleared up,
without a pimple to be seen anywhere on its surface; her braces had
finally come off, leaving perfect teeth-Madison, she had to admit, knew
a lot about orthodontists-and even her hair had decided to behave
decently.  She'd overheard Madison describing her coloring as "Black
Irish," but if that was an insult she didn't understand it, Maggie
decided, admiring the as-good-as-blusher-pink and white of her cheeks,
the snappy blackness of her hair; and the blue, blueness of her eyes.

Hello, gorgeous!

She would do.  Yes, indeed.  As for her breasts, the ones she'd hated
so much when she was so fat, now that she was, if not skinny,
marvelously voluptuous, her breasts were just absolutely the
greatest!

She had the biggest, sexiest breasts in the sophomore class at Elm,
everyone on the field hockey team had agreed about that.  Even though
she got straight A's, everyone at school agreed that sexy tits were the
best thing that could happen to a girl in this lifetime, Maggie thought
dotingly, as she pushed them high and kissed them to see how they'd
feel to some man, if some man ever came her way.

She'd never even had a date, not a real one.

She couldn't manage to reach her nipples with the tip of her tongue,
try as she would, but kissing the soft skin of her breasts soon felt so
good she had to stop.  The house was bursting with strangers busy with
the arrangements for Candice's wedding, and she couldn't be sure that
some flower person or caterer's assistant wouldn't come bumbling in by
accident and see what she was doing.  Thank heaven for the haven of her
bathroom, Maggie thought, locking the door behind her and stretching
out on the thick rug.  She was so excited that, as she had to do
several times every day, she quickly rubbed her fingers over her
panties, coming to a swift and blissful orgasm.

Better; much better.  Maggie panted in relief.  The worst was when
there was no place to do it, that drove her wild.  But between certain
stalls in the johns at school, where she could do it standing up,
between classes, and her bathroom here, she usually managed.

The bonus was that she wasn't afraid of horses anymore, now that she
got so aroused riding.  Could it be that those animals could tell how
their motion made her feel and that was why they behaved for her now?

Was she having sex with a saddle?  Or had she finally absorbed all
those lessons she'd been forced to take?  No matter; there were plenty
of hidden places off the bridle path, in the woods, and the horses
never noticed what she'd stopped to do.

She wished she'd learned all about this heavenly delight sooner.

Her childhood would have been one hell of a lot happier; Maggie
thought, smiling at her flushed cheeks in the mirror above the sink,
admiring the way the natural pearl necklace of great quality that Tessa
had sent her for her sixteenth birthday hung between the sumptuous
globes of her certifiably fabulous tits.

Thank heaven she'd lost her faith when she was fourteen.

Imagine having to confess this!  Father; I've engaged in impure
deeds.

What kind of impure deeds?  Sins against Holy Purity.  What kind of
sins?  Touching myself, Father.  How often have you desecrated your
Temple of the Holy Ghost?  Twenty-five times since my last
confession.

And how long ago was that?  One week, Father.

The poor man would certainly think she was going straight to Hell.

Losing her faith was the best thing that had happened to her; even
though she'd felt awful about it for almost a month, especially when
she'd had to tell Madison she didn't want to go to mass anymore.

Madison had been surprisingly decent about that, Maggie remembered, in
fact quite understanding.  In fact, now that she came to think about
it, positively relieved.  Well, it must have been inconvenient to have
a little papist cluttering up her house.

Poor old Madison.  When she'd mentioned the desirability of her joining
the Junior League as soon as possible, Maggie had said she'd rather
join the Communist Party.  When Madison had hinted that it wasn't too
early to start planning Maggie's coming-out party, she'd replied that
she'd rather drop acid.  It was easy to handle Madison, now that she
knew how.  Madison was afraid of her.  She didn't know why, but she was
sure she was right.  Madison had never felt the slightest drop of
warmth toward her; and, do what she could, that hurt her as much as it
always had, but she'd lived with the coldness and lack of interest so
long that it had become part of the climate of her life, Maggie told
herself.  And, thank God, it was still her secret.

20

During the next year, Tessa had another miscarriage in the middle of
her third month.  Her doctors, the best in Los Angeles, insisted that
they could find no reason for this inability to maintain a pregnancy.

Two miscarriages in a row were absolutely not a sign that she would
never have a child, they assured the Blakes.  Tessa was only thirty-one
and although, strictly speaking, she was not at the peak of fertility,
she was well within her prime.  Luke was as vigorous as a man half his
age.  After six months had passed, they advised them to "try" again.

Holy Mother; how she loathed that word Tessa thought.

Each time Luke made love to her; she imagined that half the superb
medical community of Cedars-Sinai Hospital was in bed with them, a
jovial, largely Harvard- and UCLA-educated cheering section, exhorting
them to "try, try again!"

At least that wouldn't be the case for the next six months, during
which the doctors had prescribed a holiday from even thinking about
conception, ordering her to give her womb a rest and putting her back
on the Pill.  Stress, tension, and anxiety, they emphasized, were to be
avoided.  Oh, sure, Tessa thought, turn off your mind, little lady,
there's nothing to it.  Doctors!

Luke was fifty-seven now.  On his birthday Tessa saw a man who had
barely changed since the day she'd first laid eyes on him.

Yes, there was gray in his thick, dark red hair, but only at the
temples.  His features, those powerful, weathered features she had
loved at first sight, were certainly more deeply lined around his mouth
and eyes, but otherwise he was indestructible.  Indestructible.  Only
his gaze, when he looked at her; betrayed, in certain unguarded
moments, his sorrow at her two miscarriages, a sorrow deeper for her
than for himself, for she was the one who had to go through the
physical ordeal, while he could only suffer quietly, and with a measure
of guilt.

What if she'd tried to have a child sooner?  What if he hadn't wanted
her to himself for so long?  He asked himself those questions so often
that he had to banish them from his mind.  You can't rewrite history,
Luke told himself, and in any case, she'd agreed to wait, she'd wanted
to wait as much as he did.

Before Tessa's second miscarriage, they'd bought the family home she'd
daydreamed about in Ere, choosing Los Angeles rather than Santa Barbara
because there Tessa could be closer to her work.

Luke no longer asked that she make only one film a year, since he
understood that work was her best therapy now, in this difficult
period, and he cut down deeply on his own travel to be with her during
the six or seven months she spent making two films in 1986 and early
1987.

They settled in Beverly Hills, high up in the winding roads north of
Sunset, in a historic Wallace Neff house of old whitewashed brick,
timbered in the style of a manor in Normandy, and covered with
flowering purple trumpet vines.  Four acres of land descended from
terraced gardens down to a swimming pool and finally to a tennis court,
which neither of them used.  From the upper level of their gardens they
couldn't see another rooftop, so thick was the lush landscaping that
surrounded their invisible, unheard neighbors.  It was as peaceful here
as at Ere, Luke said, and even the vegetation was uncannily similar; as
long as you didn't venture into the local equivalent of a village,
where an Armani boutique held down one end of Rodeo Drive and Chanel
and Fred Hayman the other.

Now both Tessa and Luke found themselves much more a part of the
Hollywood scene.  They no longer had the excuse of constant travel to
keep them from the dinner parties, the charity benefits, the private
screenings, and the galas that were such an important part of the local
social life for nine months a year; barely stopping during the summer
months when most of the same people moved to their Malibu beach houses
and entertained each other more casually.

It suited them both, at this particular time, to welcome distraction,
to accept a number of invitations; and, to Luke's quiet pleasure, it
gave Tessa many more chances to wear her most important jewels.  Even
now, at the peak of the lavish 1980s, when great jewelry was being worn
by many women, Tessa's vast collection of jewels was indisputably of
the highest quality, the most extravagant, and the most original ever
owned by any woman in one of the richest communities on earth.

"What shall I wear with this tonight, darling?"  Tessa asked, turning
around to show him the white silk linen dinner suit she'd chosen for an
intimate dinner party in a private room at Le Dome, where Fiona was
celebrating the completion of her first production.

She waited for Luke's answer, looking puzzled at the daunting number of
possibilities available to her, since everything went with white.

"Don't you think, maybe rubies?"

"Yes, absolutely," Luke said, smiling at her from the armless slipper
chair in her dressing room, where he liked to sit and watch her finish
dressing.

"But which rubies?"  she responded, vanishing into her closet where her
built-in wall safe was open.  "I don't want to overdress, even if
everyone else does these days, but somehow tonight all my rubies seem a
bit over the top.  Don't you think so, Luke?"  She raised her voice
slightly, so he could hear her from inside her vast closet.

"Remember; darling, I know you said I'd never cozy up to them but
that's only because they're simply not cozy in and of themselves-but it
doesn't mean I don't love them.  Luke, come on in here and help me
choose... no, never mind, I'll bring out the trays and let you see
everything," Tessa said, as she emerged from the closet laden with six
black velvet trays of jewels.

Tessa screamed and dropped the trays.  Luke was slumped sideways and
forward, his left arm hanging to the floor; his head and shoulders
following the line of his dangling arm.

Tessa ran to him, using all her strength to push his upper body back
into the chair.  His head flopped forward, his chin rested on his
breastbone.

"Luke!  Luke!"  she begged, "what's the matter?  Open your eyes, for
God's sake, is it your heart?"  He didn't move, didn't open his eyes,
didn't speak.

In a panic that gave her superhuman strength, Tessa managed to pull the
phone table toward her and dial 9-1-1 while still propping Luke up in
the chair.  He had fainted, she thought, she mustn't let him fall.

Tessa managed to give the emergency operator the address of the house
and the fact that Luke had passed out before dropping the phone and
attempting to take Luke's pulse.  As soon as she reached for his wrist
he started to fall forward toward her.  She abandoned the attempt,
wrestling with his weight to keep him in the chair.

Now Tessa tried to listen to his heart, putting her ear to his chest.

She couldn't feel a heartbeat in the heart whose exact location she
knew as well as that of her own-but his jacket was in the way, that was
all.  She couldn't find his heart because he was so heavy, so heavy,
such a mass of firm muscle.  Above all she mustn't let him fall.

Tessa was still holding Luke steady in the chair and imploring him to
speak to her; when two paramedics burst into the room.  She stood back
only when they laid him down on the floor.  One of the paramedics
checked Luke's pupils and took his blood pressure while the other
checked his pulse and quickly reached for the defibrillator paddles.

"We're going to shock his chest," he explained to Tessa rapidly.

"He's never had a heart problem," she cried, incredulously watching the
bizarre activity that had suddenly erupted in the fortress of her
home.

"His heart is perfect, what's wrong, what's wrong with him?"

"I don't know, ma'am," one of them answered.  He had no intention of
telling her that the paddles showed only a flat, straight line that
indicated no electrical heart activity.  That duty was for the doctors,
thank God.

"How could you not know?"  she shouted.  "Do something, for the love of
God, do something."

"Yes, ma'am, we're doing everything possible," he told her;
reassuringly.

The paramedics exchanged a look.  The man's pupils were fixed and
dilated, there was no pulse, no blood pressure, he was asystolic, but
they were trained to go on the basis that there was always hope.

They shocked his chest, put an airway down his throat, and put an I.V
into his arm to try and push medication into him.

"Call the hospital," one of the paramedics told the other.

Suddenly three firemen entered the room, responding to the initial call
Tessa had made that indicated that a healthy man was down.

One of them was bringing an oxygen tank, the others helping to strap
Luke onto a stretcher.  The paramedic on the phone said quietly, making
sure that Tessa didn't hear him, "We're coming in, yes, asystole, fast
as we can."

The paramedics, the firemen carrying the stretcher, and Tessa, grabbing
her purse, all ran down the stairs to the ambulance that waited in
front of the door, ignoring the servants who had finally materialized
by the front door.

Tessa climbed into the ambulance and tried to gather Luke in her arms
even though he was strapped to the stretcher.  Neither of the
paramedics tried to stop her.

"We're getting him to the hospital as quickly as possible," one of them
said.  He would not tell this poor woman, whose contorted features were
so familiar and yet unplaceable, that her husband was dead.  Stone cold
dead.  He'd known it the minute he'd looked in his eyes.  It had been
pointless to try the techniques they used for heart-attack victims.  It
must have been an aneurysm, he thought.

Nothing else could kill as quickly.  Nothing else ended a healthy life
like a bolt of lightning unless you put a loaded gun in your mouth and
pulled the trigger.

Maggie and all the Websters, even Candice and her husband, flew out to
Los Angeles as soon as possible after Fiona had called to tell them
that Luke was dead.

Madison, Tyler; and Maggie dropped the others at the Beverly Hills
Hotel and went directly to Tessa's.  There they found Fiona, Aaron
Zucker, and Roddy Fensterwald already gathered.

"Where's Tessa?"  Maggie asked as soon as she saw the little group
huddled around a coffee table in the living room.

"In her bedroom.  She won't come out," Fiona said, "and she won't let
anybody in."

"Do you mean nobody's seen her since it happened?"

"Just me," Fiona answered.  "She gave the hospital my name last night
and I went to pick her up and bring her home right away-there was
nothing she could do at the hospital but when we got here, she ran
upstairs to the bedroom and locked the door.  She won't answer the
house intercom and she hasn't rung for anything to eat.  I listened at
her door but I couldn't hear a thing, not a sound, and no matter what I
said, she wouldn't answer, not even to tell me to go away.

"I think we should break the door down," Roddy said.  "This can't go
on.

"Fiona," Maggie asked, "what was she like when you went to the
hospital?"

"In shock.  Total.  She wouldn't talk to me, she wasn't crying, she was
barely breathing.  I don't know if she even realized who was driving
the car home.  I must have been the only person she could think of to
call because she knew I was at Le Dome."

"What did the doctors tell you, exactly, Fiona?"  Maggie said, still
trying to comprehend what had happened.

"He had something called a cerebral aneurysm," Fiona answered
wearily.

She'd already explained this to Roddy and Aaron.  "Some people are born
with the possibility of it happening.  You can die from it at any time,
or live to a ripe old age, it just depends.  It's like a bubble or a
bunch of berries on a vine in a blood vessel that comes out of the neck
and goes around it, something called the Circle of Willis.  If it
pouches out, you have an aneurysm, and you die instantly.  The
pathologists at the hospital did the autopsy and called me this
morning.  There's no way to know if you have it or if you don't, and no
point in knowing either."

"Oh," Maggie said in a small voice.  "So Tessa still doesn't know why
Luke died."

"I agree with Roddy," Aaron said.  "We've got to do something, we just
can't sit around here while she's going through this all by herself.

Can't we take the door off its hinges?"

"Let me try to get her to open it first," Maggie said.  "I'm the only
one here who's family."

"You're right," Fiona agreed.  "Do you want me to come with you?"

"Oh, yes, please, Fiona.  I need someone to show me the way, this is
the first time I've been here."

As they walked up the staircase Fiona, who hadn't seen Maggie in
several years, was amazed by the steadiness of her step and her
all-but-visible resolution.  She's not a kid anymore, Fiona thought,
but how old can she be?  Surely no more than seventeen?

"I don't know how she'll live without him."

"No," Maggie said, "neither do I."

At Tessa's door, Maggie knocked.  When she received no answer she spoke
through the door, raising her voice so that it was impossible that it
wouldn't be heard.

"Tessa, it's Maggie.  I'm here, Tessa, I'm here for you.  Please let me
in.  You can't stay in there all by yourself, you need to be with
somebody.  I'm your sister, Tessa, I love Luke too.  I've loved him
almost since I can remember.  He held my hand at our parents' funeral,
remember that day, Tessa?  You on one side and him on the other?  I
still think of that.  He never let me be by myself, he never let me be
frightened.  I knew he'd take care of me, even though I was only
five.

Luke wouldn't want you to be alone now.  You know he'd want you to be
with your sister.  Please let me in.

"Maggie?  Are you alone?"

"Fiona's here with me, but she'll go away if you want."

The door opened and Tessa stood there, still wearing the white suit
she'd had on the night before, tearless, composed, with blank eyes as
dead as fossils in her white face.

"Maggie," she said, without any inflection, without any sign of
surprise at Maggie's presence.  "Maggie, have you heard about Luke."

"Yes, Tessa, that's why I'm here.  May we come in?"

"Something happened to Luke, Maggie, something I don't understand."

"I know, Tessa.  Please let us come in.  We both really need a cup of
tea and something to eat."  Maggie and Fiona both entered the room,
stepping carefully over the dozens of ruby necklaces and bracelets and
earrings that lay scattered all over the floor where Tessa had dropped
the trays.

"A cup of tea," she echoed.

"Yes.  And something to eat."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot.  What time is it.  I'll call down.  Where did
you come from, Maggie," Tessa said in her mechanical voice from which
all emotion, even curiosity, had bled away.

"From home, Tessa.  Tyler and Madison are downstairs, and Aaron and
Roddy."

"So many people," Tessa remarked, slowly.  "And Fiona, you, too.  Do
they all know that something's happened to Luke."

"Yes, Tessa, they know.  They came to be with you."

"What can they do for me?"  For the first time there was a question in
her voice.

"Just be with you.  We love you, Tessa," Fiona said.

"Be with me?  Do you think that will help?"  Tessa asked blankly.

"A little, Tessa.  It's better than being alone."

"Oh no, Fiona, it's the same thing, it's the same thing as being
alone."

Only after the Requiem Mass was Tessa finally able to begin to accept
the fact of Luke's death.  For five days, despite Maggie and Fiona's
entreaties, she shut herself up in her room once more, went to ground
like a small animal whose legs had been gnawed off, and mourned for
Luke, unable to stop weeping, sleeping only hours at a time, waking
hideously to a nightmare that never ceased, eating only when her body
insisted.  Luke, her one and only love, was gone, her safety was gone,
there was nothing left to live for; but no way to die.

She was condemned to life and condemned to danger.  Eventually Tessa's
mind began to work again, as the useless jets of wrenching sobs, in
which she'd forget everything but Luke, slowly turned to a dull
perception of reality.

She must learn to live without Luke, she understood, since she was
still alive.  If she could only act as if she had strength, perhaps she
would eventually find some measure of true strength, Tessa told
herself, with all the courage she could fake.  Searching in the only
direction she knew, she took the first step to stitch up the tattered
rags into which her heart had been ripped.  She phoned her agent and
asked him to come to the house.

"I need a job, Aaron.  Within a week."

"Tessa, Tessa, what kind of crazy idea is that?"

"I have to have it, Aaron, a location shoot, as far away as possible,
as difficult as possible, something that will keep me from thinking or
feeling for as many hours of the day as possible."

"Wouldn't it be better to-,' "What?"  she interrupted him, "sit here
and mourn?  I could spend the rest of my life doing that, Aaron, and
never have the slightest reason to stop.  I'm afraid of that... oh, it
would be so easy, Aaron, you have no idea, so horribly easy...

tempting... oh, so tempting.  It terrifies me when I think how almost
right that would feel to me."  Tessa rose with determination.  "The
alternative is to go back to work.  I know that's what Luke would have
wanted me to do.

And if I don't, how can I keep on living?  Work is the only thing I
know how to do now.

"But what about Maggie?  She wants to come and live with you.

She can do her senior year here.  She truly yearns to do that Tessa,
she hopes so much that you're going to let her; she'll be such a
comfort to you.

"Oh, Aaron, Aaron, Maggie is such a darling, but she has no idea how
bad an idea that would be for her.  She may be ready to sacrifice an
all-important year of school, but I'm not ready to let her do that.

It's a year in which she'll become everything she's been working
toward, in a place where she's finally conquered and triumphed and
become a leader.  How could I let her do that?  How, Aaron?

Only the most selfish woman in the world could allow it.  She deserves
her senior year at school, she needs it, you know it and I know it."

"I'm not as convinced as you are."

"All I can hope to be, Aaron, for a long, long time, is a woman who is
using her work to survive.  No one can 'be a comfort' to me.

The only sort of comfort I can imagine is in making movies back to
back, using the one part of me that I know still exists, still
functions.

I'm going to be on the move, and your job is to make sure of that.

Maggie's place is in school.  Do you seriously imagine I could drag a
seventeen-year-old girl around from one location shoot to another; for
companionship?  You know how unfair that would be to her.

Aaron, I'm ashamed of you for not understanding that!  She's helped me
beyond measure, she was there when I needed her; but now it's time for
her to go back to her own life."

"No reason her life can't be with you," Aaron persisted.  "No reason
why she can't take a year off Tessa, she's the only family you have."

"Aaron, no, no and no," Tessa said, cutting short the conversation.

Now that the first numbness had worn off, she saw clearly what was
right for Maggie.  She was free now to tell Maggie the truth, to claim
her daughter; to claim the only child she'd ever have, but that
revelation would bind Maggie more strongly to what she imagined, so
wrongly, so sweetly, was her mission of comfort.  She felt a strong
urge, Tessa admitted to herself, to allow herself to take Maggie's
youth and courage and lean on it, to possess, at last, a child of her
own, to hold her close, to let Maggie be strong for her to cling.

But it was wrong, clearly wrong.  She must wait to tell Maggie until
she felt less needy, less vulnerable.  She must wait until she had done
the long work of mourning that remained to her, until she stopped being
this stranger; this wounded, grieving, empty shadow of herself, with
only a craft left to keep her going.

"I'm sending Maggie back home tomorrow," Tessa said, summing up all the
resolution at her command.  "I'll call Madison and arrange it.  She's
been away too long as it is."

"I'll tell her," Aaron said sadly.  "She's going to feel she's
abandoning you."

Tessa continued as if he hadn't spoken.  "Now you, Aaron, you have no
more than a week to get me that job, and if nobody has what you
consider to be a decent location script ready to cast, don't worry,
take anything, anything at all.  I don't care about quality.

One week, Aaron, and I'll be packed and ready to go up the Amazon or
anywhere else that's far enough away.  You know you can do it.

Don't bother to argue with me again, because I don't care what anyone
thinks, not even you, Aaron.  If I don't get going, soon, I'll never
work again.  ....... Luke wouldn't have wanted me to let go of life, no
matter what happened to him.  Remember Aaron, remember how proud he was
of me...?"

21

She wouldn't have to stand it much longer; Madison Webster told
herself, sitting at the desk in her bedroom, as she listened to Maggie
clatter down the stairs, off to one of the countless events that marked
the end of her last year in high school.  That-that peasant-would be
out of the house soon, although it could never be soon enough as far as
she was concerned.

She didn't need to provide a home for Maggie any longer; not for
another second, yet for the sake of appearances she obviously couldn't
throw her out until her graduation, Madison thought, as she bent over
her accounts.

Her own private investments in the past thirteen years, solid and
substantial as they had become in the amazing market of the 80s,
remained intact.  She'd had the instinct to sell everything and cash in
several months before the stock market crash of 1987.

However; her own impressive funds, built up through thousands of
domestic economies, seemed minor compared to the twenty million dollars
Luke had left Tyler in his will.  Although the settlement of Luke's
complicated estate was not yet final, there was no question that they
were far richer than she had ever dreamed they'd be, yet she still
hadn't changed any of her frugal ways.

Aside from what Luke had left them, he'd arranged the affairs of his
company in exceptionally good order; leaving ten million dollars each
to his six top men, dependent on their pledging to remain in the employ
of the company for the next ten years, and he'd passed on his position
as chief to Len Jones, who had been his second-in-command for so
long.

He'd left seventy million dollars to various charities, and everything
else, the bulk of his estate, had been left to Tessa, except for
another twenty million he'd left Maggie, to be kept in a trust until
she was thirty-five, with Tessa named as one trustee and his tax
attorney the other.

If Luke had enough to leave a hundred seventy million dollars to
others, Madison wondered, biting the inside of her lips, what must
Tessa be worth?  She couldn't begin to imagine.  Certainly, if she were
Tessa, she'd never be able to bring herself to spend it, she told
herself comfortingly and honestly.  How odd and yes, how pleasant, how
deeply reassuring it was to know that she'd become so accustomed to a
certain way of life that she'd never want to make drastic changes no
matter how much money she might have.

In fact, for some reason she didn't explore, Madison felt more devout
about protecting her secret funds than ever.  That was real money.  It
made her feel richer than the twenty-million-dollar bequest, which,
after all, had been left to her husband, not to her.

Well, she thought, old money had always been conservative.  Her family
hadn't had true old money for two generations, although they'd had the
wit to make it look as if they had it but were too secure to spend
it.

A great deal of well-polished, ugly old silver; heavy in the hand;
unfashionable, darkly varnished mahogany; her great-grandmother's worn
oriental rugs; lots of dogs-she'd grown up surrounded by all that, and
as long as her horse was decent and her riding gear well cared for; the
money had been assumed to be there, by her friends, the only people who
mattered.

Ah, but there was one thing she promised herself to spend money on
openhandedly, her private celebration when Luke's estate was settled.

She was going to redecorate Maggie's rooms, erase every trace of her.

Once that big, gaudy girl with her vulgarly large breasts was out of
the house, once she'd been shipped off to college, the guest suite
would become her own office from which she'd manage the estate, since
Tyler had neither the ability for nor the interest in such practical
matters.  He could be trusted to buy a few promising stallions if their
manager approved the prices, but Madison had her own ideas about making
the stud farm profitable, plans she'd never been able to put into
action in the past.

As for Maggie, clearly it was Luke's intention that she now be in
Tessa's charge.  Obviously he'd intended that Maggie make her home with
Tessa, once she was of an age to go to college and no longer needed the
steadiness of living in a family.  Let Tessa cope with her sister for a
change!  Let Tessa try to get her to wear a bra!

Anyway, chances were Maggie would spend most of her holidays with
classmates just as she'd encouraged Barney to do.  That boy hadn't been
home for almost a year; what with a summer at a friend's ranch in
Nevada and Christmas and Thanksgiving in Boston and Philadelphia.  He
was such a popular boy, that his disappointing marks didn't matter.

The main thing was that he was making exactly the kind of friends she'd
hoped he'd make when they'd decided to send him to Andover; when he was
twelve, more than five years earlier.

Tyler thought that the reason for Luke's bequest was gratitude for
their sacrifice in taking Maggie into their own family.  He was
probably right but, the good Lord knows, she'd more than earned it.

In all justice, he should have left them more than he'd left Maggie.

Tyler was his stepbrother, Maggie merely his wife's sister.  But
justice wasn't Luke's strong point, as it was hers.  Wasn't she
planning to give that girl a combination eighteenth birthday and
graduation party, which, considering that Luke would never know about
her generosity, she could perfectly well have skipped?

Even though it was soon going to be too dark to ride, Maggie wandered
down to the stables and perched on the post-and-rail fence surrounding
the empty practice ring.  It was almost twilight on this soft spring
Friday evening, a week before graduation.  All the horses had been
turned out to the fields, the six stable hands had gone home to their
own lives, and she had the place to herself.  She was surprised to feel
a piercing nostalgia as she gazed at the scene of so many childhood
hours of fear and humiliation.  Yet heaven knew, she didn't feel
anything but anticipation at the prospect of going away to college,
leaving a home that had never been a true home under the cold care of
shit-for-brains Tyler and snake-blood Madison, who had never once
greeted her with a trace of warmth or even cared enough about her to
criticize, so she'd know what she was doing wrong.

There was no question in her mind now that Madison truly disliked her
and always had, for all these years.  She had grown used to the hurt of
it, grown to accept it.  Only the physical buffers of Candice and
Allison, both now married, had kept Madison from openly revealing her
unexpressed, but unrelenting and most mysteriously unexplained,
hostility, which seemed to have grown more open since Luke died.

No, her nostalgia was certainly not for her years in this house where
she was, at best, tolerated, though unwanted; where Elizabeth, the
cook, was the closest thing she had to a mother figure; where, after
thirteen years, she still felt like an intrusive, unattractive,
inferior stranger; as if she were some kind of charity case they'd been
forced to take in, although that didn't make sense no matter how she
tried to figure it out.

Her sense of loss was centered entirely on the time she'd spent with
Barney, her faithful old protector; Barney who had forgotten her;
disappearing into a world of grand new buddies and frantically social
preppy vacations.  She'd never had a chance to surprise him with how
well she could ride.  They hadn't even had a chance for one of their
private talks in years, because when Barney did come home, just long
enough to get his shirts washed and pressed, he'd been too occupied
with his parents and the impressively connected friends he brought with
him, to do more than say a quick hello to her.

Damn Barney to hell, anyway!  He was only seventeen and a half and she
was about to be eighteen in a week, a grown woman feeling sorry for
herself because she'd been ignored by a boy, a mere adolescent, who,
unlike a female, wouldn't really mature for years.

She was at the top of her class academically, Maggie told herself
fiercely, she was popular with all the other girls, she was editor of
the school paper and president of the debating team, she was highly
computer literate, she'd been accepted by Smith and Vassar and the
University of Michigan, and you'd better bet she was going to Michigan,
where there were guaranteed to be men, genuine grown-up men, thick on
the ground.  Elm Country Day hadn't any male presence except on the
faculty.  Once Maggie had made it clear that she wasn't going to have a
coming-out party, Madison hadn't introduced her to any of her friends'
sons, not that she wanted to meet them, so her feeble experience of
guys was limited to the geeky brothers of her classmates, not one of
whom turned her on as much as her favorite horse.

Once she got to Michigan, after a decent week's wait, she was going to
head straight to the student health department and ask to be fitted for
a diaphragm, so that she'd be ready for whatever happened, Maggie
promised herself.  She didn't want to go on the Pill, she'd read too
many articles about contraception to start the Pill at eighteen, with
at least thirty fertile years ahead of her, but a diaphragm was safe.

She knew she'd meet the right guy during freshman year.  It was
impossible for anyone as ripe, as eager for experience as she was, not
to find a guy, and it didn't matter if the guy was a mistake, as he was
almost certain to be.  She wanted to fall in and out of love as many
times as was possible for a sane person.  Four years of serial love
affairs, Maggie promised herself with a wide smile, wasn't that the
underlying purpose of higher education?  She'd have to keep her grades
up enough to stay in college, but fundamentally she was going to major
in passion.

And when she graduated she was going to go to New York City and get
some kind of wonderful job and have another five years of love affairs
before she even thought of getting married.  Almost more than anything
else, she wanted, needed, a family of her own, because it had been so
hard to grow up without one, but when she did marry, Maggie thought
ferociously she wanted to stay home and really be with her kids, the
way she could still remember her mother being with her, although the
memories were dim and fragmented.  She was almost sick with a wild
ambition to do and feel everything!  She wanted it all, everything!

She'd been stuck in boring, limited horse country for most of her
life.

If ever a woman needed to be liberated it was she.

There was a vast, marvelous world out there that she was going to bite
into and chew up, piece by delicious piece, Maggie promised herself.

She was going to be a raving success, she knew it in her bones.  She
felt as determined, as sharp, as purposeful and powerful as a shining
sword.

She took a deep breath, reveling in her sense of all the exciting,
unknown adventures that were going to happen to her.  She was ready for
the world and all its surprises, oh, more than ready!

"Hey," said a quiet voice behind her.

Maggie almost fell off the fence in surprise, prevented by a pair of
muscular arms grasped around her waist.

"Don't say anything, it's me, Barney," he whispered urgently in her
ear, and lifted her easily off the fence so that she stood directly in
front of him.

"What are you doing here!  You're not supposed to get out of school
till next week.  What's going on?  Why are you whispering?"

"I've been expelled."

"Shit!  Why?"

"Pot party, I made the buy and they caught me on the way to my room
where the other guys were waiting."

"Oh, Barney, you asshole!  You moron, you've fucked up your life.

Jesus!  What happened to the others?"

"They said they didn't know what I was up to, a surprise to them."

"Nice guys."

"Why should they risk admitting anything when they didn't have any weed
on them?  I'd have done the same.  So I'm out, one year short of
graduating."

"How'd you get here?"

"On my bike.  I have a secondhand Harley I fixed up so it's better than
new, kept it in a garage in town.  Bikes are my thing, my real thing,
I'm so good with bikes you wouldn't believe it."

"Wow, Easy Rider all over again," she drawled.

"You got it, I'm reinventing the genre," he grinned.  "Somebody's got
to."

"And what are Ma and Pa Webster going to say?"

"That's the part where it could get nasty.  Let's go in the tack room
and figure out a lie."

"Barney, you're delusional.  The school'll notify them.  You'd have it
easier escaping from Alcatraz."

"I've already escaped from Alcatraz, I took off as soon as I was kicked
out, didn't pack, just got my bike and headed home."

'Alcatraz?  I thought you liked school."

"Nope, not really.  I'm academically deeply lacking, but mechanically
brilliant.  I tried to be a real preppy but my heart wasn't in it.  I
made a lot of friends, but they're busy planning to turn into their
fathers, and that isn't for me.  I want to work with my hands, run a
bike shop-it's my dream-only problem is I don't dare tell my folks,
they'll never allow it.  A blue-collar son!  They'll make me get a
college degree from any tenth-rate place that would have me, even if
they have to bribe one."

He opened the door to the tack room, turned on the light, and closed it
behind them.

"Whew!  Safe at last.  I figured I might find you still trying to learn
how to stay on a horse, so I came down here first, left my bike behind
the barn."

"I can damn well stay on any horse in the Essex Hunt."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

They faced off opposite each other; unable to stop smiling in sheer joy
at the sight of each other.  She'd never been so glad to see anyone in
her life, Maggie thought.  Time seemed to stretch and sway, as subtle
as a spider web, time all but stopped while they searched each other's
faces, suddenly speechless.  Barney had shot up, he was well over six
feet tall.  His streaky blond hair, tangled by his long ride, flopped
over his forehead; his face was tanned; his pleasant, lively boy's face
had turned into that of an almost-man, strong but still changing into
what it would eventually become.

His impudent grin and his freckles were the only fleeting reminder of
the boy she'd known since she was five.

"Bet you can't," he said.  "Bet I still have to save your ass."

"What'll you bet?"  Maggie challenged him.

"A kiss."

"What kind of bet is that?  If I can't ride I kiss you, if I can ride
you kiss me?  Heads you win, tails I lose?  No thanks."

"Okay, no bet.  I believe you.  Do you know what a sexy, lovely girl
you've turned into?"

"Of course."

"Well I didn't."  He put his hands on either side of her face and bent
down and kissed her full on the lips, a long, lusty, sweet, sweaty kiss
that detonated like a depth bomb in her belly.  Her eyes opened wide in
astonishment as she kissed him back wholeheartedly, voraciously.  The
tack room whirled around her; bridles and saddles, hunt caps, rows of
polished boots, dozens of photos of horses, everything blurred and she
staggered with dizziness.  Only Barney's arms kept her upright.

"You liked that," he said, stunned by her response.

"I did.  I'd like more.  Over here, on the sofa."

"Maggie, we're not related or anything, are we?"

"Not even kissing cousins.  We're just old friends."

"Oh, God," he groaned, "you're so gorgeous, so grown-up, where have I
been?"

"Too busy to notice me."

"I must have been fucking stupid."

"You are.  Shut up."  She reached up for him with her open, impetuous,
curious, innocent lips, groaning with hungry haste and need, adoring
the touch of his searching tongue.  She quivered with delight as he
explored her mouth, lacing her fingers in his hair to bring him closer,
kissing him all over his face, smelling his unfamiliar, delicious,
rough skin.  She rapidly pushed and pulled him around so that she could
kiss his neck and his ears and his forehead, returning always to his
open mouth and his hot, eager, shamelessly seeking tongue.  Oh, Barney
was a man, a man and a stranger and she had never known, never
understood.  She loved him, Maggie thought dimly, loved him as she
would love a man.

"I've got to feel your breasts," he muttered into her lips.  Maggie
instantly ripped the buttons of her blouse open and exposed her breasts
to his hands and his mouth, catching her breath in bliss as she felt
his touch, so warm, so firm, so focused, so utterly different from when
she played with them herself that a new world opened up to her.  She
lay under him, pushing upward, as he greedily sucked her nipples and
madly rubbed her mound, under her jeans, with a penis that felt like a
club.  In a minute they both came, fully dressed, Maggie gasping,
Barney with a muffled scream.

Too shaken to say anything, too surprised to move, they lay one on top
of the other, holding each other tightly.  After a minute Maggie,
crushed, eased herself out from under Barney's body and lay next to
him, hugging him close.  He was limp from the unexpected power of his
orgasm, she was weak with a pleasure greater than she'd ever known.

"And we didn't even do anything," Barney finally said in wonder.

"We didn't?"

"Not really."

"I never have," she admitted.  "Have you?"

"Yeah, not much though.  You're so... fast."

"Is that good?"

"Damn right.  Oh, Maggie, I've got to do it again."

"I do too."

"Touch me this time, touch me, please, I've always loved you,
Maggie."

"I know."

"Can you take off your jeans?  I want to touch you too."

"Okay, but that's all, just touching."

"I promise."

In seconds both of them were naked, kissing and nipping at each other;
looking at all their secret places, exploring each other's bodies
almost roughly, trying to hold back from the only thing they really
wanted, until, as mad with curiosity as with need, they both had to
give in and explore each other frantically between their legs, fingers
wet and ruthless.  Soon, much too soon, they were both racked by
profound, piercing, slowly widening and exploding orgasms that neither
of them would forget for the rest of their lives.

Maggie returned to her room by a back staircase while Barney settled
down to sleep in the tack room.  She'd managed to make herself look
almost normal in case she met anyone on the way, but no one saw her as
she shakily made her way home and closed her door behind her.  She
sniffed herself.  She'd never smelled the aftermath of sex on herself
before, but she knew instantly that the first thing to do was to take a
shower.  The pungent odor was all over her, on her hands, on her jeans,
even her hair reeked wonderfully of Barney and his sticky juices.  If
there hadn't been the chance of someone knocking at the door to find
out why she wasn't at dinner; she would have liked to have wallowed in
the marvelous smells of the two of them as long as possible, but she
had no choice.

After her shower Maggie put on clean pajamas and got into bed so that
she could say to a curious maid that she didn't feel well enough to
eat.  She turned off her lights, lay back on her pillow, and finally
let herself think about what had just happened to her.

Barney, Barney, was all she could think at first, still dazzled by a
trembling buzz that made her nerves zing with shudders from head to toe
when she thought about the look of his cock, the unexpectedly smooth
skin of his cock rising from the silky nest of his blond pubic hair;
the blue veins on his cock, the thickness of his cock, the way it
became, literally, the center of the universe as it grew imperious,
demanding, irresistible.  He had a power she'd never known existed.  If
he had asked her; she might not have been able to stop him from putting
his cock in her.  She longed for it so intensely right now that she was
forced to give herself to another orgasm, before she was calm enough to
think about anything else.

Barney was seventeen and a half years old, Maggie told herself when she
had regained her breath and found herself finally able to consider the
situation calmly.  A man-boy, half-grown, who had the terrifying power
to make her do crazy things because of that thick cock that dangled so
heavily between his legs when he stood up to put on his jeans.

No.  The word came from within her; a warning, a summons, an enjoinment
from deep within her spirit.  If she met him again in the tack room
there was no possibility of not giving in to him.  By tomorrow he would
have managed to jaunt out on his bike and buy condoms, she was certain
of it, and somehow he'd talk her into thinking that was safe enough,
because she wanted him so much.  No!

She was scared witless, Maggie realized with the utmost seriousness, by
the thought of how helpless she would become if she lay in his arms
again, kissed him, smelled him.  She'd never be able to stop with just
grinding and petting and the kind of touching they'd done tonight.

Barney, darling, beautiful Barney, no!  She knew ten times more about
sex now than she had a few hours ago, she knew that his stiff cock-that
cock she'd always wanted-was quite enough to make her take leave of her
senses.  And she wasn't going to do it.

She must not.  She dared not.  There were too many reasons against it,
she told herself sternly.  They could not allow themselves to venture
any deeper into a sexual obsession with each other.  As little as
Maggie knew, she realized enough to sense that they were on the very
verge of obsession.

They were not kissing cousins, not related by a drop of blood, this
almost-grown-up Barney was as fascinating as if he were a stranger and
she could too easily imagine the insane risks they'd be willing to
take, if they ever really started.  They'd do anything to be together
and one of those times they'd be discovered and utterly disgraced.  By
Madison and Tyler.  No, never!

She was on her way to college, he'd been thrown out of prep school and
didn't want to go back.  She was on her way to many years of adventure,
he had no ambitions beyond his dream of a bike shop, Maggie told
herself, forcing herself to be coldly realistic.  Both of them had
their lives ahead of them but they didn't want the same things.  Sex
wouldn't be enough, their still-childish love wouldn't be enough.  The
real world would crush them.  They were simply too young.  Kids, both
of them.

What had happened to all her sense of adventure and her eagerness to
get out and stir the world up around her?  she asked herself.  The
answer came clearly.  Nothing had happened.  She still intended to have
it all.  Barney's appearance here tonight had changed nothing
fundamental.  The timing was all wrong.  She couldn't change her own
dreams for Barney, sweet, loving, heavenly, glorious Barney, even if
she would never forget him.  It was over.

It had to be over.  There was no choice.  Never again.

It was, Maggie thought as the tears streamed down her cheeks, her first
one-night stand.

The next day, at lunch, Maggie found herself alone at the table.

"Where are my aunt and uncle?"  she asked Elizabeth as soon as she
could find her alone.

"They left to fly up to Barney's school, that's what I heard them say
at breakfast.  There's some sort of big trouble, but I don't know what
it is."

"You haven't seen... anyone else around?"

"You know more about it than I do, I'll bet."

"What makes you say that?"  Maggie asked innocently.

"Because I found Barney hanging around here when I came downstairs this
morning and I had to give him half the food in the kitchen before he'd
go away.

"Barney?  What's he doing here?"

"That's what I thought you'd know."

"I haven't got a clue."

Maggie wandered down to the stables, dawdling along the path.  Barney
couldn't be in the barn or the tack room or the stable hands would have
seen him.

"Jesus, I thought you'd never show up," he said, stepping out from
behind a grove of trees.  "Come here, come here darling Maggie, I've
been up all night thinking about you."

"No, Barney," she said, standing in the middle of the path.  "It was
the most wonderful, exciting thing that's ever happened to me.

It was bliss, Barney, but I can't, not again, I can't even kiss you."

The amazing hurt on his face went through her heart, but she faced him
firmly.

"Nothing will ever work out for us, and I love you too much to dare to
love you more."

"That's crap!  Pure crap!"

"Maybe, to you, but not to me.

"Come here and explain what you mean."

"No.  I'm going back to the house.  I just came to tell you.  And
there's something else.  I know that they've gone to make a fuss and
get Andover to take you back, and maybe they'll manage it, but I think
you should do what you're good at, what you want to do.  Go to New York
and work with bikes, and get what you really want.  Make your own life,
don't let them force you into anything.  You're different from them."

"You came down here to give me career advice?"  he asked
incredulously.

"Yep, I did.  Do you need any money?"

"Christ!"

"Well, do you?"

"No, I have enough."

"Will you let me know where you are in New York?"

"Will you come to visit me?"

"I don't know, maybe someday, but first I have to go to college,
Barney, I have to grow up and so do you."

"Oh, God, I hate it when you're right."

"So you know too."

"Yeah.  We're too fucking young.  Now.  We won't always be, Maggie,
don't forget that.  Don't forget me.  I loved you from day one.

I love you now, I'm going to love you always.  You're my girl Maggie.

I'd better split.  I'll let you know where I am.  Give me just one
kiss."

"I'll owe it to you.  One kiss and we'll be back where we started
yesterday.  Good luck, darling, darling Barney.  Good luck, have a good
trip, and darling, good-bye."

22

Maggie, come on in the kitchen as soon as you get a chance, I have
something to ask you," Elizabeth the cook whispered with an air of
secrecy, the day before Maggie's Saturday-night birthday party.

Madison reluctantly had realized that it was her duty to celebrate the
occasion, considering the size of the legacy Luke had left Tyler;
although why he'd felt it necessary to leave Maggie an equal amount
she'd never understand.

During the past week, since Barney's expulsion from school, Maggie had
barely seen the Websters, both of whom were beside themselves with
anger at their son and the need to find him and somehow place him,
willy-nilly, in another school so that he could get into college next
year.  If they hadn't turned the plans for Maggie's birthday party
entirely over to Elizabeth, they would probably have forgotten about
it, Maggie thought, but the cook, who'd been through the older girls'
debuts and weddings, was perfectly capable of managing a dinner party
for Maggie's graduating class of twenty-three girls without any
instructions from Madison.  What special treat had Elizabeth dreamed
up?  Maggie wondered, as she made her way into the large kitchen.

"You're not going to show me my birthday cake in advance, are you?" 
she said, grabbing Elizabeth around the waist and planting a kiss on
each of her cheeks.  "Isn't that supposed to be bad luck, like seeing
the bride's dress before the ..."

"Maggie, come in the pantry," Elizabeth said with unaccustomed
seriousness.  "I don't know what to do about this."  She handed Maggie
a letter addressed to her.  "Here, read it."

Maggie opened the envelope and scanned the single page.  It was a short
note from Barney, asking the cook to give Maggie, and only Maggie, his
address in New York.  He was fine, he said, but he didn't want his
parents to know where he was until he had a job and could support
himself, because nothing would make him go back to school.

"What should I do?"  Elizabeth asked.  "Should I show this to Mrs.
Webster?"

"Give it to me," Maggie said.  "They're worried sick about him.

They have to know he's okay."

Relieved, Elizabeth turned over the paper to Maggie and went back to
her preparations.  Maggie memorized the address, tore the letter into
bits, and put it in the trash.  She promised herself to go into town
that afternoon and empty her sizable bank account so she could send
Barney money to live on until he could pay her back.

She knew he couldn't have much, and she'd saved most of her
allowance.

Maggie waited impatiently until Madison and Tyler returned for lunch.

"Barney called while you were out," Maggie said, as soon as they
arrived.  "He wanted you to know that he was perfectly fine but he said
he wasn't going back to school and you shouldn't worry, he's looking
for a job."

"Shouldn't worry?"  Madison screamed furiously.  "Shouldn't worry,
after what he's put us through!"  She sounded relieved but doubly
furious.  "Where was he?"

"I asked but he wouldn't tell me, I'm sorry."

"God, what I would give to get my hands on that rotten kid," Tyler
raved.  "Who the hell does he think he is, how could he treat us this
way, what kind of future does he think he has?  A job-who would employ
him?  He must be lying around smoking marijuana with a bunch of
dropouts just as bad as he is.  When I think-all we've done for him-he
could be anywhere!"

"He sounded together."  Maggie ventured, "not drugged at all."

"As if you could tell over the phone," Madison scoffed.  "Why on earth
didn't you get more out of him?  I'll bet you didn't try.

How can we find him?  How dare he hide from us?"

"I did try," Maggie protested, "but he's doing his thing."

"Oh, that phrase!  It makes me sick.  Well, obviously there's nothing
to do till he runs out of money and turns up on the doorstep.

He'll be forced to come back, if I know Barney.  Oh, and Maggie,
speaking of turning up, I left too early to tell you, but Tessa is
coming to the party tomorrow.  It's supposed to be a surprise but with
all I have on my mind I simply can't be bothered trying to remember"
Damn Tessa's movie-star conceits and damn Maggie, she thought, for not
having pried Barney's whereabouts out of him; they'd always been thick
as thieves.

"Tessa's coming?"  Maggie cried, stunned with joy.

"She's taking the Concorde over from London, arriving at the Carlyle
tomorrow morning, driving out here for the party, spending the night at
the hotel, and returning Sunday."

"Oh, I don't believe it!"  Maggie rejoiced, flooded with happiness.

Months ago she'd given up all hope of seeing Tessa on her birthday.

As she had planned, as soon as possible after Luke's death almost a
year ago Tessa had replaced Michelle Pfeiffer, a flu victim, at the
last minute on a major movie set in a small Greek village.

The role had kept her working for four months.  Then, with only a week
for hurried costume fittings, she'd made a MerchantIvory film that had
finished filming in the English countryside, and she was now in the
early days of a Jaffe/Lansing production also due to be made in and
around Paris and London.

Tessa had sold the house in Beverly Hills, the ranch in Texas, and the
villa at Cap-Ferrat.  "Heart-Broken Star Will Never Revisit Scenes of
Past Happiness," the story in People had said, and, Maggie reflected,
they had it right.

Tessa seemed to have jettisoned all her baggage except for her
jewels.

The rare photographs of her in the past year had been taken when she
went out for an evening surrounded by a band of coworkers, once in a
small Greek seaside cafe', twice in unknown British pubs.

Inappropriate though they were for such places, Tessa had been covered
with gems, blazing as if for a ball among her casually dressed
friends.

She must need, Maggie realized sadly, to wrap herself at all times in
the protective armor Luke had given her.

Tessa had sent her brief postcards in the past year, but none of them
said when she might be coming back to the United States.

Maggie, in her concern, had been inspired to phone Aaron Zucker to find
out Tessa's plans for the future.

"I'm playing it by ear, sweetie," he said, lamenting.  "I mail her
every script that I think has a part worthy of her in it, and let her
pick and choose, because I can't read her mind.  I'm more like a
postman than an agent.  The scripts keep flooding in but she doesn't
want my advice on anything.  She's got nothing on her mind, as far as I
can figure out, except keeping so busy she can't think.  Well, I guess
it's one way of mourning, but I keep wondering if she's ever going to
give herself enough time to feel."

"I guess that's the last thing she wants to do," Maggie replied.

"But can you live life like that?"

"I don't know, Aaron.  I don't know Tessa well enough to say."

"How can you feel like that, Maggie?  You've known her all your life.

She's your sister."

"There's knowing and knowing.  I've spent so little time with her, even
when you add it all up, and mostly I was a kid.

Each visit was an incredible treat, a thrill, an adventure-not everyday
life where you get to know what makes people tick.

And you don't talk frankly about yourself to someone so much younger,
as I am, even if she is your sister.  You, and Roddy and Fiona, you all
know Tessa much better than I do.  For me she's an adored, impossibly
glamorous stranger from another planet who drops in or sends for me
every once in a while, lets me wear her jewels and tells me nothing
serious.  We've never had a grown-up relationship."

"Tell me about movie stars, Maggie, tell me something new.  But now
you're old enough to get to know her," Aaron said consolingly.

"Think of it that way."

"Only if she stops rushing from one shoot to another."

"Good point, kiddo.  The minute I know what she's going to do next,
I'll let you know."

Maggie had hung up, after talking to Aaron, feeling farther away from
Tessa than she had for years, when at least she could dream about their
next flying visit.

"Tessa's going to a lot of trouble for just one party," Madison said
sourly, annoyed at Maggie's expression of radiant expectation.

How like Tessa, she thought, to dump her sister on other people three
hundred and sixty-four days a year, and then show up once a year and
get all the credit for having made an enormous effort.

"Oh, Madison, she is, she is!"  Maggie gulped and ran out of the room
in a hurry because she was about to burst into happy tears.

Tessa was coming!  Coming to see her!

Two days earlier, Tessa had found herself free from preproduction
chores, with a whole day stretching in front of her.  London was at its
best, spreading its humming vastness out beneath a sky of a singular
transparency.  It held not the promise of perfection but perfection
itself.  It was that one particular spring day that came but once a
year, when every window box had reached its perfection of spring bloom;
when every ancient tree in every ancient park celebrated itself with a
burst of perfect new leaves, when the most conservative of Englishmen
left his umbrella at home and the most conservative of Englishwomen
bought herself two new hats.

Tessa stretched out in a canvas chair in St. James's Park and
contemplated the passage of three tiny white clouds that punctuated the
exquisite pastel of the sky framed in a circle of treetops.

She could live here, she thought idly, if every day were like this
one.

She could buy a house in London if she hadn't spent last winter here,
grimly accepting what any Californian would think of as a twilight
zone, with lamps lit well before four in the afternoon.  But it might
be amusing to have a small place, just a mews house, with a little
garden, only for the spring and fall, so that she wouldn't always have
to live in hotels.... With a great start of surprise Tessa realized
that she was making a plan.  It was the first time since Luke had died
that she'd thought of the future.  Galvanized, she jumped up from her
chair and started walking rapidly through the park, oblivious to
anything but her thoughts.

If she could make any plan, even a tentative one based on the weather;
she must be well along in the mourning process, Tessa told herself.

Mourning Luke had been like having an invisible wound that left no
outward trace.  She could only judge its healing by the way her mind
worked.  She had reached this point by living one day after the other,
hanging on, enduring.  Every morning she willed herself to get out of
bed and go to work, never thinking of her future.

So... time had passed, enough time apparently, although she would never
have known it if she hadn't imagined owning a mews house.  If she were
well enough to consider real estate, Tessa thought with a leap of joy,
she could allow herself to be with Maggie without clinging to her and
dragging her down into her grief.  And oh, how right she'd been to
leave Maggie in school to graduate.  The past year she'd been hell to
be with, she was aware of that, but since she had always arrived at the
set on time, line perfect and ready to work as hard as necessary, no
one she loved had been injured by the gloom of her moods.

Maggie would be eighteen on Saturday, Tessa reflected, hurrying back to
the hotel.  Eighteen, her child would be eighteen!  The concierge
could, had to get her tickets on the Concorde so that she could tell
Maggie the truth without any further delay.  Maggie could spend the
summer with her in London before going back to start college.  They'd
have months in which to begin to learn how to be mother and
daughter...

if...

Maggie would accept her after she'd told her everything that had
happened.

Tessa broke into a run.  There was so much to do, so much to plan.  So
much to hope for.

The morning of her birthday Maggie had awakened early, feeling very
important.  She'd had dreams of strange rapture, like dancing on clouds
of gilded meringue, that vanished as soon as she'd awakened, but they'd
left her feeling light, graced, and poised.

After her shower she put on her pearls and posed naked in front of her
full-length bathroom mirror, admiring her rosy, abundant, sexy adult
self from all possible angles.  Then, for a mad minute, she capered
about in honor of the kid she was leaving behind, wiggling her ass at
herself in mockery.  As she dressed, Maggie realized to the full how
major an occasion today was going to be in her life.

Eighteen is a milestone, she thought, a stepping stone to the future, a
sign of adulthood that no one can dismiss.  The magic day had come at
last, and, to make everything perfect, Tessa would be arriving in New
York well before noon.  She knew that the Concorde left London very
early in the morning and Tessa had once told her that people who made
the three-hour flight often ate two breakfasts, one early, in flight,
and one late, in New York.  What if she took the bus into the city and
met Tessa at the hotel?  Elizabeth would drive her to Essex to catch
the bus, and she'd have time alone with her sister before the party.

Turning the idea over in her mind, with mounting excitement, she rushed
down to the kitchen for breakfast, the first one to arrive.

"Well, here's your annual birthday card," Elizabeth said with a
smile.

"Your godparents in California never forget, do they?  Not at Christmas
and never on your birthday, or Easter, for all the years you've been
here.  This one looks almost like a letter.  Maybe they're sending you
some good advice; that's what godparents are supposed to do, you know,
even if you are half a pagan."

Maggie ripped the envelope open and found that it wasn't a card, but a
letter from Brian Kelly enclosing a sealed letter addressed to her.  To
escape Elizabeth's kindly but prying eyes, she took the two letters
into the deserted dining room to read.

My very dear God-daughter Maggie, As you know, your father, Sandor
Horvath, or Sandy, as I called him, was one of my closest friends and I
treasure the honor he did in making me your godfather, even though you
haven't been around much for Helen and me to spoil, worse luck.  When
you were five years old, your father gave me this letter to deliver to
you on your eighteenth birthday in case he was no longer on earth to do
it himself.  I've often wondered if he felt a premonition, poor dear
man.  I've kept it in my safe-deposit box for thirteen years, ever
since your parents tragically passed on.

The post office tells me that this should reach you well in time for
your birthday, since I live too far away to bring it to you in
person.

Dear Maggie, have a wonderful day and remember that both of us send you
all our very best wishes and many happy returns of the day.  The next
time you come to California, we'd be so happy if you could find the
time to visit us.  You must be a very grown-up young lady by now.

With our fondest love, Brian and Helen Wonderingly, reverently, Maggie
turned over the enclosed letter.

The envelope, yellowing at the edges, was heavily sealed and addressed
to Miss Mary Margaret Horvath in handwriting she'd never seen before,
elaborate and beautifully formed handwriting, unlike anyone's she
knew.

Mary Margaret, she thought, Mary Margaret, my father thought of me by
my full name.  How strange that I never knew that, that I've always
been Maggie.  If he had lived, maybe he would have called me Mary
Margaret and that would have changed me in some way.

She held the letter; turning it over and over, and realized that she
was postponing the moment of opening it.  A letter from her father,
written thirteen years ago, was too important to open here, she
thought.  She hastily took both letters to her room, where there was no
chance of Madison or Tyler walking in.

Maggie put Sandor Horvath's letter carefully on her desk and slowly,
being very careful not to tear it, slit the envelope open with the old
wooden letter opener Barney had once whittled for her at summer camp.

The letter paper was stiff and so heavily creased that it was hard to
smooth out, but the elegant handwriting was as easy to read as
calligraphy.

Beloved Mary Margaret, I pray that you will never receive this
letter.

I am fifty-four years old and, given a merciful God, should be alive to
be with you thirteen years from now, on your birthday.  But there is no
way of knowing the future and I am determined that you should be told
the truth about your birth when you have reached the age of reason and,
I hope, compassion.  If it is within my power, I will tell you the
following facts myself when you turn eighteen, but if I am no longer of
this world, someone must tell you, and there is no one I trust but
myself.

I believe deeply in my God and in the Church of Christ.

You have been sinned against by a great lie, a lie told to you by me,
by Agnes Horvath, my wife, and by Teresa Horvath, my daughter.  I
believe that this lie has caused you real harm, which thus constitutes
a mortal sin.  The only thing a good Catholic can do to try to make
restitution for a mortal sin is to confess it and receive absolution.

My daughter, Teresa Horvath, has confessed but a small part of this sin
and has received the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

However, my wife has not confessed the greater part of the sin, for
which she is responsible and for which I am equally responsible.  On
the contrary, she continues with the sin of presumption, of pride, to
believe that she can save her soul without the help of Almighty God.

We both continue to break the eighth commandment, "Thou shalt not bear
false witness against thy neighbor," i.e to tell a harmful lie.  A
harmful lie is a mortal sin in the eyes of the church.  We have, I
know, certainly lost sanctifying grace and our chance of eternal
life.

I have discussed this grievous capital sin with my confessor, Father
Vincent, and since you are only five years old, we have agreed that the
only way I can make restitution to you for this sin is to confess it to
you when you are old enough to understand it.  He cannot give me the
Sacrament of Reconciliation unless we stop the lie in which we live,
which is not now possible since it would have grave consequences for
our daughter, Teresa.

Mary Margaret, your sister Teresa is your mother.  She gave birth to
you when she was still but fourteen years old.  We do not know who your
father was.  Your grandmother, Agnes, and I decided to bring you up as
our own child.  This was done for several, all-too-human reasons.

First of all, we wanted to spare Teresa the great disgrace of bearing
an illegitimate child.  In the second place, your grandmother wished to
keep all knowledge of this disgrace from her family, and I, for my
part, wanted another child.  For that reason we came to California to
live, where everybody we know believes you to be our child, not our
grandchild.

Your mother, now twenty years old and known to the public as Tessa
Kent, is about to leave our home and go to Scotland to make a motion
picture.  At the age of sixteen, when you were only two, she became a
film star.  I do not know when she intends to tell you the truth about
your birth, but I pray every night that it will soon become possible
for her.  On that day I will destroy this letter.

Until that day, all three of us, your mother, Teresa, and the two of
us, Agnes and Sandor Horvath, your loving grandparents, are mired in
this lie, which deprives you of knowledge of your true mother.

You are a good, sweet, well-behaved child, Mary Margaret, and you have
given me great joy, but I have never felt that I had a right to that
joy with the knowledge I possess.  I have always blessed you, and will
always bless you, every day of my life.  Forgive me if you can.

Your grandfather, Sandor Horvath As she read the letter; Maggie had
instinctively risen from her desk chair and retreated to the bathroom,
where she could lock herself in.  She reread it twice more and then
once again, seeking time to absorb the shock.  At the first reading she
had grasped it as clearly as a single headline, but she hadn't allowed
herself to know it.  During the next two readings, she'd willed herself
to pick her way among the complications of the story, as if they might
change its message, but after the final reading she had to allow the
contents of the letter; and all it meant, to pour, pounding and
irrefutable, into her open, unprotected consciousness.

Long before the final reading, Maggie's emotions had galloped ahead of
her mental process and assumed a vile, jagged, threatening shape that
filled her chest and abdomen and pushed inward on all her vital organs,
making it almost impossible to breathe.  There was a growing
constriction in her throat, a tightening and an ache in the length of
her neck, especially under her chin, as if she were wearing a cruel
leash.

She was overcome by an intense desire to hide, to disappear from a
world that contained this story of betrayal and secrets and lies, all
directed at her since she had been born.  She felt crushed, flayed,
utterly incapable of sustaining a personal identity stripped, mocked.

She was a nothing crawling on the face of the world.  A cipher;
unwanted, unwanted, unwanted.  She was without rights, without a place
of her own, a fraud, a mistake everyone could lie to, manipulate, put
down or take up at will, a sin to be confessed, a throwaway toy, a
disgrace, a thing to be hidden but never acknowledged.  A thing, a
thing, not a person.

For a long time Maggie knelt on the carpet, sitting on her heels, the
letter scattered by her side, bowed over so that she could rest her
head on the floor and protect it with her hands, gathered into the
smallest space she could take up, too beaten down for the relief of
tears, a solid wad of pain.  Gradually her mind slowed and all but
stopped working for a timeless period, a self-protective period in
which she knew, in her slow-moving, almost dreamy consciousness, that
her life had changed forever.  She existed in the moment, with no past
or future, enduring the darkness and the shame, panting, unable to draw
a normal breath, content to stay in the darkness, content to be
motionless, nonexistent.

Slowly, gradually, from a place she didn't know she possessed, thoughts
gathered, strength returned.  She was Maggie Horvath, and Maggie
Horvath was a person.  No matter how unwanted she'd been, no one could
take that away from her.  Maggie Horvath existed, the five-year-old to
whom that letter had been written had become Maggie Horvath, a grown-up
woman, not poor little Mary Margaret.

The web of the letter dropped away and Maggie was left with one piece
of certainty: She existed and Tessa was her mother.

Maggie got up off the floor and looked at herself in the mirror.

She looked like the same person who had awakened to such happiness this
morning, yet now she was reeling with pure rage.  She could smell it.

It escaped from her pores into the air.  The shape of pain inside her
had condensed into an anger she could barely contain.

Her eyes were bright with it, her cheeks flaming with it, her heart
beat with the power of it.

She dressed for Manhattan in minutes.  She packed a small suitcase,
grabbed her handbag, and walked downstairs, pausing only to pick up the
keys to Madison's car from the hall table.  She heard the sounds of
lunch being served as she left the house.  She hadn't taken the test
for her driving license yet, but she'd known how to drive expertly for
years, and within an hour and a half she'd parked in an uptown garage
near the Carlyle, her mind concentrated entirely on the route and on
avoiding the attention of the police.  She left her suitcase in the
car, walked briskly to the hotel, and had herself announced at the
reception desk.

"Please go up, Miss Horvath," the clerk said, after he'd called
upstairs.  "Miss Kent is in suite nine hundred."

"Thank you."

As she got out of the elevator Maggie saw Tessa standing in the hallway
at the door to her suite, arms open in welcome, her words tumbling out,
her smile filled with excitement and hesitation and uncharacteristic
apprehension.

"Maggie!  Darling Maggie!  Madison must have told you... I... I wanted
it to be a surprise.  I have so much to tell you... but I hardly
recognize you, you've changed, you're so very much more grown up than a
year ago.  Oh, give me a kiss, my Maggie."

"I don't think so," Maggie said, walking past Tessa into the sitting
room.

"You're not too old to give me a kiss, are you?"  she said,
bewildered.

"You're much too old, Tessa."

"What?"  The smile was still on Tessa's face.

"You're thirty-two.  Isn't that too old to lie to your daughter?"

They faced each other mutely.  Maggie's expression a fierce, frozen
challenge as she searched Tessa's face, watching the smile fade and the
eyes fill with the beginning of comprehension.

"I came on purpose to tell you... I couldn't before because-" "Liar."

"No, truly...

"Lie!  I'll never believe anything you tell me, ever, ever, ever!"

"Oh, God!  I can't blame you, but Maggie, please, please us-" "Don't
you wonder how I know?"

Tessa was shocked into silence, unable to keep from turning her face
away from Maggie's look of flaming accusation.

"I had a letter from a dead man this morning.  Sandor Horvath.  Not my
father, not the father I watched being buriedyour father, Tessa.  He
didn't trust anyone to tell me the truth-he knew you pretty well,
didn't he?-so he wrote me thirteen years ago and left the letter with
my godfather to send.  My first birthday present."

"You can't understand," Tessa said, sinking down onto a sofa.  "I don't
expect you to understand yet, but I was only fourteen.

Fourteen.  You should try, at least, to understand that, you've been
fourteen, you know what it would have meant."

"Of course I understand.  He explained it all.  Any fourteen-year-old
girl would understand.  It was perfectly normal.

If you hadn't been Catholic you might have aborted me.  Why didn't you
give me up for adoption?"

"My father wouldn't-" Maggie put her hand to her mouth in horror.

"He told me, he wanted another child.  Otherwise you would have,
wouldn't you?"

"Probably.  That's what my mother wanted."

"And you, what did you want to do with your child?"

"I don't know, I don't remember.  I just wanted it not to have
happened.  How could I have taken care of you?  I was only fourteen.

I I did what they told me.  I had to obey them to survive, that's all I
remember.  And you weren't Maggie, you were just a baby."

"I don't blame you for any of that," Maggie said in a level tone.

"Oh, Maggie.."  Tessa turned to her with a look of hope beginning to
flare in her lovely eyes.

"I blame you for everything else.  I blame you for what you did to a
little five-year-old child who hadn't harmed you, who believed
everything you did was wonderful.  I blame you for sending me to live
with those cold terrible people when you married Luke.  I've seen the
wedding pictures a hundred times... I wasn't even invited to the
wedding.  I was only five, it wasn't too late to become my mother once
you were married.  You could have kept me with you, I had no parents,
you could have claimed me.  But you abandoned me forever when you
married Luke.  How could you have been heartless enough to do that to a
child, your own child?  I blame you for sending me away for thirteen
years to the Websters, people who never had a drop of love for me,
people who weren't my family, who treated me like an intruder.  Except
for Barney, the cook is my only friend in that house."

"Maggie.."

"How much did you pay them to keep me?  It must have been a fortune to
keep Madison halfway civil, no matter how miserly she is.

But you would have paid anything, wouldn't you, to keep from having to
take care of me yourself?  You can't deny it, you don't even try.

You were too busy being a star, too busy being married to a rich man,
too busy jaunting around the world, too busy living for Luke, too busy
being the famous Tessa Kent.  There was simply no room in your
wonderful, brilliant life for a child, was there?  You and Luke didn't
even want one of your own.  I grew up without love, except the little
bit you spared me when Luke was away and you allowed me to visit,
allowed me to play with your jewels.  Your jewels around my neck
instead of your arms.  Stories of how to clean pearls instead of
stories about my grandparents, my family, my place in the world.  I
grew up with no one but you and the crumbs you gave me.  My grandmother
had relatives, and one of them might have loved me, who knows?

I'm not that unlovable, although that's the way I felt, so ashamed that
no one loved me but afraid to tell you because I thought you'd be
disappointed in me."

"You should have said something."

"I should have said something?"

"I thought you were happy with the Websters."

"Even if I had been, they're nothing to me.  You're my mother.

My mother!  How could you leave me with them?  How could you pretend to
be my sister?  How could you spend so little time with me?"

"Luke didn't know," Tessa whispered.  "He never knew."

"What's that supposed to mean?  What does that have to do with
anything?  Luke's been dead for a year.  Even if I believed you never
told him, and I don't believe it for a second, once he died you could
have told me."

"I couldn't then," Tessa cried.  "It wouldn't have been fair to you."

"This is where I came in, Tessa," Maggie said, taking off her pearls
and putting them on a table.  "I don't want to see you again, ever.  I
don't want anything from you, ever.  I don't want the money Luke left
me, nothing will make me take it.  Tell Madison I took her car and I'll
send her the claim check for it.  And tell her to cancel the party, I
won't be going back there."

She turned and walked toward the door as quickly as possible.

It swung shut behind her as Tessa, immobile, was unable to try to
follow her.

"I came here to tell her," she told herself in a small voice, hugging
herself and rocking back and forth.  "I came here to tell her, but I
couldn't before, could I?  Could I?"

23

A few minutes later Maggie found herself sitting on a bench in Central
Park, so drained by the revelations and emotions of the morning that
she couldn't imagine how she'd ever get up again.  Her brain was as
empty as an eggshell from which the yolk and white had been suctioned
out.

Only the sight of a soft-pretzel vendor aroused her to action.

After three pretzels and two orange drinks had restored her blood sugar
level, she found the strength to take a ball that a little boy put in
her lap and toss it for him to retrieve and gleefully give back to her
for another go.  She could have spent the afternoon absorbed in this
game, but when his nanny dragged him, protesting, from his new friend,
Maggie's mind began to work, reluctantly but efficiently.

The past was entirely past: over, finished, dead.  College was out,
because that would mean having her bills paid by Tessa, and any future
relationship with Tessa was unthinkable.  Even as she thought of Tessa,
she felt absolutely nothing, no sense of loss, not even a flicker of
anger, just an empty blankness devoid of pain.  She was somehow
insulated from emotion, Maggie realized.  Her heart had withdrawn from
her body and only clear facts were left.

The future was hers to invent.  Her assets?  The money, the eight
hundred dollars she had planned to lend Barney, was still safe in her
purse.  She had a suitcase back in the car filled with whatever she'd
packed this morning, she was dressed in her best light spring suit, and
her shoes were beautifully polished.  She had Barney's address.  All in
all she was in a relatively rich position from which to begin a new
life.  She needed a job and a place to live.

Resolutely Maggie returned to the garage to get her suitcase,
gratefully used their restroom, and took a taxi to Barney's address, a
brownstone converted into single rooms on a street between Columbus and
Amsterdam avenues on the Upper West Side.  The street showed no sign of
the gentrification that was taking place in the neighborhood.  No
tempting little shops, no cafes or enticing ethnic restaurants, no
polished brass doorknobs, no pretty curtains hanging in the windows,
Maggie noted.  Some of the houses didn't have panes in the windows,
much less window boxes.

Barney's name was scrawled next to one of the buttons on the downstairs
panel, but when he didn't answer she sat on the second step of the
short flight of outside stairs and waited for him.  She welcomed this
opportunity to decide what to tell him.  Not a word about Tessa, she
concluded instantly.  The story, with its all-but-gothic complications
and recitals of a grandfather's mortal sins-a grandfather she barely
remembered-could only be explained in its entirety or it didn't make
sense.  It had nothing to do with Barney or her new life.

Madison and Tyler.  They were reason enough, Maggie thought, watching,
in an increasingly dreamlike state, the lively action of the crowded,
noisy, dirty, and almost certainly dangerous street.

Eventually, as she clasped her handbag tightly in one arm and threw the
other around her suitcase, her lids closed over her weary eyes.

"Maggie!"  Barney scooped her up and held her tight.  "Oh, my Maggie, I
thought I'd never see you again!  How could you abandon me like that?

Oh, sweetheart-" "Barney!  Wait, please wait.  Shut up and listen to me
and try to understand.  You've got the wrong idea, I know how it looks,
but I haven't come to be with you.  I've run away.  I'm never going
back, I'm on my own now.  If Elizabeth hadn't given me your address I'd
have gone to a hotel."

"Run away?  It's your birthday, you can't run away on your birthday,"
he blurted, totally confused.

"It's as good a day as any other."

"Maggie, for Pete's sake, what's going on?"

"I've had it up to here with your folks.  I know you probably love
them, but I had to get out.  Your mother and I have always had problems
with each other and when I realized I was eighteen and legally free, I
got out.  I gave them your message, by the way.

Your dad's plenty pissed, your mother said you'd be back when you ran
out of money.

"The hell I will!"

"I didn't argue with her," Maggie grinned.  "For a change."

"Come upstairs, birthday girl, we can't talk here," Barney said, taking
her suitcase and leading the way up two flights of stairs to the room
he'd rented.

"It's not a palace, but it's home sweet home," he said proudly, opening
the door on a back room with one curtainless window looking out on a
dusty tree.  The walls were already all but concealed with bike
posters, he had a futon on the floor partly covered by a threadbare
rug, and a table held the essentials for living: a tape deck, a hot
plate, and a can of insect spray.  A tiny, ancient refrigerator hummed
in the corner; and the sink on the wall had room for a soap dish and a
toothbrush.  A mirror hung above it.  The room, even the window, looked
clean if nothing else.

"There's a closet, and a john down the hall.  I can cook and do my
dishes, and my neighbor has a shower he'll rent out for a quarter for
five minutes," Barney said proudly.  "As they say in France, I have le
tout con fort."

"No princess phone?"

"There's a drugstore around the corner.  So what do you think?"

"It's perfect.  I had no idea you were so neat.  It's you, Barney.

The real you.  Where's your bike?"

"Safe in the shop.  I got a job at a big Harley repair place, entry
level but plenty of room to rise to the top.  I already know more than
most of the guys there but I'm playing it cool, not letting them know
yet."

"Wise," Maggie said, reclining as sedately as possible on the
improvised couch.  "Are you liking it?"

"I love every second.  And I'm a reformed character."

"You?  In one week?"

"Yeah, me.  Joined the Y lifting weights, no beer; no pot, early to
bed, saving half my salary, no time to waste goofing off, and I figured
out how to cook hamburger and scramble eggs.  I can also open a can of
tuna fish.  Even got mayo.  Want something to eat, my beautiful
birthday girl?"

"I'm starving."

"Listen, you take a nap, you're half asleep already, and I'll go get
something for an early dinner.  We'll celebrate being free.  I'll get
Twinkies, too, and birthday candles."

"No, Barney, I have to get a place to live first," Maggie said
regretfully, gazing at him.  He looked a year older than he had last
week.  And ten years more adorable.  If only she could kiss him..

She sat up quickly.

"Hell, you could stay here for just one night," he said indignantly.

"I wouldn't jump you.

"You wouldn't?"

"Not 'jump' exactly.  Maybe..  more like a suggestion..  a birthday
commemoration?  You're only eighteen once.

"Nope, no can do," she said briskly, making herself stand.  "Do you
think there are any rooms to rent in this building?"

"It's full up.  This was the last room, a lucky break.  But at the
drugstore there's a bulletin board for the whole neighborhood, people
selling stuff, looking for soul mates, lost cats, even legit
roommates.

We could go look."

"Forward, comrade.  Do they make sodas in this drugstore?"

"Maybe they did, forty years ago."

"Find anything yet?"  Barney asked.  He'd managed to get Maggie an ice
cream cone and a Coke while she investigated the bulletin board.

"Lots of local color and one possible roommate.  Listen to this.

'Wanted, to share part of rent: female, open-minded, unshockable,
immaculate, quiet, NONSMOKER, no pets, no tattoos, no body piercing, no
post-Beatles music.  Private room and bath.  P Guildenstern."  And it
gives a phone number."

"Sounds like a weirdo.  'Immaculate and unshockable'-and what does 'no
tattoos' mean?"

"It sort of sounds like me.  I'm going to call her.  What have I got to
lose?"

"How do you know it's a woman?"

"I don't yet," Maggie laughed, dialing the number on the wall phone.

"Hello," said a deep, gruff voice.

"P Guildenstern?"

"Herself," the voice said, in its normal feminine tone.

"I saw your notice.  My name is Maggie Horvath.  No tattoos,
unshockable, nonsmoker.  Is the room still available?"

"That depends."

"On what?"

"On whether I think you seem like a suitable person."

"I'm immaculate, too."

"That's always a subjective judgment.  Come on over and let me see for
myself.  It's three blocks up, the house on the corner of Amsterdam,
top floor.  I have a German shepherd, trained to attack if you make a
false move."

"I'm harmless.  All right if I bring my cousin to check you out?"

"Man or woman?"

"Man."

"No, leave him one flight down.  I'll leave the door open so you can
scream if you think it's necessary."  P Guildenstern's voice trembled
slightly.

"I'll be right over."  Maggie put down the phone.  "She's ten times
more scared of me than I am of her; Barney.  I bet she doesn't even
have a tabby cat."  She finished her cone, looked at herself in the
mirror of her compact, wiped a speck of chocolate ice cream off her
lip, applied a little powder; and smoothed her hair.  "Do I look nice
and clean?"

"Distinctly nice, definitely clean," Barney agreed, using all the
verbal restraint at his command.

Breathless from the climb to the top of the six-story building, Maggie
knocked at the bright blue door on which was tacked a tiny card
engraved with the word "Miniatures."

The door opened on a stout chain and P Guildenstern looked up at her
with wide gray eyes attempting a fierce stare.  Maggie looked down at a
dainty woman of perhaps five feet one inch, whose mass of curly
red-blond hair was tied back from her neck with a black velvet
ribbon.

She had a charmingly delicate face with a small, piquant, pointed nose
and Victorian rosebud lips.  A German shepherd almost as tall as she
stood at attention by her side, on a short leash.

"Good afternoon, Miss Guildenstern," Maggie said gravely.

"Good afternoon," she answered tentatively.

"I'm Maggie Horvath, I just called."

"Oh, good.  I couldn't be sure.  Sometimes strangers ring..."  she said
vaguely, while she inspected Maggie rapidly and keenly from head to
toe.  "Is your cousin downstairs?"

"Barney, give a yell," Maggie called.

"I'm down here," Barney called up from the fifth-floor landing.

"Tell him to stay there."

"It's okay, Barney, just stay put."

"My name is Polly," P Guildenstern said, unlocking the door but keeping
the dog on the leash.  "Please come in.

"Oh, how wonderful."  Maggie stood stock still, astonished by the large
skylight that let a flood of late-afternoon sunshine into what was
clearly a studio.  "You're an artist."

"I paint miniature portraits."

"I didn't know anyone still did that."

"They rarely do, since the camera was invented," Polly said with a
trace of wistfulness, "but there's still some specialized call for
them.  It's not steady work but it's what I do best."

"What do you paint on?"

"I use vellum, or what passes for vellum laid on card-what does this
have to do with the room?"

"Nothing, I was just interested," Maggie explained, peering across the
studio at a work table topped by a fascinatingly time-worn, good-size
box with many drawers and a top that had been raised to form an
easel.

"You may take a look at the room now.

"Does that mean you think I look like a suitable person?"

Maggie was suddenly conscious of being in the presence of an utterly
benign personality who, nevertheless, possessed a sharply functioning
and critical mind.

"Fairly suitable," Polly Guildenstern said with a considering sniff,
walking down a hallway and unlocking a door.  "It's stuffy," she
apologized, throwing open both of two barred windows, "but of course I
keep these locked when there's no one here.  You can't be too
careful."

Maggie looked around.  A canopied four-poster bed, hung with rather
tattered pale blue and white damask, dominated the room.

The walls were covered with an old floral paper in dim but still-gay
yellows on white.  There was pattern upon pattern everywhere, a garden
of embroidered and painted flowers composed by worn but unmistakably
elegant floral fabrics, some satin, others taffeta and silk.  They were
draped over two French armchairs, made three skirts of different
lengths on a round table, and were used freely as draperies at the
windows.  A patched floral rug covered the floor.

Nothing matched, everything had mellowed into shades of faded pastel,
and everything melted together.  It was like stepping through time,
into an illustration from an old book of fairy tales.

"Oh, it's heaven!"  she gasped.

"I collect old textiles," Polly said demurely.  "I keep them away from
the light, but here I used the ones that were faded beyond hope."

"It's a dream, it's like a museum, but I'd be afraid to use the bed,"
Maggie cried yearningly.  "What if I tore something, or spilled
something by accident?  I'd never forgive myself" "Everything can be
and has been patched a dozen times over."

Polly murmured reassuringly.  "There's nothing of real worth here,
though they do look lovely all together; don't they?  There's a closet
and a small but complete bathroom.  Would you like to look at it?"

"Oh, yes, but what's the point?  There's no place to cook."

"So it would seem.  But nothing is quite what it seems, don't you
find?"  Polly asked, drawing back a four-panel screen painted with
vines and revealing a compact little kitchen.

Picking up a nest of plastic measuring spoons, Maggie burst into
tears.

She couldn't stop sobbing once she'd started, and, not daring to sit
down in one of the chairs, she sat on the floor and cried her heart
out.

"Not the spoons?"  Polly asked after a while, giving her a box of
Kleenex.

"No," Maggie gulped, and dissolved into fresh tears.

Polly sat on the bed and let Maggie recover herself slowly, apparently
not embarrassed by this large stranger's emotion.

"I'm sorry," Maggie finally was able to say.  "I've had a tough day and
it all hit me at once.  And it's my birthday, on top of everything.

I'm eighteen."

"I'm twenty-six, and you need a cup of tea."

"Oh, yes, please."

"Is two hundred dollars a month all right?"

'Am I suitable?"

'Absolutely.  But first we have to talk."

"We do?"

"I'm afraid so.  Come back to the studio and I'll make tea."

Maggie sat quietly, after repairing her makeup, while Polly boiled
water and measured tea leaves into a pot.

P Guildenstern, she observed, wore a white cotton dress she must have
bought in a vintage clothing store, for it wasn't of this century.  She
covered it with a pinafore, from a time long ago when people wore
pinafores, made of a sprigged material that she was certain must be
called dimity, although she wasn't sure what dimity was.  White ballet
slippers and a locket around her neck completed the outfit.  Passing
strange, Maggie thought, but strangely suitable.

"You see," Polly said, passing the sugar in a silver bowl, "I'm a
lesbian."

"Huh?"

"I know, I know, that wasn't the first thought that came to mind when
you met me.  But I am, devoutly so.  It's only fair to let you know."

"I don't care, one way or another;" Maggie told her truthfully, trying
not to look too surprised.

"Still, you might reasonably wonder if I were attracted to you.

That's why I put 'no tattoos or body piercing' on the notice.  I only
like my own gender when they are tattooed and pierced.  Not that it has
to be evident at first glance.  I have a weakness for black leather and
boots... on others.  As I said, nothing is quite what it seems.

You're a very pleasant-looking girl but simply not my type-I'd never
rent to my type."

"That sounds... sensible."

"I learned that the hard way.  She broke my heart."

"Did it mend?"

"Oh, yes, many times," Polly giggled deliciously.  "I have all the
virtues except fidelity."

"Oh, my God, Barney!  He's still waiting!  I'd forgotten him."

"I take that to mean your cousin is the faithful type?"

"Madly faithful."

"Well, let's offer him a cup of tea, in that case.  Go tell him to come
up."  Polly called her dog.  "Stay, Toto," she ordered him.

"Toto!"  Maggie whirled around.

"Don't dare laugh."

"Barney," Maggie called, "you can come up now.

"About time," he growled, mounting the stairs two at a time.

"Polly, this is Barney Webster.  Barney, this is Polly Guildenstern and
this... this is Toto."

"Fucking unreal!"  Barney said, taking in the scene in bewilderment.

"Barney!"  Maggie reproved him.

"That's all right, you should hear what most people say," Polly
laughed.  "Barney, would you like a cup of tea?"

"Yes, ma'am."  He looked around the studio, shaking his head in
continued wonder.  "This place is great!  Have you been here long?"

"About five years."

"So, have you two worked things out?"

"Yes, we've covered the necessary ground," Polly said with her lilting
giggle.  "I believe you wanted to check me out."

"It's not important," Barney said hastily "You look very...

lady-like... I mean, proper and nice, very nice.  And pretty, of
course, I mean, you know that."

"Thank you," Polly replied, including him in the blessing of her sunny
disposition.  "In what way are you two cousins?  I love hearing about
family trees."

"Well..."  Barney hesitated.  "It's sort of complicated.  My dad's
stepbrother was married to Maggie's sister, before he died."

"Hmm.  . then you're not really cousins?"

"But we were brought up together;" Maggie said hastily, as she felt the
blood rise to her cheeks.  "When we were little, that is."

Polly's keen glance traveled from Barney to Maggie and immediately
comprehended the essentials of their relationship.  She smiled gently
to herself.  Very sweet, she thought, and harmless.

Straight people were so simple to figure out.  And she did enjoy
watching them, it was like being around two adorable, decidedly naughty
children, trying hard to look innocent.

"Barney, Polly's an artist," Maggie said hastily, following the speed
and import of Polly's sweeping appraisal.  "She paints miniature
portraits on vellum."

"No kidding?"

"Would you like to see some of my work?"  Polly asked them.

"We certainly would," Maggie said eagerly.  She'd been dying of
curiosity, but was too polite to ask.

"People commission them, sometimes of themselves to give as presents so
people will remember them, sometimes they have them made of their
friends," Polly explained as they moved toward her worktable.  "The
largest portrait can be shown on a small easel and the smallest you can
put in a locket.  The medium is watercolor, and the brushes are made
from animal hairs-in the sixteenth century they used hairs from the
tails of squirrels.  Now this one is meant to go on a night table-it's
exactly two and a half inches square, and this little oval is destined
to be worn around someone's neck."

Maggie and Barney bent in wonder over the exquisitely detailed,
ravishingly painted, hyper-realistic miniatures, the oval no more than
an inch and a quarter in length.

"I've never seen anything like them," Maggie said, choosing her words
carefully.  "Your work is extraordinary and amazingly beautiful, truly
beautiful, Polly."

"Thank you-it's something of a lost art.  Some museums have collections
and occasionally they turn up at auction, but I don't know anyone else
who's doing this now.

"Wow," Barney muttered.  The oval miniature was of a heavy-leather,
short-haired, glorious biker chick, every tattoo rendered in perfect
detail, every stud on her jacket as definitive as a jewel.

The square miniature showed the most magnificent pair of naked breasts
he'd ever imagined.  No shoulders, no torso, just full, exquisitely
shaped breasts and nipples, bathed in a radiant light, the gradations
of flesh tones breathtaking.  "They're really... something else."

"They are indeed," Polly agreed solemnly.  He was blushing violently.

Good, she'd thought those breasts were rather a tour deforce.

"Someday I'll show you some of my favorites, the ones I kept for
myself," she promised him, lowering her lids so he wouldn't see the
mischief in her eyes.

"Great!  Say, Maggie, should I go and get your bag now?  Then we can go
out for dinner."

"Would you?  Wonderful."

Barney retreated quickly down the stairs.  The two women looked at each
other, rocking with silent laughter.

"Men," Polly said at last.

"Men," Maggie agreed.  "They scare so easily."

24

"Maggie, xerox all these papers, file them, give the originals to Miss
Hendricks, bring me two boxes of large paper clips and three packages
of little Post-its, get rid of that stale bagel, empty the coffee
machine and refill it then report on the double to Mr. Rexford in
Coins.  He has some work for you that has to be done immediately."

"Yes, sir."  Maggie hastened to the Xerox machine, anxious to get these
tasks for Mr. Jamison of Animation Art out of the way so that she
could go downstairs to Coins, whose immediate neighbors were the
departments of Tribal Art, Arms and Armor, and Collectibles.

Collectibles was her personal favorite of the fifty-nine different
departments at the venerable auction house of Scott & Scott and one
into which she never failed to cast an eye, no matter how rushed she
was, since she was always rushed.

In her three months working as a temp, Maggie had never had a job she
had found as interesting, confusing, and overwhelming as this one.

She'd probably never understand the maze of complication that
constituted a great auction house, she realized, and during the past
two weeks, since she'd arrived, she'd been happy just to be able to
observe its mysteries while she zoomed around carrying out her
errands.

Collectibles charmed her because it was sometimes possible to see,
through a half-closed door, the resident expert, Miss Radish,
inspecting the great varieties of objects people brought in to Scott &
Scott to find out if they could be sold at auction, objects that so far
had included dolls, stuffed animals, corkscrews, croquet sets, farmers'
tools, sports equipment, and antique toys.  Almost anything that could
be collected apparently became valuable over time, Maggie reflected,
amazed as she was on a daily basis by the function of a major
international auction house.

Did the person who had once bought a Mickey Mouse watch for less than a
dollar ever imagine that one day a roomful of people would be anxious
to bid against each other until one of them proudly acquired it for
several thousand dollars?  she wondered.

Scott & Scott seemed to her to be a combination of the attic of an
eccentric, fanatic, obsessive, wildly materialistic
great-great-grandmother who traveled all over the world and lived only
to acquire everything she saw, and the most expensive and glamorous
garage sale in the world.  Of the departments, Art and Jewelry were the
most profitable financially, as far as she could figure out, but her
typing, filing, and general dogsbody jobs hadn't yet taken her into
their quarters in the upper stories of the large building the company
owned that occupied an entire block at 84th Street and Second Avenue.

As for the hallowed auction rooms themselves, she hadn't had a
glimpse.

The Monday after she'd moved into her room in Polly Guildenstern's
apartment, Maggie had looked in the Yellow Pages under employment
agencies and made an appointment with the largest one that listed
temporary help.  With her computer skills and her absolute willingness
to do anything, no matter how lowly, she'd hoped she'd find no trouble
getting jobs, and she'd been right.

There had been a long series of jobs, one more boring and repetitive
than the next, none of which had needed her help for more than a few
days.  Now, at Scott & Scott, she felt a sense of opportunity, a
possibility that she might have fallen into a job that could last for a
while, because it was obvious that the auction house operated with as
small a permanent staff as possible.

Paperwork was piled up on everyone's desk and often on the floor around
the desk, and sometimes stacked up against the walls as well.  Scott &
Scott, although considerably smaller than Sotheby's or Christie's, was
a global auction house with thirty-nine offices in twenty countries.

It held several hundred auctions a year, and only a larger and more
computer-savvy staff could have managed to keep up with the workload,
Maggie noticed as she raced around, hailed by dozens of harried people
who needed her help immediately.  She liked S & S and the people who
worked there, and now that fall was nearly here she felt like building
herself a nest in the shelter of a job with some familiarity, even if
it was on the bottom of the office food chain, where only the cleaning
staff was lower than a temp.

Still, a temp is only a temp until people know your name, she told
herself, and the constant calls of "Maggie, I need you over here" gave
her a feeling of identity that helped to combat the adjustment she was
slowly making to living on her own and being completely responsible for
herself.

It helped enormously that she wasn't living in some dreary furnished
room; it helped that Polly, bless her, so often invited her to share
the savory stews she cooked so well, keeping her from feeling utterly
alone.

It helped to know that Barney was nearby if she needed him, but she
couldn't seek his company in the familiar framework of their former
palship, because the discovery of their mutual passion had blocked them
from being alone together, and Maggie knew that privacy would, sooner
or later, lead to consummation, and that way lay certain disaster.

Either they'd deepen their feelings and get into a really major mess,
or they'd end up disillusioned with each other, their long friendship
destroyed.  Barney was like a wonderfully warm fur coat that had to be
kept in cold storage, winter or no winter.

She took comfort where she could find it, however.  It helped, even
more than she'd hoped, that she had acquired the outward persona of a
New Yorker.  She'd strolled along Madison Avenue for several Saturday
afternoons in her excellent but totally unexciting suit, taking mental
notes.  She soon realized that if she dressed in black from head to toe
she could blend into the local look at any level.

More afternoons patiently, relentlessly chasing bargains in the bazaars
of the Lower East Side had yielded two black miniskirts, one wool, the
other leather; black sweaters; an ankle-length black wool coat; a wide
black belt; tall, black, low-heeled boots; and opaque black panty hose,
all for less than a hundred dollars.  For another ten dollars Maggie
had bought herself long, vivid mufflers in bitter orange, sulfur
yellow, and screaming green and parted reluctantly with twenty dollars
for a pair of small, sterling silver hoop earrings that went with
everything and could be polished with toothpaste.

Too much hair, she'd decided, looking at herself in the mirror, not New
York hair, and she'd taken herself off to a cheap drop-in barber shop
and had it cut so definitively, defiantly short that it looked
deliberately futuristic and violently chic.  Maggie's only makeup was
black mascara and bright red lipstick, both discount drugstore
close-outs, her only beauty aid Pond's Cold Cream.  When she had
finished putting herself together, the aggressive flag of a knotted
muffler flying behind her as she dodged traffic, Maggie became a very
primer of a New York career girl, the crackling blue of her eyes and
the vivid pink and white of her complexion so enhanced by their crisp
black frame that she looked like a piece of walking pop art.

Still and all, she was lonely, Maggie admitted to herself.  She was as
truly lonely as the lyrics of the most heartbroken country-western
singer.  She did not, could not, would not, even allow herself to think
about Tessa.  That was a closed subject, not subject to speculation,
further hurt feelings, or fruitless fury, and in any case, what had
Tessa ever been to her but a few postcards and an occasional visit to
an unreal world?  She was better off without her.

No, Maggie decided, the reason for her loneliness must be that she
regretted, more than she wanted to realize, the plans she had made for
college.

Being a temp, even at a world-famous auction house, was a far cry from
being a freshman at a great university, but what the hell, you could
stretch a mile and consider it an education in itself, at least an
education in objects, she thought as she went to the sink to wash out
the coffee machine.  To her irritation she saw that there was a very
tall man blocking the sink, standing still, in contemplation of the
faucets.  He wore an ancient tweed jacket and baggy gray flannel
trousers.

Maggie planted herself behind him, tapping her nails on her empty
coffeemaker, hoping that the noise would alert him to the fact that the
sink was not a place for meditation.  He had, she saw, dismantled
another coffeemaker and spread its pieces over all the available
surface.

"Missing something?"  she finally asked, as he showed no sign of doing
anything but stare helplessly.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I'm missing any notion of what to do with
this damn thing."

"I'll do it," she said impatiently.  "Couldn't you find a temp and ask
her?  Men aren't expected to know how to make coffee in this office,
it's not a feminist-oriented workplace."

"I'm a floater, I'm not supposed to bother a temp," he answered,
turning gratefully and peering down at her through his glasses.  He
knew immediately that he'd give a lot to take a bite-not metaphorically
speaking out of this particular girl.  She was as appetizing, as fresh,
as tasty-looking as a nectarine at its moment of perfect ripeness.

"A 'floater'?"  Maggie asked, bending over the sink.  "You mean there's
something lower than a temp?"

"A temp, they told me, has to have real skills; a floater..

floats, drifts, levitates... to wherever there's assistance needed,
selling catalogs, moving stuff, cleaning stuff, making coffee, God
knows what else, but silently, without making the slightest wave or
creating undesirable noise."

He nattered on deliberately, his object to engage her attention for as
long as possible.  "My brief, as I understand it, is to act swiftly,
silently, helpfully, unquestioningly, above all, floatingly....

I'd be more, a great deal more specific but this is my first day
here."

"So you didn't go to college either?"

"I have a master's in Fine Arts from Harvard, a degree from Business
School, also Harvard, and a year studying at the V and A in London," he
admitted ruefully.

Stunned, Maggie looked up at this overeducated moron.

"The V and A?"  she asked curiously, as she took inventory of the tall
young man with a lot of fine red-brown hair that badly needed cutting,
big hazel eyes that were really interested in her for some reason, a
two-day growth of reddish beard that needed shaving, a long but
handsome nose, horn-rimmed glasses that were mended with what looked
like a small Band-Aid, and a large, well-shaped mouth.  All in all, a
sort of hairy, academic hunk.

"The Victoria and Albert Museum.  They have a program that's almost a
necessity for people like me...."

"People like you?"

"Ceramic and porcelain people."

"You sound fragile," she laughed, giving him the reassembled, refilled
coffeemaker.  "You must be a glass person too."

"Oh, good Lord no, another department entirely, not my neck of the
woods, although not outside of my ken, if you see what I mean, and
obviously you must, with your skills.  Glass and paperweights go
together, like Art Nouveau and Art Deco, or Books and Manuscripts."

"But still," Maggie said stubbornly, "if you were coming to an auction
to buy plates, mightn't you also need glasses, or pick them up on
impulse?"

'Absolutely, but thinking like a department store is not encouraged by
Scott and Scott," he informed her with a smile.

"Not when you're a lowly temp," she said, tossing her head, forgetting
that she now had untossable hair, "or an even more lowly floater.  My
name's Maggie Horvath."

"I'm Andy McCloud," he said, offering her a large, warm hand.

'Andy!"  A secretary scurried up behind them.  "For Pete's sake, will
you bring that damn coffee!  A whole meeting on Musical Instruments
just walked into my boss's office."

"Got to go.  If I take you to dinner will you show me how to make
coffee?"

"Dinner?"  Maggie asked, surprised at this abrupt invitation from a
stranger.

"Tonight, meet you after work."  He dashed off, almost dropping the
full coffeemaker in his hurry.

She had a date, Maggie thought excitedly.  Her first real date!

Andy McCloud, wordy, messy, incompetent, and surprisingly attractive
floater, had asked her for dinner, and they'd have to go to a
restaurant because of all the things she didn't know about him, the
least likely was that he knew how to cook.  On the other hand,
coffeepot or not, he was a fast worker.  But it stood to reason that a
ceramic and porcelain person was probably gay.  Still, it would be
wonderful to make a new friend.

Hamilton Angus McDevitt Scott and his sister, Elizabeth Stewart Scott
Sinclair, as well as a younger sister who didn't work in the business,
owned Scott & Scott, an auction house that had been run by the Scott
family since its founding in 1810.  Hamilton and Liz shared offices in
the penthouse suite of the relatively new building on the plot of land
their great-grandfather had bought before the turn of the century, so
far uptown that it was considered to be in the wilderness.

Scott & Scott had moved with the times.  Although they had preserved as
much as possible of the paneling and atmosphere of the actual auction
rooms, their offices were established in a building that had been
rebuilt on the old site in the late 1930s.  The two of them were, as
always, alone for their biweekly discussion of the state of their
eight-hundred-million-dollar-a-year business, ritualistically drinking
tea from a set of particularly fine Chinese Export porcelain that
Elizabeth had picked up at Sotheby's shortly after her marriage to John
Sinclair forty years earlier.

"Damn that freak Andy Warhol and damn his freaking cookie jars,"
Hamilton Scott said furiously as he put more sugar in his tea.

"Cookie jars!  Can you believe it?"  His handsome, ruddy face quivered
in outrage.

"We sell cookie jars in Collectibles all the time, as you well know.

H, you'd give your left nut for the Warhol auction, cursing isn't going
to change anything," his sister said with maddening calm.

She possessed her older brother's handsome features in a charming
womanly version and had the most elegant head of silver hair in
Manhattan.  There were envious women who said she must spend all her
profits from S & S on clothes and jewelry, but they were very far from
understanding the extent of the commissions on sales the business
brought in.

"I find your language increasingly vulgar as you totter lingeringly,
indecently reluctantly, on the verge of your golden years," he
replied.

'And as your golden years mount up, I find your patience regrettably
diminished," she replied, smiling at him with profound affection.

The ownership of a huge business was a source of constant rage for her
poor brother, Liz Sinclair thought.  Instead of being reasonably
content with the one-third of the profits he possessed, H had never
managed to get over the competition he was destined never to win with
Sotheby's and Christie's.  And yet those two giant auction houses,
which dominated the world, doing over a billion dollars a year each,
were publicly traded companies owned by their stockholders, while she
and H, who owned what was arguably the third largest auction house in
the world, had nobody to account to but themselves and their sister
Minnie at the end of their fiscal year in April.

H, a former world-class polo player and yachtsman, had deep connections
with the serious rich and aristocratic all over the world, many of whom
preferred to do business with S & S rather than with the larger
companies, particularly since H was one of the star auctioneers of all
time.  Minnie had married a major multimillionaire, whose extensive
family had collected old and new masters for generations.  The couple
lived for art and served on the boards of many of the important museums
of the country, giving S & S entry into the art world when the time
came for other collectors to buy or sell.

Liz herself was involved in a dozen of the pet charities of the very
rich and social, further enlarging that vital pool of intimate personal
connections that every auction house cherishes and cultivates while it
waits for death, divorce, and disaster to bring about the need for the
sale of property.  Liz was responsible for most of the personnel
decisions made at S & S. She had a sure but delicate human touch her
brother lacked.

"I've got to go light a fire under the heads of the American, English,
and European furniture departments," Hamilton grumbled.

"They haven't been aggressive enough in actively seeking
consignments.

As usual.  You, Liz?"

"I'm off to lunch with Bitsy Furness.  She's determined to sell the
huge place in Locust Valley now that Eddie's run off with that girl
from his office, and I hope we can get the contents of the whole
house.

Bitsy has truly fabulous things, museum quality, and of course he'll
have to give her practically everything before she agrees to a
divorce.

Nobody knows about her decision yet and she's anxious to get the matter
settled without shopping around and spreading the news."

"Good hunting, old thing.  I wish we had more department heads like
you.  It seems to me that all they do is sit and wait until things drop
into their laps."

"But H, they didn't go to school with at least half the Bitsys of this
world."

"Worse luck."

"Well, here's the choice.  We can go back to my place and you can show
me how to make coffee over drinks, or we can have drinks and dinner
first, and then have the coffee lesson," Andy McCloud said, after he
and Maggie met at the employees' entrance to S & S.

"If I didn't know that you really can't make coffee, I'd say that was
the best way of getting a girl up to your place that i've ever heard
of."

"I suppose a girl like you has good reason to be suspicious of every
man she meets."

'And what kind of a girl is that?"

"A sophisticated New Yorker who gets hit on-I believe that's the
correct phrase, is it not, or is it dated?-by every man who sees
her."

"How perceptive of you.  You've described me perfectly," Maggie beamed
at him.

"Which shall it be?"

"Drinks and dinner first.  You see, I never actually promised to teach
you how to make coffee.  I only sounded surprised that you wanted to
have dinner."

"So you did," he said, remembering their exchange.  "I've been
presuming on your good nature."

"Without knowing a thing about me except that I had to get you away
from that sink so I could use it."

"But you see, you don't look like a person who would refuse to impart
vital, job-related knowledge.  You look essentially good and kind, as
well as frighteningly luscious," he said, tucking her arm under his in
a masterful way and rapidly walking in the direction of Third Avenue.

"There's a little bar right down the street where they don't use a
jigger when they pour.  I think the jigger is the most unfriendly
device ever invented.  It's the very personification of the deliberate
withholding of pleasure, don't you agree?  And why withhold pleasure
when life is so short?  Did you ever see a bartender use a jigger in a
movie?

People would walk out in protest and ask for their money back."

"Never," Maggie agreed breathlessly.  Andy McCloud had an immense
stride, and he was so tall that she seemed to be flying alongside him,
absorbing his energy.  She'd never been inside a New York bar or any
other bar for that matter.  Would they refuse to serve her a drink
because she didn't look old enough?  Oh, the humiliation!

"Here we are," Andy said, whisking her inside a dim cave of a place
that was almost full.  "They don't have a television set here, so you
don't get those crazed fans who have to watch the game."

"Which game?"

"It never seems to matter, does it?  There's always a game, no matter
what the season.  This is an old-time place, no innovations, no happy
hour, just a jukebox that doesn't work.  Now, what are you drinking?"

"Dry sherry, please."  Madison always drank that, Maggie thought.  It
must be proper.  She pulled her arms out of her coat and placed it
beside her in the booth.  The lack of bright lights in the bar didn't
prevent every man within sight from observing her with close
attention.

Maggie in her unadorned black sweater, Andy thought, was almost
unbearably juicy, a girl with big breasts who didn't flaunt them, and
wasn't coy about them, just let them stand at attention and speak
eloquently for themselves.

"Joe, the lady will have Tio Pepe and I'll have Absolut on the rocks.

Maggie," he said invitingly, "this is the kind of place in which people
tell each other the high points of their lives, so I'll let you go
first."

"I have no intention of telling an almost perfect stranger my life
story.  I'd have to know you much better," Maggie said, trying for a
tone of composed, worldly aloofness.  Damn!  Why hadn't she thought of
something to make up about herself when she'd had half the day to do
it, instead of stealing precious minutes between jobs in anticipation
and speculation and primping in front of the ladies'-room mirror?

"Quite right of you.  Reveal nothing until you know to whom you're
speaking.  So, about me.  You already know my education and what I
do.

Born and bred right here on the East Side of Manhattan, the usual two
parents, one older sibling, female, several cousins, all female, usual
youthful traumas, dancing school et cetera, two engagements, five
unhappy romances, currently completely unattached."

Maggie giggled.  "You used more words describing your job as a floater
than you did in telling me your life story."

"I was stalling for time, trying to figure out how to ask you for
dinner without seeming too abrupt, but I couldn't quite figure out how
to do it."

"You managed quite well.  Now, what about those two engagements?"

"Broken by mutual consent."

"Why?"

"General immaturity."

"On whose part?"

"Everyone's, no harm, no foul."

"Ah, I see."  She sipped her sherry carefully.  "And all those
romances?"

"I tend to fall for the wrong girl, the neurotic, essentially
unobtainable girl, the girl who falls for the obvious wrong guy instead
of really loving me.  I'm the Episcopalian Woody Allen, but without his
talent."

"That's one of the saddest things I've ever heard," she said, trying to
sound sympathetic.  Either he was a gifted liar or he wasn't gay.

Her fingers itched to take off his glasses and get a better look at his
golden-brown eyes.  Did he have long lashes?... Impossible to tell.

She wondered if his hair felt as soft as it looked and if his beard
felt as scruffy as it looked.

"Well, I'm still young," Andy said.  "There's time to find the right
girl.  I'm just twenty-seven."

"Twenty-seven and only a floater!"  She sounded as scandalized as she
was.

"You have to start somewhere."

"What do you want to be when you finally grow up?"

'An expert, of course."

"In ceramics and porcelain?"

"That would be the basic idea," Andy McCloud replied, repressing a
smile, thinking of his many intense years of specialized education.

Maggie had great natural dignity, but he'd bet she wasn't much more
than twenty-one, and she certainly was unschooled in the great universe
of precious and rare objects.  Very few men in the world could hope to
be experts in the vast fields of both ceramics and porcelain, but he
was deeply ambitious.

"A business executive can always be replaced," he informed her, "but an
expert can count on being needed all his life, into his dotage, and,
alas, often beyond.  Now, may I hear a little about you, Miss Horvath,
or do you have more questions?"

"Parents dead," Maggie answered promptly.  "No siblings, brought up by
distant connections, no money for higher education, no engagements,
currently unattached."  She copied his telegraphic style; it was ideal
for leaving out things she didn't intend to talk about.

"Elementary school?"  he probed, finding her unnecessarily
mysterious.

From her account she could be an alien.  Yet everything about her, her
body language, her accent, her gestures, her attitudes, her entire
being, revealed a girl of a class he recognized, the class he belonged
to.

"Just a little country school."  She smiled nostalgically, as if she'd
studied in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Nebraska.

'And how long have you been a temp?"

"Oh, quite a while."  Maggie's tone indicated a long, interesting and
varied career, something a soldier of fortune might look back on with
pride.

"What did you do before that?"  he asked, determined to get some
concrete detail out of this girl who was growing more maddening and
more alluring by the minute.

"I was a journalist, but I didn't think I had a future in it."

Considering that it was a high school paper, that was certainly true,
Maggie thought.

"What about love affairs?"

"None of your business," she answered.  Barney didn't count as a
romance, he was her oldest friend, an impossible partner in lust and
confusion, but there was nothing at all romantic between them, not as
she defined romance.  Eighteen and only fond memories, certainly not
romantic ones, of a few favorite horses.  Was that all she had to show
for her life?  "Is the inquisition over?"  she asked.

"My God, I have been giving you the third degree, haven't I?  It was
rude of me, I apologize, but you're so... how about another sherry?  Or
are you starving?"

"Oddly enough, no," Maggie said, coming to a decision.  "What I'd
really enjoy, what I'd most like to have right now is... is...

a cup of coffee."

"Joe, check please, right away."

They took a taxi to a building in the upper sixties off Madison
Avenue.

Could Andy possibly still live at home with his parents?

Maggie wondered as they strode quickly through the handsomely appointed
lobby to the elevator.

"It's rent stabilized," he told her, reading her thoughts as he
unlocked the door.  Inside she just had time to gain an impression of
wood paneling and walls of bookcases before he turned her around and
took her in his arms.

"May I?"  Andy McCloud asked, bending his head to try and look into her
eyes.

"Only if you take off those glasses," Maggie answered, doing it for him
as she spoke, trembling with eagerness.  "I remembered what you said
about withholding pleasure.  Life's too short and dinner takes too
long."

"Oh, Maggie, are you real?"

"Try me," she whispered, reaching up and twining her arms around his
neck so that she could easily reach his lips.  Yes, she thought, as he
kissed her over and over again, as firm on his feet as a tree, oh,
yes.

She half-closed her eyes as she let him lead her into another room and
sit her down on the edge of a bed.  She pulled off her boots and her
panty hose, and lay back of her own accord, squeezing her eyes tightly
shut.  Who would have guessed that he had such demanding lips?  she
wondered.  Who would have expected him to be lying naked next to her so
quickly?  Who would have imagined that he could strip off her clothes
so adroitly, a man who couldn't even assemble a coffeemaker?

"Maggie, aren't you ever going to look at me?"

"No, not yet."

"Why not?"

"Because I want to be surprised," she whispered, pulling his head down
to her breasts.  The contrast between the silky hair she twisted
between her fingers and the rogue scrape of his beard as he
concentrated all his attention on her breasts with a controlled but
unmistakably violent hunger, a hunger that announced that he was in no
hurry to satisfy it, told her that she had to do with a man, not a
boy.

His mouth was deliberate and crafty, brushing her nipples only long
enough to promise further attention, while he knelt on either side of
her body and raptly marveled at the whiteness of her breasts and the
perfection of their form.  Each time he imprinted his hard mouth on
them he left a mark that receded slowly, so that soon both her breasts
wore a rare and rosy flush, while her nipples, all but untouched,
filled and stood erect in circles of deepest pink, their tender
surfaces stretched upward in a way that begged for the easement of his
tongue.

Too soon, he thought, too soon.  She had run the show so far, but now
the power was in his hands and he chose to grasp her hips even more
tightly between his knees and let his mouth drift, slow kiss by slow
kiss, away from her breasts and down the fragrant skin of her torso,
almost at random, ignoring her attempts to stretch upward toward his
mouth.  She wanted to be surprised, she'd said, and he vowed to himself
to do his best.

Now that Andy's head was too far away for her to grasp his hair, Maggie
stretched out her arms and caressed his shoulders, reveling in the
solid forms of his tense muscles and the vigorous tufts of hair under
his arms.  Her mouth was dry with desire, her lips open with an
unuttered plea, when suddenly she felt him elude her touch as he moved
downward on the bed, holding her thighs apart with his elbows, his
hands stern and commanding as he opened her wide, parting her dark
pubic curls far enough to bury his tongue between her legs.

She held back a scream, panting, almost holding her breath.

She'd read about this, dreamed of this, but the reality and the dream
had nothing in common.  The warm roughness of his artfully pointed
tongue meeting the delicate concavities of her body was far wilder and
more arousing than anything her imagination could have created.  She
listened with all of her senses as his lips and teeth joined his
tongue, fastening themselves on the distended, hard, secret arrow only
her own fingers, and Barney once, had ever touched.  Maggie was utterly
silent.  Only the muffled sound of his sucking existed until, soon,
with a shriek, she came with a series of acute, frenzied spasms that
arched her body high off the bed.

Not until she lay almost quietly, but still quivering, did he push
himself into her with exquisite carnal precision, seeking his own sure
pleasure without hurry.  Abruptly he stopped, startled at the
resistance he met.  "Maggie?  Maggie?"  He pulled away.

"Yes," she sighed, smiling to herself.

"Jesus, Maggie!  You're a virgin!"

"I told you... none of your business..."  she breathed languidly.

"But.  .

"Please," she murmured, sliding down on the bed, tilting her pelvis
upward, urging him back toward her, and rubbing one finger shamelessly
on the base of his spine, "don't stop now, I couldn't bear it."

"Do you think I could?"  As gently as possible but relentless with
severely awakened and unrelieved need, Andy took her entirely, and
afterward, as if in penance for his ignorance, he attended to her
neglected nipples with all his skill until she was maddened by fresh
desire, ready for him to take her again.

25

Polly Guildenstern's own life offered such possibilities for gossip and
intrigue that she had little curiosity left over for her star boarder's
comings and goings.  However, she couldn't fail to notice that over the
family holidays of 1988 Thanksgiving and Christmas, there was
apparently no place on earth where Maggie Horvath was expected, nor did
she ever mention any normal, conventional regret at not being able to
join her family for one reason or another.  Maggie, looking not at all
depressed, spent the long weekends sleeping late, puttering in her tiny
kitchen, reading a pile of books, going alone to movies, and devouring
with gratitude the leftovers Polly brought back from the big
Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners to which she'd been invited.

Was she an orphan?  Polly wondered.  She knew Maggie had a lover or
possibly several lovers, because there were many nights when she didn't
return to the apartment.  Now wouldn't he, or one of them, as the case
might be, invite her for a holiday dinner?

Polly wondered.  And what had happened to cousin Barney?  If, as Maggie
had said, they'd been brought up together, what had happened to that
family?  It was all most mysterious and worrying, for someone of
Polly's warm nature.

There was a deep essential aloneness to Maggie that made Polly feel
irrationally guilry, almost maternal, but it was against her principles
to delve into anyone's personal background unless invited to do so.

All

she could do was triple her casual dinner invitations, so that Maggie
would know that there was one place in the world where a plate was
always set for her whenever a pot was simmering on the stove.

Gradually, throughout the winter of 1988 and the early weeks of 1989,
Polly and Maggie became excellent friends.  Maggie was still working as
a temp at S & S and she fascinated Polly with the growing body of
knowledge she was accumulating about the workings of an auction
house.

Eventually Maggie told her about Andy McCloud, but from what she heard,
Polly shrewdly deduced that Andy was as close-mouthed about his parents
as Maggie was about hers.  The only solid detail Maggie could give her
about his background was that his older sister was a ballerina in an
English ballet company.  How warm and important was their relationship,
she wondered, if they chose not to talk to each other about their
families?  Wasn't that one of the classic ways in which lovers became
friends?

Polly kept her own counsel, however, even when the registered letters
began arriving for Maggie.  The overweight postman who normally left
her mail downstairs in her mailbox complained bitterly each time he had
to climb the stairs and get Polly to sign for the letters that began to
arrive for Mary Margaret Horvath on a weekly basis in January 1989.  As
Polly placed each one on the floor in front of Maggie's door, she
noticed that they all came from the same place, a law firm named
Butler, O'Neill and Jones.  As she checked her own mail she couldn't
avoid seeing the same registered letters in her box, unopened, with
"return to sender" written in block letters across them.  Was Maggie
being sued, she wondered?  It wasn't anything she could ask about, it
would make it seem as if she were spying on her, but Polly's curiosity
was aroused.

One early afternoon her buzzer sounded and a pleasant woman's voice
announced that a Miss Robinson of Butler, O'Neill and Jones would like
to see Miss Mary Margaret Horvath.

"She's at work," Polly answered.

"Oh, no!  I've been ordered not to dare come back to the office if I
can't see her in person.  Absolutely all I need is her signature.  And
it's snowing worse than ever.  I have to wait for her until she gets
back, even if I freeze in a snowbank.  Unless could you possibly tell
me where she works?  I could try to find her there."

Polly weighed the question.  She didn't intend to tell a stranger where
to find Maggie, but she couldn't let a person with such a charming
voice stand outside in one of the worst storms of the winter.

"Why don't you come up?  Perhaps I can help."

"Oh, thank you!"

Polly Guildenstern, you're just agog, you know you're just dying to
find out what's going on, she scolded herself severely, as she put the
kettle on to boil, her adorably pointed nose was fairly quivering with
inquisitiveness, her very hair ribbon alert with unasked questions.

Attractive, young Jane Robinson left her wet boots outside on the
landing, and after she'd removed her heavy coat and made friends with
Toto, she thawed out, gulping the restorative tea with pleasure.

"It's my first job," she explained to Polly.  "I'm just out of law
school and if I don't bring back a signature to Mr. Butler, he'll
probably fire me... and it's such a prize job too, they're a major Wall
Street firm.  Oh dear, oh dear, what shall I do?

Miss Horvath has sent back the document unopened three weeks in a row
so they sent me.  This tea is saving my life, I don't know how to thank
you."

"Here, have a cookie, I made them myself."

"Oh, bless you!  I didn't have a chance to grab lunch today.  Mr.
Butler threw an absolute tantrum when he saw the returned letter, and
practically chased me out into the storm.  Oh, chocolate chip, my
favorite!  Could I... possibly have another?"

"Oh, eat them all, you're doing me a favor, I made too many.

And call me Polly."

"You're an angel!  What a heavenly studio!  And you look just like
Alice in Wonderland.  I wish I'd had artistic talent, but no, not a
drop, so my destiny was law school and Mr. Butler.  Oh, Polly,
terrible, mean Mr. Butler!  This document may be my downfall, and then
it'll be difficult to get another job with such a good firm."

"Document?"

"As far as I can tell, it's a major document.  They have to have Miss
Horvath's signature before they can settle the estate, that's the
gossip around the office, but the partners are in a terrible state
about the delay.  It couldn't be more important to them, the deceased
was their biggest client."

"Why didn't one of them come in person if it's so vital?"

"Estate," Polly thought, and a "deceased"; how lucky she'd taken a
chance and invited Jane Robinson up.

"Oh no, Polly," Jane said, shocked.  "They're all too important to run
around chasing signatures.  That's for underlings like me."

"And of course they don't care about my fat old postman who has to walk
up all these flights," Polly said indignantly, "or about my being
disturbed having to sign for all the letters."

"Things like that simply wouldn't occur to Mr. Butler.  Poor Mrs.
Butler.  Imagine the life she leads!  Well, I'd better not interrupt
your work any longer.  I wonder, if I leave this letter with you, could
you possibly just give it physically to Miss Horvath and tell her that
she shouldn't send it back without opening it and signing it?  Then I
can explain that she was at work but you agreed to hand deliver it.

Mr. Butler might accept the fact that I did my best, even though I
don't come back with the signature."

"I guess I can, Jane, although it sounds a little like serving a
subpoena.  But what if she refuses?  What if she won't even take the
letter?"

"Well, I guess the next step would be, oh, dear, I could be wrong but I
think Mr. Butler will track her down at work.  Himself, And that would
be unpleasant for her, and hard to explain-he's not an inconspicuous
man.  And he wouldn't be discreet.  Or quiet."

"How would he know where to find her?"

"Oh, he'd use another private detective, of course.  He'd have to."

"Another'?"

"How do you think they knew where to send the documents?

Miss Horvath had simply disappeared, or so I heard around the
watercooler."

Polly was speechless.  Maggie had disappeared from somewhere?

A private detective had been snooping around and found out that Maggie
was living in her spare room?

"Goodness gracious," she breathed when she finally found her voice.

"Or, as my grandmother would say, a pretty kettle of fish."

Polly and Jane looked at each other wide-eyed.  This was as close as
either of them had come to such a situation and neither of them tried
to hide the fact that they were enjoying the drama of it.

"Jane," Polly finally said, breaking their long, speculative silence,
"there's no possibility that Maggie will get home for at least four
hours, assuming that she comes back at all tonight.  Often she
doesn't.

Aren't you roasting in all that leather you're wearing?"

"Actually I am feeling a bit overheated.  And it's so cozy in here.

I feel so relaxed, you've been so kind to me, Polly.  The mere thought
of trying to get back to the office empty-handed in this storm...

"Why don't you make yourself comfortable for a while longer?

Why rush to disappoint Mr.  Butler?"

"Well... perhaps... it's not as though I could hope to get a taxi in
this weather, and the buses are so jammed they don't even stop."

"If you take your jacket and pants off," Polly said casually, "I'll
bring you a blanket so you can stretch out on the sofa and take a
nap.

Naps are great when it's snowing."

"Or, consider this alternative, Polly.  I could take your clothes off,
very, very slowly, one adorable, dainty, tiny little piece at a time.

And skip the nap."

Polly purred, her intuition validated.  "I'd prefer that.  Then I can
see the rest of the interesting tattoo that's just peeking out of your
cuff."

"I'd been wondering... if maybe you might... and hoping you would."

The next evening, when Maggie finally struggled home, trekking
cross-town on foot from S & S, after spending the previous night with
Andy, Polly looked up, took off the strong magnifying glasses she wore
while painting, and said, "Join me for dinner?  I'm baking a mustard
chicken with winter squash."

"You've saved my life, I'm wiped out, completely exhausted.

This filthy weather!  It took hours to get home.  I've got to have a
hot bath and then I'll be right in.  Oh, you are heaven-sent, Polly!"

Polly carved the chicken and poured Maggie three glasses of wine while
the tired girl ate hungrily, the two friends enjoying the meal in
companionable, rarely broken silence.

"Now that you're fed," Polly said, after Maggie had eaten two slices of
her apple pie, "I have a duty to perform.  I didn't want to ruin your
appetite by giving it to you before dinner."

"Huh?"

"It's this registered letter," she said, thrusting it into Maggie's
hand.  "It arrived here yesterday.  The person who brought it said that
it was absolutely necessary for you to open it and sign it, and somehow
or other I got talked into promising to give it to you.

I'm sorry about that, but seriously, whatever it is, Maggie, you can't
expect our postman to keep on walking up six flights, he'll have a
heart attack and it'll be on your conscience."

"Shit!"  Maggie glared at the envelope.

"Heavens!  What can be so terrible?  And how do you know when you
haven't even opened it?"  Polly asked, her curiosity more inflamed than
ever by the sight of Maggie's furious face.

"I know who these lawyers are and I know what it's about.

Damn it to hell, how'd they find me?  I thought if I printed 'return to
sender' on the envelopes they wouldn't know I lived here."

"A private detective found out where you were living, and what's more,
if you don't sign it, some monster of a big-shot lawyer is going to
come to your office to make you sign it."

"What!  What!"  Maggie burst into tears of rage.  "Who told you
that?"

"I did a little detective work myself on the messenger.  I don't like
people meddling with you, Maggie."

"Oh," Maggie wept, her angry tears redoubled, "why can't she leave me
alone?  I told her I didn't want the money, that I wouldn't touch it,
isn't that enough?  She put a detective on me, she knows where I am,
maybe she has me followed everywhere ... oh, God, Polly, I don't know
what to do."

"What money?"

'A bequest..  a will."

"Well what's so terrible about that?"

Maggie looked at Polly through her tears and saw the sensible,
concerned, deeply fond face of the only female friend she had in the
world, the only woman besides Elizabeth, the cook, who'd ever treated
her with affection and real interest, the only person besides Andy and
Barney who cared about her.

She wiped her eyes and huddled in the corner of the sofa.  "My
so-called mother's husband died and left me money, that's what the
document has to be about," she told Polly in a shaking voice.

"He wasn't your father?"

"No.  And I don't want his money.

"Wait a minute.  What's wrong with inheriting money?  He was your
stepfather, why shouldn't he leave you money?  That doesn't make sense,
Maggie.  And you've never spoken of a mother, much less a 'so-called
mother,' whatever that means.  You never mentioned a family, you never
go home for holidays...?"

"Polly!  If I tell you the whole story, will you promise me never to
mention it again, ever, as long as you live?  Nobody in the world knows
it except me and the woman who gave birth to me.

"I'll promise, and you can count on me to keep my promise, but I want
you to be sure you truly want to tell me," Polly said, more serious
than Maggie had ever seen her.  "There's nothing worse than telling a
secret to a friend and then hating yourself afterward because you wish
you hadn't.  It's ruined many friendships and no secret's worth that.

I'd much rather not know than have you regret that you told me."

"Polly, I have to tell someone and I trust you entirely.  It's eating
away at me, I try not to let myself think about it, I forbid myself to
think about it, but it keeps coming into my mind anyway, all the time,
and I dream about it, so many nights... such sad, sad dreams.

If I can share it with you, I'll feel better.  I certainly won't feel
worse.

I think I need some sympathy and there's nobody more sympathetic than
you.

"Tea-and-Sympathy Guildenstern," Polly laughed.

"An unbeatable combination."

"Well, then, go ahead and tell me."

Maggie took a deep breath and, in as few words as possible, told Polly
her whole story, leaving out any identification of the people
involved.

She kept her eyes fixed in her lap as she spoke, as unemotionally as
possible.  As the story unfolded, Polly grew more and more outraged,
although she kept her feelings to herself until Maggie's silence
indicated that there was nothing more to tell.

"What kind of inhuman bitch could do that to her own child?"

Polly finally burst out after Maggie stopped talking.

"Tessa Kent could do that, Tessa Kent, who was born Teresa Horvath, she
could do that to me, she did do that to me."

"You're... you're Tessa Kent's daughter."

"Biologically, yes.  In any other way, no.

"My God.  Tessa Kent!  Tessa Kent..  .I..  it's..  my God, how could
she?  How could she!"

"That's exactly what I keep asking myself."

"It's what anybody sane would ask."

"Oh, Polly, it is, isn't it?  There's no excuse, is there?  I've tried
and tried to think of one, but I can't."

"You can't because it doesn't exist!  What she did is beyond
inexcusable!  When you think of all those movie stars having babies
without being married and showing them off in the magazines...

it's not as if there's a stigma attached to it anymore, not in
Hollywood.

And she's young, she's not of the older generation, she can't be more
than..."

"Thirty-three."

"Look, Maggie, you've been treated so badly I don't know what to say,
there are no words to express how I feel.  It's been a tragedy for you
and all the sympathy I have won't help, not if I talked all night,
which I'm afraid I just might do.  But right now you've got to be
practical, you don't want an angry lawyer showing up looking for you at
S and S and causing a lot of talk.  Now that they know where you live,
you're going to have to open the letter and see what it is and deal
with it."

"I know, I've known all along that it wouldn't just go away.

You're right, damn it."  Maggie ripped open the envelope and read the
pages it contained.  "Well, it's what I guessed it would be.  They're
finally finishing the settlement of Luke's estate-the husband who
died-and they need me to sign as one of the people he left money to.

If I sign, I get the money when I'm thirty-five, meanwhile it'll be in
trust and I'll get the income."

"Are you absolutely sure you don't want it, Maggie?"

'Absolutely, a hundred percent.  I'm going to write out a strong
statement to that effect and send it back with this letter.  A person
has a right to refuse a bequest, don't they?"

"I don't really know, legally, but realistically, how can they force
you to take something you don't want?"

"They can't," Maggie said grimly.  "I intend to stay independent, no
matter what."

"I'd take it myself, in a wink, no matter what.  It would be something,
anyway, that you'd get out of all of this.  A private income never did
anyone any harm."

"It's not what I needed all of my life, it's not what I want, now, or
ever wanted."

"Too little, too late, you mean?"

"No, Polly, too much, much too much, and much too late."

26

Where's a temp?  I have to have one desperately!

Somebody, find me a temp!"

Maggie looked up from the Xerox machine to see a woman she knew only as
Lee Maine, the head of the press office, standing in front of the
elevator doors with a wild look on her distinguished, lovely face.

"I'm a temp," she said, leaving her machine.  "What can I do for
you?"

"Man the battle stations!  This is ridiculous!  I have to go to
Philadelphia in ten minutes to work on the blasted American Primitives
sale and there's nobody, not one solitary soul, in my blasted
department!  My second-in-command had a premature baby over the
weekend, I still haven't replaced the little traitor who defected to
Sotheby's last week, and my last remaining assistant just called in
sick with flu!  Damn all three of them!  Now listen closely.  I want
you to sit in my office and answer phones, take messages, tell one and
all I'll be back tomorrow.  If anybody in this place tries to get you
to do something else, anything at all, tell them Lee Maine said she'd
strangle you with her bare hands if you so much as left the desk except
to pee."

Maggie grinned down at the beautiful, dark-eyed woman with a long curve
of straight silver hair that fit her elegant head perfectly.

She had small bones and was probably four inches shorter than Maggie.

"I warn you, I'd probably put up a fight," she heard herself say.

"I don't have a sense of humor, whoever you are, but I insist on a
minimum, a bare minimum of competence."

"I won't even pee," Maggie said hastily.

"That's better.  And while you're at it, take a look at the piles of
work on the other desks.  Maybe you'll find some little thing you can
try to do between calls, but don't leave the office, on pain of
death.

That phone must be answered!  We live by the phone!"

"Got it, don't worry.  Do you want me to call you with messages during
the day?"

"Good God, no, don't tie up the phone lines.  I'll be back tomorrow.

And you'd damn well better be there," she warned.  Lee Maine belted
herself into a long red coat, jammed a Cossack's black astrakhan hat on
her head, and, pulling on her long gloves, took off without another
word, leaving Maggie to find the press office for herself.

Within five minutes she'd settled herself at one of the three
assistants' desks and started eagerly going through the various auction
catalogs she found lying there.  She soon realized that many of the
sales coming up, according to the dates on the catalogs, were
unaccompanied by any sort of press release.  Memos, all begging for
releases, were tucked into many of the catalogs, along with the forms
for such releases.

Perhaps they'd already been written, Maggie thought, and the memos were
out of date, but an interoffice phone check of the departments involved
revealed only that they were waiting impatiently for the press releases
to arrive so that they could send them to their usual media sources.

Did Lee Maine have any idea what an unholy mess her department was?

Maggie wondered, as she bent over a computer.  She'd said that she
insisted on a bare minimum of competence, but it didn't look to her as
if she'd been getting even that from her staff; if some of these
releases weren't written at once, they risked appearing only a week or
so before the sales involved, and it was self-evident that the longer
people knew about a sale in advance, the more popular it would be.

In her days running the school paper at Elm Country Day, Maggie had
been accustomed to putting out the paper almost single-handedly,
writing everything from humorous columns to thoughtful editorials.  She
found a file of old press releases and quickly realized that there was
no mystery to them.  The process obviously should start with studying
each sale's catalog to pick out the most newsworthy items, and
translating that into a lively press release, short enough to be read
quickly but long enough to tantalize the imagination of possible
collectors.  She could write as well as or better than the sample
releases, she thought, grinning to herself.  Most of them were too long
and didn't grab her attention.

In spite of frequent phone interruptions, by lunchtime she'd finished
the work on one desk and started on the second, finding a floater to
bring her a sandwich and a secretary to sit by the phone while she made
a hurried visit to the ladies' room.  It was one thing to promise not
to pee, another to carry it out.  By nine at night, Maggie, working as
if the devil were riding behind her, had finished every press release
that had been left undone on all three assistants' desks, printed them
out on the laser printer, and stacked them in a neat pile on Lee
Maine's desk, each attached to the relevant catalog.  Next to them she
put the neatly written pile of dozens of phone messages that had
arrived during the day.

The next morning she was sitting primly at one of the desks outside of
Lee Maine's office when the press office head arrived, in a flurry of
questions.  "Who called?  Any emergencies?  Did you find anything you
could manage to do?"

"Everything's on your desk," Maggie said, biting her lip in
nervousness.  Had she presumed?  Was her method the right one for
writing press releases?  Lee Maine disappeared into her office, closed
the door behind, and stayed there for at least a half hour without
buzzing.  Suddenly she rushed out.

"What's your name?"

"Maggie Horvath."

"Do you insist on being a temp?"

"Good God, no!  My ambition is to be a galley slave."

"Perfect.  You're hired.  Only don't work this hard or they'll cut my
staff down to just you and you'll burn out at this pace.  Also, you'd
better write the next batch of releases quite a bit longer to give the
editor something to cut, editors always have to find a reason to cut,
remember that, or they'd be out of their own jobs."

"What-what do I call myself if anybody asks?"  Maggie ventured,
electrified with excitement.

"Press officer for Scott and Scott."

"Press officer?  Oh, Miss Maine, thank you!"

"Thank me?  I'm the lucky one.  And call me Lee, everyone else does,
unless they really know me and then they call me Lee, darling.

When did you get here?  At S and S I mean, not this morning, because
you must have slept in the office last night."

"I started last fall, in September."

"Good grief!  It's almost March-you've been a temp for more than five
months.  What's wrong with the people here?"

"Nobody ever asked me to see what else I could do.  Xeroxing has been
my chief mode of self-expression.  Sending a fax made my day."

"Madness, sheer madness," Lee Maine said in wonder.  "All right,
Maggie, take these around to where they're needed and report back
here.

I have a bunch of notes from Philadelphia for you to start working on
with Fred Cashmere in the catalog department, he'll explain what to
do.

I've got to rush down to the sales rooms.

There's a Contemporary Print sale on exhibition and I have to do some
serious media hand-kissing.  Wait a sec, that still leaves nobody to
answer the phones... well, find a temp somewhere, grab her, and make
sure she stays here till one of us gets back."

"Will do.  What should I tell the personnel department?"

"That you've been promoted-no, make that hijacked, full time-that
you're working for me now, exclusively, and they'd better find another
temp to take your place."

"Miss Maine..  salary?"

"Whatever you've been making, plus twenty-five dollars a week and lots
of free lunches.  PR is about free lunches, among other things,
including keeping this auction house going almost single-handedly."

Lee Maine disappeared with a wave.

Press officer, Maggie said to herself, PRESS OFFICER!  Oh, yes!

Polly would be thrilled for her, "press officer" sounded so wonderfully
butch.  And Andy... Maggie, in her daze of delight, suddenly remembered
Andy, still a floater.  How would he feel?

She probably wasn't going to have a terrible problem with Andy's
reaction to her new eminence, she decided, on reflection.

He seemed quite content with his humble position, showing a lack of
ambition that puzzled Maggie.

On the other hand, she had to admit that his job, which so lacked any
status, was ten times more interesting than that of a temp.  Since
she'd known him, he'd floated to Toronto to help out at an important
sale of English furniture; he'd floated to Mexico City with a group of
experts who were cataloging the entire contents of a Mexican
collector's huge estate; and he'd floated to L.A. with the chief of the
Department of Impressionist Paintings, because the widow of a studio
head had decided to divest herself of her husband's world-renowned
collection so that she could find a renewed social life in buying the
work of contemporary artists.  "They always need somebody to go out for
pizza," was Andy's standard comment when Maggie enviously asked him the
details of his travels.

During the past few months, he'd been floating in the loftiest of
departments, doing his vague, many-faceted, unimportant thing, whatever
it was, in the executive offices of S & S, which she'd never yet
entered.  She'd seen Mr. Scott and Mrs. Sinclair from a distance and
plagued Andy with questions about them, to which he only replied that
they were "just plain pizza lovers only with more money.

Perhaps the reason he gave the impression of aimlessness, the reason he
didn't take floating more seriously, Maggie thought, was that his true
destiny was to work as an expert, and floating was only a matter of
being able to call himself employed until he moved into a position in
Porcelain and Ceramics.  But how long would he have to wait?  Now that
she came to think about it, she didn't know Andy's timetable for
success any better than when she'd first met him.

Tonight, since they hadn't seen each other for several days, Andy had
been so ravenously intent on making love that she hadn't had a minute
to tell him about her new job, Maggie realized, as she sat up in bed
and watched him nap.  If he didn't wake up soon she'd have to get up
and scramble eggs or perish of hunger.  He'd been so anxious to fuck
her that he hadn't taken the time to feed her after work, or even to
stop for a drink in their favorite bar.  It was, she supposed,
flattering, in its own way, but most certainly not her idea of a
well-choreographed evening.  Flattering, perhaps, polite, no.

Lusty, yes, thoughtful no.  She be damned if it would happen again.

The depth of Andy's sleep began to irritate her seriously.  Why were
men so exhausted by sex that they had to restore themselves with a trip
to unconsciousness?  She'd never felt more alive!  But how could she
generalize about men when Andy was the only man she'd ever known
intimately?

Maggie heaved a little sigh as she thought of the variety of love
affairs she'd once planned for herself at college.  Oh, how naive and
innocent and full of herself she'd been, not even a year ago.  Just
look at her now, lying here quietly starving to death with one man; one
man with whom she'd had an exclusive relationship for many months; at
the moment a slightly snoring man.  Yet Andy's lovemaking was so
inventive and ardent that, Maggie thought philosophically, she should
not, in all fairness, feel deprived.

But it was too damn domestic!  And yet not domestic enough in certain
ways.  At Thanksgiving Andy had gone home for the weekend, explaining
that if he took a girl with him his absurdly conventional and
conservative parents would consider him engaged, and over the Christmas
weekend he'd wangled a week off that included the New Year's weekend,
ten days in all, to go skiing with a bunch of pals from Harvard, an
annual blast that he told her never included women.

Andy'd never actually said he was in love with her, but then she'd
never told him she was in love either, Maggie brooded.  The truth was
that she didn't know if she was or not, her only yardstick for love was
still Barney, and that was such a complicated, tormented, tangled web
of emotion, that she couldn't compare it to anything but itself.  Andy
was charming, funny, and whimsical, wonderful to look at, but..

.but..

.was she ready to really fall in love, whatever that meant?  If you
were ready, would you have to ask?

Maggie lay back on the pillow, wondering if her black clothes were the
right gear for a press officer.  Twenty-five dollars extra wasn't
enough to branch out into anything but one more piece of black, she
decided, poking Andy gently.  He turned over, seeming to fall more
deeply asleep.  She buried herself under the covers and pulled his ears
and blew on his eyes until she was satisfied that he was rising up out
of the depth of sleep.  She wasn't going to wait another minute to tell
him her news.

'Andy, Andy, darling?"

"Yeah, yeah," he mumbled, aggrieved.  "What time is it?"

"Dinner time.  Listen, Andy, do you know who Lee Maine is?"

"Lee..  .great gal... think Uncle Hamilton..  always..  .had sorta
letch for her," he yawned, still three-quarters asleep, trying to bury
his head between her breasts and plunge back into oblivion.

Maggie pushed him away, recoiling almost before the words made sense to
her.

"'llncle Hamilton'!"

"Oh, Jesus!"  Shocked fully awake, Andy blinked at her.  "Did I say
that?"

"You said that.  Uncle Hamilton who, Andy?"

"Well, obviously.  oh, shit!"

"If Hamilton Scott's your uncle, Mrs.  Sinclair's your aunt!

You're some sort of Scott!  How the hell could you not have told me?"

"I didn't want it to influence you," he replied, looking badly caught
out.

"In what way?"  Maggie demanded, hopping out of bed, pulling a robe
around her and standing wrathfully against a wall as far as she could
get from him.

"It was damn stupid but I thought it could have made you like me more,
or less, depending-you could have thought I had unfair pull or...

well..."

"I could have played up to you because of your connections?

Don't you know me better than that?"

"Of course I do!  Shit, Maggie, that's the last thing you'd do, you're
the most emotionally honest person I know, but by the time I got to
know you, I'd let it go so long I didn't know how to tell you, there
never seemed to be an exactly right time."  He struggled out of bed
with as much dignity as he could muster; wrapping a blanket around his
waist.

"Thanksgiving, tell me about that, Andy.  Tell me about your
conventional parents and why you couldn't invite me."

"I felt like a bastard about that, Maggie, oh, darling, really, you've
got to believe me, I hated leaving you alone in the city, but my mom,
Minnie, is Uncle Hamilton's and Aunt Liz's younger sister.  Years ago
she appointed herself the family Thanksgiving dinner giver, so most of
the family was there, the McClouds, the Scotts, and the Sinclairs.

I've never brought a girl home for Thanksgiving, they'd have been
buzzing and wondering..  .you can see the problem, can't you?"

"I'm very good at seeing exactly that sort of problem."

"There are only a few people at S and S who know who I am: Lee and some
of the department heads, and the head of the International Office...

people I've known practically all my life.

My floater job has been a way of training me..."

"Going out for pizza is your way of working your way up the company
ladder?"

"Well, pizza was just a euphemism.  I've actually been working my ass
off learning the ropes.  I need the practical experience of seeing how
everything runs, from top to bottom, from the day a consignment arrives
until it's sold and paid for.  Eventually, unless I screw up big-time,
I'll become head of S and S. It won't happen for many years, of course,
but none of the other kids in the family wants to go into the
business.

Aunt Liz has two married daughters in California, with their own busy
lives; both of Uncle Hamilton's sons are doctors; and my sister doesn't
care about anything but the ballet; so that leaves me.

"The Porcelain and Ceramic Expert," Maggie said flatly.

"That's perfectly true.  There's no reason why an executive can't be an
expert too.  That's why I went to business school, so I'd have both
kinds of training.  Oh, come back over here, sweet, beautiful Maggie,
don't look at me as if I were a monster."

"Is this apartment really rent-stabilized?"  she asked, not moving.

"Yes, thank God.  But I don't live on a floater's salary, I have what
is known as a small but adequate private income."

"Is there anything else I should know?"

"Well... yes.

"Don't you think you'd better tell me?"

"Hellfire and damnation!  Next month I'm going to Geneva.

"For a sale?"

"No... for a year.  Oh, Maggie, I can't help it, Uncle Hamilton made
the decision.  I'm going to be working directly under the head of the
Geneva office, for upper-level training, and then I'm going to the
London office for more of the same, another year or so, maybe more."

"That's two things," Maggie said.  "Maybe even three."

"You can see that I intended to tell you everything, how could I leave
for all that time without explaining why?"

"No, that would have been too much to lie about, even for you," Maggie
said, from behind the closet door where she was quickly getting
dressed.

"I wasn't lying, Maggie!  I just wasn't being straight with you,
there's a difference!"

"You're playing with words."  She emerged, ready to leave, her
sulfur-yellow muffler wrapped tightly around her neck, her eyes
narrowed in disgust.  "You've lied every night we've spent together
since you knew me enough to trust me; you would have kept on lying
tonight if you'd been even half-awake.  Lies of omission, steady
omission of the truth, is as much a lie as any other kind, Andy, didn't
you ever learn that at Harvard?"

"But Maggie, you can't leave, I'm crazy about you!

"Were you planning on taking me to Geneva?"

"How could I?  But I thought-" "That it would be much easier to wait
till the last minute and then just drop the bomb."

Andy fell into a silence of admission while Maggie studied his face.

No, she'd never been in love with him, how could she have ever wondered
if she was?  There was a strong physical attraction between them,
nothing more.  The hurt was in being lied to, but that particular hurt
would always be the most painful, the most unforgivable one for her
because of her past.  Andy had behaved the way many men would when they
want to keep a girl without making a commitment to her and, in all
fairness, she'd never asked for more, not so much as hinted.  She'd
been as content with the status quo as he'd been.

'Andy, don't do this again to another girl.  It stinks, it's beneath
you, it isn't fair," she said gently.  "But I owe you, so I forgive
you."

"Owe me?  What are you talking about?"

"I owe you for a glorious, five-star, incredibly thorough and
imaginative erotic education.  It's going to be marvelously useful in
the future.  After all, Andy, remember, you were my first.  I certainly
never planned for you to be my one and only."

"Oh, Maggie!  Don't go!"

"Good-bye, Andy.  I have to go out for pizza."

27

When she reached thirty-six, in August 1991, Tessa formed her own
production company.  There had been no noticeable lessening in the
number of scripts offered to Aaron for her attention, but she'd seen
too many major actresses suddenly wake up one day and discover that
there were fewer and fewer roles for them as they approached forty, to
assume that the same thing wouldn't happen to her.

It was as sure to happen as the effects of gravity on the human face,
she thought, and although Tessa, in the most demanding, thorough, and
severely professional inspection of her looks, still couldn't find any
damage to her skin, her features, her hair, or her body, she knew that
through some change behind her eyes, through some difference in her
expression, she had changed vastly from the girl who'd started playing
Jo March to someone who could and should be playing nothing but a
woman.  A young woman, of course, but one who had done her full share
of living and loving and maturing.  She'd been in front of the cameras
for twenty years, she'd grown up in front of those cameras, and it
showed in a million ways that no moviegoer could pin down but each one
would recognize.

Fiona Bridges had been willing to join Tessa in the new production
company in exchange for Tessa's commitment to do one film a year for
the entity, leaving her free to make pictures elsewhere.

To have this call on the services of a star as internationally adored
as Tessa, was vitally important to Fiona.  As partner in Kent-Bridges
Productions, she had taken two or three giant steps.  Aaron Zucker had
been retained to be business manager for the company, as well as
continuing to serve as Tessa's agent.

"No full-frontal nudity," Tessa stipulated, as they celebrated the
formation of the new company.

"That the only no-no?"  Aaron asked.  "How about hookers, addicts,
abused women, serial murderers-that sort of thing?"

"That's Oscar nomination material for any actress of my age," Tessa
giggled.  "If you can find a script in which, at some point or another;
I'm committed to an institution, preferably maximum-security, where I
don't wear makeup, have no costume changes, and never get my hair
washed, it's almost a sure thing.  However; there's got to be a white
phone in my cell."

"And Fred Astaire takes you out dancing once a week," Fiona murmured,
"and they let you wear your jewelry."

"Fiona, darling, you've always understood me," Tessa remarked lightly,
wondering what Fiona would say if she knew that since Luke's death
she'd continued to buy herself extraordinary jewels on many of the
special occasions he had observed, spending princely amounts of her
enormous wealth on what had become a necessary part of the content, the
very rhythm of her life.  She owned so many treasures that there wasn't
an important jeweler who didn't notify her when a truly exceptional gem
came into their hands.  In the small, tight world of important
gemstones, she had progressed from a woman who merely wore the jewelry
a man gave her; to the status of a major, serious private collector.

"Understand you?  That's more than I can say," Aaron muttered into his
champagne.

Kent-Bridges's first success had been a film in which Tessa played a
lawyer defending a character played by Bruce Willis on murder
charges.

The picture owed fully as much credit to Willis's splendid performance
and the chemistry between them as it did to her own performance, but
his monster salary had chewed deeply into their profits.

Now, a year later, in the fall of 1992, not long after Tessa turned
thirty-seven, she had set her heart on making a film in which the
meatiest part belonged to her.

"Aaron, have you finished the biography of Lady Cassandra Lennox?"  she
asked impatiently.

"Considering that it's nine hundred and ninety-seven pages long, I'm
proud to say I finished it last night.  That's over three hundred pages
a day and my wife's ready to leave me.  Again.  I've been reading till
two in the morning."

"Well?"

"Hey, I didn't think women could get away with that sort of stuff back
in Queen Victoria's time.  No wonder she was considered the most
scandalous woman of her era.  All those lovers, all those little
bastards she popped out so easily, all that travel from one court of
Europe to another; all that stealing other women's husbandswho wouldn't
admire a dame like that?"

"But did you find out about the rights?"  Tessa asked impatiently.

"I sent you a memo on it this morning.  The guy who wrote it, Dr.
Elliott S. Conway, flatly refuses to sell.  To anybody.  He's had a
heap of offers.  Warner Brothers' and Lorimar wanted it for Michelle
Pfeiffer; Jaffe/Lansing for Glenn Close, Paula Weinstein for Susan
Sarandon-only Woody Allen and Streisand haven't been heard from, to
hear his agent talk.  Dr. Conway maintains that Hollywood would only
sensationalize Lady Cassandra, turn her into something she wasn't,
leave out the important things she stood for.  He spent seven years
researching her life and he says there's no way he'll allow anyone to
turn it into a two-hour movie.  He wants people to read every page of
the entire book and nothing less."

"That's ridiculous.  How could Cassandra be shown as more sensational
than she really was?  And how can he refuse a movie deal?  Nobody
refuses a movie deal," Tessa said, more amazed than irritated.

"He doesn't appear to be aware of that.  The guy's a history professor
at Columbia, with a major ivory-tower attitude."

"I bet he has a trust fund as big as his ego," Fiona said, "or a very
rich wife, probably both."

"I've got to meet him," Tessa said resolutely.  "I have to play
Cassandra, it's my part, not Susan's or Glenn's or Michelle's or anyone
else's and that's all there is to it.  Aaron, can you arrange it
through his agent?  I'll fly to New York any time and meet with this
absurd professor."

"What if he won't take a meeting?"  Aaron asked.

"Tell his agent I'm a devout fan and all I want to do is buy him a
drink, tell him how brilliant and wonderful his book is, and get my
very own copy autographed."

"What if he doesn't fall for that line of sickening bullshit?"

"Oh, Aaron, you've been around me so long you take me for granted,"
Tessa sighed.  "I tell you that if he's any kind of man he'll want to
meet me, and if he's gay he'll want to meet me, and if he's an alien
he'll definitely want to meet me and take me back to his planet for
breeding purposes, good luck to him."

"Yeah, Aaron, she's Tessa Kent, remember?"  Fiona weighed in, wishing,
as usual, that Aaron could be less pessimistic.  Didn't he realize how
lucky he was to have kept Tessa's loyalty?  Every last nominee for an
Oscar performance last year had been a CAA client, and Ovitz would grab
Tessa in a Beverly Hills microsecond if he got the chance.

"I'll give it my best shot," Aaron said, repressing a groan.

Two weeks later Tessa waited in a unreconstructed neighborhood bar far
uptown on the West Side near Columbia for Dr. Elliott S. Conway, who
was, at this point, a half hour late.  He'd declined to come downtown
to have a drink at the Carlyle Bar; or in her suite, because, as he put
it, he had severe limitations on his time.  He could at least have the
courtesy to be prompt, Tessa fumed, tired of pretending to be engrossed
in a copy of The Life of Lady Cassandra Lennox while avoiding making
any eye contact in a bar jammed with men who were staring openly at
her.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd been in a bar by herself,
Tessa thought.  Had she ever done so?  Hadn't she, all her life, met
strangers or friends on her own territory or in protected, privileged
spaces, rather than this kind of down-at-the-heels, seedy hang-out,
which reeked of a hundred years of beer?  As she'd left the shelter of
her limo, parked discreetly around the corner, she'd twisted her
wedding ring so that the huge green diamond lay on the palm of her
hand, an automatic action whenever she walked on the streets of any
city.

She'd prepared herself for this meeting as carefully as possible.

She'd had a burgundy suit designed which, without being in any way a
costume, possessed a subliminal Victorian influence in its silhouette:
a tightly laced waist, a full skirt, a wide-lapeled jacket that
out-lined her breasts and opened, at her throat, on an blouse of
precious white lace.  Around her neck she wore a dog collar of small
pearls that clasped at the front with a cameo; delicate cameo earrings
hung from her ears; and her dark hair was brushed into a highly
modified version of a Victorian hairstyle, up off her neck and into a
careful array of curls.  She'd stopped well short of looking
over-the-top, Tessa was certain as she left her hotel, but she hadn't
reckoned on the uniform of blue jeans and baseball jackets that the
local barflies wore.

She realized too late that she looked as if she'd wandered in from a
costume party, but there was nothing she could do about it now.  After
all, what would Dr.  Conway expect Tessa Kent to wear?

she asked herself Anything at all from her ordinary wardrobe would have
looked equally out of place in this joint full of bums.  But she'd
shown her hand by wearing something evocative, no matter how cleverly,
of the Victorian era.  She should have worn the most cutting edge
outfit she owned, something futuristic by one of the new Japanese
designers.  Bloody hell!  If she didn't get to play Cassandra Lennox
she'd never forgive herself!

Calm down, Tessa told herself A man who habitually drank in a sinister
gin mill like this wouldn't even notice clothes, wouldn't have the
subtlety to realize that her eagerness to buy the rights to his book
was emblazoned on her back.  And what difference would it make if he
did?  He had to know she was eager anyway, or else what would she be
doing waiting alone in a rough part of town for a rude, self-important,
pompous professor of history?

"Let me see the book," a man said, sitting down next to her; wearing a
bulky leather jacket and corduroy trousers.  As Tessa yelped in
surprise, he took it away from her and laid it flat on the bar table,
open to the halfway point.  Then he flipped through the following
chapters, quickly opening the book to certain pages, until he came to
the end.

"Either you've really read it or somebody else has," he said, extending
his hand.  "I'm Sam Conway, which was it?  You or somebody else?"

"Me, of course, Tessa answered, bewildered.  "What were you doing to
it?"

"Checking.  You can tell if a book really has been read.  You open it
in the middle and if it falls flat, the back's been cracked.

Then you look for the signatures, folds of printed paper stacked on top
of each other and glued to the backing, each one the same length, and
you can see if they've been skipped or not."

He was young and burly, a huge man, and he didn't fit her expectations
of a dour, arrogant, ancient Herr Doktor Professor with his long,
tough, battered nose; the quirky, humorous light in his eyes; his
capable big hands; and his badly cut, untidy thatch of curly blond
hair, shades lighter than his heavy eyebrows.  He looked like a
longshoreman.  He looked as if he needed to be on a horse, or on a
small boat in a stiff breeze, Tessa thought, as she studied him.

"Why would I be here if I hadn't read the book?"  Tessa asked.

"Someone could have read it for you and given you coverage, that's what
they call a reader's report."

Tessa laughed.  She'd known what coverage was since she was sixteen.

"Aren't you going to give me a pop quiz?  Cassie has no secrets from me
that she didn't keep from you, Professor.  And how come it's Sam and
not Elliott?"

"Elliott's not my style.  Samuel's my middle name.  How come you call
her Cassie?"

"That's my own private name for her."  Tessa answered.  "Lady Cassandra
Lennox seemed too long after the first twenty pages.  I hope you don't
mind."

"I think of her as Cassie, too.  A pisser, wasn't she?"

'A first-class pisser."

"What are you drinking?  Oh, by the way, sorry I'm late, a student
tried to talk me into a passing grade and it took a long time to say
no, and explain exactly why."

"Why didn't you say yes and get here on time?"

"Can't do that," he said, shocked.  "Where are your morals?  So what'll
it be?"

"Vodka straight up," Tessa ordered, hoping that the alcohol might
sterilize the bar glass, that notorious conveyor of germs.

"Jim, two Stolis straight up, very cold, bring the lady a straw."

"How-?"

"I read minds."  He grinned at her; with a flash of whimsical
complicity Tessa was not accustomed to inspire in strangers.  "You
don't exactly look at ease.  This place may be humble but they do use a
dishwasher.  Still, you'll be happier with a straw."

"Well, I admit, I didn't feel comfortable before you showed up," Tessa
said, opting for the charmingly frank approach.  "I've just realized
that I've never been in a bar alone in my life, much less one where a
mob of guys are staring straight at me.  Most people are too cool to do
that, they just give a peek out of the corners of their eyes, the
instant celebrity once-over that says they're not impressed."

"That, I guess, would be out in Hollywood and in your better
neighborhoods, like the Carlyle."

"Exactly."

"But by showing up here, you just made me at least four hundred
bucks."

"What?"

"I said I'd bring Tessa Kent in for a drink and everybody bet me five
bucks apiece I couldn't do it.  That's why they're all checking you
out, making absolutely sure I'm not pulling a fast one, as if a Tessa
Kent look-alike could possibly exist.  I guess they want their money's
worth."

"My God, how old are you!"  Tessa exclaimed.

"Thirty-eight."

"And still playing fraternity house tricks?"

"Why not?"

"But you're a full professor; you have a doctorate in some deeply
meaningful subspecies of Victorian history, you've written a great,
great book, aren't you too old to-" "Soul of a teenager.  That's what
my wife said."  He shook his head ruefully at the memory.

"Wife?"

"Ex-wife.  I couldn't get rid of the soul."

"How many wives?"

"Only one, long gone.  I was much worse in my twenties."

"Children?"

"Nope.  You?"

"No one."  Her fingers fluttered all complications away.  "Fancy
free."

"Soul of a teenager?"

"I grew up fast, at fourteen.  I never had time for one."

"That's too bad," Sam Conway said seriously.  "You missed something
wonderful.  But it's never too late.  Hang around me, you'll see, it's
catching."

"I'd like to hang around you," Tessa said, taking the plunge
resolutely.  "I'd like to play Cassie."

"Well of course you would.  That's why you're doing a most wonderfully
subtle impression of that ravishing creature in her prime.  But I don't
want to sell the rights to the book."

"Sam, look, you may be immune to money but don't you realize how many
people will be exposed to the story of Lady Cassandra Lennox if a
film's made?  You're not being fair to her."

"Book's hit the top of the Times nonfiction list right now," he said
with a hastily smothered look of satisfaction, "and my publisher says
it should stay at number one for another six weeks minimum, according
to his calculations and the reorders.  Even a couple of months, until
the next big book comes along."

"Which means about three, maybe four hundred thousand copies will be
sold in hard cover; maximum, because most people don't buy books they
can't read in bed in comfort, and say two, two and a half million plus
in paperback over the years, although, again, thousand-page paperbacks
are a hard sell, because they're too heavy to carry around.  Oh, and
college bookstores.  Make it three million copies all together; plus
foreign rights, and that's way on the high side," Tessa snapped,
remembering all of Fiona's publishing lore.

"And I'm being generous and it will take years."

"That's a lot of books from where I sit.  I can't even begin to imagine
three million people."

"A movie, on the other hand," Tessa continued, with every ounce of fire
she could command, "would make Cassie a household word, all over the
world, with millions and millions of people seeing the film when it's
released two years from now at a time when they've practically stopped
buying the hook.  That means a major return trip to the paperback
bestseller lists.  Then, every time the movie is run or rerun on
television, more multiples of millions of people will watch it.  And a
percentage of them will go right out and buy the book and read it for
the first time.  Why do you think Gone with the Wind is still in
print?"

"Gone with the Wind is the perfect illustration of what I don't like,"
Sam said, turning so that he could look at her closely.

Intensity darkened his dark blue eyes.  Jesus, Tessa thought, the man
filled the room!  He was off the wall, yes, but what presence he
possessed!

She could imagine him lecturing to a mesmerized classroom, she couldn't
look away from the open neck of his work shirt where the springy blond
hair ... stop it Tessa!  You want something, this is business!

She made herself listen intently.

"Now, Gone with the Wind, there was a book full of history, slanted
toward the Southern point of view, I grant you, but still history,
crammed with vivid research, and what did they end up with?

A movie about Vivien Leigh's costumes and four people with fucked-up
love lives.  The script included five percent or less of the book.

The Civil War was treated as a plot device, just enough to hold the
romantic narrative together."

"But there's no war in your book," Tessa retorted passionately.

"It's not a true historical tome, it's the story of one real woman's
amazing life, she's front and center the whole time.  She is the
narrative, the spine of the story, the Civil War; Scarlett, Rhett,
Ashley, and even poor Melanie all rolled into one.  Every page lives
and breathes Cassandra Lennox.  You wrote biography like a novel and
now you're thinking like a historian."

"And you're talking like an agent."

"I am not!"  Tessa glared at him in fury.

"Just kidding, take it back, wanted to see what you'd say," he said,
stumbling over his words at her rage.  "You're talking like an actress
who's fallen in love with a part, aren't you?"

She sat in sullen silence.

"Well, aren't you?"  he persisted.  "Yes or no?"

"True," she snapped.  "Did any of the others talk to you like me?"

"No, it's all been agent-to-agent talk, I haven't gotten into it at
all.  I just keep saying no."

"Shouldn't you be less rigidly academic, more flexible and most of all
more thoughtful about the future of your work," she prodded him.

"I played football to get through college, never had much of an
academic attitude till I discovered history.  Shouldn't you be more
show biz, more snotty, more Hollywood?"  His grin told her that he
wasn't to be influenced easily.

"Do you see Susan Sarandon as Cassie?"  Tessa demanded.

Maybe a change of pace, even if she had to mention a rival for the
rights, would at least make him think about the possibility of a film,
and nudge him off his prejudices.

"Nope, too much of a wholesome American redhead, too mature for the
early scenes.

"Michelle Pfeiffer?"

"Too fragile.  Essentially tragic.  Cassie had more blood and guts."

"Glenn Close?"

"Too tall, beautiful in her own austere way, but she doesn't drip sex
and Cassie did.  Now Meryl Streep-" "Streep?"  Tessa stopped just short
of screeching.

"Just kidding."

"I hope you're having fun," she said coldly.

"I am," he said, looking pleased with himself.  'Another drink?"

"It must be ego-gratifying to have every major star in Hollywood
wanting to play Cassie," Tessa said, tapping her empty glass.  This
wasn't going to work, the man was some kind of tin-pot despot, more
interested in protecting his precious rights than giving Cassandra
Lennox to the world.  She might as well have another drink.

"Not particularly," Sam Conway replied slowly, suddenly sounding
uncharacteristically bashful.  "What is ego-gratifying is that you,
Tessa Kent, want to play Cassie.  I kept seeing you as I researched and
wrote the book.  I know this sounds totally corny, but you've always
been my favorite movie star.  I cried at Little Women, disgracing
myself completely with my high-school buddies, not at Beth but as
Jo-you broke my heart, you were so beautiful... almost as beautiful as
you are now.  And Gemini Summer was the only sexed class I ever
needed.

I wouldn't sell my book because I was saving it for you.  But I wanted
to see if you'd read it.  I wanted you to come to me.  My adolescent
soul again, and my adolescent crush on you, and I guess, shit!, my
adolescent insecurity."

"Oh."  She could only look at him, her lips parted in astonishment.

He was blushing violently, but he held her gaze until she dropped her
eyes.

"You know what?"  he mumbled.  "Let's go ice skating at Rockefeller
Center, this minute.  You're dressed just right.  And we can tell our
agents to make a deal tomorrow.  Sound good to you?"

"I haven't ice skated since I was sixteen," Tessa stammered.

"Don't worry, I'm a whiz.  I'll hold you up, won't let you go, can't
have Tessa Kent flat on her ass in front of her public."

"Sam, I'll be a great Cassie, I promise you."

"I knew that years and years before you did.  Jim, put this on my tab
and collect my winnings.  So long, guys, well worth losing five bucks,
wasn't it?"

As they left the bar in a storm of applause, whistles, and cat-calls,
Tessa thought that she knew what it felt like to have the soul of a
teenager after all.

28

Maggie settled herself, as comfortably as she ever could in a plane,
and reflected thankfully that there was no one on the flight to present
her with a birthday cake and wait for her to blow out twenty-three
candles.  No one who knew as she returned to New York from Hong Kong,
that this June day in 1993 it was her twenty-third birthday.

The previous year the ladies of the press office, led by Lee Maine, had
made a big deal out of her turning twenty-two, just as they'd done for
everyone's birthday since she'd been one of them, but something in her
hated the thought of having to face "Happy Birthday" again.  Was it a
reflex of inhabitual shyness when confronted with that perfectly awful
song, an ordeal that required everyone to put on a happy face and
pretend delight and surprise?

It should be banned for grown-ups.  Or was she merely reacting to the
incredible stress that went hand in hand with the utter exhaustion that
came from supervising the press on the largest sale in her career?

In any case, Maggie was relieved that her birthday would be well over
by the time this plane landed.  She'd been gone two weeks, working the
publicity mill for all it was worth.  For a month preceding the trip
she'd worked in New York with the Chinese wire services and the two
English-language Hong Kong newspapers as well as with journalists from
the most important of the dozens of magazines that crowded the Hong
Kong newsstands.  Once there she'd held a press conference attended by
more than a hundred journalists, and worked without respite with
writers for the score of Chinese newspapers, trying to give each one a
different story angle.  She'd organized every detail of the catering
and flowers for the week-long exhibition and the actual sale, held in
the Regent's largest ballroom.

During the sale she'd dashed between journalists and the bank of phone
bidders, finding out which purchasers were willing to let their names
be used.  She'd kept herself going on room-service scrambled eggs, tuna
fish sandwiches, and long dawn and late-night swims with which she
religiously released her tension in the Regent pool.

Although Maggie wasn't, like Caesar, actually bringing back the spoils
of war to parade them in front of the Romans, she felt as if she were
leading a train of elephants loaded with booty.  In addition to the
commissions on the hammer price on the many millions achieved by
porcelain, Chinese furniture, Chinese paintings, and the results of the
jewelry sale-largely jade, watches, and the fancy colored diamonds so
admired by the Chinese-she was returning with the ten percent
commission on 1.7 million dollars that had been paid for a rare and
extraordinarily fine jade necklace composed of 107 of the precious
beads, a world record for S & S or any other auction house.

She was still in shock, she realized.  If you calculated in Hong Kong
currency, in which it had been sold, the price fetched was more than
HK13 million.  Thirteen million, two... the price of that necklace, in
addition to the great success of the entire sale, had finally
established S & S as a major player in Hong Kong.

Was it possible that only five years ago she'd been the most temporary
and inexperienced of temps and that now she was Lee's chief staff
officer, with three assistants to supervise and entire auctions to
publicize on her own?  Was it possible that as soon as she returned to
the office she'd start working on her next auction, a sale of
Postimpressionists for which she'd go to Geneva?

Well, why not?  Maggie thought.  She sipped another glass of the
champagne the flight attendant kept bringing her.  Five years in the
auction business, she was convinced, counted for more than fifteen
years in any other job.  Any press officer has to be prepared to be
pushed, not just to the edge, but over the edge, totally and utterly
consumed by the business at hand, and auction followed auction
relentlessly.  Lee had warned Maggie not only that she would frequently
find herself truly homicidal, for which she recommended strenuous
exercise, but that she would have very little time for a personal
life.

Lee had been right; in fact she'd underestimated.

But, Maggie thought smugly, but what little private time there was she
used well.

She was as direct as any man when it came to sex.  If there was a real
attraction she not only didn't expect courtship, she didn't want it.

Courtship took up precious time.  She came to the table to play, not to
look around, and she made it a rule not to accept an invitation from
anyone, not even for a drink, if she didn't have a strong suspicion
that there was a good chance that she'd want to go to bed with him.

Sometimes, Maggie thought, the rapid development of her many affairs,
and the unsentimental way she dropped lovers in whom she'd lost
interest, even managed to shock Polly, and that took some doing.

"You're so frisky," Polly had commented recently.  "Meaning what?" 
she'd asked.  "You're like a puppy, chasing its tail.  Why don't you
settle down with one guy for six months and see how it feels?"

"Like you and Miss Jane Robinson?"  Maggie had asked, laughing.

"Remember, that snowstorm brought you together; so I was the
inadvertent matchmaker."

"Laugh, laugh, I don't care, I'm a happy woman," Polly had replied.

Well, "happy" for Polly now meant steady domesticity, and that was the
last thing Maggie wanted.  She was simply having too much fun.  She had
no intention of getting married to anyone, and when men got serious
about her, as, unfortunately, so often seemed to happen, she let them
down firmly.  It was kinder that way than to keep them dangling with
false hope.  She hadn't missed all the pleasures of a college education
after all, now that she came to think about it.

Of course, even with her mild disapproval of Maggie's frenetic sex
life, Polly was no longer fully privy to the details of Maggie's
private life since she'd stopped being a boarder.  As she'd advanced in
the press department, she'd earned more money.  It still wasn't much,
public relations never paid well but she managed to make her salary
cover her brutal haircuts that were never in or out but were essential
to her look, expensive Wolford panty hose that wore like iron and were
a true economy, shoes she tended so carefully that they lasted forever;
and a very occasional replacement to her consistently all-black
wardrobe.  By being fanatically careful about expenses, Maggie'd
managed to rent an amazingly cheap two-room apartment one flight down
from Polly.  It gave her the advantage of the increased privacy she now
wanted for her busy love life, and the reason to start slowly buying at
auction for herself.

Maggie had never realized that she had a deep need to own her own
things, always living in other people's houses as she had, but once she
learned enough about furniture, art, and objects from the friendly
experts at S & S, all of them eager to educate her on the chance that
she'd shine extra publicity on their departments, she'd been able to
pick up a few true bargains at various sales.  There were invariably
days when, by sheer luck, there was little interest in a piece on which
she had her eye.  She'd been able to snatch up some wonderful antique
textiles for Polly as well, by way of repayment for the amounts of
Polly's food she'd consumed.  Nothing could repay the permanent, deeply
affectionate welcome she always found at her friend's studio.

Her own tiny apartment was, Maggie thought dotingly, as eclectic as you
could get.  It was still fairly empty, but everything in it mattered to
her.  No matter how many shelter magazines she pored over or how many
decorating editors she huddled with for her work, she'd never chosen to
make a single "design statement," which, as Polly said, was damn lucky;
considering what an incredible mishmash she was creating with her
magpie eye.  But it was the home she'd never had and always longed
for.

She didn't entertain there and probably never would.  Lunch almost
always took place at a fashionable restaurant as, sometimes with Lee
and sometimes alone, Maggie became friends with the many journalists a
press officer needed to know: the ladies and gents of the art and
antiques magazines, the fashion magazines, the general-interest
magazines, and the specialized magazines for collectors.  There were
two magazines for teddy bear collectors alone, Maggie thought, still
surprised after all these years, and small fortunes were spent on old
Steiff bears in good condition.  Life had done a big piece on their
last teddy bear auction and was waiting eagerly for the antique doll
sale that was coming up.

"May I offer you a little more champagne?"  the flight attendant
asked.

"Please," Maggie said, holding out her glass.  This stuff wasn't
getting to her; she was still too high on the last two weeks to be
touched by wine.

What a fantastically international business she was in, Maggie
reflected.  No matter where an auction was held-New York, Munich,
Lugano, London, or Kuala Lumpur or anywhere else-the bidders came from
every country where people had money.  If they weren't there in person,
they'd bid by mail or by phone.

You could put all the auction houses in the world on an
island-something the size of Bermuda, for instance-and as long as there
were good hotels, enough sales rooms, and plenty of free meals for
journalists, you could declare it the auction capital of the world.

No force known to man, not even a legion of furious golfers, could keep
the collectors and dealers away.

You'd need marvelous mail service for the catalogs, and an
international airport, but in the end the results would be the same.

Some people wanted to sell and others wanted to buy; if you had a fine
enough silver service you could march off into the middle of the Sahara
and knock it down for eight million dollars.  You could slip a Faberge'
Imperial Easter egg into your pocket, climb a mountain, and pull in
three million in change.

God but she loved doing something really well, and she was getting
better at it all the time.  She loved her two crazy little rooms; she
liked each of her lovers; she loved her friends: Polly, Lee, Jane,
Hamilton, Liz.... And then there was her oldest friend, Barney, who was
always there for her, Barney about whom she could never think without a
deep pang in her heart, a muddled turmoil in her brain, and a peculiar
longing that seemed to come from her wrists and radiate up her arms to
... Never mind Barney, she was the luckiest girl in the world, Maggie
decided.

An empress of China had once collected apple-green jade and tucked it
away in 3,000 ivory cabinets.  Where had it all disappeared to?  How
much per head were 107 jade beads-or jadeite, to give it its proper
name-into 1.7 million dollars?  she wondered.  The human desire to own
was a marvel.  How much per round, green, carved little rock?  Maggie
tried to figure it out in her head, but the amounts she arrived at kept
changing as she drifted off to sleep.

On the first Saturday night in September 1993, just as business hours
were ending, Maggie met Barney at Chopper Dude's, the custom motorcycle
shop he'd opened with a well-financed partner several years earlier.

Soon after his arrival in New York his alliance to his Harley had
melted into total immersion in the world of hand-made swingarms,
skyscraper sissy bars, stretched headlights, and hand-hewn fenders; a
world in which one company alone made 250 different kinds of motorcycle
seats, a world in which a seventy-year-old CEO might spend four years
working on his Springer, gold-plating the chrome on the shoulders, the
front fork, the brake and clutch levers, the screen behind the
carburetor faceplate, and the band behind the nitrous bottle.

Maggie and Barney had reached an agreement never to talk shop.  Even
the brand names of the bikes competing in the Daytona 500 remained as
foreign to her as the very existence of a Philadelphia Chippendale tea
table remained to him.

"Take me out of this testosterone-as-a-lifestyle pit," she demanded.

"I have something to talk over with you."

"Where the hell have you been?  I haven't seen you for it seems like
months," Barney complained as they walked down Ninth Avenue.

"Working," Maggie said briefly, mindful of their agreement.

"Working too hard to give me a quick call?"  he asked, hurt.

"In Hong Kong," she said tersely.  It wasn't true, but how could she
tell him that something about the light of summer evenings in the city
made her long for him too much to permit her to see him safely?  She'd
rationed herself to this casual drink tonight.

"Okay, I understand, enough said.  Don't tell me why."

"I wasn't going to, you hard-core, real-deal chopper dude, darling."

"Want that drink, beautiful?"

"Need that drink," Maggie replied, turning off the noisy street into a
little bar with pretensions to Barcelona chic.  They sat silently,
waiting for their drinks, happy just to be together.  Barney looked so
much older than he was, Maggie thought, scanning his beautifully
muscled body, his perpetual squint that came from working on pieces of
evil machines, his perpetual tan that came from test-driving the
grotesque monsters.  There was something pagan about him, something
barbaric, monolithic, almost... regal... with the confidence of a young
prince.  A man now, a man to be reckoned with.

But it didn't matter one whit how safe he said his beloved bikes were,
she distrusted them all, not for anyone else, but only for him.

How many women felt the same way?  she wondered.  And what good did it
do them once the bike virus bit?  She'd never understand the
relationship of men and speed, she'd realized long ago.  It must be
some sort of useless extra gene.  But oh, he still smelled so
powerfully good; clean sweat, motor oil, and that special Barney smell
she'd always known, like a perfect apple hanging on a branch on a sunny
afternoon.

"So what's your problem?"  Barney asked, finally.  "It can't be about
your job so it's got to be about a guy."

"It's not about a guy," Maggie said slowly.

Relief washed over him.  He'd dreaded the day she'd meet the right guy,
dreaded it for years.  No matter how good it might be for her and how
inevitable he knew it was, how bound it was to happen in the course of
her life, he honestly didn't know how he'd live through it.

He'd tried fruitlessly not to worry about it, but he'd never managed to
forget the possibility every time he thought about Maggie, and that was
often.  Christ, much, much too often, for all the good it did him!  How
did she dare to get more luscious?  It infuriated him!  She'd slimmed
way down, not that he thought she needed to, without losing her
fabulous tits, and she'd accomplished some evolving and mysterious
alteration of her black uniform, so that she resembled every other
chic, unmistakably New York woman from the neck down.  But Maggie's
skin looked as if she spent her days in a rose garden near Connemara,
wearing a sun bonnet.

No woman in Ireland had eyes as blue, he was convinced, and certainly
no one had ever managed to make hair so short into hair so sexy.

Or have a laugh that gave every man in earshot a hard-on.

"If it's not about your job and it's not about a guy, you must want to
buy a bike," he said.

"Great guess, but just off the mark.  No, Barney, believe it or not,
it's about my future.  I've had a job offer from another auction house,
a much bigger house, at more money, with more opportunity."

"Which one, Sotheby's or Christie's?"

"How'd you know their names?"  Maggie was startled.

"Classic car and bike auctions."

"And that's dumb of me, because of course we have them, too, so I
should have realized."

"Well, which?"

"Sotheby's."

"Why don't you want to take it?"

"I don't?"

"If you did, you wouldn't be asking me, you'd have done it already."

"Hmmm, you're smarter than you used to be.

"Yeah, I think I escaped Dad's share of the gene pool when it came to
brains."

"And you're certainly not like your lovable mother in any way that I've
ever noticed."

"Aren't you full of compliments today?"  He smiled down at her.

"Either they adopted me, or else I was switched at birth.  There's no
other explanation."

"Do you see them?"

"You know I do, from time to time, now that they almost approve of
me.

Success has had a way of tempering their parental horror at my wicked
ways.  Stop changing the subject.  Why don't you want a better job?

Especially at the best place?"

"I've thought and thought about it, and it keeps coming back to
loyalty.  Lee and Hamilton and Liz have just been so damn good to me.

They've trained me, they've molded me, patiently and with kindness.  I
love all of them.  And there isn't one of the other assistants who
could begin to do the job I do, and where would that leave Lee?

Especially now that she's getting married.

"Married?  Isn't she in her fifties?"

"Barney, really!  What's wrong with you?  Lee was working on a major
Old Master sale-sorry, sorry!-and the chief consignor and she fell head
over heels.  She's going to keep on working, but he's a very rich man
who takes frequent vacations and she'll want to go with him."

"More work for you, then."

"Unquestionably.

"More money?"

"Probably, but not as much as I was offered."

"I don't think you should consider moving," he said with complete
conviction.

"Why not?"

"Because you said you loved all of them.  That's the best reason I've
ever heard for staying put."

"Hmm... I thought it was loyalty... but no, it is love...

everyday love, basic love, just about the most important thing in the
world....

I knew I should ask you.  Barney, what's that on your arm?"

"Nothing," he said, hastily rolling down his sleeve.

"Show me," Maggie demanded.

Sheepishly, he rolled his sleeve back, revealing the edge of a
tattoo.

"Oh, for Pete's sake, not you too!  Let me see that awful thing."

"Yes," Maggie insisted, using both hands to yank the fabric almost up
to his shoulder.  A good-size heart, pierced by an arrow, appeared on
his bicep, adorned with an M on one side and a B on the other.

"Oh," she said and lapsed into silence.  After a minute she asked, "How
many others do you have?"

"That's the only one.  You can search my body if you don't believe
me."

"I believe you."

"Happy Valentine's Day, retroactively."

"Thank you, Barney," Maggie said gravely, more touched than she was
willing to admit.

"I'll never have another, you know that, don't you?  And I wasn't drunk
when I had it done... well, maybe just a little, but I'd wanted one for
years."

"I do know, I do, sweet Barney.  You're such a romantic, aren't you?

You'd ride off to war for me, you'd fight dragons for me, you'd jump
into a pit full of snakes and cut their heads off for me, wouldn't
you?"

"Damn it, Maggie, you know I would," he said passionately, fussing with
frustration.  "I'd do anything in the whole wide world for you, I'd go
into outer space for you, with or without a spacesuit, but
unfortunately, that doesn't seem necessary right now.  You're riding
high."

"So are you," she replied absently, thinking hard.  She had to deal
with this... thing... about Barney sooner or later.  It had been going
on for five years, it stood in the way of her ever caring about another
man, or even, if it came to that, wanting to care.  The basically
heartless, bitchy way she treated men, the way she flittered and fled
from one to another, was directly related to this schoolgirl obsession
she'd never been able to let go because she'd nourished it by not
living it out.  And it wasn't sensible or healthy for Barney, either.

That new tattoo proved that he hadn't forgotten, that he still
cherished what he mistakenly thought were romantic feelings for her.

Without them he'd have found other girls, available girls, and many of
them, long ago.  They'd both be happy if they weren't stuck in their
shared past.  But were they both condemned to remain so attached to an
idealized concept of each other, a myth of their teenage years, that
they could never grow beyond it?  Were they that helpless?

They'd never know, Maggie realized, her hair rising on her closely
shorn nape, unless they did something about it.  It was the only
remedy, the hair of the dog as it were.  As long as they remained
inaccessible to each other, they'd remain slaves to their old
fantasies.

But a fantasy realized, a fantasy acted on, would be a fantasy no
longer, just mundane reality that could be easily judged for its true
value, and discarded, leaving them free.

"Maggie, you're a million miles away.  Not still thinking about that
job offer?"

"No, just... relaxing.  It's Saturday night, remember?  Date night."

"Except that this isn't a real date, it's just the two of us," Barney
drawled wryly.  "Two old buddies, comrades in arms, pals for life, like
a couple of leathery cowboys sharing a bottle for old times' sake, just
as if you didn't know that I'm in love with you, more than ever.

Fuck!

I shouldn't have said that.  It slipped out, a bad habit.  It won't
happen again."

"Barney...?"

"What?"

"Oh, Barney, I don't know..."  she sighed.

"Maggie, you?  You always know.  You're the one with all the answers
about us.  Right from the beginning.  Not that I'm bitter, I just sound
bitter, oh, hell, so maybe I am a little bitter; what the hell, I can
live with it."

"What if you didn't have to?"

"I'd be a happy man, but don't kid yourself, it's not gonna happen just
because it makes you feel more comfortable to think it might.  It's not
your problem, Maggie," he said brusquely, "it's strictly mine, don't
worry about it."

"But what if?  ... Barney, what if you could stop feeling bitter?"  she
persisted.

"You talking lobotomy?  I don't think they do that anymore.

"No."  Maggie sat up straight and looked him directly in the eye.  She
knew she was blushing, but she didn't care.  This had to be said and
said clearly.  "I'm talking about making love, you and me, the way we
never did, and getting it out of our systems, once and for all."

"Is that..  is that," he asked carefully, "what you really think would
happen?"

"I'm sure of it," Maggie answered, overcome by the rightness of her
thought process.  "It's logical and it makes perfect sense.

"Hmmm.  What if you got me out of your system but I didn't get you out
of my system?  What then?"

"Barney, remember how right I was before, that day when you left
home?

Even you had to admit that we couldn't make love then.

Well, I'm right again.  Now we can, now we're old enough," Maggie
insisted, made more stubborn and impetuous by his unexpected
resistance.  "We both have fantasies about each other that have to be
exposed to daylight, or they'll persist, or even get worse."

"Let me get this absolutely straight, so I don't take advantage of your
theory.  You propose that we make love, in cold blood, so we won't moon
around about each other anymore?"

"Exactly," she answered, her eyes shining with conviction.  "No more
mooning, it's childish."

"When and where?"  he asked quickly.

"Tonight.  The sooner the better.  We could go to my place or your
place, it won't matter.

"You know you're nuts, don't you?  Completely, absolutely nuts."

"I've never been saner in my life," she said urgently.

"Let's go to your place.  Then I'll be the one who has to get up and go
home afterward, not you."

"Fine."

"Now?"

"Now," Maggie said, with resolution, even though her mouth was dry and
her feet were cold and she longed for him with her palms and her
fingertips and she ached for him in the pit of her stomach and the back
of her neck, it must be now because once it was over; once it was real,
she wouldn't feel this unendurable need again.

Maggie woke up in the middle of the night, woke up completely, as if it
were broad daylight, and knew, without a single doubt, that she had
never had a happier minute since she'd been born.  Everything in her
life had led to the harbor of this bed in which Barney lay quietly
sleeping on his back, an arm flung across one of her breasts.

She felt as open and fertile as a field in spring, ravished, teeming
with possibility, lying, rich and receptive, under the light of noon.

She eased herself away cautiously so that she could turn around, lean
on her elbow, and gaze at him in the dim beam of the streetlamp that
filtered through her curtains.

He was the stuff of dreams, this man of hers, he was the pink-silver of
a spring dawn, the honey of a summer afternoon, the mothdreaming indigo
of twilight, oh, he was the cat's pajamas, all right.

And if she hadn't been brilliant enough to prove that to herself, once
and forever, she might have missed understanding that he was the love
of her life, and always had been, Maggie thought, suddenly terrified at
her close call.

Admittedly, she'd followed a roundabout path to find out the truth, and
her logic had been faulty, but oh, so beautifully faulty, a full 180
degrees faulty, so perfectly wrong that in the end, wasn't she all but
forced to understand that she'd been right?  What was her insanity but
a higher form of sanity?  What was being so certain of her own thought
process but a subtle form of readiness to be convinced that she was
wrong?  And wasn't she the wickedly clever one, Maggie admitted, in a
sudden giggle of honesty, to find a highfalutin way to get Barney into
bed without even letting herself know what she was doing?  Much less
him?

The whole of the crowded island of Manhattan centered on this one
rumpled bed, on this trance of adoration with which she contemplated
Barney's profile.  She felt as if she'd never had anything to do with
another man, and in fact, she never had...

well, that was, as it were, to be specific, not really, not truly,
because she'd never experienced emotional fulfillment before, never
felt a part of someone else, never allowed herself to let go of her
borders and be bound to another; in bonds of unquestioning love.

How many women had Barney conquered to make him into such a magnificent
lover?  she wondered.  She suppressed a pang of jealousy.  Neither of
them should ever ask each other any questions about what they'd done
while they were waiting for each other.  The past no longer existed.

"Have we reached the part where we stop mooning about each other
yet?"

Barney asked sleepily, his eyes still closed.

"Oh, no, no, no, not yet."

"Not ever?  Promise?"

"Never; my love, never.

29

It had been a year; Tessa realized, one whole year since she'd met Sam
Conway.  Her thirty-eighth birthday had come a few weeks ago with the
end of the summer of 1993, but in her happiness she hadn't given a
thought to something as unimportant as a birthday.  Sam and she had
been inseparable since that night they'd gone ice skating.  No one
could slide a piece of paper between them, Tessa told herself, hugging
the thought, no one could break into their universe.

She'd fallen in love twice in her life, both times at first sight.

How many women had ever been that fortunate?  Apparently that kind of
sudden, certain, all-consuming emotion wasn't reserved only for the
very young.

The girl who'd known instantly that Luke Blake was the man for her, had
become a woman of thirty-seven, a woman who lived alone, a woman who'd
learned to get through each day, forcing herself to act courageous
until she became truly courageous.  She had spent five years without
Luke, years in which no other man had entered her consciousness.

And then Sam.  Such a different man from Luke, this new love of hers.

And yet, in certain ways, so much the same.  Bold, inwardly directed,
used to authority, heedless of opinion-they had all those qualities in
common.

But Sam was not a restless rover over the face of the earth, absorbed
by making things happen, commanding hundreds of men, forever seeking
new ventures, new areas to conquer.  His strong sense of self had
nothing to do with money or possessions or the ability to make other
men follow him.

Sam, Tessa had discovered, was a contemplative man who found his
deepest satisfaction in teaching and writing.  His antic sense of
humor, his essential boyishness, and his love of mischief masked the
fact that he measured success by his own sure standards:

delivering a good lecture, inspiring his students to ask thoughtful
questions, finishing a chapter of his new book.  Even one good page was
enough to bring him deep pleasure.

They lived life at a slower, quieter pace than she'd been used to since
she'd made her first film, more than twenty years ago.  Sam's work at
Columbia had kept them in New York during the academic year.  Over the
summer they'd gone to seminars at Aspen and Berkeley, where he'd been a
guest speaker; and she'd managed to get him to Los Angeles for a few
weeks, long enough for Sam to get to know Fiona and Aaron as well as
the brilliant scriptwriter, Eli Bernstein, who was working ten hours a
day turning The Life of Lady Cassandra Lennox into a film.

"I'd rather not meet him," Sam had said.  "Who wants to meet the man
who's chopping up your beloved child into little bits and pieces and
relishing every minute of it?"

But when the two men had met they'd liked each other immediately and
plunged into a conversation about the psychology of Cassie that
continued for days.  Afterward, Sam felt that he and Eli agreed
entirely on what made Cassie tick.  Even if he was going to have to use
only the highlights of the book to make the script short enough to work
for a movie, it would still be an epic film.

That script should be finished soon, Tessa realized, as she returned to
her apartment in the Carlyle after a day of lazy shopping while Sam
worked in his office at Columbia.  She bought only casual clothes now
for her new understated world.

Sam's friends, of whom there were a bewildering quantity, had been
guarded when he first introduced her to them, and they'd taken their
time to look her over.  She had used all her art to underdress without
looking as if she'd worked at it.  Yes, she was a movie star; she
couldn't pretend she wasn't, fame clung to her as naturally as her
fingernails, but she never once made other women feel dowdy-that had
been her aim.  And she treated everyone with the same warmth and
friendliness.  Sam's friends were important enough in their own fields
to slowly grow to accept Tessa as a human being, not an
incomprehensible creature from an alien world.

Tessa's jewels, except for a few basic pieces, like her triple strand
of pearls and the engagement ring she always wore, were put away in
their bank vaults.  She'd bought no new jewels.  She'd gone to no
auctions, looked at no catalogs; she'd utterly lost interest in more
acquisition of gemstones.

Nevertheless, Tessa clung to the existence of her own jewels in memory
of Luke's love and that major portion of her own existence that was
embodied in them.  Her jewels were the twelve years of her life with
Luke, they were the personal collection she'd amassed to try to comfort
herself after his death.  In ways too complicated and symbolic for her
to put into words, her jewels were an absolute extension of herself,
Tessa recognized.  Whether she wore them or not, whether she left them
in the vault, a secret treasure, or sported them every night, their
existence was an intrinsic part of her own sense of identity, they were
an indispensible layer of her selfhood.

Frequently, when Sam was teaching a late class and she found herself
alone, she thought about them, visualizing each piece safe in the
shelter of its velvet box, and wondered how it would feel to wear them
again in public.  Had there really been a day when, wearing lilac satin
and illuminated by a historic web of Faberge diamonds, she'd presented
an Oscar in front of the world?  Many, many times Tessa went to the
vaults she rented and visited her jewels, played with them in a private
room lined in beige velvet, tried them on, one marvel after another;
and gazed at herself in the mirror that stood on a large table.  In
those hours she became another Tessa Kent, Tessa Kent who had existed
in a triumphant whirl she'd thought would last forever; a Tessa Kent
she knew too well not to miss keenly in spite of Sam.  Oh, yes, she
loved all her jewels deeply, still, and forever; every last one of
them.  Her jewels were her autobiography.

Yet since she'd met Sam, Tessa had automatically refused all film
offers, even those that would be shot in Manhattan, because she hadn't
wanted to alter the rhythm of her new life with him.

However, once Eli completed the script, and that shouldn't take more
than a few months, she'd have to go to the Coast for the casting
process-Lady Cassandra's lovers demanded a full roster of strong
leading men and inevitably, a start date would be set.  The locations
of the film were all English and European.  How many of them would
require her to travel and how many interiors could be reproduced in
Hollywood?  she wondered.  She was torn already between the prospects
of a role she'd been born to play and a man she didn't want to leave,
not for a day.

Resolving not to worry about something that hadn't happened yet, Tessa
kicked off her shoes, stretched till her bones cracked, and rang for
tea.  The room-service waiter who brought it also brought a dinner
menu.

"I thought I'd leave this for you and Dr. Conway," he said, "unless
you're going out tonight."

"Thanks, Joseph.  We'll order later."  One of the joys of the hotel was
twenty-four-hour room service, Tessa thought, and one of the joys of
Sam Conway was that he was sure enough of himself to allow her to
corrupt him in unimportant ways, to live there with her and not ask her
to move into his bachelor apartment on Riverside Drive, because of some
stiff-necked principle.  But she would have, if it had been important
to him.

She'd do anything for Sam Conway, Tessa told herself, with the shy,
secret, brimming emotion of a girl thinking about a lover.  She would
have cleaned for him, she would even have cooked.  Well..  she would
have given it a try; at least.  Who knows, she might have turned out to
be a natural.

"Do you know anything better than Midol for cramps?"  Tessa asked
Fiona, a few days later toward the end of one of their frequent,
coast-to-coast phone conversations about the progress of the script.

"Midol and gin," Fiona answered.  "Why?"

"I've got them bad, really worse than ever," Tessa said miserably, her
brow wrinkled in pain.

"Haven't you seen your doctor?"  Fiona questioned.

"A year ago to get another prescription for the Pill, right after I met
Sam.  I figured I didn't want to get pregnant and have another
miscarriage.  I had my annual checkup then, Pap smear and a mammogram
too.  You know I've always been a bit paranoid about my health.

But my cramps weren't bothering me all that much at the time."

"This is what my mother did," Fiona advised.  "She'd take three Midol,
fix a glass of room-temperature gin and plenty of it, put it on her
bedside table, wrap herself around a hot-water bottle, and tell the
family to leave her alone.  She was usually all right by the next
day.

As I remember, she had three periods a month, just for a little peace
and quiet."

"Room-temperature gin?  Ugh.  I can't even stand the smell of it in a
cold martini," Tessa responded.

"That was her absolute prescription, just the way it comes out of the
bottle.  It has to be gin, Tessa, sorry, but it's a well-known home
remedy."

"I can order some in a minute, from room service."

"Well, take a good slug, just remember to hold your nose when you
swallow," Fiona advised, "and you should feel better soon.  What about
a hot-water bottle?  As I remember, you don't have one.

"I'll have them send to the nearest drugstore.  Sam would go, but he's
at Yale for a week, giving a seminar.  I knew I'd get my period now so
I didn't go with him."

The next day Tessa, haggard and weak, answered Fiona's phone call.

"Well?"  Fiona asked, anxiously.

"Now I have a truly hideous hangover on top of the cramps," Tessa
said.

"and I don't want anything but a Bloody Mary.  I refuse to drink gin
again, ever.  It's poison.  Your mother should be ashamed of herself"
"Tessa, you've simply got to see your gynecologist."

"If she says warm gin, I'll be surprised.  Home remedy, indeed!"

Dr. Helen Lawrence, whom Tessa saw the next day, was a small,
middle-aged woman with a pleasant manner, and she had the reputation
for doing the most gentle pelvic exams in town.  After Tessa dressed,
Dr.  Lawrence invited her into her office.

"I'd like you to have an abdominal and pelvic ultrasound, Tessa.  It's
possible that you might have endometriosis.  In any case, that's the
first thing to rule out."

"Endrometriosis?  What's that?"

"One of the most common causes of painful periods.  Some of the uterine
lining gets outside the uterus and develops implants, which bleed into
the abdominal cavity."

"Does the test hurt?"

"Ultrasound?  Not in the slightest," Dr. Lawrence said, handing Tessa
a card for an outpatient radiology facility where the test could be
performed.

"Does it take long?"

"No.  I'll go ahead and make an appointment for you.  There's a very
good radiologist there, Doctor Henry Wing."

"Please, Helen, just let me know when.  I want to get this over with
before my guy comes back."

"Miss Kent?  It's Doctor Wing."

"Yes," Tessa said anxiously.  "I've been waiting for your call.  Do I
have endometriosis?"

"No, there's no sign of it."

"But there's got to be something!"  Tessa exploded, as much in anger at
not getting a quick answer as in fear at what no answer might mean.

"I do see some evidence of an enlarged pancreas, Miss Kent."

"Is that the problem?  Cramps from the pancreas?  I've never heard of
that."

"No, there's no connection."

"Oh, for the love of God, what the devil do I do now?  Why did I ever
start this nonsense anyway?"

"Miss Kent, I'd like you to go for a test called Computerized
Tomography, a CT for short.  While the doctor is at it, he'll do a
CTguided needle biopsy."

"A..  biopsy...?"  Tessa asked.  What the hell did this doctor know,
suggesting a biopsy.  "A biopsy of what?"  she asked, keeping her voice
as level as she could make it.  A flutter of confused apprehension
began to rise in her stomach, like a bad smell she couldn't avoid.

"Of your pancreas."

"Why?"  she demanded, fear of her fear making her sound bold.

"The pancreas is, as I said, enlarged.  We have to find out why."

"Oh, this is so typical!  You go to a doctor for a pimple and the next
thing you know he sends you to a leper colony!  What if I don't choose
to go, Doctor Wing?"

"I think you should talk it over with Doctor Lawrence, before you make
any decision.  I can only tell you what the ultrasound showed."

"I certainly will!  Good-bye, Doctor Wing," Tessa said, narrowly
preventing herself from slamming down the receiver.  It was natural and
normal to feel apprehension about another of their damn tests, Tessa
told herself, who wouldn't?  One test always led to another, nothing
ever had a simple answer.  But mostly, she told herself, she was
furious at the medical profession, every last one of them.

Christ, she hated doctors!

"Well, Fiona, the good news is the lining of my uterus is staying right
where it should be and not creeping around my belly.  The bad news is I
have to have something called a CT and a fucking CT-guided needle
biopsy, whatever the hell that is," Tessa reported as soon as she'd
talked to Helen Lawrence, who had insisted on the necessity of
additional tests.

"What's a CT?"  Fiona asked, her lips white.  She refused to say the
word "biopsy," phone or no phone.

"It's short for Computerized Tomography.  Naturally that doesn't leave
me any smarter and frankly, I didn't want to ask for too many
details.

For all their future-world terminology, wouldn't you know that they
still have to use needles?  Doctors!  Damn them all to everlasting
hell.  But Helen won't take no for an answer and I have to admit that
she's the best gynecologist in New York.  She says it's only slightly
uncomfortable, they use a local anesthetic before they stick you with
the needle.  I'm going tomorrow.  I want to get this nonsense all over
with before Sam gets back."

"Tessa, I want you to see one more doctor," Helen Lawrence said calmly,
after she'd learned the results of the CT and the biopsy.

"Her name is Susan Hill."

"Not another doctor!  I don't believe it!  My God, Helen, all I came in
for was cramps!  I should have stuck with the gin and the hot-water
bottle!"

"Well, that's been known to work, but you really need to see Doctor
Hill."

"What kind of doctor is she?"

'A medical oncologist," Helen Lawrence said quietly.

"An oncologist?"  Tessa said, so stunned that she could feel her heart
turn over in her chest.  "But... but Helen, an oncologist's a cancer
doctor!  Is that what you're suggesting?  You know perfectly well I
couldn't possibly have cancer.  That's out of the question.

How could I possibly need to go to a cancer doctor for cramps?  This
whole thing has gone beyond ridiculous!"

"Your cramps are complicated.  You need a doctor who knows more than I
do," Helen Lawrence replied, her voice firm.

"But a cancer doctor!  That's insane!  Why can't you handle my problem,
Helen, why do you think I came to you?  I don't want to see anyone
else.  Why are you handing me over to every damn doctor in this damn
city?"

"Tessa, I know how you feel, but like it or not, you really need to see
someone who knows more than I do," Helen Lawrence insisted.  "I've made
an appointment for you.  Doctor Hill will see you this afternoon.

Fortunately she had an opening in her schedule, she's a very busy
doctor."

"But..  .but..  look, Helen, what's the big rush?  I feel doctored up
to the hilt right now.  And my cramps are gone, as usual.

Nothing's different, I just have to learn to live with them."

"Tessa, the sooner you see Susan Hill the better.  There's never going
to be a perfect time and I want her to get into this, she's the best I
know.  Is your gentleman friend still out of town?"

"Yes, but Helen, this afternoon?  Really this afternoon?  It usually
takes an eternity to get a doctor's appointment in New York.

This sounds suspiciously like your typical Beverly Hills celebrity
service to me.  Why do I have to go now?"  Tessa asked, her voice
childish with reluctance.

"You'll like her, Tessa."

"Oh, no doubt about that.  I'll be crazy about her.  I've always wanted
to meet a medical oncologist."

How could a cancer doctor be so wholesomely pretty, have such flaming
red curls, and look no more than thirty-eight or -nine?

Tessa wondered, trying to distract herself as she sat in front of Dr.
Susan Hill's desk.  What kind of person could possibly choose to be an
oncologist when there were so many other specialties in the world of
medicine?

"Doctor Hill, how long have you been an oncologist?"  Tessa asked,
nervously, feeling as if she should be seeing a wise old man instead of
this young woman, who could only be a few years older than she.

"I've been in practice for twelve years, Miss Kent," she said,
smiling.

"May I call you Susan?"  Tessa asked impulsively.  She'd feel more
comfortable if she didn't have to say "doctor" every five seconds.

"Of course, in fact I'd prefer it.  And I'll try to call you Tessa,
even though that seems a bit like name-dropping."

"Good.  Is that your own hair color?"  Tessa asked, nervous enough to
ask any question she could think of that had nothing to do with her
visit here.  Susan Hill laughed.

"It used to be, until five years ago, but now I have to give it a
little help.  Still, I wouldn't feel like me without it."

"Where did you go to medical school?"

"Out in L.A where I grew up.  I graduated from UCLA Med School, and
then I did my internship and residency at New York Hospital, when my
husband and I moved here.  I always wonder why doctors' diplomas are
hung on the wall too far away for anybody to read them, but where else
could you put them?"

Tessa Kent would run out of questions soon, Susan Hill thought, but she
was right to ask as many as she wanted to.  If you're going to an
oncologist, you need to know something personal about him or her.  It
still didn't level the playing field: In time she'd end up knowing a
great deal more about this strikingly vivid personality, this woman
she'd seen on screen more than a dozen times, this actress who was so
much more beautiful than she looked on film, than Tessa Kent could ever
know about her.

"Why did you pick this particular specialty, Susan?  How come you
didn't want to be in something more agreeable, dermatology, for
instance, or plastic surgery?"

"Because there's such immense progress being made in the field of
cancer," the doctor answered, a smile of genuine enthusiasm flashing
across her face.  "It's the single most fascinating area of medicine
today.  This is where I can do the most interesting work and see real
results."

"So, tell me, what's wrong with me?"  Tessa asked abruptly, disgusted
at her postponement of the questions she knew she should really be
asking, instead of playing for time.

"I've studied the radiology and biopsy reports carefully."  The
doctor's smile faded.  She'd rather have answered more questions.

"They indicate a tumor of the pancreas.

"A tumor-you mean a cancer?"

"Yes."

Tessa felt death inhabit her body.  Death, unmistakable.  She closed
her eyes and dropped her head, raking her hair back from her face with
all the strength of her hands.  She was going to faint, she thought
dimly, through an icy mist.

"Put your head between your knees, yes, that's it, way down.

Stay like that and breath deeply, long, deep breaths.  Take your time,
don't lift your head until you feel ready."

Eventually Tessa fought through the mist and faintness.  She fought the
word "death."  Cancer wasn't death, cancer was cancer and she could be
cured of it.  She felt the doctor's hands on her shoulders, steadying
her.

"Sorry," she said, lifting her head.  "I didn't know people still
almost fainted in this day and age."

"That's the least of it," Susan Hill said, pouring her a glass of
water.

"Where exactly is the pancreas?"  Tessa asked.  Chemotherapy, she
thought, draining the glass of water.  Ten to one that's what she'd
have to have, but her hair grew amazingly fast.  If it all actually
fell out, she could always wear wigs while her hair was growing back
in.

She was accustomed to wigs.  No one need ever know.

"Look at this chart, Tessa.  Here's the pancreas, that transverse
organ, that looks like a longish, horizontal piece of liver, thick at
one end, thin at the other.  It's surrounded by the duodenum here, the
liver here, the spleen, and the stomach.  Your particular tumor is
right here, at the thin end, where I'm pointing."

"It's a nasty-looking organ," Tessa said with as much bravado as she
could.  "What's the purpose of it?"

"It's a gland that secretes pancreatic juice, a fluid made of different
enzymes that help in digestion, and it also secretes insulin."

"How important is it?  Is it indispensable, Susan, like a heart or a
liver?"

She was asking the right questions, Susan Hill thought, and going
straight to the point.  Tessa Kent was a smart, direct woman, making
that serious effort certain patients were capable of to be thoroughly
informed about something they've never before, under any circumstances,
wanted to understand or even think about.

"No, it's not actually indispensable.  There are some patients in whom
the pancreas can be removed surgically.  Then they can be maintained on
artificial pancreatic fluid and insulin injections for the rest of
their lives."

"'Some patients' do I need that operation, Susan?"

"No, Tessa, you don't.  The only time to operate, what we call the
'resectable' time, is when the tumor is confined to the pancreas.

Yours is not.  You see, one of the problems with this particular tumor
is that it doesn't cause any symptoms, such as pain, in its early
stages, so it's rarely discovered at a time when an operation is
possible.

You wouldn't have known you had it at this point if you hadn't gone to
a doctor for other reasons.

"So if Helen Lawrence hadn't sent me to Doctor Wing..."

"Exactly, you couldn't have known yet."

She only answered the questions a patient wanted to ask, Susan Hill
thought.  It was vital to let them set the pace of their tolerance for
knowledge.  No two patients were alike.  They all had different points
at which they turned off the spigot of understanding, a different
comfort level at which they could accept or permit themselves to learn
things.

Tessa Kent looked, from the brilliant determination in her
extraordinary green eyes, as if she were going to keep on going right
to the end.  If that was her choice, she had every right to know as
much as it was possible to tell her.

"You said the tumor isn't confined to the pancreas?"

"Where did it spread to?"  Tessa persisted.

"Certain lymph nodes close to the pancreas, the celiac nodes.

Yours are enlarged, a sign that an operation isn't possible."

"Well, you can't get rid of my pancreas.  So that's one option I don't
have," Tessa said, squaring her shoulders.  "What will you want to do
next, what treatments are available?  Is it going to be chemo or
radiation or a combination of both?"

"You know a lot of medical terms."

Tessa had said "chemo" and "radiation" with such fine, careless
courage, as if they were just two words without resonance, Susan Hill
thought, yet she hadn't been able to hide the slight trembling of her
lips.  Her age, her age.  Only thirty-eight.  My God, but she was
young.  Much too young for this.

"I read a lot of magazines," Tessa explained, "and you can't get away
from seeing articles about cancer, can you?  And you can't always make
yourself skip them, much as you'd like to.  So what exactly are you
planning to do to me?"

"I can't be 'exactly' sure, until we talk it over.  We have treatments
for pancreatic cancer that will prolong life," Susan Hill said
carefully.

"'Prolong'?"

"Yes."

"Prolong... what the hell kind of word is that?  It could mean
anything!  Look, Susan," Tessa demanded, suddenly ferocious, "say I
take every single treatment you can throw at me, how long can I expect
to be okay, after that?"

"That... that differs in each case.

"Damn it, give me an average!"

"Even if the treatments are successful, the tumor will eventually
return-" "How soon?"  Tessa interrupted savagely.

"In a year and a half, perhaps two, perhaps a little bit longer."

This was where they'd been heading, but most people would never come
this far, most people would not ask such precise questions.  Susan Hill
felt sick.  Nothing, no amount of experience, had ever hardened her to
this moment.

"So soon?  So soon?"  Tessa whispered.  Her features were stone, her
eyes almost black with shock.

"Tessa, in medicine there aren't any hundred-percent guarantees, I can
only give you my best opinion, but I could be wrong, nothing is an
absolute..."

"Susan," Tessa said desperately, "wait a minute, Susan, you said,
perhaps longer than two years.  Tell me what's the longest I can expect
to be okay if everything goes well, the treatments work out perfectly
and I get very lucky."

"It's an inexact projection.  A little longer, a few months, perhaps
even a little more 'And then?  What then?"

"Tessa, there isn't a permanent cure for pancreatic cancer."

"You mean that I have an incurable cancer?  You're telling me that even
all the treatment in the world won't make it go away?"

She'd understood this sooner, Susan Hill thought, she'd heard in
several different ways that the tumor would inevitably return, she'd
grasped that perfectly, but she still insisted on making it crystal
clear, in boiling it down to "incurable," a word she would not have
used herself with a patient.  Why, oh why was Tessa Kent so strong, so
stubborn, a flagellant, determined to do herself the greatest damage
she could?  She was adamantly pronouncing the ultimate sentence on
herself.  Yet who had a greater right?

"Yes.  Yes.  Tessa, I wish I could say you were wrong but you're not.

There are no miracles in this kind of cancer.  I'm as sorry as it's
possible to be.  The most important thing I can offer you, Tessa, is a
minimum of pain.  The tail of the pancreas is where a tumor gives the
least possible pain and most of that can be handled with narcotics.

I believe in the most aggressive pain management possible."

Tessa was silent, trying to think through the iron casque of shock that
enveloped her and invaded her brain with utter numbness.

Wasn't there something else she could ask, something else that would
give her some hope?

"Does everybody have treatment?"  she asked, finally, barely able to
offer the question.

"No, they don't.  They decide that they don't want treatment, they
don't want the side effects, since, well, since it's not going to fix
the problem permanently."

"I see.  If there's no 'fix,' Susan, the people who do choose to have
treatment why do they pick it?"

"Usually to try as hard as possible to be around for some special
event, a child's graduation from college, for instance, or a
grandchild's wedding or a golden wedding anniversary."

"So..  so.  That means I must be..  .very young..  .for this."

"You are.  Exceptionally young."

"Is there anything I don't know?  I don't want to go home and remember
some question I forgot to ask."

"Tessa, I've almost never had a patient walk out of this office who
asked every possible major question, but you have.  You know all the
options.

"You mean the lack of options, don't you?"

"This isn't one of the days I'm glad I went into oncology.  I'm here
for you, Tessa, for everything.  Any other questions no matter how
small, any fears, any medication, anything at all, at any time of day
or night.  That's my job.  That's what I do.  Will you let me know as
soon as you've decided how you intend to handle matters?"

"Besides die, you mean.

"I mean I'm here for you..."

"Thank you for being so honest with me."  Tessa got up carefully, so
that she wouldn't stagger.  She pulled herself up as tall as she could
and forced a small smile.

"See you around, Susan."

"Yes, Tessa.  Whenever you want, remember that."

30

Three hours after she had left Susan Hill's office, Tessa snapped out
of a time period she would never rediscover in detail again, and found
herself sitting in the Madison Avenue office of an unknown travel
agent, about to sign an agreement to take one of the four Crystal
Penthouses on the Crystal Harmony for a ninety-six-day world cruise
that started in January in Los Angeles and crossed the Pacific going
toward Hawaii and points west, following the sun.

"I'm sorry," she babbled to the travel agent, trying to hide her
confusion.  "I've just realized that I really can't take off ninety-six
days.  Oh my God, I must have been quite mad to think I could.  I'm so
terribly, terribly sorry to have wasted your time, please forgive me,
I'm so very sorry.

"But Miss Kent, you insisted... I pulled every string to get the
accommodations...

"I'm so sorry, I'd really love to go, but it just isn't possible.

Do forgive me, I'm sorry," she blurted and fled, carrying with her a
full burden of shopping bags.  She'd raided Bergdorf's, Tessa noticed
as she dumped the contents of the bags on her bed back at the
Carlyle.

She'd bought cruise clothes of every sort: a dozen pairs of fashionably
flimsy high-heeled sandals, five bikinis, each with its own robe, a
heap of imported lace underwear; seven tubes of designer lipstick, and
a pile of sparkly, frilly summer dresses with little wraps to pull on
over her shoulders.

Everything could be sent back to the store tomorrow, Tessa realized,
and with that, she began to weep, slowly at first and then more and
more violently, howling without words, wailing, high and shrill without
any thoughts, lamenting ruinously without any end but the sheer brute
need to weep her heart out.  She was shaken by hugely mounting sobs,
wrenching, painful sobs, wave upon wave of them, until she slowly
stopped only because she had wept as much as her raw, aching eyes and
throat could endure.

When she was able to look at her watch, Tessa realized that she must
have been lying on her bed, her pillow over her head, pounding the
mattress, for hours.  If Sam had been home he'd have asked questions,
and insisted on answers, she thought, and that was the one thing she
was determined not to have happen.  Her eyes were burning and felt
enormous, stretched like the skin of some rotten fruit about to burst;
she had a murderous headache and a hungry pain at the pit of her
stomach.

How could she possibly be hungry?  Tessa thought as she phoned room
service for a double order of scrambled eggs and toast.

She stood under a hot shower for a long time, and then, wrapped in her
toweling bathrobe, took off the metal covers that had kept the eggs and
toast warm, spread the toast with the entire contents of a pot of jam,
and wolfed down everything, just to fill her stomach.

She went to the bar and made a compress of ice wrapped in a napkin.

She locked the door to the apartment, lay down on her sofa, put a big
tumbler filled with iced vodka within reach, and adjusted a heap of
pillows under her; intending to move the compress from place to place
to try to make her eyes feel better.  She was exhausted, she told
herself, she needed to rest, she needed, in the comfy English phrase,
to put her feet up.

In a few seconds Tessa was shaken by a rage so destructive that it made
it impossible for her to remain motionless on the sofa.

Gulping the vodka, and pouring more, she paced back and forth,
muttering to herself in an incoherent monologue composed of the vilest
words she'd ever heard.  She'd like to kill somebody, yes, more than
anything, she'd like to hit and hit and hurt and hurt until somebody
died.  If she had the power she'd order a hundred executions, she'd
hurl thunderbolts, she'd wipe out cities, she would, she meant it, she
yearned to do it, she thought in a concentrated passion of fury that
lasted for hours until, weak and drunk, she fell on her bed and slept
dreamlessly, without moving.

She woke up at three A.M disoriented at finding herself in her robe,
lying on top of her quilt, her feet freezing.  For a minute she
remembered nothing of the previous day, and then it all came rushing
back in a blast of realization so horrifying that she didn't think she
could survive.  Finally, forcing herself to think, she painfully began
to reconstruct the entire conversation with Susan Hill, detail by
detail.

It could not, it could not possibly be as bad as all that, she thought,
with sudden, clear conviction, pulling on heavy socks.  It couldn't be
a death sentence, not because she had bad cramps.

Helen Lawrence, Dr.  Wing, Dr.  Susan Hill, what did they know?

Tomorrow she'd go to see some good doctors, better doctors, doctors who
would tell her that the needle biopsy had been a mistake, that she had
fallen into a nest of the worst, most unprofessional medical frauds you
could find in the City of New York.  Look how they all knew each other
and passed her from one to another.  She shook with hatred as she
thought of them, people who hung a dozen diplomas on their walls and
then lied and lied and lied for no reason at all except to frighten
her.

Lied for no reason at all.

Fuck!  If she could only manage to believe that.  If she could only
prove it.  But they were all first-class physicians, each one of them,
and she knew it, Tessa admitted, any other idea was absurd.  She stared
in utter confusion at her image in her mirror.  She didn't look like a
woman with no more than two years to live.  If she was lucky, two years
and a few months.  If she wasn't, a year and a half.

She'd only just turned thirty-eight.  In two years she'd just reach
forty.  Forty was nothing!  She looked like someone who'd spent a night
with some brutal stranger she should never have gone home with, badly
bruised around the eyelids, nostrils raw, cheeks mashed, her whole face
disheveled and glazed but unquestionably very alive.

But she'd never reach forty.  She'd never celebrate the birthday that
foolish, lucky women complained about in make-believe misery, even lied
about.  Why did people lie about their age?  Why wasn't every birthday
a brilliant triumph to be toasted and celebrated, another year you
could boast about because you'd survived?  Were people utterly crazy,
not to realize that survival was a gift of the gods, to take it for
granted, to actually feel bad about getting older?

About having lived more life?  What were wrinkles, what were forty
extra pounds or weakened muscles or gray hair except signs of the best
of good luck?

It was too much to bear.  It was too unfair.  It was the most unfair
thing she'd ever heard of happening to anybody, nothing that had ever
happened was unfair compared to this, not even Luke's death.

It was the ultimate unfairness and no one to blame but some cells gone
mad.  She felt knocked to her knees by the unfairness, yanked and
punished and dragged like a wet mop across the floor; skinned alive,
gashed all over her body, gutted like a fish, yes, even nailed to a
cross-that unfair, exactly that unfair; not a bit less, and not for any
reason, any deed, any thing she'd ever done or said or thought.  At
least Christ had convictions He knew were worth dying for.

She wished, for the first time, that she hadn't lost her faith after
Luke had died.  Maybe then someone could try to convince her that this
unfairness was for a purpose, but she knew it was random, she knew it
was impersonal.  Yet Tessa felt as if she'd been targeted, as if it
were focused, as if some malevolent force loathed her, specifically
her, with a direct, evil calculation that had already measured out the
dose of poison that would kill her twice over.  Random and targeted at
the same time... that shouldn't make sense but it did.

She'd go back to the church and never miss an early morning mass or a
Holy Day of Obligation or a single weekly confession if she could reach
forty-five.  All she asked was to be middle-aged...

that unattainable heaven that other actresses dreaded.  She'd never
make love to Sam again if she could reach forty-five, or eat another
good thing or drink another drink or buy another flower; if she could
reach forty-five: she'd give up her work and give up Sam and slave in a
homeless shelter eighty hours-a hundred and twenty hours-a week, she'd
do anything... become a nun... if she could reach forty-five.  Become a
nun?  As if they'd take her.  Tessa had to smile bitterly at her own
craziness.  A nun indeed.

Tessa realized suddenly that she must have been steadily ripping apart
a gauzy, sequined white dancing dress she'd bought earlier.

It lay all around her in shreds and strips.  She hadn't known she was
doing it, she hadn't known she had that much strength in her hands.

Was that what people meant when they talked about a frenzy of grief?

Had she been rending her fucking garments?  Well, she damn well wasn't
going to do any more of that, she thought, angrily throwing the entire
heap of clothes onto the floor of the nearest closet.

She only knew one thing with any certainty.  She wasn't going to have
any treatment.  No chemo, no radiation.  She wasn't interested in
spending one second in a hospital or a doctor's office to see her
nonexistent granddaughter get married.  She'd never have another
wedding anniversary or see anyone she loved graduate or celebrate a new
decade of life.  There would be no future of simple, daily joys with
Sam, no more major markers in her life's history, no remember-whens" to
be talked about with Fiona when they were both wise enough to get out
of the industry.  She'd never face the need to think about a face-lift,
she'd never know the regret of being over the hill, she'd never decide
to take character roles-oh, she'd give anything to be too old to play
another romantic part, too old to play a character part, the right age
to play a crone, a withered crone, without makeup and have it
believable!

She felt a blanket of the blackest depression, bleak, dismal, and
hopeless, start to sneak over her; smothering and all-but-irresistible,
and Tessa knew that if she didn't think of something else quickly, the
two years she still had left could be spent, would be spent, in a hell
of self-pity.  She had used up years of her life mourning Luke.

After he'd died, she'd actually believed she had no reason to live.

How stupid she'd been!  How wasteful!  All those priceless days thrown
away on grief.  There was no time lefr, not a day, not a minute, to
mourn for herself.  It was a luxury she couldn't afford.

What did she have left?  she asked herself, trying to focus.  Sam?

But how long could she keep this from him... how long could they love
each other without the shadow of the future spoiling every minute?  Her
work?  She couldn't play Cassie, she couldn't count on having the time
to finish the film; they'd never get insurance on her now anyway.  So,
at best, she could assist Fiona in some way, and watch Streep play
Cassandra Lennox, or if not Streep, another actress.  All her friends
in California and New York?  Friends, Sam, work.  Wasn't that more than
a lot of people ever had?  It was, she tried to tell herself, it really
was.  She'd had decades of stardom to look back on... Luke, she'd had
her life with Luke.  She'd had her year with Sam.  How many women could
say as much?  Wasn't that enough?  No, it wasn't.  It was not enough.

She was going to be denied most of the experiences of a mature woman,
there was no getting away from that.  She would have no forties, no
fifties, no sixties, no three score and ten.  She would never accept
it, she could never forgive it, but she knew it was a fact she had to
bite into with all the power left to her.

Tessa saw her life stretching forward, a narrow ribbon, a short strip,
with a sharp snip cutting it off not far from her feet, the ribbon
curling back on itself.  But narrow ribbon or not, she vowed, she would
make it so full of reality that it would count as much as a longer
stretch of time.  For a moment she let herself make believe that
nothing had happened, that she could release herself into the casual,
unthinking dailiness of life, but she couldn't sustain the idea.

The ribbon kept snapping and curling backward.

But... but... there existed one essential transaction she must make, a
way to control her short future, one single thing she could do, one
thing she still had time for, one experience no one could refuse her;
one way to still create, to leave something behind that would show that
she had lived a life outside of her films, some bit of her that would
survive and make a difference.

She could make her peace with Maggie.  She could know her daughter
again.  She could try to heal the rift between them.

There was time, Tessa thought, plenty of time for that.  Her life had
been cut short, but it hadn't been abruptly terminated, like her
parents' lives, like Luke's life.  There was still time, time for
Maggie.

Maggie.  She had a daughter and her daughter would have a daughter or a
son some day.  No cancer could take that chance away from her.  A
daughter who had inherited half of whatever she was would eventually,
inevitably, have children of her own, descendants... her descendants,
who would know that Tessa Kent had lived....

Her excited thoughts slowed down.  It had been roughly five years since
Maggie had refused to accept the millions Luke had left her.  Maggie
would have had a yearly income of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Had she even stopped to think of what she was turning down in her haste
to have nothing to do with anything that linked her to her mother?

Probably not in such detail.  She was too young to understand the
financial consequences of what she had done, but the gesture said
clearly that she was not too young to have made up her mind, once and
for all, that her mother was cast out of her life.

But that could not be allowed to stand.  She would not permit it!

She had her rights, damn it, cancer or not, and Maggie would have to
admit them, whether she wanted to or not.

In five years, Tessa calculated, on fire with her idea, Maggie must
have changed, must have mellowed.  Five years were forever; she knew
that now.  Maggie was an adult, she'd passed her twenty-third birthday
months ago.  Tomorrow, yes tomorrow, she'd go to see her; go straight
up to that apartment she was living in, that apartment Tessa had never
ceased to have quietly checked out by a private investigator every six
months, and confront Maggie, yes, have that confrontation she'd never
dared to risk before because she believed that Maggie would shut the
door in her face and that had seemed too much to endure.  What a vile
coward she'd been, to let so much time go by.  She'd tell Maggie that
she only had a short time to live, force her; force her to listen, just
to listen.  That's all she asked.

No one could turn down a dying woman.

31

When Tessa woke up, after a few hours of fitful sleep, later that
morning she knew, even before she opened her eyes, that the
confrontation with Maggie she had been so convinced about in the middle
of the night was a lousy idea.

If she presented herself as a dying woman, as a case for pity, no real
relationship could he established between them, much less any
honesty.

It was hard enough, if an incurable disease struck one loving partner
and not the other; to maintain the former balance between them.  And
she and Maggie were not, had never been, partners.  Sisters, unequal
sisters, but adults together; never.

There must be another way to reach Maggie, a way that didn't involve
anything to do with her health.

Maggie's work at S & S-that was the only path left to her; Tessa
realized as she ate breakfast.  She'd known Liz Sinclair socially and
casually for years.  They had many of the same acquaintances from the
days when Luke was alive, and there wasn't anyone important in the
auction business she didn't know.

Why?  How?  What reason could she give Liz Sinclair to explain that she
had to talk to Maggie Horvath, had to see Maggie Horvath?

Suddenly Tessa knew what to do.  She had Liz Sinclair on the phone in
minutes.

"Tessa Kent, what a lovely surprise!  I couldn't imagine how you'd
managed to disappear from sight in the last year; although I did hear
something about a devastating professor, hmm?  How are you, Tessa?

It's been so long, Hamilton was just saying-" "Liz, I haven't time to
be polite.  Just assume we've had ten minutes of charming small talk.

I intend to auction my jewels, everything but my green diamond and a
few strings of pearls.

"Tessa!"

"For charity, of course.  That goes without saying.  S and S has the
auction... no Liz, don't interrupt, there's no need to compete with
another auction house, no need to give me a guarantee, it's yours on
one single condition.  I don't want to work with Lee Maine on the
publicity.  She's tremendously good, I know, but I want to work
exclusively with Maggie Horvath.  Why?  Liz, I know that Maggie's made
it a point of pride never to trade on it, but she's my younger
sister.

I was born Teresa Horvath."

"What!  Good grief, Tessa, I had no idea..."

"I know you didn't.  Maggie and I have actually been, well, I suppose
one could call it, at arm's length, for the past few years.

Actually an estrangement.  We haven't spoken, can you imagine?

Silly family stuff.  I want to end that.  Now.  Quickly."

"But, but... sell all your jewels!  Tessa, are you sure?  You could
never duplicate..."

"Liz, what a tender-hearted woman you turn out to be," Tessa said,
impatiently.  "Hamilton would be shocked if he heard you.  Of course
I'm sure.  They're only... things.  Very lovely things, but they don't
have hearts."

"Well, no, of course not, Tessa-" Liz said, still almost dumb-struck by
this turn of fortune.

"I expect you to make it the biggest single-owner auction since the
Duchess of Windsor's," Tessa continued.  "My jewels are easily equal in
quality to anything she had, and there are a great many more of them.

And I'm alive, Liz.  Not a dead duchess.  I can publicize the sale from
here to Saudi Arabia and I will.  But it all depends on your delivering
Maggie to work on the publicity with me.

She won't want to do it, I'm pretty sure of that.  And if she refuses,
I won't sell the jewels, not anywhere.  It's either S and S or no
one.

And it has to be quick, within six months, no more.  I know that's
short notice, less than you need for your usual preparation, but that's
the way it has to be," Tessa said firmly.  If she allowed more time,
how much would she have left in which to be with Maggie, be with her as
a proper mother!  S & S could do it in six months if they pulled out
all the stops.

"Good God Almighty, Tessa, I'm stunned.  I may faint."

"I tend to doubt that, Liz.  As soon as you've set up a meeting with
the director of your jewelry department, you and Hamilton and I can get
started.  But Maggie has to be there, right from the start."

"I understand.  I'll call you as soon as I've talked to Maggie."

"Thank you, Liz.  Use all your powers of persuasion.  It's vitally
important."

"Never fear.  I'll make it happen or die trying."

"We'll both do that, Liz."

"Maggie, Mrs. Sinclair wants you to go up and see her right away," one
of the assistants said, after she'd answered the interoffice phone.

"She say why?"

"No, just get moving."

"Miz Liz," Maggie said cheerfully upon entering Liz's office.

"You wanted to see me?"

"Yes, sit down Maggie and have some tea."

"No tea, thanks.  What's going on?"

"It's complicated, Maggie.  It concerns the future of the house."

"How's that?"

"You know we're not the top dogs and never will be."

"S and S is still a mighty big business."

"How come you didn't take that offer from Sotheby's?"

"You knew about that?"

"In the auction world everybody gets to know everything, sooner or
later."

"I simply decided I liked it better here than I could anywhere else.

I'm happy as a lark.  I truly love working with Lee and you and
Hamilton-you've all been wonderful to me since my days as a temp, so
why should I change all that, even for more money?  Although, Liz, if
you've called me up here to offer me a raise, I accept."

"I'm offering you a chance to help me with a great opportunity, one I
never dreamed we'd have."

"An opportunity?  What kind?"  Maggie asked eagerly.

"Something's come up, something that would do more for S and S than
anything else that could happen, ever.  We've been offered a historic
sale, a fantastic sale of one of the finest, most famous private
collections in the world, almost certainly the finest in this
country."

"Oh Liz, great news!  What's the sale?"

"It's a single-owner sale that will get us more publicity than either
you or I can imagine.  It's a sale, Maggie, that will make S and S a
true worldwide household word for the first time since it was
founded.

There's no question that it will put us on a par, as far as status
goes, with Sotheby's and Christie's.  Smaller, yes, but just as good.

That would mean everything to Hamilton, and to all of us.  This sale
will open the door to dozens, hundreds of other great sales in the
future.  People will think of us who've never even considered
consigning their property to S and S. It's not an exaggeration to say
that this sale will change our future forever."

"But you still haven't told me what it is-are you trying to make me
beg?  And what about Lee?  Why are you telling me first?"

"Because you have it in your power to make sure that this sale takes
place.  You also have it in your power to prevent the sale, to keep it
from ever happening."

"Oh, Liz!  For heaven's sake!  How could that ever be?"

"Maggie, the sale..  it's... the jewels of Tessa Kent."

"You... you..."  Maggie stopped and looked away, shaking her head in
total negation.

"Maggie, I know she's your sister.  She called this morning and told
me.  I know the two of you have problems, but Maggie, dear Maggie, you
see the only reason she's willing to auction her jewels is to get a
chance to be reconciled with you.  She wants you, not Lee, to handle
the press.  How terrible can that be, Maggie?  It's a job you're
thoroughly capable of doing.  Tessa said she'd never sell her jewels
unless you were in charge of the publicity."

"No, Liz, no, she can't get at me through you."

"Maggie, the older I get the more I realize that happiness depends on
people, not things.  You can't get through life without family and a
few good friends.  Much as I adore my husband, my life has been deeply
enriched by my daughters and Hamilton and Minnie more than I can tell
you."

"No, Liz."

"Whatever the problem is with you and Tessa, believe me, as the two of
you get older, you'll need each other.  The ancient hurts and
hostilities will come to seem unimportant, even absurd.

In time you'll forget the details.  But the two of you-sisters-will
have something priceless together in the years to come, someone to talk
to who remembers the same family things you do, who came from the same
parents and grandparents, who understands you from the earliest days,
who speaks your language the way no friend ever can..."

"Liz, I do realize what family sentiment means," Maggie said, forcing
herself to sound patient and reasonable.  "But what went wrong between
us isn't something any auction can change."

"You don't know, you can't be sure of that!  Tessa's willing to help
with the publicity on this in every way, travel with the jewels to
previews and exhibitions, pose for any pictures, do any
television-Tessa Kent, one of the rare, truly great stars, Tessa Kent
who so rarely gives an interview, the very famously private Tessa
Kent.

Oh, Maggie, just think what that would mean to us!  Her only
stipulation is that the auction has to take place no later than six
months from now.  Of course we really need a year to do it right, but
what could I say?  She intends to give the proceeds to charity, maybe
that has something to do with it.  I didn't find out what the rush was,
I was too excited, but it will mean a mountain of immediate work, a
triple-time rush, I'll get you all the extra help you need-" "She said
six months?  Exactly that and no more?"

"Yes."

"Then you can't expect me to give you an answer in six minutes," Maggie
said, red-faced with suppressed words, as she took her leave.

"Polly, I have to talk to you," Maggie yelled through the door.

She'd left the office right after she'd talked to Liz and hurried home
to take counsel with Polly.  This wasn't something Barney and she could
discuss.  He didn't know anything about Tessa and her.

"Keep your hair on.  I'm coming."  Polly unlatched her door and watched
calmly as Maggie dashed in like a furious ball of dark tumbleweed,
turning around and around for a place to light.

"Oh, do sit down, for mercy's sake.  What's the matter?  Had a fight
with your very own Barney?  Already?"

"Of course not.  It's Tessa, can you believe it, after all these
years?"

"Did she try to get in touch with you again?"

"'In touch'?  Oh yes, you could say that.  She's blackmailing me the
strongest way she knows how.  She's offered S and S an auction of her
jewels-but only on condition that I run the press on it, meaning we'd
be in constant daily contact for six months.  Liz has just been at me,
singing siren songs, playing hearts and flowers, telling me that the
future of the house depends on me, and me alone.  Pure blackmail.

That, Miss Polly, is why I'm in a state."

"Mercy."

"How well expressed, how finely spoken.  Mercy, indeed.  Tessa's
probably got the greatest collection in the world except for a few
Saudi ladies who can't wear them in public, the several wives of the
Sultan of Brunei, and Queen Elizabeth."

"She must really be desperate to make up with you, Maggie," Polly said,
in her most serious, thoughtful voice.

"Guilt, pure guilt.  Although why it struck her now I can't imagine."

"I can't either.  But something's better than nothing.  At least she
feels bad enough to sacrifice her jewels."

"And I'm supposed to make her feel better about all those years of
rejection by helping her make a terrific success of the auction?

Hah-at least it's for charity."

"Something tells me that she wants to feel better by getting closer to
you.  I'm sure she can't be eager to part with her jewels.  She could
just give the money to charity if that were all it was, she has
enough.

People don't usually sell their jewels unless they need money or
they're dead, do they?"

"They're absurdly important to her, she's fixated on them, that's
something I'm sure of.  We used to play with them, dress up in
them...

talk about them endlessly..."

"Why are you still so opposed to trying for some sort of, oh, I don't
know, I hate to say 'relationship' but I can't think of another word to
replace it."

"Oh, not now Polly, not when I'm so happy," Maggie cried fervently.

"I've put her out of my mind, forgotten about her.  Why reopen old
wounds?"

"Is that fair?"

"I don't give a flying fuck if it's fair or not.  That woman has no
right to expect me to be fair.  How can you even ask me that
sickeningly sanctimonious question, Miss Priss?  'Fair' my ass!"

"So you still want to punish her?  The way you do when you regularly
send her letters back without reading them?  Nothing's changed in five
years.  You haven't let it.  Talk about carrying a grudge, you're the
champ."

"You do say what's on your mind, don't you?"

"That's what it is, isn't it?  Pure punishment?"

"Right.  And it's the least I can do."

"First you turn down money, then you send back letters, now you won't
work on a big exciting auction-wouldn't that be good for your
career?"

"Damn right it would.  Of course what motivates Liz is the
world-beating, slam-bang auction that's going to make such a difference
for S and S."

"Will it?"

"Of course it will.  It'll dwarf anything else this year.

"And you said no?"

"Several times, Polly, trust me.

"So now you're punishing Liz and Hamilton and the entire house of S and
S too, not just Tessa Kent?  Can't you let it go?

Can't you stop being so desperately something or other-immovable,
proud, stiff-necked, hard, stubborn, impossible?  That's certainly not
the Maggie Horvath I know and love."

"When were you elected to become the voice of my conscience?"

"The day you moved in, a sad, lonely case, really needing a place to
live, and I fed you for months, or rather years to be exact, and let
you rent my beautiful room, and became your best friend and still
am."

"Low blow."

"Well?"

"I'll think about it.  Bitch!"

32

Want to eat here tonight, sweetheart, or go out for Chinese food?"  Sam
asked Tessa soon after he arrived back at the apartment, three days
after she'd spoken to Liz Sinclair.

"How hungry are you?"  Tessa asked, holding him as tightly as she
could.

"I'm not, really.  I had an enormous lunch with the head of my
department, he's a two-fisted eater and if you don't match him bite for
bite he broods and sulks.  Rumor has it that a young professor was once
fired for ordering nothing but a salad."

"Could we just sit here for a while?  I have something I have to tell
you.

"That sounds ominous.  You haven't stopped loving me?  You don't want
me to pack my bag and go?  Because, you'd have to physically remove me
and you're half my size.

"Nothing like that.  This is all about me."

"Now that'll be a treat-you talk about yourself less than any female
I've ever known.  If you weren't so famous, you'd be my wonderful
little secret, my very own private woman of mystery."

Sam's love for her showed so openly, so happily, and with such a lack
of complication, that Tessa could scarcely endure it.

"Sam, sit down, drink your drink, and listen to me.  Don't interrupt.

I have to get this out all at once."

"Tessa, what the hell-" "Just listen.  Please.  When I was fourteen I
had a baby.  Maggie.

Mary Margaret Horvath.  My parents brought her up as my sister, to hide
the disgrace.  By the time Maggie was three I'd already made Little
Women.  I'd become Tessa Kent.  I neglected her shamefully.

I was too wrapped up in my own future, too full of ambition, too high
on my own totally wonderful self, to even think of getting to know
her.

I had plenty of opportunities because I lived at home for the next
three years, but I allowed my mother to take over Maggie completely, I
never even put up a fight.  I was... grateful; it meant one less
distraction in my exciting, brilliant, self-important life."

"Oh, come on Tessa, that's not you at all, that's-" "Then I met Luke
and married him," Tessa continued without giving Sam a chance to say
more.  "I was twenty, Maggie was five.

I never told Luke about her although now there's no question in my mind
that if I had, right at the start, he would have accepted the fact that
Maggie existed.  Hell, he was forty-five, a grown-up, a kind man, and I
knew he was crazy about me.  There was a window of opportunity, and I
blew it.  He wanted to think I was a virgin, right from our first date,
and I let him believe I was.  That was the worst of my lies.

Afterward, I couldn't admit I wasn't-not that I was remotely tempted
to-I lied and lied, even on our wedding night.  I could never be honest
no, I could have been, Sam-I could have but I chose not to."

"Tessa, you're so hard on yourself, you were a kid-" "You weren't
there, Sam, I was.  I'm merely being accurate.  The week Luke and I
were married, my parents died in an accident and Maggie was left all
alone.  I let her go, Sam, I let her go to Luke's stepbrother's family,
the Websters, and grow up there.  My daughter could have grown up with
Luke and me, with a mother and a stepfather, instead of being stashed
away with strangers, but I never had the courage to admit she wasn't my
sister.  I was an utter coward, a shameful coward."

"Tessa..."

"Don't, Sam, let me finish.  I visited Maggie from time to time, and
she visited me, not nearly as often as it should have been.  I never
truly knew if she was happy or not.  I could have found out, so
quickly, if I'd only had the guts to ask her the right questions, but I
kept our relationship bright and easy and utterly superficial.  The
truth must be that I didn't really want to know, not in my heart of
hearts.  That was easier for me.  So much less complicated.  My life
with Luke came first.  Before my own daughter, Sam.  I wasn't even a
good sister to her.  All the real family Maggie ever had was this
remote movie-star creature who threw glamour dust at her every once in
a while instead of steady, daily love and caring.  Barney, the
Websters' son, adored her.  That's all the real love she got, Sam, from
the time she was five until she was eighteen.  That was most of her
life-she's twenty-three now.  Even after Luke died I didn't tell
her."

"Then why now-?"

"Wait!  Maggie found out I was her mother when she was eighteen, five
years ago.  I'd finally decided the time had come to tell her, but she
found out first.  She's never spoken to me since, or opened a single
letter I've sent her.  There's one chance left, but I'm afraid Maggie
won't let it happen."

"One chance for what?"

"To somehow get closer to Maggie."

"Are you looking for forgiveness?"

"I guess.  ..oh, shit, of course I am!"

"I don't blame you."

"If there's the slightest chance, it's worth trying.  Maggie works in
publicity for S and S, the auction house.  I called a friend there, one
of the owners, and told her I'd sell all my jewels at auction, but only
on the condition that Maggie would work on the sale.  That way we'd be
thrown together all the time and she'll have to talk to me, and
maybe... but I don't know yet if she will or won't."

"Do you have a lot of jewels?"  he asked, in surprise.  "All I've ever
noticed is this unbelievable green rock and some pearls.  Oh, and those
cameos you were wearing the day we met."

"Oh, Sam, darling Sam, Cleopatra had more jewels than I do, I'm sure,
but yes, I have jewels.  I just don't wear them with you or your
friends.  They're a..  distraction."

"You mean something like a million bucks worth of jewelry?"  he asked
incredulously.

"Tens of millions."

"That just might have made the wrong impression at faculty parties."

Sam gave a snort of laughter.  "When will you know?"

"When Liz Sinclair calls me.  I have very little hope."

"If there is an auction, when will it be?"

"I told them it had to be held within six months, I don't want this
situation to drag on and on."

"Will it take up a lot of your time?"

'Almost all, and I'll have to travel a lot to publicize it."

"Tessa, we've been together for a year and you've never said a thing
about Maggie.  You never so much as told me that you had a sister.  Is
it because of the auction that you told me the whole story tonight?"

"No, Sam, no!  There probably won't be an auction and I certainly could
have waited to find out if it was going to happen.

But I couldn't stand lying to you anymore, lying by not saying
anything, even though chances are you would never have known."  She
couldn't tell him everything at once, Tessa thought with a twinge of
guilt.

"And even though you thought I might stop loving you.  Admit it, you
did think that.  I know you so well now, I could tell."

"But how can you keep loving me, Sam?"

"You made one hell of a lot of mistakes, rotten judgment calls, you
were a thoroughly lousy mother and not even a decent sister.

But that was then and this is now, and there's hope for you, Tessa
Kent.  So you thought I would change, you actually believed that was
possible?"

"Yes."

"I guess you don't really know me yet," Sam said, grabbing her and
pulling her tight.  Tessa sobbed into his shirt for long, unutterably
relieved minutes while he kissed her hair and patted her back as if she
were a baby.  Finally, she looked up at him, her mascara running down
her cheeks, and said, "You haven't even asked what this will do to the
movie schedule, how long we'll have to postpone starting production."

"What movie?"

The next day Maggie, grim-faced but bowing to the arguments of wily,
irrefutable Polly Guildenstern and to her own intensely rooted loyalty
to S & S, agreed to handle the publicity for the auction of the jewels
of Tessa Kent.

A preliminary meeting was immediately scheduled for the following
morning, a meeting that would include only Liz and Hamilton; Tessa;
Maggie; Monty Foy, the director of S & S's jewelry department; and
Juliet Tree, the director of marketing.  As within every auction house,
the big sale, or the prospect of one, was a tightly held secret known
only to the few top people who would work on it from the very
beginning.

Everyone but Maggie had arrived and taken their places around a table
by the appointed time.  Earlier that morning Liz had gathered Monty Foy
and Juliet Tree together and told them that the only reason S & S had
the prospect of Tessa Kent's auction was that Maggie Horvath was
Tessa's younger sister.  Unless Maggie ran the press, there would be no
sale, but they must not make any reference to that fact during the
meeting.  They had to be informed, she realized, so that they wouldn't
make a gaffe about the absence of Lee Maine, who normally would have
been there.

Tessa had refused to sign the Master Consignment Agreement even after
she'd telephoned her with the news that Maggie would participate, Liz
thought, tapping her foot.  Tessa was waiting to see if Maggie was
actually going to show up, in spite of Liz's assurances, and by now,
Maggie, who was usually so punctual, was ten minutes late.

"Who'll have more tea or coffee?"  Liz asked, presiding as she always
did at staff meetings, behind a Georgian silver service.

"I'd love another cup of coffee, Liz," the normally collected Monty Foy
said nervously, rubbing his bald head in an automatic gesture.

If that man has more coffee he'll explode from nerves, Liz thought,
glad that she'd substituted decaf without telling anyone.

She knew she couldn't take another drop of caffeine herself, without
risk, to say nothing of Hamilton, who looked as taut as she'd ever seen
him.

The presence of Tessa Kent certainly did nothing to lower the level of
tension in the room, Liz noted, trying not to look at her watch.  In
most cases, the owner of a collection is dead.  Everyone in the room
was accustomed to dealing with heirs, using tact, discretion, and tacit
sympathy.  The auction business, Liz reflected, is a profoundly people
business, a service business that has to please everyone, sellers and
buyers, yet an infernally delicate business because you can never
forget that you're coping with people who are in varying degrees of
pain about selling their personal property, so often things they care
about but can't afford to keep.

However, the presence of one of the most radiant film stars in history
sitting at their conference table changed everything.  To all of them,
even to her, Liz realized, Tessa Kent was the sum of many things, the
unforgettable roles she'd played, the Oscars she'd won, the sheer
mythology of her Hollywood glamour, the cloak of inaccessibility she'd
drawn around herself for twenty years, her position as Luke Blake's
widow, and, of course, her jewels, that incredible collection of jewels
that was not, until the contract had been signed, theirs to sell.  And
it was impossible to keep your eyes off her beauty, which made them all
look as if they belonged to another species.

"Miss Kent," asked Juliet Tree, breaking the silence, "have you seen
the Sotheby's catalog of the Thurn und Taxis Collection belonging to
Princess Gloria that's being sold in Geneva in November?"

"I glanced at it the other day," Tessa replied.

Just what had given the otherwise clever Juliet the idea of mentioning
Sotheby's at this particular moment?  She must stop grinding her teeth,
Liz told herself.  The dentist had warned her about that.

Let him go into the auction business, that fussy little man, he
wouldn't last a week.

"I guessed it would interest you," Juliet continued, "since it's a
single-owner catalog, and those, you know, are exceedingly rare.

Did you happen to notice the three-page genealogy of the House of Thurn
und Taxis in the front?"

"How could I miss it?"  Tessa answered.  "All those princes and
princesses, with an archduke or an infanta or a king thrown in now and
then, related to half the aristocracy of Europe, and the whole thing
based on running a better postal service.  Just imagine what I might
have accumulated if like Princess Gloria, I'd married a man whose
family had started transporting mail for the Holy Roman Empire five
hundred years ago?

But alas, my genealogy is shorter, simpler, and vastly more humble.

There seemed to be an abundance of tiaras in the sale.  I wonder how
many people are in the market for tiaras?  Of all the jewelry, I
preferred the green beryl and diamond brooch in the form of the neck
badge of the Order of the Golden Fleece... it was fantastic enough to
have been designed by Verdura."

Why was she chatting on and on like this?  Tessa wondered, feeling her
hands cold with sweat.  She'd never been one to chat, especially with
perfect strangers.

"You mean... Miss Kent, you're going to keep on buying jewels after
your own auction?"  Monty Foy asked, agog, putting out his cigarette.

I'd kill him, Liz thought, but death would be too good for that fool.

"Well, who knows if this auction is even going to happen," Tessa said
lightly.  "Maggie doesn't seem to be showing up, does she?

But no, Mr. Foy, I'm not selling my jewels in order to start buying
more.  I was interested in the extraordinary light green of the
beryl.

After all, what is an emerald but a beryl with traces of chromium in
it?  I love green jewels more than any others.  Give me a peridot
rather than a diamond any day.  On the other hand, I've never said no
to an emerald.  In fact, I've always gone rather seriously overboard
about them.  No one is aware of it, but after my husband's death, I
started collecting.  Collecting seriously, as a connoisseur; not just
to wear.  It seemed to comfort me.  But, of course, you'll see
everything for yourself, depending on Maggie, that is.  I'm almost
ashamed to confess it but many of the great jewels that were bought at
auction by phone, anonymously during the past four or five years were
sent straight home to me."

Good God, Liz thought, she has even more than all the jewels we've seen
her wearing in photographs.  I can't stand this.

Maggie, where the bloody hell are you?

"In fact," Tessa continued, "I've just remembered something I noticed
last night-about the color photos in the Thurn und Taxis catalog.  They
were better than any I've ever seen for any auction, but not good
enough to satisfy me.  Who works on the catalogs?"

"I do, Miss Kent," Juliet Tree answered.  "That falls into the
marketing department."

"I want Irving Penn to take the photographs, all of them.  It would
make the catalog a permanent artistic treasure, like his flower
books."

"Penn!  But..  but..  .he's-he's the most expensive---" "I'm aware of
that.  Even Estee Lauder pales at his prices.  I'll pay for them
myself, of course.  Always assuming that there is an auction."

"Tessa," Liz asked, clutching at anything to keep her staff from
returning to the magnificent Thurn und Taxis catalog, "have you decided
which charities you plan to give the proceeds to?"

"Cancer research, Liz, curable cancer.  First breast cancer and then
others.  I'll have to educate myself about where the greatest progress
is being made, if, that is, the auction actually takes place."

"Lung cancer?"  Monty Foy asked curiously.

"No, that's incurable, didn't you know?"  Tessa said.  "You may live
with it for quite a while, but you can never cure it."

The urbane Mr. Foy paled.  He'd smoked a cigarette just before the
meeting.  It would, he vowed, be the last he'd ever smoke.  He wished
he'd known, he might have enjoyed it more.  Or less.

Hamilton Scott couldn't keep silent any longer.  "If the auction takes
place, as you put it, Miss Kent, we'd be well advised to make sure that
no other big jewelry sales are scheduled at Sotheby's or Christie's for
the same time period.  And we'd have to light a fire under Mr. Penn,
today if possible."

"But I've already established a firm time frame, Mr. Scott," Tessa
answered, irritated.  "Didn't Liz tell you that any sale has to take
place no later than six months from now?"

"We will, naturally, respect your desires, but I still don't quite
understand the reason for such haste," he persisted, undeterred.

Tessa Kent might be the most important consignor they'd ever had, but
his family had been running auctions for almost two hundred years.

"That's the way it is," Tessa snapped.  She wasn't about to explain her
reasons to anyone, she thought wrathfully.  And if Penn couldn't take
the pictures quickly enough, she'd find another great still-life
photographer who could, not that there was anyone who came close.  It
could be made to happen quickly in Hollywood.  What was wrong with
these plodding, cautious auction people?  She felt herself beginning to
get warm with growing rage.  She didn't like pompous Hamilton Scott.

She should have gone to Sotheby's... but Maggie didn't work there,
worse luck.

"More tea?  More coffee?"  I'm starting to squeak, Liz Sinclair
thought.  If only she'd thought of getting Danish pastries or bagels,
the wait might seem shorter.  Maggie was well over a half hour late as
it was.  She must have changed her mind and be too embarrassed to admit
it, damn the girl!  Why hadn't she had the gumption to phone?

"Give me some tea, Liz," Hamilton Scott grumbled.  "Whoever made this
coffee should be fired."

"I'll get a floater to brew a fresh pot," Liz said, wishing her look
were a death ray and she could make her brother disappear in a puff of
smoke.

"Sorry!  Sorry everybody, the bus broke down, we all had to get out,
the next three buses were so full that they didn't even stop, so I had
to walk the rest of the way," Maggie said breathlessly as she slid into
the vacant chair between Juliet Tree and Monty Foy.  She busied herself
with opening her handbag and taking out a notebook and pencils, not
looking at anyone in the room, a neutral expression fixed firmly on her
face.

Tessa's heart was cleft by a burst of thanksgiving at the sound of
Maggie's voice.  She could find no armor to protect herself from her
emotions.  She felt as bare, as stripped, as she'd ever felt in her
life.

"I believe we can get started now," said Liz Sinclair, managing to
remain majestic as she slid the Master Consignment Agreement across to
Tessa, who was seated next to her, and indicating the place for Tessa's
signature.  As soon as Tessa scrawled her name, Liz continued.  "From
now on, Maggie, you're to travel with a car and driver.  Your time's
too valuable to be wasted."

"Great," Maggie responded, opening her notebook and arranging her
pencils according to some unknown order.

She won't look at me, Tessa thought, but oh, she's here, she's here.

Tears started into her eyes as she stared hungrily at Maggie, all but a
stranger after five years, a self-assured, consummate New Yorker,
transformed, God knows how, into one of the bright-eyed, swift, strong,
stunningly self-possessed young women who strode the streets of the
city as if they owned them.  Maggie, her flamboyant, downright
voluptuous daughter, who owed her nothing, whose difficult path through
childhood and adolescence had been traversed without her, Maggie who'd
created herself triumphantly, with the only cards she'd been dealt.

Maggie, almost unbelievably, was here today, ready to go to work.

Maggie, her daughter.

"Maggie," Tessa managed to say, "you look wonderful."

"Feelin' fine," Maggie replied briefly, with a nod at the room in
general.

She won't say my name, Tessa thought.  She won't look at me.

But she's here.  We've made a start.  Thank you, God.

33

It could be called "unseemly haste," Tessa reflected, as she sat and
watched the transfer of her jewels to the possession of the house of
Scott & Scott, or it could be called an intelligent use of time.  Each
day for the next six months had suddenly become vital once she'd signed
the Master Consignment Agreement and made the auction a reality.

It was only hours since this morning's meeting and yet Monty Foy and
two of his assistants had begun an inventory of every piece of jewelry
she owned, in a room two stories underground that the bank had put at
their disposal.

Tessa sat next to the table where they worked, watching them carefully
open each jewel box and take out and triple-check each item in low,
colorless voices, each man scrutinizing the piece in question and
repeating its description.  They wrote a preliminary account of each
item on a separate sheet of paper, which Monty Foy gave her to sign,
and then replaced the contents, closed each box, and added a special
seal.  Outside the room a large team of couriers and armed guards
waited.

In the room, at their feet, lay a heap of heavy canvas bags, worn and
battered briefcases, and sturdy paper shopping bags in which, as each
day's inventory was completed, the jewels would be distributed and
hand-carried from the bank to S & S in specially rented taxis and
ordinary cars.  Foy estimated that they'd be finished in three days.

They undoubtedly knew what they were doing, Tessa thought.

Harry Winston usually employed the U.S. Postal Service to deliver his
precious pieces; Van Cleef had always given her unmarked, plain manila
envelopes to slip her purchases into.  Did any jeweler but Tiffany's
advertise with those unmistakable turquoise bags, which so often, after
a trinket had been taken home, were used to hold brown-bag lunches
until they fell apart?

The velvet mountain of unopened boxes that had been assembled from her
various vaults seemed to diminish slowly, yet the pile of sealed boxes
on a four-wheeled metal carrier, which looked like a miniature airport
baggage truck, grew steadily as the highly trained men worked in deep
concentration.

It was vital, Tessa had been told, to make the transfer as quickly as
possible so that S & S's experts could begin to examine each jewel for
an estimate of its value.  Their resident experts in the Geneva,
Zurich, and London offices had all been notified to come to New York
immediately to help Monty Foy and his juniors, who couldn't possibly
cope with the volume of work required.

The catalog would require a highly detailed description of the size,
condition, and number of specific jewels contained in each and every
piece, as well as all the details available of provenance.

The appraisers would examine every piece and send them through the S &
S jewelry laboratories for a thorough check of the quality of each
jewel before they set the high and low estimates of what the piece was
likely to sell for on the open market, its "fair market value."

All jewelry bought at retail, rather than at auction, is routinely
marked up to include the retailer's profit, his insurance, the
reputation of his establishment, his advertising, and his cost of doing
business.  Prices at an auction are less than retail prices by a high
of fifty to sixty percent, and a low of twenty-five percent, of the
retail price.

Tessa knew this, particularly since she'd started collecting.

Going into a great jeweler's, selecting a jewel, and taking it home was
a luxury for which one paid dearly.  But Luke, like the majority of
jewelry customers, had been willing to pay that huge markup for the
pleasure of dealing with the top jewelers of the world, for their
individual design styles, for the knowledge that they stood behind
their wares and vouched for their quality, and most particularly for
the human desire to buy exactly what you wanted when you wanted it,
especially when it was intended as a gift.

As each box was opened, Tessa felt herself getting more and more
irrationally disturbed at the sight of three strange men handling her
property.  They were as dignified, respectful, and ceremonial as
priests serving the mass, as they went about their task.

But how did they dare so much as touch her jewels, she raged, feeling
her heart beat faster and faster as each box was opened and its
contents were gently taken out and thoroughly inspected.

When she'd signed the Consignment Agreement, the "contract" as everyone
called it, she hadn't realized that she would actually witness this
scene, this hideous desecration, this rape!

So far everything they'd inventoried had been given to her by Luke.

Monty Foy had put his nicotine-stained paws all over the same jewels
Luke covered her with before they made love.  Now the odious man was
holding up the emerald necklace Luke had given her in Ere, on their
honeymoon, and intoning, in his detestably monotonous and oily voice,
"One emerald and diamond necklace, five pear-shaped emeralds, one
pear-shaped emerald pendant, detachable, all six emeralds set in
diamonds."

His mere contact with the necklace violated one of her most precious
memories, made it vanish into a crass transaction, drained it of its
magic, turned to ashes the memory of her innocent bliss on that
thrilling evening.  She'd had no idea how violently it would hurt.

Tessa turned her head away from the table, concentrating on her
engagement ring, trying to escape the sight and sound of the three men,
until the moment she had to quickly turn back to sign each
description.

She was filled with a feeling of astonished wrath at herself.  Had she
been pig-stupid enough to decide to sell her jewels at auction without
ever truly comprehending, in her heart, that an auction meant that she
would have to strip herself of these beloved symbols of her past?  Was
she so slow-witted that she'd believed she could avoid the outrage of
strangers treating her most personal belongings as mere objects?

Hadn't she understood that many other women would soon be wearing, at
their ears, their wrists, their throats, the only tangible remains of
her most private moments?

"Oh, yes, you're absolutely right, it did come from Tessa Kent's sale,"
said with a self-satisfied laugh!  Couldn't she accept the fact that
this surprisingly painful defilement was the price she had chosen to
pay?

Had she somehow had the notion, baroque in its elaborate flourishes,
that she could sell her jewels and keep them at the same time?

Hadn't she known that finding a way to have access to Maggie would come
at a severe price?

Shut the fuck up and stop complaining, you ridiculous little twit, she
told herself savagely.  Just because Maggie never once looked at you
today, just because she rushed off halfway through the eeting in order
to huddle with Juliet Tree and Penn's rep, is no reason to whimper.

There are almost six months to go.  Anything can happen.  Something
must happen.  Nothing was guaranteed except that Maggie and she would
be working together on the auction.

"One triple-strand ruby necklace, set in diamonds..."  Monty Foy had
reached the boxes and boxes of rubies, carefully set aside in their own
vault, not one of which Tessa had touched since Luke's death.  She
would have gotten rid of them long ago, but even the idea of coping
with their existence had been too much to face.  She couldn't stand the
sight of them.

"I'm going out to get a cup of coffee," she said, rising abruptly.

"But we can't continue without you," Monty Foy said.  "I can't touch
these boxes unless you're here to verify the inventory."

"For Christ's sake, Mr. Foy, I trust you.  You're not going to stuff
them in your pockets!  Or smoke them!  Finish the inventory of every
last ruby without me and I'll initial each sheet of paper," she ordered
him.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, unless you appoint someone, a lawyer or an
accountant, to do it in your place."

"Send in one of those security people."

One of Foy's assistants opened the door and motioned to the first man
standing against the door.

"What's your name?"  Tessa asked him.

"Bernie Allen, ma'am."

"Mr. Allen, please witness the inventory of my rubies, sign each paper
Mr.  Foy gives you, and I'll sign them again when you're finished."

"Yes, ma'am."  He raised an eyebrow at Monty Foy, who shrugged his
shoulders and waved him forward.

Tessa left the room and headed for the ladies' room at the end of the
corridor.  Suddenly, walking toward her, dark against the glare of the
fluorescent light, was the tall, slender shape of a girl wearing the
black outfit Maggie had had on this morning.  Tessa's hand flew to her
throat.  Maggie!  Oh, Maggie!  The girl approached, and quickly she
realized that it wasn't Maggie but a stranger, with dark red hair worn
in close-cropped curls, dressed in that black quasi-uniform they all
wore.

"Miss Kent, I'm Janet Covitz, Maggie's assistant press officer.

She sent me over to see if there was anything you needed.  Can I get
you a cup of tea or a Coke or some Perrier?  Have they made you
comfortable in there?  Are there any personal errands you'd like me to
run for you while you witness the inventory?  Any phone calls you'd
like me to make?  Maggie told me to tell you that from now on I'll be
totally at your disposal."

"No, thank you, Janet, nothing.  I'm just taking a breather.

What do you mean, totally at my disposal'?"

"Maggie's going to be super busy for every minute of the next six
months, Miss Kent.  She's formed a team with one of the other press
officers and two floaters to work directly with her, and she's
delegated me to do everything she'd normally be doing for you herself
if she had the time."

"I see.  I could use a cup of coffee.  I'm just going to stand out here
in the corridor for the moment.  It's claustrophobic in there."

Her mind a blank, searching helplessly for a way around Janet Covitz,
Tessa paced the hall, oblivious to the security team, until Bernie
Allen reappeared.

"Mr.  Foy's finished with the rubies, Miss Kent."

"Thank you, Mr. Allen.  When a young lady shows up with coffee, please
tell her I've changed my mind about it.  She can go on back to her
office."

Tessa returned to her chair, just as Monty Foy lifted her Tiffany
pearls from their box.  "I'm keeping these," she said, snatching them
from his hands.

"Quite right," he said understandingly.  "They're hardly in the same
ballpark as the rest of the collection, are they?  Some sentimental
value, I assume."

"No more value than your lungs, Mr.  Foy."

34

ow'd the meeting go?"  Sam asked eagerly even before he'd kissed
Tessa.

All of yesterday evening, he thought, she'd been negotiating her way
across a tightrope of nerves in a way that was completely foreign to
his experience of her.  She had been so wound up that she could talk of
little other than the fact that today, this very afternoon, since all
the jewels were now in the possession of S & S, she'd find herself in
the same room with Maggie for the first time since the day when she'd
signed the auction contract.

"I'm not sure," Tessa answered in a white, muted voice, her vitality
and conviction lost.  "I'm just not sure at all.  I may have blown
it."

"What are you talking about?"  he asked, tipping her lips up for a
kiss.  "You said this was just a preliminary strategy meeting.

How could even you, with all your amazing ability to screw up your
life, possibly blow a six-month effort right at the beginning,
darling?"

Tessa gave him a smile that was no more than a faint attempt at
smiling, so miserable that he felt genuine alarm.  "Tell me everything
that happened," Sam ordered, "from the beginning, so I can explain it
to you, because you don't make sense."

"There were seven of us, sitting around a conference tableLee Maine has
lent the room to Maggie for the duration, and--" "Who were they?

Pretend you're a historian, baby.  I want details."

"Besides Maggie and Juliet Tree and me, there was that girl Janet
Covitz I told you about, and another I hadn't met before, Dune Maddox
by name, a rakish, very social blond with more brains than you'd think
to look at her.  Also there were two floaters Maggie recruited, kids,
Sam, probably no more than twenty, and adorable, a matched pair of
brunettes, both obviously bright and eager, named Aviva Beach and
Joanne Corday."

"Were you the only grown-up there?"

"No, Juliet Tree's in her forties, a true professional who's been at S
and S for years, an elegant woman, the chignon and tailored suit type,
who seems a bit square, especially compared to the others.

Obviously Maggie's a cult figure; the others are all Maggie clones,
like Janet, even down to that haircut, and except for Juliet, they
treat her word as writ."

"So you're sitting there with a bunch of females, and you're
looking...

how?"

"Semi-movie-star.  Oh, Sam, I was up half the night obsessing on what
to wear, and I decided it would be affected to dress down the way I do
for your department head, that I should look more or less the way
they'd expect me to look, but not anything over the top, so I wore the
same thing I had on the day I met you.  I hoped it would bring me
luck."

"But remember, you had me in thrall from adolescence on.

Then what happened?"

"Oh, I behaved myself.  I pushed my chair just far enough away from the
table so I wouldn't seem to be intruding on Maggie's turf, since she
was running the meeting, and I shut up and listened.  She explained how
they announce an important auction, keeping it totally secret until the
actual morning of the press conference, so it makes headlines all over
the world.  She said Hamilton Scott would make the announcement of the
sale and then I'd speak, explaining why I'd decided to auction my
jewels and telling the press that the proceeds would go to cancer
research and answering questions ... the usual stuff Dune Maddox seemed
surprised that I was going to be doing that, as if somehow a movie star
wouldn't be able to open her mouth without a script, and I told her
public speaking didn't bother me."

"So far, so good."

"Oh, Sam, you said to start at the beginning, damn it!  So don't keep
giving me progress reports on what I tell you."

"Don't you think you want a drink?"

"Not particularly.  It'll just make me more depressed and worse
tempered than ever."

"Don't you think you need a drink?"

"Probably.  Thank you, darling.  Why do you take such good care of
me?"

Tessa asked plaintively.

"Why shouldn't I?  You're my designated lifetime sweetheart, and on top
of that, you're a good provider.  Now drink this and tell me more."

"Juliet wanted to know if I had any scrapbooks and I told her that
Fiona had made them of every picture ever published of me since my
first film and I'd let her know to send them here right away.

They need the pictures for the catalog and to distribute to
magazines."

"But there must be thousands upon thousands of photographs."

"There are.  The idea is that every magazine that does a story on me
will get entirely different photos from different movies and different
occasions when I was photographed in real life wearing my jewels.

Maggie's trying for cover stories in most of the magazines I read like
Vogue, Town and Country, and Vanity Fair-and in some I don't, like
People and Hello!  and Life and even in some of the decorating
magazines like Architectural Digest or House and Garden-she says they
rarely do celebrity covers but if they can come here to photograph me
at home they almost certainly will.

And she's hoping for Newsweek and maybe even Time the actual week of
the auction."

"Isn't that publicity overkill?  Almost the only ones she's left out
are Spy and Rolling Stone."

"Apparently she doesn't think overkill exists.  She's going after the
big television interview shows, too.  I didn't question it, just said
I'd be available for anything except lying in my tub with bubbles up to
my armpits."

"Will you mind if anyone gets wise to us?  You've kept it so quiet all
year.

"Mind?  I'd take out an ad in Puhlishers Weekly if you'd let me.

Will you mind is more the question."

"I wish everybody knew," Sam answered.  He understood Tessa's
discretion intellectually.  He realized that she didn't want them to be
the focus of worldwide gossip and speculation, but he yearned for an
official romance.  Hard to have with a public figure, he told himself
impatiently.  If only she'd marry him!  She'd been on the verge, before
the auction came up, but now all her emotional focus was turned toward
Maggie.

"Your study'll be off-limits anyway," Tessa continued.

"Photographers won't want me in front of a desk."

"You can do this stuff in your sleep, can't you?"

"Just about.  I publicized every picture I made, but I never did an
interview just for the sake of keeping my name in front of the
public.

That's probably why I'm supposed to be something of a recluse.  Anyway,
I gave all the press department an open invitation to come on and take
a good look at this place so they'll have an idea of how it could
photograph.  Janet and Dune jumped at it, the two floaters didn't quite
dare speak up yet, though they'll get here sooner or later."

"What about Maggie, doesn't she want to see it too?"

"Clearly no.  She told them she was delegating all questions
photographic to Dune and Janet.  She gave Juliet Tree first choice of
pictures for the catalog.  They think there's a good chance they can
sell it in the hundreds of thousands, what with the serious buyers, the
merely curious, the Irving Penn fans and my own fans.  It can sell as a
gift book since it'll be out in time for Christmas.  I told them that S
and S was donating all their profits on the catalog to cancer research
too."

"When did that happen?"

"When I called Liz Sinclair this morning and suggested it," "Do they
know it's your idea?"

"Of course not; it's got to be perceived as Liz and Hamilton's
gesture.

"So far, strictly as a historian, I don't see where you blew it."

"The next thing that happened was I took a really good look around the
table and I decided that whatever I said, no matter how informal or
available I was, and believe me, I was giving my all, they were still
looking at me-all but Maggie, that is-with a stifling mixture of awe
and curiosity and disbelief and oh-me-oh-my-she'sreally-Tessa-Kent
stuff.  They all called me 'Miss Kent,' of course, even Juliet Tree,
and they couldn't stop darting tiny sideways glances at me, checking me
out over and over, all of them except for Maggie."

"But she knows what you look like," he said reasonably.

"No, Sam, that's not the point.  She made absolutely no eye contact
with me, none, Sam, even though we had been in that meeting for at
least two hours.  She looked at all the others whenever she talked to
them, but I could have been completely invisible.  When she looked
around the table she'd skim way above the top of my head, moving her
eyes so quickly that no one could tell.  She never once, not once, used
my name, Sam, she referred to me as 'the consignor' as if I weren't
right there in the room, and managed to make it sound as if she were
just being terribly correct and polite.

She was actually ceremonial, as if I were the hundred-year-old
hereditary ruler of some feudal country."

"So then you blew up?"

"No, nothing that sensible.  Then I suggested that since we were all
going to be working together for a long time, we should be like people
on film sets, at least my sets and use first names.  I asked everybody
to call me Tessa, because that way Maggie would have to go along with
the rest of them."

"Well, what's wrong with that?"

"They all looked at Maggie, as if for permission, and she raised her
eyebrows slightly as if I'd said something embarrassingly overfriendly,
like a puppy dog wagging my tail, and that's when-oh, shit, Sam, I was
so frustrated by the icy, determined way she was giving me the
invisible treatment, I was so desperately anxious for her to
acknowledge me in some way, yes, Sam, just like a puppy jumping up and
down for attention, and planting his muddy paws all over a white skirt,
that I explained, in an entirely natural, casual way, that Maggie had
been leaning over backward to be proper because she didn't want to
trade on or presume on the fact that we were sisters."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Not much, I wasn't there.  How did Maggie react?"

"She didn't.  They did.  They were rocked by the news.  You could
literally feel their astonishment hit as they took in the word
'sisters."  They were incredulous and shocked and fascinated and
salivating at the gossip value, but, to their credit, they held it down
pretty well.  A couple of them blurted out 'Sisters?"  and Juliet
looked as if she'd just solved some large puzzle, and Maggie didn't say
anything at all, just kept on consulting her everlasting notes, so I
blundered right on, doing a Miss Innocence number, and I said that I'd
assumed they must all have heard by now, that Liz Sinclair and Hamilton
Scott and Lee Maine knew and I simply imagined that everyone in the
publicity department would know... Christ, I really blathered all over
the place, fool that I am."

"How can you be so sure if she didn't react?"

"Because the entire rest of the meeting, which lasted another endless
hour; Maggie still didn't look at me or use my name, and I could tell
that she'd become ten times colder than before, and now she was deeply
resentful, because I'd pushed too hard and confronted her.  And I
had!

Oh, Sam, I had, damn it to hell!  I pushed her into being in charge of
the publicity for the auction and then I pushed her again, the very
next time I saw her!  I didn't need to bring that up, Sam.  I should
have let it come out if and when Maggie chose for it to come out, or
never be mentioned at all, if that's what she wanted.

Instead of walking lightly and carrying no stick at all, I stomped on
her toes and bashed her over the head with a baseball bat."

"Okay, so you've had a setback, I won't try to tell you otherwise, but
you haven't 'blown it,' darling."  Sam said after a moment's thought,
"You've gotten a modified version of the truth out in the open, so at
least you don't have to go around acting as if you two had never met
before, which would be pretty hard to keep up for six months,
especially since other people at S and S already knew.  And it's good
that everyone will be calling you by your first name and feeling more
comfortable with you.  You're not just Tessa Kent anymore, you're
Maggie's big sister, so that makes you human."

"Do you really think that or are you just saying it?"

"I really think it.  You know I don't soft-pedal things to you.

When you get right down to it, it's not the sister stuff that's the big
deal.  It's the mother-daughter connection that's making her act the
way she does, and that's been going on for so long that it won't go
away until... it goes away.  Somehow.  Or other."

"Oh, Sam, I was so awful!"

"You were natural, you weren't on guard, you were too happy to see her;
you wanted to shout from the rooftops.  You weren't very smart.  Even
you, darling, have moments like that.  But, remember; you've still got
six months.  Anything can happen.  Six months is a long time."

"Oh, Sam.  Six months?  Six months!  They'll go by so quickly!"

"You can accomplish miracles in six months... we've only been together
a little more than a year and I can't even imagine how time passed
before I knew you."

"I guess... time... is always relative," Tessa said in a small voice,
drifting to the window and looking out blindly.  Six months, not even
two full seasons of one year.  One day Sam would be a fine old man, a
famous old man, still teaching, still writing, happily married, the
father of a family, one day, twenty or thirty unimaginable years from
now.  Oh, Sam, when you look back, will you still think six months was
a long time?  Will you have any idea how much I would have given to
grow older, year by year with you?  How often will you remember me, my
darling?  How long before a day will pass without your thinking of
me?

How long until you meet another woman?

Please, be happy, Sam, but don't forget me-not too soon...

35

"You look so tired," Polly told Maggie, inspecting her friend's face.

"Is it the same reason I've been hearing about for the past few endless
months so I can keep on feeling guilty, or is it something else?"

"Keep feeling guilty," Maggie said grimly.  "You have no reason to hope
for anything better."

"Tessa Kent is still the trooper of troopers?"

"Honestly, Polly, if you could just see her.  Today, in a long list of
other appointments, we had an interview lunch with a particularly
difficult stringer from the London Times who obviously considers movie
stars deeply beneath him, particularly those with spare jewelry to
hawk-an old-line Labour Party supporter who made it clear that he'd
confiscate the Crown Jewels if he could and abolish, if not behead, the
entire Royal Family-and by the time she'd finished charming him, the
guy'd have agreed to increase the Prince of Wales's revenues and
chipped in his own money to help buy the House of Windsor a new
yacht.

Talk about manipulative!  Thy name is Tessa Kent."

"Isn't that her job?"

"Sure it is, I'll give her that.  But she's such an operator.  It's
sickening to see the way she gets people to eat out of her hand."

"How'd she do it?"  Polly asked, always avid for details.

"Damned if I know.  She used the familiar wit and the familiar warmth
and smiled at his attempts at jokes and pretended she didn't hear his
snide remarks, and finally, God knows how, got him to tell her about
his wife and how he had been suckered into buying her an engagement
ring from Asprey, who are three times 'by appointment' to members of
the Royal Family, because that's what his wife had been dreaming about
all her life, and after that it was off to the races about the
psychological reasons for women's inner attachments to jewels until
finally she led him down the garden path with historical stuff like
Mary Stuart's famous black pearls that Queen Elizabeth got her hands on
even before she ordered Mary's head chopped off.

"Aha, the old black pearl ploy."

"Exactly.  Now this Brit has decided to do a two-piece story on the
whole subject, concentrating on her collection of a particular kind of
rare and valuable Tahitian black pearl-their color is called peacock'
because it ranges from deepest purple to dark green-a large, perfectly
matched string could bring close to a million dollars... please, Polly,
it's sickening.  This reporter is well on his way to becoming a black
pearl expert and there are some seventy different shades of them.  She
hooked him good, with the help of poor Queen Mary... she played Mary
years ago, that's how she knew about Mary's pearls.  Aviva was sitting
there looking as fascinated as he was, but then of course she can do no
wrong with her little cheering section."

"It's not so little," Polly murmured.

"Only Juliet, Aviva, Janet, Joanne, and Dune.  Every last person in the
press department," Maggie admitted grimly.  "Lee can't get over her
either; the way she's cooperating.  I always bring at least one of the
others along for an interview and they're all getting a version of the
treatment I got when I was a kid the stories she tells the press are
simply more adult, more detailed, and cleverly tailored versions of the
way we used to play with her jewels when I went to visit her.  She had
ways of making these stones into more than they really are, and somehow
adding their luster to her own.  Oh, I'm so confused, Polly!  She's
doing a dream job, no one of us could ever come close to working the
press the way she does-after all the jewels don't belong to us, we
don't know anything about them, we're not the person who's auctioning
them for a good cause but it still makes me furious!  I'm disgusted
with myself, but I can't help it."

"You're not, by any chance, just a little jealous of her admirers?"

"Polly, that's sick!  The reason she's collected this little band of
worshipers is that she's trying to get at me, and who knows it better
than you, who talked me into it in the first place?  And if I don't
bring one of them along, I'll end up being alone with her in the limo
on the way to the restaurant and back."

"God, I honestly don't know what made me say that!  Sorry!  I must have
forgotten, for a minute, why all this is happening."

"I wish I could forget," Maggie said limply.

"She must be totally determined to 'get at you, as you put it, or she
couldn't possibly be going to all this trouble," Polly said
thoughtfully.  "I imagine that Tessa Kent has better things to do with
her life than win over some journalist who came into the lunch with a
hostile attitude ... she can't be used to having to do that."

"Of course not.  When the studios arranged her press interviews it was
always a major coup for whoever got to meet her."

"So look," Polly said hopefully, "don't jump down my throat, but if
she's putting herself through all these hoops, with months more of the
same to come, with every day an exhausting one, which you've admitted
yourself, to say nothing of the travel still to come to those foreign
cities where you're taking the highlights of the collection and where
she'll be doing mobbed press conferences-not to mention that she might
even be attached to some of these jewels she's selling-why couldn't
you-" "Don't start with me!"

"Why couldn't you be... a little less... unbending, I guess is the word
I'm searching for."

"Polly, you promised!"

"I know, I know, but these complaints of yours have been going on and
on for months.  You know what my opinion was of Tessa Kent when you
told me your story, but now I'm beginning to think no matter how bad a
mother she was to you for eighteen years, she's trying her hardest to
get to know you now, and that now should maybe... be given some, just a
little bit of... credence, allowed to have some truth of its own.

It's real enough, God knows.  You can't dismiss it when you live with
it all day, when you see the effort she's making-and all of it to try
to get through to you.

"A few months effort?  Eighteen years of neglect.  Do you think that's
a fair balance, Polly?"

"Of course not.  There's never going to be any fair balance.

Forget you ever heard the word 'fair'; leave it out of your
vocabulary.

Tessa Kent can never make up to you the vital things that she didn't do
while you were growing up.  Not ever.  But do you have to hold so
tightly onto the crime, Maggie?  Isn't there ever going to be any
forgiveness?  Not the slightest bit, no matter what she does to try to
earn it?"

"Hell, I can't deal with you, Polly.  You're almost as manipulative as
she is.  I feel totally awful.  My energy level is down to my shoes."

"PMS?"

"God no!  don't even believe there is such a thing...

I've never had it anyway, not so I've noticed, maybe because I've been
so irregular all my life.  I haven't even had a period in ages.  I had
a dry spell like this when I first came here and was working as a
temp.

It's stress that's getting to me.  Seriously getting to me.  She's
driving me crazy and so are you, Ms.-life-isn't-fair-Guildenstern.  Did
you think up that idea all by yourself?  I'm going downstairs to see if
Barney's home yet.  He was going to work a little late tonight."

"How's my bright-eyed boy?"

"Bliss.  Pure bliss."  Maggie brightened and stood up, ready to leave,
all thoughts of Tessa driven from her head.  "If it weren't for this
auction I'd say that my life is so utterly glorious it's frightening.

I never guessed I could love anyone like this.  We were born for each
other; and don't give me that theory of yours that you knew it all
along, from the first day you saw us together."

"But I did," Polly said serenely.  "I should have written it down and
mailed it in a sealed letter to myself and waited till now to give it
to you-then you'd believe me."

"But you would have been wrong because if it had happened then it
wouldn't have worked out.  Now is the perfect timing, and the rest of
our lives will be the perfect time."

"I know this is a ludicrously old-fashioned idea, but has the thought
of getting married crossed your mind?"  Polly asked casually as they
walked toward her door.

"Oh, we have eons to think about that," Maggie said with fine
disregard.  "We're together and we'll never be apart-but marriage?-all
those deadly formalities?  Having to see Madison and Tyler again?

We'll simply have to elope, but all in good time.

What's the rush?  Living in sin is so much fun-as you ought to know."

"Jane and I would get married if we could," Polly said wistfully.

"I'd just like to have the legal opportunity.  If you decide to go the
traditional route, will you let me give the wedding?"

"Oh, you mistreated, generous creature, of course!"  Maggie cried,
remorsefully, hugging her friend with such enthusiasm that she all but
lifted her feet off the floor.  "I'd even let you pick out my dress, or
else I'd end up in slinky black velvet or something equally
unbridal."

"Go find Barney.  Just thinking about weddings makes me cry," Polly
said, pushing Maggie out the door.

Tessa carefully checked the laden tables that room service had just
brought up to her apartment.  Almost from the start of the auction
planning she'd invited the press department to an early breakfast every
Friday morning so they could sit around in comfort, assess the work
done in the past week, and get a jump on the next week's plans.

It was the only way to keep herself firmly focused on the progress of
the complications of the publicity schedule, Tessa had decided, after a
few meetings at S & S had been interrupted by unrelated phone calls or
questions from the members of the press office who were handling the
publicity on S & S's other auctions.

With Liz Sinclair, Juliet Tree, Penn's rep, and occasionally Monty Foy,
who was composing the part of the text that related to the history and
quality of the jewels themselves, Tessa had weekly meetings at S & S to
work on the layout of the catalog, which was almost ready to be printed
and mailed.  Never, everyone agreed, had jewels been photographed so
imaginatively and alluringly, never would there be better shots of an
owner wearing the jewels in the company of intensely famous people at
seriously glamorous parties, and certainly never had there been an
auction catalog that contained, in the owner's own words, her thoughts
about the occasions on which she had bought or been given the jewels,
and her memories about the times she best remembered wearing them.

When Tessa studied the photographs, culled from Fiona's scrapbooks, she
found herself at a strange distance from them.

Yes, there she indisputably was, not more than eight years ago, in a
pale-blue satin strapless Givenchy gown, dancing with the king of Spain
at a ball in Venice, wearing yards of cornflower-blue Kashmir sapphires
as lightly as if they were bubbles; there she was laughing with Tom
Hanks, Tom Cruise, and Kevin Costner at an opening night party of some
Imagine Entertainment comedy, only three years ago, in a short,
unadorned black satin shift and a throwaway pair of oval diamond
earrings of fifteen carats each that Graf of London had found for
her.

They could easily look, to the untutored eye, as if they were costume
jewelry, because the diamonds were that startlingly pure bright,
flawless Fancy Vivid Yellow that only the Sultan of Brunei also
possessed.  They were set in a nine-million-dollar pair of earrings,
each carat costing three hundred thousand dollars... but there she
wasn't.  Not really.  Another world, another life, another woman.  Her
emotional removal was a blessing, Tessa thought, or else she might well
have felt regret at the way she had chosen to use these six priceless
months of her life, as it became more and more certain that Maggie
wasn't going to soften one whit toward her; no matter how much time
they spent in the same room.

The concierge announced the first of the troops from S & S, and soon
they were all gathered around the tables, helping themselves to heaping
platefuls of the enormous breakfast Tessa had provided-everything from
croissants for the delicate eaters, to scrambled eggs and smoked
salmon, or baked ham and sausages with pancakes, for those in the
majority who jumped at the prospect of a hearty breakfast, instead of
their usual fare.

What great girls they were, Tessa thought, as they took time to enjoy
their food before they started on the business at hand.  Now that she'd
gotten to know them, or rather now that they'd gotten to know her; a
genuine relationship of easy warmth and camaraderie had come about.

She felt as young as they were; the sixteen or seventeen years that
separated her from Aviva and Joanne seemed nonexistent.  This is what
it would have been like to have a big family of daughters, Tessa
thought, except that love, maternal love, would have been allowed to
enter the way she looked at all of them... there would be love in the
way they looked at her.  She'd be able to casually smooth Dune's hair;
or kiss Janet's cheek.

They'd be bound together; even if they disagreed, bound for life.

She'd be there when they met the men they were going to marry, she'd
hold their children, she'd go to the birthday parties... oh, the path
not taken!  And if she hadn't had children other than Maggie, this
might have been a breakfast party she was giving for her daughter, this
group of girls might be Maggie's bridesmaids, and she'd be the mother
of the bride, Tessa thought dreamily, the mother hen, deep into the
fascinating details of invitations and menus... no wonder people had
big weddings.

The atmosphere at this morning's breakfast was especially exciting,
Tessa realized, coming back to the present moment, because tomorrow, on
Saturday morning, she, Maggie, and Dune were leaving on a nonstop
United Airlines flight to Sao Paulo, where the first foreign exhibition
of the highlights from the collection would take place the following
Monday night.  S & S was giving a gala reception in the ballroom of the
luxurious Maksoud Plaza Hotel, where they were all staying, to which
every potential bidder in South America had been invited.  On Tuesday
and Wednesday there would be wall-to-wall private appointments for
those women who wanted to try on the jewels and inspect them carefully,
since they couldn't be taken out of their cases during the
exhibition.

Dealers would have to travel to New York before the auction for the
same privilege.  Sao Paulo, the South American equivalent of New York,
was not just a center of vast wealth and big business but a hub of
journalism, and a press conference had been called for Monday
afternoon, which hundreds of reporters from all over South America were
expected to attend.

Security was as important as publicity in any foreign exhibition and
Tessa, Maggie, and Dune would be traveling on one plane and the jewels
on another.  The jewels would be accompanied to the airport in New York
by one large group of inconspicuous security men and would be met by
another such group hired by S & S's Sao Paulo office.  A heavy force of
Brazilian police would keep the jewels under armed surveillance during
every second of their stay in Brazil.

While the others were in the middle of breakfast, Maggie, who was
seated close to the door of the living room, put down her plate and
slipped quickly out, unnoticed by anyone but Tessa.  After a few
minutes of hesitation, Tessa followed her.  Did Maggie even know that
the guest bathroom was around the corner and down the hall?

The door to the guest bathroom was open and the room was empty.  Where
had she disappeared to?  Tessa wondered.  Had Maggie simply left the
meeting for some reason?  Worried, she looked next in the empty
bathroom off the library and finally went to her own bathroom, where a
large, mirrored dressing room and closet were separated by an inside
door from the toilet.

The door to the dressing room from the hallway wasn't entirely closed,
and as Tessa stood outside, unwilling to disturb Maggie, she heard the
unmistakable noises of vomiting, violent and uncontrollable, relieved
for seconds as Maggie gasped for breath.

Finally, after a long period of dry heaves, she heard Maggie flush the
toilet twice, let herself out of the locked toilet, and cross the
marble floor toward the sink.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, Tessa thought, morning sickness.

There was nothing else it could be.  She'd never forgotten that
sound.

She'd bet all she owned that what Maggie had wasn't stomach flu, the
excuse she'd invented for her own mother.  Tessa found herself clasping
her arms across her breasts with her hands at her throat, as she closed
her eyes and automatically whispered a prayer.

Don't go in, she told herself, fiercely trembling with the desire to
rush to Maggie; don't you dare to go in.  Remember what happened the
last time you intruded on her right to privacy.  She's pregnant but you
may not, you must not, discuss it with her.  She's pregnant with your
grandchild, but you must seem not to know.

She's pregnant and you don't know who the father is, she's pregnant and
you don't know when she'll have the baby, or if she'll have the baby,
and you may not, dare not, must not ask!  All you can do is thank the
God you no longer worship and pray the prayers you no longer think do
any good.

Hastily, Tessa blotted tears of excitement and joy from her eyes and
fled down the corridor to rejoin the others.

Maggie gazed wide-eyed at herself in the mirror over the sink.

She spit out the mouthwash she was gargling because she was grinning so
widely that she'd almost swallowed a mouthful.  Good God Almighty, so
this was why she hadn't had a period in so long!  PMS, stress... no, a
baby, Barney's baby.  Contraception didn't always work, she'd always
known that, but she hadn't guessed how marvelous it would be when it
didn't.  What would Barney say, what would Polly say, what would Liz
Sinclair say?  What difference did it make what anyone said, Maggie
thought, her heart jumping with wild happiness.

What would Tessa say when she found out she was going to be a
grandmother?  She frowned at herself in the mirror.  Tricky, all this,
especially leaving for Brazil tomorrow.  She'd just sit on the
delicious knowledge, hug it to herself, until she'd had a chance to
tell Barney.

She gargled one more time, splashed her face with cold water, reapplied
her lipstick, and set off sedately for the living room.

There had better still be some croissants left... she was starving!

36

Maggie frowned and consulted her watch once again as she and Tessa
waited in the V.I.P lounge for their eight A.M. flight to Sao Paulo.

Dune should have joined them at least a half hour ago.  How could she,
the most obsessively reliable of all her assistants, have failed to
realize how vitally important it was for her to be on time this
morning?

The plane would be ready to load in twenty minutes.

"Miss Horvath?  There's a phone call for you," an attendant said, "you
can pick up right here."  Maggie grabbed the phone and listened grimly
as Dune, sobbing with anger at herself, informed her in disbelieving
outrage that she'd broken her ankle running for a taxi and was calling
from a pay phone in a hospital emergency room, where she was waiting to
have it set.

"Damn it, Dune, why'd you wait till the last minute to call?"

"I've been trying to get someone to replace me first.  I've tied up the
phone here for an hour.  I tried Janet four times, the last time just a
minute ago, but all I get is her goddamned machine.  I'm sure she's at
her boyfriend's place till Monday.  Then I tried Lee but she and her
guy are out of town.  I called Aviva and Joanne and those two both, can
you believe it, both, left for hot weekends last night, according to
their roommates.  They didn't leave numbers where they can be reached
and they're not expected back till late Sunday night.  While the cat's
away... .I thought checking on their availability was more important
than calling you with bad news."

"You did right.  So nobody's available.  Even if Janet calls her
machine, the next plane doesn't leave till tomorrow."

"Why would she call her machine if she's with her boyfriend?"

"Good question.  Maybe they'll go to her place, probably not.

I'm sorry about your ankle, Dune."

"Oh, Maggie!"  Dune wailed.  "How could I have done this to you?"

"We should have sent a limo for you, too.  Don't worry, no big deal.  I
can handle it alone.  Feel better, take care."

Maggie walked over to Tessa and told her the news.

"Oh, that poor girl!  She must be miserable," Tessa said, even as she
reproached herself for being thrilled by Dune's accident, which left
them inescapably alone for the first time.

"She is," Maggie said, tight-lipped, as a United Airlines official
arrived to escort them to the gate where they'd be boarded before
anyone else.

Tessa and Maggie, lacking the hapless Dune, each took a window seat in
the two first rows of first-class, one behind the other.  They spent
the uneventful nine-hour trip with only the most perfunctory
communication, Maggie properly concerned with Tessa's comfort while she
remained entirely aloof on a personal level.  In the Sao Paulo airport,
at six in the evening local time, they were met by the capable,
energetic, and very elegant Senora Marta Pereira, the director of the
local S & S office, bearing a huge bunch of flowers for Tessa and
accompanied by her two senior employees.  They were driven through the
immense metropolis of sixteen million people in an air-conditioned
Bentley that had been rented for the occasion, and soon they were
settled in their magnificent suites on the top floor of the Maksoud
Plaza Hotel, built around an enormous atrium.  It was spring in Brazil,
although except for the temperature and the masses of spring flowers in
their suites, there was no way to glimpse any countryside, even from
their elevation, so sprawling was the city itself.

Before she unpacked, Tessa phoned Sam in New York and told him about
Dune's accident.

"Until the press conference on Monday afternoon I'm totally at loose
ends here, darling.  I've finally got Maggie to myself and it's obvious
that she's going to keep herself so busy that I'll never be alone with
her," she said sadly, almost with resignation.  What else had she
expected, anyway?

"Tomorrow she's planned a whole day around Marta Pereira, inspecting
everything from the placement of the exhibition cases and the mike to
checking on the local security staff and meeting everyone who's going
to actually handle the jewels when they're finally put into the
cases.

Then she's checking personally on all the arrangements made by the
hotel catering staff and the florists even though that's all been
planned locally for weeks.  Maggie's already adopted Marta Pereira in
the place of Dune, so we'll never be alone, but there's nothing I can
do about it, I can't tag along when I'm unnecessary."  Tessa paused
while Sam spoke.

"What will I do?  I'm going to order something light to eat and go to
bed early.  Nine hours on any plane trip leaves me feeling as if I have
jet lag, even though we've gone through only one time zone.

Do you miss me yet?  Oh, sweetheart, say that again.  And again...

please.  Thank you, Sam, that helps so much.  It's lucky that I brought
three books with me; Sunday promises to be a long, lonely day.

I'll call often and early..  .if you're out, call me back, all right?

Oh, I do love you!"

In the middle of the night Tessa was awakened by a faint but persistent
knocking on her door, coming from the circular entrance hall that led
to her bedroom.

"Who is it?"  she called, startled.

"Maggie."

Tessa switched on a light, jumped out of bed, and ran to open the
door.

Maggie stood there in her bathrobe, her face totally blank of any
emotion but panic, her eyes huge.

"I didn't want to bother you..."  she faltered, standing unsteadily in
the doorway.

"Maggie, what's wrong?"  Tessa cried, pulling her into the room.

"I oh, hell-I'm bleeding."

"Oh, no!  The baby!  Lie down on the bed right away, yes, flat, feet up
on this pillow."

"How did you know ?"

"I heard you throwing up yesterday.  How long have you been
bleeding?"

"I can't be sure.  Fifteen minutes ago I woke up and went to the
bathroom and noticed... it was brownish, at first, and then there was
some bright red blood...so I just came here... I didn't know what else
to do..."

"Any cramps?"

"No, just the bleeding."

"I think it's a false alarm, just spotting, but I'll get a doctor
immediately."  Tessa sounded more reassuring and knowledgeable than she
felt.  If ever, this was the time to convey calm and self-possession.

"Why a false alarm?"  Maggie gasped.

"I've lost two pregnancies.  I could never have made it down a hotel
corridor on my own.  I had terrible cramps and I lost blood like mad.

Now keep quiet, take deep breaths, and try to relax."

Tessa picked up the phone and spoke to the night operator.

"Operator, this is Tessa Kent.  What's your name?  Dolores?

Excellent.  Now, Dolores, connect me to the manager of the hotel, no,
Dolores, not the night manager, the general manager, at his home,
immediately, and tell him to call me at once.  This is an emergency.

It's very serious, Dolores.  I am Tessa Kent and I'm counting on you.

After you've reached the general manager, call the night manager and
tell him to come up immediately to Tessa Kent's suite with an empty
hot-water bottle and two buckets of ice cubes.  Immediately.  It's an
emergency!

Thank you, Dolores.  I'll hang up so the general manager can phone me
directly, at once, you understand?  At once, immediately.  Don't try to
inform the night manager until after you've reached the general
manager, and remember, Dolores, ice and a hot-water bottle, for Tessa
Kent.

Yes, of course I'll sign an autograph, if you hurry.  But only if you
hurry."

She turned to Maggie, whose face was twisted with apprehension.

"I'm going to get some towels, it won't take a second," Tessa said.

She hurried to the bathroom and returned with an armful of towels.

"Here, I'll pull your pajama pants off over your feet, and you put one
of these between your legs.  No cramping?  Good girl."

She turned to answer the phone.  "This is Tessa Kent.  Thank you,
Senor.  As you know, I am staying in your hotel.  Thank you, Senor.

Yes, it's an emergency, a major emergency.  I need the best
gynecologist in Sao Paulo here in my suite immediately.  What's the
best hospital in the city?  Good.  Now, please call the Albert Einstein
immediately, you understand, and tell them it's for Tessa Kent, I'm in
an emergency situation.  Ask for the Department of Gynecology and write
down the names and home phone numbers of their top doctors.

Explain that it's for me, Tessa Kent.  If anyone doesn't want to give
out home numbers, call the director of the hospital at home.

Immediately.  If one of the doctors is available right now, at the
hospital, go get him and bring him to my suite at once.  Otherwise,
call them at home, ask the first one who answers to come here for me,
Tessa Kent, at once.  Immediately.  Tell him to speed, it's an
emergency Senor, in your hotel.  No, not the hotel doctor.  Never a
hotel doctor!

Would you send your wife to a hotel doctor, Senor?  I thought so.

I'm counting on you, Senor."

Tessa turned back to Maggie.  "Would you mind if I took a look at that
towel?  Good, there's not too much blood, but you're still bleeding.

Here's a fresh one.  Just relax and lie still."

"I never thought I'd hear those words so often in two phone calls,"
Maggie said in a weak voice.

"Which words?  'Immediately' or 'emergency'?"

"'Tessa Kent."' "They work best.  Oh, that must be the ice," Tessa
said, relieved, scrambling to open the door to the night manager.  She
took a tray from him and told him to go downstairs to wait for the
general manager.  Quickly, she filled the hot-water bottle with ice
cubes, wrapped it in a hand towel, and placed it low on Maggie's
abdomen.

"The ice would drip too much without a hot-water bottle," she
explained.

"Where'd you learn all this?"  Maggie asked to distract herself.

"I've put in my time with gynecologists."

The phone rang again as the general manager reported that he was
driving a top gynecologist to the hotel, leaving that minute, for Miss
Tessa Kent.

"Won't they be surprised when they see you're up and about?"

Maggie whispered, unsmiling but visibly relieved that a doctor was
coming.  'And in that nightie?"

"Good Lord, I'd better put on a robe.  Would you like a wet towel on
your forehead?"

"Yes, please."

"Would you like a piece of ice to suck?  No, better not.  Who knows
about the water anywhere?  A sip, but only a sip, of mineral water?"

"Yes, please."

Maggie lay on the bed and Tessa brought a wrung-out, cool, wet hand
towel and the water and pulled up a little chair to sit beside her.

She gave Maggie a little water and quietly ordered, "Now just close
your eyes, it won't be long."

Maggie sighed and obeyed.  Tessa looked at Maggie's hand lying
protectively over the hot-water bottle and willed herself not to touch
it or to speak.  Perhaps Maggie could fall asleep for a minute or two,
Tessa thought, breathing as quietly as she could.  Soon, very soon,
even in this gigantic city, the doctor would arrive, but until then she
gave herself up to imagining that she was spending a whole night alone
with her daughter, waiting and watching and keeping her from harm, in
the circle of pale yellow illumination made by the lamp on the bedside
table.

Soon a knocking on the door announced the arrival of the night manager,
the general manager, and a short, powerfully muscled, handsome,
middle-aged man who announced that he was Doctor Roberto Goldenberg.

"Thank you gentlemen, thank you so much," Tessa said, shutting the door
on the hotel men and admitting only the doctor.

"Miss Kent, what seems to be your problem?"  he asked in a deep voice
that resonated with self-assurance.

"It's not me, it's my daughter.  She may be having a miscarriage.

I've got her flat in bed with an ice pack on her belly."

"How long ago did it start?"  he asked, as he hurried across the
entrance to the bedroom.

"I'm not sure.  Maggie woke me up about a half hour ago.

"You work quickly, Miss Kent.  From the hotel manager I imagined you
must be having triplets this very minute."

"Where were you in medical school, Doctor?"  Tessa demanded.

"Harvard, and later Johns Hopkins.  Hello Maggie.  I'm Doctor Roberto,"
he said, smiling with very white teeth.  "Now, let's take a look at
you.  Mamae, wait in the sitting room, please," the doctor said,
bending over Maggie.

Vanquished by a superior force, Tessa retreated, reassured by the
doctor's manner, and huddled in a chair in the sitting room, watching,
without seeing, the spinning, spilling field of lights of the vast
city.

After some time she was joined by the doctor, who sat down next to
her.

"In my opinion, Maggie's not having a miscarriage," he said, patting
her hand kindly.  "The chances are very low, although you realize that
they're never zero, that she will lose this pregnancy.

This kind of spotting is frequent, and it has almost stopped.  However,
it's best to be on the super-cautious side for the next three days.

Don't let her get up except to go to the bathroom, and before I leave
I'll give her a stool softener so she won't get constipated.  She can
eat whatever she wants, and if she doesn't want to eat until some time
tomorrow, don't force it.  She can live on soup.  Your little girl is
very far from delicate, Mamae.  The most important thing is rest, rest,
rest, and plenty of fluids."

"Did you give her all those instructions?"

"I'm telling you, isn't that enough?"

"You're going to have to repeat the rest part to Maggie.  She's down
here to work and she won't listen to what I say."

"She'll obey me," Dr.  Goldenberg promised, with a chuckle.

"How pregnant is she?"  Tessa asked.

"That's what Maggie wanted to know.  Astonishing!  My own patients pay
very close attention to such questions.  They come in and say, "Doctor
Roberto, I'm two weeks and five days gravida.  In Maggie's case, I'd
say close to three months, but without the date of her last period I
can't tell exactly, and she seems to have no idea when that was.

Extraordinary, you North Americans."

"Could you possibly come back tomorrow, Doctor?"

"Certainly, Mamae.  Every day.  Every evening if necessary, but I don't
think it will be.  And on Tuesday, I'd like to see her in my office for
an ultrasound, so we'll be able to see what's going on in there."

"Oh, Doctor Goldenberg, isn't there any way you could bring the
ultrasound machine here, to the hotel?  I don't want to risk the drive
through this city, the traffic, the elevators, the crowds-" Tessa
looked at him imploringly.

"It's... unusual, but... yes, of course, Mamae.  The machine is
portable, after all.  Now come with me while I put the fear of Doctor
Roberto into Maggie."

The doctor looked at Maggie severely, as Tessa stood by his side.

"Listen, Maggie, I've told your mamae and I'm telling you, the only way
to be sure you don't lose this baby is to stay exactly where you are,
with your feet up, and rest for three days.  Drink lots of fluids, eat
what you want, but stay in bed.  You don't need the ice pack now.  You
can get up carefully and slowly walk to the bathroom.

But you absolutely cannot go downstairs and run around that exhibition
you were fretting about.  You may not!  Under any circumstances.

Doctor Roberto completely forbids it.  Let your mamae wait on you hand
and foot.  Understood?"

"Oh, Doctor Roberto, I have so much responsibility," Maggie protested
weakly.  "This couldn't happen at a worse time."

"Someone else will take care of everything, count on it.  Your mamae
will manage that as well as she managed to get me here in the middle of
the night.  Now, Maggie, it's time for you to sleep.

I'll come back and check on you late in the afternoon tomorrow."

Tessa accompanied the doctor to the door to her suite.  "Oh, Doctor
Goldenberg, you're an absolute angel!  I can't possibly thank you
enough!"

"Not at all.  You must understand, I'd do as much for anyone ...

well, perhaps not the ultrasound, but everything else.  However, in
your case..."  he looked suddenly shy.  "Would you mind?"  He handed
Tessa his prescription pad and a pen.  "I won't pretend the autograph
is for my wife, it's for me.  I'm a shameless fan, I've seen all of
your movies.  How, and I ask you this strictly as a man of medicine,
you understand, can you possibly be old enough to have a grown-up
daughter?"

"It's a long story," Tessa laughed, "and one that probably only a
gynecologist would believe."

37

Tessa closed the door behind Dr. Goldenberg and marched into the
bedroom armed with a feeling of complete authority.  Maggie was sitting
up in bed, with the beginning of a potentially rebellious expression on
her face.

But Tessa--" "You heard what the doctor said, Maggie.  You're not going
anywhere."  Oh, the simple joy of saying those words, Tessa thought,
words every mother must have said a million times.

"Wow, talk about a Brazilian Alpha Male!  Calling you 'mommy' and
referring to himself in the third person!  He's devastating, isn't he,
that Doctor Roberto?"

"I worked in Brazil once, years ago.  Their word mamae is pronounced
'mommy,' but as I understand, it's just a way of saying 'mother."" "If
I have to stay here, you take my suite."

"Nonsense.  There's plenty of room for both of us.  Doctor Goldenberg
was horrified enough that I didn't know how many months pregnant you
are.  Can you imagine what he'd say if I left you alone?  Consider me
your personal Florence Nightingale.  I'm in thrall to Doctor
Devastating."

"Why did he expect you to know all the details?"

"I guess in Brazil the mamae is the first to find out."

"Well, you were.  I didn't know until a few seconds before you did.

Yesterday was the first time I had morning sickness.  I didn't have any
today.  Oh, God, do you think I'll have it again tomorrow?"

"Probably not," Tessa said with more conviction than she felt, but she
didn't want to eliminate the power of suggestion.  "There was all that
eating going on, all those food smells, added to the stress of knowing
we were leaving the next day.  It could easily have been a onetime
thing.  Doctor Roberto said you were about three months pregnant and
that's almost always when morning sickness stops.

After all, you were fine this morning."

"It could just have been a fluke," Maggie said dismissively, looking
concerned.  "The worst of it, besides being out of commission, is I
can't reach Barney to tell him.  He took that gorgeous Ducati he's in
love with and went off with her for the weekend.  Damn!"

Tessa waited a few well-timed seconds before she murmured, without any
inflection at all, "Ducati."  Oh, God, let Maggie not be involved with
a man who didn't adore her.

"His new motorcycle.  Very special, I gather.  Barney owns a custom
bike-building shop.  Don't even ask, but he does well, very well."

"Barney," Tessa all but hummed in a way that kept any element of
question out of her voice.  Tensely she waited for Maggie to reply.

"You remember Barney!  For heaven's sake, Tessa, you can't have
forgotten Barney?"  Maggie asked with as much indignation as she could
summon lying down.

"The only Barney I remember actually seeing with my own eyes wasn't
quite five years old."  Barney, she thought, with a leap of her heart,
remembering the little sunburnt boy who had taken care of Maggie from
the moment he met her, Barney, protective Tarzan to Maggie's timid
Jane.

"But we've talked and talked about him!  Don't you remember how he'd
never leave me alone?  Always pestering me?"

"Barney Webster?  ... Your old faithful Sancho Panza?"  She started to
breath again in relief.

"Tessa, really!  There's never been another Barney in my life."

"He certainly never gave up, did he?  Making you gravida seems an
ultimate form of pestering, if you ask me."

Maggie giggled, sleepily.  "Neither one of us ever gave up, not
really."

"Will he be happy?"

"Beyond happy... way, way beyond happy," Maggie said faintly, as she
closed her eyes and fell silent.

Tessa watched her intently until she was satisfied from the changed
sound of Maggie's breathing that she was fast asleep.  Now that Maggie
wouldn't be disturbed, Tessa began the slow, stealthy labor of tugging,
inch by inch, two deep, heavy armchairs until they came together near
the bed.  She positioned them so that they faced each other and formed
a short, downy couch on which she planned to curl up for the night.

She found a pillow and an extra blanket in a closet and snuggled down,
her knees bent, in what seemed to be a fairly comfortable position, but
sleep eluded her.  She couldn't make herself close her eyes and waste
this opportunity to look directly at her daughter as much as she
liked.

Even in sleep Maggie had a theatrical quality, Tessa thought.

Even without the play of her eyes she was vibrant, vivid; her parted
lips looked as if she were waiting for a kiss.  A curtain could rise
and show her sleeping and an audience would immediately be caught by
her, would wait patiently to see what was going to happen to this
vital, young creature with her eloquent coloring and laughter-promising
features.

What would it have been like, Tessa asked herself, as she contemplated
Maggie's face, if she'd never met Luke, if he'd never come to Edinburgh
Castle and instantly transformed her entire life just by existing?

After her parents died, Maggie naturally would have come to live with
her; that serious, roly-poly, staunch little five-year-old, and all
Maggie's problems and hurts would have been brought to her for
comfort.

Her career and Maggie's life would have been intertwined.  When she
came home from the studio, Maggie would have been there, working
earnestly on her homework, waiting to read her a composition or asking
to be drilled on a spelling test.  If Maggie had fallen, she would have
been the one who gently washed her knee and applied iodine and a
Band-Aid.  She would have planned Maggie's birthday parties and gone
shopping with her for party dresses and her first pair of high heels;
she would have sent Maggie to summer camp and seen her off, protesting
that she didn't want to go, and two months later, welcomed home a
surprisingly taller girl, tanned and laden with prizes, a girl who
missed her friends from camp and temporarily hated everything about her
home life.

Tessa gave a great sigh as she thought of all the things she'd missed,
of all the potential of their history, lost forever.  She would have
told Maggie about sex and love, and the many shades of difference
between them; she would never have married a man who hadn't passed
Maggie's inspection and didn't know that she was Maggie's mother.  As
soon as Maggie had been old enough to understand, by six or seven, she
would have told her what they truly were to each other and by now the
idea that she had once claimed Maggie as a sister would have faded into
a dim memory, not a painful lie that had been temporarily suspended, in
order to simplify matters for a doctor summoned in the middle of the
night.  Everything would have been very different... so difficult to
imagine... so many other things could have happened... too
complicated... Tessa thought as she finally drifted into sleep.

Many hours later, Maggie woke to find Tessa sleeping alongside the
bed.

Soundlessly she slid out of bed on her way to the bathroom.

"Where do you think you're going?"  Tessa asked, one eye flying open.

"The john.  I thought you were sleeping."

"I was."  Tessa sat up, threw off the blanket, and yawned.  "And then I
dreamed you were trying to escape, so I woke up."

"I'll be back one of these days," Maggie said, putting one foot down in
front of the other in slow motion, with a show of caution.

Tessa scampered to the second bathroom of the suite to splash icy water
on her face and run her fingers through her wild hair to try to smooth
it down.  Every bone ached because of her awkward sleeping position,
but she welcomed the evidence that they'd both managed to get some
rest.  She quickly rejoined Maggie, who'd dutifully returned to bed.

"Any bleeding?"  she asked, trying to sound casual.

"Nope.  Not a sign.  And I feel terrific.  In fact I'm starving."

"Oh, Maggie, that's the best sign of all!  What would you like to
eat?"

"A gallon of orange juice, bacon and eggs, piles of toast, strawberry
jam, tea, oh, my God, what time is it?"

"Two in the afternoon.  I'll open the drapes and order for both of
us."

"If I had morning sickness, I must have slept through it.  You can't
get it after lunch, can you?"

'All I'm certain of is that it's not something you can sleep through,"
Tessa said, as the springtime sunlight of Brazil flooded the room, "and
I've never heard of anything called afternoon sickness, although I have
heard of rare women who have all-day sickness from day one through the
delivery."

"They must be passionate to have a baby, to put up with feeling
hideously queasy and throwing up for nine whole months."

"That means you're wondering how passionate I am about it, aren't
you?

Do you think I don't know what that noncommittal sound means?"

Tessa threw up her hands and indicated that there was no more she was
going to ask.

"Oh, Tessa, I'm dying to have a baby!  I didn't know it until I thought
I was going to have a miscarriage, but I want a baby with Barney more
than I want anything else in the world.  I honestly can't imagine how I
got pregnant-it certainly wasn't on purpose-but, now that it's
happened, I'm bussed out!  I never expected to feel this way.  It
wasn't in my plans, at all.  Of course, now we'll have to get married,
which will make Polly's day."

"Polly Guildenstern?"

"You ought to know, you and your private eyes, you know perfectly well
who Polly is, you probably have her Social Security number and her
psychological profile.  Just the other day she hinted at a wedding
because she knows all about Barney, and I promised Polly she could give
it if we ever had one.  Oh Lord, do you think we have to invite Tyler
and Madison?"

"There's no way out of it," Tessa said, her heart jumping in jubilation
at this question.  It was the first time Maggie had asked her advice in
many years.

"Well, they probably won't stay long, if they even show up.  I'd give a
lot to see Madison's face when she finds out I'm going to be her
daughter-in-law.  Mrs.  Barnaby Alcott Webster.  I love it!

I'll order calling cards and leave her one someday, when I'm sure she's
not at home.  Oh, here's breakfast, or is it lunch?  Doesn't it look
good?"

Maggie was half-finished with her eggs when her hand flew to her
mouth.

"Sick?"  Tessa jumped up, alarmed, immediately ready to help Maggie to
the bathroom.

"I just remembered!  Marta Pereira!  I'm supposed to meet her at
three."

"She'll call up from the lobby.  I'll explain that I'm taking your
place.  Trust me, I'm good at making up convincing excuses, as well as
a demon at checking arrangements.  I'll pretend I'm you and I won't be
satisfied with anything but pure perfection."

"That's all very well for today," Maggie admitted, glad to be
vanquished, "but Tessa, tomorrow!  The press conference and the gala
reception at night.  Every single potential important bidder from all
over South America!  What am I going to do?"

"Guess?"  Tessa asked, repressing a smile.

"I'm going to stay here in bed, flat on my back," Maggie muttered, "and
let you handle everything, which you're perfectly capable of doing, as
I'm aware, without anyone's help.  After all, you're Tessa Kent and,
more than the jewels, Tessa Kent is what they're coming to see, like
that day at Elm Country Day."

"I have three books you can read, and I can get you magazines from the
newsstand in the lobby."

"Maybe later.  Aren't you going to finish your breakfast?  Look, you
left half of it.  Because if not... thanks.  You know, if you'd let me
get up very, very carefully, just to brush my teeth, I think I could go
back to sleep for a while."

"I'll get the maids to change the bed while you're in the bathroom.

Just don't try to get fancy.  No baths, whatever you do," Tessa said
warningly.

"You're allowed to give yourself a sponge bath, but, Maggie," she said,
feeling the most delicious sense of matronly power "you have to promise
me to be careful, to do everything very, very slowly.  Here's a fresh
nightgown."

"And a very sexy one, too.  Thank you.  I promise, cross my heart, to
make no sudden moves.  After all, Tessa, I'm almost as involved in this
baby business as you are.  I wonder what the divine Doctor Roberto will
think when he sees me in this... he'll know it couldn't be mine.  Had
you noticed that he has the hots for you?"

"Maggie!"

"Mamae!"  Maggie retorted, laughing, as she drifted as slowly as a
turtle toward the bathroom.

38

Taking great care to make no noise, Tessa opened the door of her suite,
late on Monday night, only to find Maggie lying in bed, still
reading.

"I couldn't possibly sleep," Maggie explained, putting down her book,
"until you came back and told me how it went."

"It was a fantastic success, a brilliant, glorious gala!"  Tessa
exclaimed, excitedly flinging down the cape of silver lame' that
swirled in pleated folds around a bare, slender column of silver
satin.

"Oh, Maggie, I was riding so high I could have personally auctioned off
every last piece in the exhibition for twelve times its high estimate,
but Marta wouldn't let me.  She's still down there making appointments
for women to come and try on the jewels-they're keeping the pieces here
two extra days because they can't handle the requests in less time than
that."

"But-" "No, don't worry, she called New York and cleared it.  We'll go
back as we planned.  Oh, I wish you could have been there!  Such
glorious people, such superb clothes.  They really know how to dress
up... it was the way I imagine Hollywood must have been in the
fifties.

I felt a bit of a country mouse.

"Poor thing," Maggie mocked, "you should have borrowed some jewelry,
instead of having nothing to wear but your skin, since you can't count
that dress.  Did Doctor Macho take you up on your personal
invitation?"

"Of course.  We tangoed-divinely, of course and then he bent over and
whispered in my ear, 'Tell Maggie that she's been a very good girl and
Doctor Roberto is pleased with her."' "You get to tango and I get to
stay in bed and be a good girl.

What's wrong with that picture, I ask you?"  Maggie complained
wickedly.  "I supposed he kissed your hand, too?"

"Possibly, possibly.  It's only fair; considering the process that
landed you in bed.  You can't get gravida from the tango, at least not
immediately," Tessa replied, pulling out the pins that kept her hair
swept up high and letting it tumble down around her flushed face.

"Since I don't believe Sam knows how to tango, I made the most of
it."

She'd made the most of the entire evening, Tessa thought.  She'd never
flirted before, not really.  Luke and Sam weren't flirtations but
headlong, mutual flights into love, and there had been no one before
Luke or after him until Sam.  She could have, should have, made a
career out of flirting, Tessa thought, if she'd had time, if she hadn't
met Luke, if she'd had a few free years she would have flirted with an
army.

Now her entire knowledge of her amazing power to flirt would be forever
compressed into illuminating a ballroom of willing South American
men.

Better late than never, she told herself, smiling at Maggie.

"So Sam isn't perfect?"  Maggie asked.

"He is, with that one exception.  Does Barney tango?"

"Not unless they taught it in dancing school, along with the box
step."

"Oh, Maggie, I'm so glad it's over," Tessa said, sitting down on the
edge of the bed.  "The press conference, the gala-everything a
triumph-now all that's left is the ultrasound and the flight back
home.

Won't you go to sleep now?  There's nothing left to worry about, and
with this first trip under your belt, speaking loosely, you know the
others will simply be more of the same.  You can finally relax."

"But you must be exhausted.  You've been on your feet for two days."

"Oh, maybe just a little, but it doesn't matter..  .you only live
once."  Tessa yawned and stretched, and unzipped her dress, letting it
slither to the floor.  Maggie lay back with her eyes half-closed until
she heard Tessa return from the bathroom in her bathrobe and sit at the
dressing table to take off her makeup.  Maggie pulled herself up on her
pillows with quiet determination, while Tessa, her back turned,
concentrated on silently turning the lid of a jar of cleansing cream.

"Who was my father?"

"Oh!  Good God!  You scared me!  I thought you were sleeping."

"Who was he?"  Maggie demanded firmly.  "I want to know all about him,
every last detail.  Don't leave out a thing.  I would have asked sooner
but I didn't want to get into it and probably upset you before the big
night."

"Your father's name was Mark O'Malley and you look very much like
him.

He was tall and beautiful and as Irish as they come, and he had your
curly dark hair and your marvelous big blue eyes, and he was seductive
and confident and had a charm no one could resist.  Like you.  He was a
local hero, Maggie, the captain of the high school football team.  I
was besotted with him for two years.  I promise you, I was violently in
love and I know how that feels."

"Two years?  You had a two-year romance with him?"

"Hardly that," Tessa answered soberly, remembering.  "He didn't know I
existed..  .my love was a mad, completely one-sided passion.

I adored him from a distance, I dreamed of him night and day.  It was
first love, and there's nothing like it.  All-consuming.  You ought to
know, you and your Barney.  Finally, when I had just turned fourteen, a
friend and I crashed a party at his house and I met him.  I told him I
was eighteen and he believed me.  I looked much older than I was and I
dressed the part.  He took me upstairs and he... more or less...

seduced me.  He never knew my name, he never knew I'd gotten pregnant,
he never saw me again."

"You mean..  he could be alive?"

"Well, of course."  Tessa laughed.  "He's probably a perfectly nice
forty-one-year-old guy with a wife and four football-playing kids
somewhere."

"That son of a birch!"

"No, no Maggie, don't say that!  I had on a lot of makeup, he thought I
knew what I was doing; I led him on, actually, he certainly didn't have
to force me, so you can't blame him.  Blame me, I'd had too much to
drink and I wanted to."

"Is that what you mean by he 'more or less' seduced you?"

"Well..  .no.

"Then you mean you seduced him?"

"Not that either."

"So how in the name of God did you get knocked up?"  Maggie asked
impatiently.

"Do you absolutely insist on knowing?"  "I do."

"I warn you, it's quite improbable."

"I have a right to know," Maggie insisted sturdily.

"He was... overly... aroused... and when he ... ah, when he...

penetrated me, he only managed... about an inch... before he had an
orgasm, and that was that."

"An inch!  That's how you had me?  An inch!  You were still a virgin,
for Christ's sake!"

"I was, but who would believe me?  Your grandparents didn't want to
know a single detail; they knew I was a sinner and that was enough."

"So I owe my existence to a horny high school hero with super sperm who
suffered from premature ejaculation and a horny high school girl who
let him put it in!  Where were you when they taught sexed?"

"In deepest Catholic school."

"Great.  Just great."  Maggie shook her head at the ways of
yesteryear.

"Well, think of it this way, if it hadn't happened, you wouldn't be
alive."

"Oh, God," said Maggie, "an inch, an inch, one lucky inch..."  and she
began to giggle so hard that the mattress started shaking.

Soon she began to howl with laughter.  "An inch, an inch, I owe my life
to just one inch...

"Stop it, you're getting hysterical," Tessa begged, beginning to laugh
herself.  "Please, please stop it, Maggie, honestly it wasn't funny at
the time, but you made me tell you all the details... oh, oh, I admit
it's really... too ridiculous... when it doesn't happen... to you, oh,
an inch, that's all it was, an inch... not... not that he didn't
have...

much more... oh, oh..."

"I assumed..  .he did..  .dear old Dad..  .oh, oh, poor Mamae...

what a rotten break, what lousy luck, I always knew I was special but I
never guessed I was the product of a virgin birth.  Oh, you're right,
it is improbable... but I believe you, even if nobody else ever did."

Maggie and Tessa gave full rein to their fill of mirth until they both
fell silent with the realization that this discussion wasn't over.

"When I got that letter from my grandfather," Maggie said, solemnly,
"what just about killed me was not the whole teenage mom story, because
anyone would understand that, but the fact that when you could have
acknowledged me, you didn't.  I totally get it that when you became
famous at sixteen you couldn't be allowed to have a kid, but what about
when you married Luke and my grandparents died?

That's where the whole thing sucks!  Since I was supposed to be your
sister anyway, not some stranger, why didn't you and Luke just take me
instead of sending me to the Websters?"

"There are a dozen answers to that, none of them any good."

"Yeah?  Well, tell me a few, just for my information."

"Luke never knew you were my child, that was the beginning of it."

"You never told him?"

"I... he wanted to marry a virgin.  It was terribly important to him, a
real obsession."

"What right did he have to want a virgin!"  Maggie sputtered with
rage.

"Luke was a hundred years older than you, he'd had a million women,
what gave him the goddamned right to have the fucking nerve, to want a
virgin?  Was he some kind of god who demanded a virgin sacrifice?"

"Oh, Maggie, if only I'd dared to ask him that!  I was too stupid, too
much in love, too young, I wanted him too much, I believed he could
keep me safe.  Oh, how I needed to feel safe!  It was like suddenly
being able to breathe fresh air after being underground for years.

I was desperate.  I'd never felt safe in my life, especially after I
got pregnant... I don't expect you to understand or forgive me, I'm
just telling you exactly the way it was.  I was afraid to lose Luke, so
I lied by letting him believe it, and then, afterward, I couldn't even
consider telling him the truth because it was such an enormous and
fundamental lie, Maggie, I believed our life together was founded on
his believing me.  Depended on it.  Even on our wedding night, I played
up to it."

"But you'd had a child, couldn't he tell?"

"The doctor who delivered you assured me that he'd done me a favor and
stitched me up so that I was 'as good as new."  I found out what that
meant the first time Luke and I made love."

"Okay, so you got away with passing as a virgin.  But the man totally,
absolutely adored you, I know that, so why couldn't you admit it sooner
or later, once he couldn't live without you?  All those years, Tessa!

Why couldn't you face up to telling a lie?  Tell him to take his belief
in you, and stuff it?  That's what I would have done!"

"I was a criminal coward, Maggie.  Luke was a very selfish man.

I always knew it, even when he was alive.  He had a terribly jealous
temperament and he hated my career; but he let me have it anyway.

I didn't want to disturb that delicate balance we'd created.  Luke was
demanding, and controlling, but even though his world revolved
completely around him, I had become the most important element in it.

He was incredibly generous in so many ways, to so many people."

"He bought people," Maggie said in a low voice.

"Yes, he did, one way or another, Maggie, but he didn't buy me.  I
allowed him to set the terms of our life because I liked it that way.

I didn't have to do it, don't you understand, I wanted to!  Deep down,
I wanted to be dominated, to be all the things Luke wanted me to be.  I
told you, it made me feel safe, and I thought I couldn't live without
that.

I wasn't as brave as you would have been.  I took the easy way.  The
lying way.  The protected way.  The longer I did it, the more it became
the only way."

"But after Luke died, why couldn't you have told me then?"

"That's the one thing I got right, Maggie, the one action I'm proud
of.

I was a basket case, nothing would have helped but time and getting
through the grieving and loss by myself.  I knew I had to just set my
teeth, keep busy, and do my mourning alone.  If I'd let you sacrifice
your last year in school to be with me, it would have been thoroughly
wrong and horribly unfair to you.  I'm certain about that.  As soon as
I discovered that I was able to make plans again, my first thought was
to claim you.  But you'd received that letter... and it was too
late."

"More than five years ago..  I can't believe it," Maggie murmured.

"Maggie," Tessa said, "you do believe, don't you, that I never
understood how you felt about the Websters?  I thought you were happy
with them."

"I never wanted you to know."

"But I should have guessed!"

"You couldn't have, not possibly.  I'm a pretty good liar myself, and I
can keep it up for years, like you.  Maybe it's a talent that runs in
the family... your mother; then you... and me."

"You don't have to let me off the hook."

"Maybe I want to," Maggie said impetuously.  "Maybe I'd rather have a
mother I can love, than a sister I won't look at and don't speak to."

"Maggie, oh, Maggie, do you mean that?"

"Isn't it time?"  Maggie asked, with a sob, opening her arms and
pulling Tessa close, so that she could lay her head on Tessa's shoulder
and feel the sweet, necessary longed-for comfort of her mother's
embrace.

39

When?"  Dr. Helen Lawrence echoed Maggie's question.  "I'd guess in
about six months, more or less, but I wish you had some clue as to when
you got pregnant.  It would take a lot of the guesswork out of this."

"I always used my diaphragm," Maggie laughed, pocketing the ultrasound
photographs Doctor Roberto had given her to take to her own
gynecologist in New York for comparison.

"Always?"

"Well... maybe," Maggie said thoughtfully, remembering the frenzied,
incredulous, magnificent haste of the first night with Barney, "maybe
there's the possibility that I forgot, once, in the spirit of the
moment as it were, but what's once, Doctor Lawrence?"

"Even if you always used it, there's a failure rate, even if you used a
diaphragm and a condom, there's still a failure rate.

Almost none, I grant you, Maggie, but never discount the power of a
sperm.

But since you're so thrilled to be pregnant, it doesn't matter."

"Well," Maggie defended herself, her eyes rolling with mischief, "at
least my diaphragm worked for five years, with replacements of
course.

Don't you remember when I first came to you to be fitted?

I didn't know any doctor's name but Tessa's."

"Of course.  You were just eighteen and so upset that you couldn't get
contraception for free from the college you couldn't afford to go to,
that I didn't charge you.  It was the very least I could do.  After
all, Tessa'd sent me plenty of patients in the course of years.

How could I charge her little sister?  Whatever happened to that
ceramic-porcelain person you were so involved with way back then?"

'Andy?  He married a bookish, beautiful, and, so I hear, slightly daffy
daughter of an earl-very appropriate, young, rich, noble.

Just his style-and in about six months, when Hamilton Scott retires,
he'll be coming back here to help run the business."

"And the father of this baby of yours?  Or is that too personal?"

"Oh, Doctor Lawrence, you'll be invited to the wedding!  His name is
Barney Webster and I've known him all my life."

"How refreshingly unconventional."

"Don't you mean conventional?"

"These days?  When a girl gets married to someone she's known all her
life?  It makes a doctor's hair stand on end with surprise.  It's
unique.  Congratulations, Maggie, my dear.  I'm thrilled!"

"Thank you, Doctor."

"You're sure you don't want to know the sex of the baby?  I can tell by
now."

"No, I want to be surprised!"

"You're wonderfully old-fashioned, Maggie.  Now tell me, how's Tessa
doing?"

"She's simply marvelous.  She totally wowed them down in Sao Paulo.

She did her job and my job and everything went better than it would
have if I'd been on my feet."

"What about her appetite?"

"Her appetite?  I honestly didn't notice."

"It's so vitally important for her to keep eating," Helen Lawrence
fretted, sitting forward and fixing Maggie with earnest eyes.  "I was
very upset when Susan Hill told me Tessa had decided against any
chemotherapy or radiation, but obviously," she sighed, "treatment would
have made it impossible to make all these public appearances for the
auction that you've been telling me about."

Maggie, too stunned to seize the deeper meaning of the doctor's words,
felt brute instinct telling her to maintain her calm at any price.

"Obviously," she agreed in a voice that revealed nothing.

"Maggie, are you able to notice if she's feeling any pain yet?

Doctor Hill has all sorts of methods of keeping it under control, but
of course, knowing Tessa, if she had a job to do, she wouldn't use
anything as strong as Roxanol, which really does the trick.  She'd
probably just pop a Percocet or a Dilaudid and get on with the show."

"Roxanol?"  Maggie asked casually, her nails biting into her palms.

"Morphine in an elixir; a liquid, form.  It tends to slow you down and
numb you, you're not as alert or sharp as usual and you won't be as
willing to make the effort to eat.  Food aversion is such a difficult
thing to do anything about.  Whatever you can do to get her to increase
her fat intake is important, Maggie, since you're traveling with her
and seeing her every day.  Most people with her kind of cancer lose a
shocking amount of weight, and the last time I saw Tessa she didn't
have an extra pound on her to lose."

"Fat intake?"  Maggie parroted, sitting straight in her chair by using
all her willpower.

"She's never carried any extra weight, Maggie, you know that as well as
I do."

"True, but how about... about her kind of cancer?"  Maggie said
carefully, keeping her face as immobile as possible and her voice
utterly level.  If she didn't find out as much as she could from Doctor
Lawrence, Tessa was entirely capable of not saying anything to anyone
until she absolutely had to.  "I don't quite understand it."

"That's not surprising.  Most people don't.  Pancreatic cancer is so
rarely diagnosed before it's spread.  There usually aren't any symptoms
until it's too late.  If Tessa hadn't come to me for something else she
wouldn't have known for months.  Quite possibly not even now.

Often it's other people who notice when they see someone after a period
of time and realize how thin they've grown.

"'Too late,' too late to cure it, you mean?"

"Too late to treat it.  Maybe someday there will be a cure, but not
yet, Maggie, that's the terrible pity of it.  Thank goodness you're
having a baby-that's going to be a great happiness and distraction for
her.  She'll have lots of time to enjoy your baby, months and months
with any luck."

"Only... months?  Not... a year?"

"Oh, yes, maybe a year; even a little more, God willing.  We just don't
know."

"Do you think... would it be a good idea..  if I suggested that she
stop making these trips?"

"No, absolutely not.  Obviously South America agreed with her.

She'll know when she feels too tired to travel.  With Tessa's
willpower; all this hoopla probably helps to keep her going, now that I
think about it, and serves to distract her at the very least.

The worst thing would be having too much time to think.  Anyway, it's
her choice how she spends the time she has left."

"How much..  morphine is it safe to take?"

"As much as she wants, Maggie.  I hate doctors who dole out pain relief
to the dying.  It's not as if there's a danger of long-term addiction,
is there?"

"No, of course not, I never considered that."

"No reason why you should," Helen Lawrence replied briskly as she got
up to show Maggie to the door.  "Now be sure to take those vitamins I
prescribed for you and make an appointment for a month from now with my
nurse.  I'll call you as soon as I have the results of all your blood
work, but from everything I've checked, you couldn't be healthier and
you're perfectly all right to travel.  You're very pale, but that's
what the winter in New York will do to a girl.  I guess I should start
calling you a 'woman' now, shouldn't I?"

"I don't care," Maggie said, "it doesn't make any difference."

Maggie walked up Lexington Avenue as purposefully and quickly as she
always did, although she was absolutely aimless.  She wasn't expected
anywhere.  Once she'd been able to get a doctor's appointment, she'd
told the office that she was taking the rest of the day off, since she
and Tessa had arrived home so late the previous night.

Everything she passed, every store window, every traffic light, every
man and woman on the street looked unnaturally bright and clearly
outlined, as strangely and flatly illuminated as if she were walking
through a comic strip.  She crossed the street when other people
crossed the street, she avoided the taxis that made their turns too
close to the curbs, she kept from being jostled with her habitual
agility, she put one foot quickly in front of the other to keep up with
everyone else, but she wasn't conscious of anything except Helen
Lawrence's words.

She didn't feel shock, she didn't feel sad, she didn't feel surprise,
she didn't feel pity, she didn't feel anything, Maggie realized.

She felt blank, as blank as a sheet of white paper covered by fresh
snow.  She felt cold and blank and white.  The only thing to do was to
keep moving.

Maggie reached the Carlyle.  Without bothering to have herself
announced, she took an elevator directly up to Tessa's floor.  She
rang, and when the maid opened the door she pushed by her and walked
into the living room, where Tessa was arranging a vase of flowers.

"I saw Helen Lawrence this afternoon.  She told me.  About you.

About your cancer."  Her voice was hard and furious.

Tessa carefully adjusted a rose and straightened up as slowly as
possible, putting off the minute when she'd have to look at Maggie's
face.

"Helen must have thought you knew," she said calmly.  "I was going to
tell you in my own way, Maggie darling, but not yet, not until I had
any real symptoms.  I feel perfectly fine.  I wouldn't believe there
was anything wrong if I didn't know."

"Don't 'Maggie darling' me!  How could you, Tessa?  How could you be so
cruel to me?  Why didn't you just leave things the way they were?

Everything was great before you came along and dangled an irresistible
auction in front of Liz-all she had to do was turn me over to you.  You
said Luke bought people, what about you?  God damn you, Tessa, I didn't
need you, I didn't miss you, I had my own life and you weren't remotely
part of it.  I never gave you a thought.

I didn't hate you, I was indifferent.  But now!  You trapped me.

How could you plan a way to get at me, how could you arrange it so that
I'd find out what it was like to have a mother?  You knew before you
started that I'm going to lose you, but no, you weren't satisfied to
let me live my own life, you had to make me love you--" "But that
wasn't--" "Don't tell me that!  It was!  You know you hoped I'd love
you when I got to know you.  Deny that!"  Maggie challenged Tessa, her
anger as unstoppable as breaking surf.

"I can't deny that I wanted us to mean something to each other."  Tessa
said in a voice that was all but demolished by Maggie's rage.  "I
wanted to try to repair the things I'd done, I didn't want to die
without your forgiving me for the way I neglected you.  I had to try to
explain why it happened, no matter how ashamed I was of myself."

"Yourself" Maggie shouted.  'Always yourself!  That's all you thought
about, your needs and your reasons and your feelings and your lies and
why you did this and why you did that for endless whole lousy years!

Did you ever put yourself in my place?  Even for a minute?  Just look
at the way you acted in Sao Paulo, knocking yourself out, showboating,
taking care of me as if the world depended on it.  So what if I'd had a
miscarriage?  You knew I wasn't married, what made you assume I even
wanted to have a baby?  It was an excuse, that's all, you saw a chance
to mother me and you grabbed it.

Nothing was too much for you.  Why didn't you take care of yourself?

You knew and you slept on those chairs!  You knew and you spent your
precious energy running around a hotel doing my job.  How the fuck do
you think that makes me feel?  Guilty, that's how, guilty as sin."

"There's not one single thing I did on the trip that will shorten my
life and a rest cure wouldn't make me better; didn't Helen explain
that?  But seeing your baby... that's going to make a big difference to
me.  I was just being selfish again."

"I understand that, damn it, but it doesn't help, don't you understand
anything?  I still feel so terribly guilty and it's all my fault.

Why couldn't I have opened at least one of those letters you kept
sending, why was I so stubborn, why was I so devoted to collecting the
injustice of it all, why did I never even try to find out your side of
it?  Oh, Tessa, I can't bear it..  I literally can't bear it...

I don't know what's right and what's wrong anymore... I don't know what
to do..."  Maggie faltered, as her storm of emotion swept her suddenly
into the tumult of tears she hadn't been able to shed before.

"Come sit down here."  Tessa tugged Maggie down onto a sofa and pulled
her close.  She wiped away the tears that streamed unceasingly down
Maggie's hot face, smoothing her cap of curls and giving her little
kisses all over the cheek she could reach.

"Don't blame yourself!  If there's only one thing I can tell you, it's
to not blame yourself.  I've done enough of it for both of us.

Please, Maggie, I'd have sent those letters back just the way you did,
honestly, truly, cross my heart.  You had your pride and you were right
to turn away from me.  It was the least you could do.  You were right
to resent me.  If I hadn't found out how little time I had left, who
knows what I would have done?  Left you alone, in all probability.

I never thought of it from your point of view, only from mine."

"Oh, Tessa, what are we going to do now?"  Maggie asked in a tone of
uncomprehending anguish.

"We can't walk out of the theater and ask for our money back," Tessa
said, with a note of genuine self-mockery in her voice, although tears
were running down her cheeks and mingling with Maggie's.  "We're stuck
in our seats, we've got to make the most of the rest of the
performance.  At least we can sit next to each other and hold hands for
as long as it lasts."

"A pretty pair;" Maggie sobbed.  "But what are we going to do?"

"Stop crying, I guess, and start living again."

"I love you, Tessa.  I've always loved you, even when I thought I
didn't, but now I love you so much more.  You know that, don't you?"

"Yes, my own darling, my daughter; my little girl, I do.  That's what
we're going to do now, love each other; very hard and very much.

That's the only answer I can think of."

"You're going to tell me something you think I don't want to hear;" Sam
whispered to Tessa as she lay naked in his arms that evening.

"Eli's finished the script, hasn't he, and they want you out on the
coast tomorrow.

"Why do you say that?"  Tessa asked, her voice muffled in his chest.

"Because I've never been seduced the way you seduced me tonight... I
felt like an innocent, young, untutored broth of a lad in the arms of a
magnificent female who had decided to make a real man out of me.  Is
this what actors mean by 'getting into the part'?"

"You thought I was being Cassie?  Passionate Cassie?"  Tessa asked,
lifting her head.

"Passionate Tessa with something... astonishingly new, something I'd
never even dreamed of before."

If only it were that, Tessa thought, burrowing again into his arms.  If
only her frenzy had been Method acting, instead of a driving need to
make love one last time before she had to tell him about her sickness,
a last celebration of pure sexual playfulness during which he wouldn't
know about her cancer; in which such awareness couldn't cross his mind
while they were together.

"But what you don't know, and couldn't guess," Sam continued, "is that
I've made arrangements to begin my sabbatical year early so I'll be
able to spend it with you, while the picture's being made.

I realized I couldn't let you go away on location without me, or
rather, to be honest, I couldn't stand to stay here while you were
gone.

I know it's boredom squared to watch a picture being made so I'll do
research during the day and be there when you get back at night, or
whenever you have a free minute.  How does that sound to you?"

"Like a dream of impossible bliss."

"Nothing impossible about it-it's already arranged with the dean of my
department."

"But it can't be, Sam."  Tessa sat up in bed, leaned against the
headboard, and pulled a robe over her naked body.  She took a
shuddering breath and reminded herself that if she didn't tell him now,
she'd have to do it tomorrow because she couldn't let him find out the
way Maggie had.  "It can't be because I can't make the film and I can't
make the film because I have cancer."  she said, forcing her voice to
be as ruthlessly direct as a well-thrust dagger.

Sam swung his feet to the floor; his body reacting against the blow
before his mind.

"I don't believe it."

"Yes, you do.  You know I wouldn't say it if it weren't true."

He looked at her sitting with her arms folded defensively over her
breasts, her hands balled into fists, and moved quickly toward her;
until he could hold her fiercely close.  "Tessa, we'll fight it
together; darling, you're going to be all right, I promise you.

"No, I'm not going to be all right, Sam."

"Don't say that.  Whatever it takes, you have to do it, I'll be with
you every second."

"There's nothing to do."

"Who told you that nonsense?"

"The doctor."

"For God's sake, Tessa, what kind of quack told you a thing like
that?

Tomorrow we'll find the best doctor in New York-" "Sam, Sam darling,
listen to me.  I've been to one of the best doctors in New York.  I
have pancreatic--" "God!  No!"  He let her go abruptly, stood up, and
punched the wall so hard that she could hear a bone in his hand
break.

"Sam?"  Tessa asked in the sudden silence.

"My father died of it."

"So you understand."

"Yes."

"How old was he?"

'Almost eighty.  Tessa, did you get a second opinion?  You're much too
young, there's something wrong... it's simply not possible..."

"I'd get a second opinion, if it would make you feel better; but I've
had ultrasound and computerized tomography and a biopsy and a
consultation with a top oncologist and there's no doubt.  It's
inoperable and I refuse to have treatment that would eat up whatever
good time is left.  It's very early, Sam, I have at least a year and
maybe more, maybe even two... yes, just hold me, keep holding me, don't
ever let me go."

"I won't, my beautiful girl, I won't.  40

Fiona Bridges, who had been in New York for two days of the last week
in March, leading up to tonight's auction, perched on the seat Tessa
had reserved for her, one of the best in the house, in the middle of
the main auction room where she could see all the action.  As she
waited, Fiona clutched her bidder's paddle, on which she was relieved
to note that the numbers were a good eight inches high.  She was free
to tug her ears, pull her nose, and make any facial or body movement
she pleased.  Only the paddle, raised above her head, would be
considered a bid.

Roddy Fensterwald, sitting in another reserved seat next to Fiona, had
repeatedly reassured her of this very fact, but until she had actually
received her paddle from one of the dozen young women sitting behind
the long tables in the entrance, where hundreds of carefully selected
people brandished their invitations and lined up to identify themselves
and register as bidders, she hadn't been quiet in her mind about it.

Unlike Roddy, who collected antiques and frequented auctions, this was
her first such event.

At the Oscars, Fiona was so accustomed by now to the status of the
placement of her seat, just a few rows behind the nominated stars and
far forward of the nominated technical people, that she took it for
granted.  Her last five independent productions had all been solid
box-office hits, and for a woman in Hollywood that was powerful
medicine.  But the mob on Oscar night, black-tie though it was, seemed
pitifully small-town and inbred, she observed, compared to this
luxurious and fevered assembly of the chirping, squealing, waving,
kissing, and preening international ultra-rich who were now crowding
excitedly into the high, wood-paneled auction rooms.

Fiona craned her neck in every direction, grateful to Tessa for
inviting them and producing these seats.

"I feel like an utter hick," she whispered to Roddy.

"Me too," he responded.  "I don't think there's ever been anything like
this..  .of course I wasn't at the Duchess of Windsor's sale, but that
was held in Geneva, out-of-town is out-of-town, darling, no matter
what.  This auction's electrified New York.  That's all people were
talking about wherever I went today, even the taxi drivers."

"I didn't dare tell anybody I had a reserved seat, I knew they would
have torn me apart in sheer envy.

"Especially since you're not in the market for any of the jewels."

'And you are, Roddy?"

"At these prices?  But I couldn't resist getting a paddle anymore than
you could.  It looks as if I'm here to pick up a little something for
you, love.  How many of these women do you think are going to be
bidding for themselves?  Almost none, I bet.  It'll be the men who'll
actually bid, egged on by the women, and it's the men who'll pay."

"Have you realized that it's eleven whole years since that night when
Tessa, looking like Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream presented the
Best Picture award?"

"Eleven years!  Jesus, Fiona, you're right.  It was eighty-two.

Missing won, didn't it, or was it E.T?  I never can remember."

"Gandhi, and how you can forget is beyond me.

"My inner feminist says it should have been Tootsie.  Were movies
better then or were we younger?"

"Both," Fiona responded fervently, "both."

"I still don't understand at all why Tessa's having this auction,"
Roddy mused.  "It isn't as if she couldn't afford to keep her jewels in
their vaults, quietly letting them appreciate in value.  No matter how
dowdy and academic her life's going to be with Sam, she's still going
to have years and years of major movie star appearances at which to
wear them."

"I think the real reason is no more mysterious than what she wrote in
the 'Owner's Note' in the beginning of the catalog, where she said that
she felt the resources tied up in the jewels would he better spent now
in creating a foundation for cancer research.  As simple as that."

"Is our Tessa bucking for sainthood?  That's never been her style,"
Roddy said thoughtfully.  "Her jewels are so much a part of her that
selling them is as if she's saying good-bye to her past.  And that
doesn't make sense.  It makes me feel sad-and old.... I suppose I
simply don't like to think of them belonging to other women.

"Maybe this is some sort of sign that the eighties are really over."

"What a terrible thought!  Fiona, never, ever say that again!

Don't even think it!"  Roddy said, aghast.

"Sorry, darling.  The eighties will last till the year three thousand,
never fear."

"You're sure?"

"Positive," Fiona said wryly.  She'd just had alterations made on all
the shoulder pads in her large and expensive wardrobe of power suits,
yet not one of the jackets looked quite right anymore.

There was no way out, she'd have to spring for totally new Armani, the
whole nine yards, or forget about the industry lunch.  There was no
such thing as investment dressing, and the people who edited fashion
magazines were touts.  Whatever was changing, and something damn well
was, she didn't have the handle on it yet.  Nevertheless, with her job,
she needed to stay well ahead of the curve.

"Where's the private box Tessa's sitting in?"  Roddy asked.

"Up there, behind you," Fiona said, turning and pointing to the upper
level of the huge room.  "See those windows that are almost hidden by
the paneling?  There's a viewing room up there from which the owners or
heirs can witness the auction without being stared at."

"What if..."

"What if what?"

"Well, suppose Tessa suddenly changed her mind about a certain piece,
couldn't she just bid on it, like everybody else?

Maybe through a special telephone?"

"It seems that's illegal, once it's been consigned."

"How do you know so much, when this is your first auction?"

Roddy asked suspiciously.

"Tessa told me when we had lunch yesterday."

"And how come I wasn't invited?"

"Girl talk, Tootsie."

Andy McCloud, who had returned home early to be present at the auction
of the jewels of Tessa Kent, stood at his privileged place under the
raised podium at which his uncle was about to begin the auction, and
marveled at the scene.  Every seat they had been able to cram into both
auction rooms was filled with bidders from all over the world, many of
them people who had never come to S & S before, reserving their custom
for Sotheby's or Christie's.

Throughout the Western Hemisphere, in Beverly Hills, Chicago, Boston,
Dallas, Miami, San Francisco, and Palm Beach, as well as in Toronto,
Montreal, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Rio, and Buenos Aires, S & S offices
had rented hotel ballrooms that had a direct audio feed to Hamilton
Scott's podium, so that the people sitting in those cities could hear
the auction as it took place.  In each of those ballrooms, as here at S
& S, the individual jewel being auctioned was shown, in a vastly
enlarged photograph, on a giant screen that hung several feet above the
auctioneer's head, while an electronic board, just under the photograph
of each jewel, would display the current bid in all major currencies.

There was a bank of twenty-five telephones, both here and in the other
rooms, each one of which had its own line and its specially trained
operator, who would take phone bids from people who either found it
inconvenient to travel to the auction or, in many cases, choose to
remain at home, in order to maintain their privacy.

Right now, Andy thought, his excitement mounting, there were people
everywhere, in every time zone, in both hemispheres, up all night,
sitting by their phones, eyes trained on their catalogs, waiting for
the call from their particular operator that would notify them when the
lots on which they had requested telephone bids were about to come
up.

The operator would repeat the latest price as quickly as the auctioneer
said it, allowing this global network of invisible bidders to
participate fully in each sale.  The hammer would not fall on a single
jewel as long as somewhere in the world there was someone still willing
to raise the bid, one anonymous phone bidder prepared to duel with
another anonymous phone bidder until one of them carried the day.

And no one in the world, Andy told himself, would know who had won,
except for the three people who would go over the auction in detail
tomorrow: Uncle Hamilton, Aunt Liz, and finally, after all these years,
himself.  Even then, many of the most important purchases would be made
by someone bidding for someone else, whose identity even they would
never know.  Jewels were, as they had always been, the most reliable
form of international currency, a traditional hedge for the very rich
against everything but total destruction of the earth and its
population.

What a fabulous business!  As much as he was captivated by his
porcelains and his ceramics, he had to admit that nothing except a
great painting auction could equal the fascination and violent
excitement of a great jewel auction.  He could positively feel the ebb
and flow of the financial structure of the world, as if it were an
underground river that tonight had chosen to flow just below the
floorboards of S & S.

He had no official job here, unlike anyone else who worked for S & S.

"Just observe closely," Aunt Liz had said, "and remember everything."

Did she mean to include the sight of Maggie Horvath Webster, Andy
wondered, Maggie who looked-and it seemed impossible-even more sexy,
even more irresistible pregnant than she had as a virgin?  It was, Andy
found to his surprise, rather more bitter than sweet to realize that he
was the only person in the room who was entitled to make that precise
judgment.  After all, his wife, Lady Clarissa, had her own
much-appreciated charms, all of them delicately blond, delicately
boned, delicately bosomed, delicately smiling, delicately-just plain
delicate, damn it.  How could Maggie, who was all boldness and blossom,
all belly laughs and noticeable belly, seem somehow, bewitchingly.  .

more... feminine?  Absurd.

He watched her closely as she was busy greeting and seating the dozens
of journalists of every description who were important enough to be
invited tonight, so that tomorrow the auction would live a vast second
life in the press.  Cameras weren't allowed inside the auction rooms;
no one wanted to risk being photographed in the act of buying millions
of dollars worth of jewels, but certain journalists were welcome, and
those rare bidders who didn't object to publicity could discreetly
arrange for their names to be released through Maggie or one of her
corps of press officers, all of whom had adopted Maggie's maternity
uniform of a long, widely flaring black turtleneck tunic over very slim
black pants and ballet slippers.  Or were they all pregnant, Andy asked
himself?  Perhaps she'd started a new fad?

God knows, it would be understandable after the job she'd done on this
auction.  She and Tessa Kent.  Odd, decidedly odd that Maggie had never
seen fit to mention that she was Tessa Kent's sister, back when they
were together.  Could it be that she hadn't trusted him?  Hardly
likely, he reflected, all things considered.

There must have been another reason.  After all, a woman tells her
first lover everything-at least she should.  Clarissa had, revealing
all of her delicate, innocent, girlish little secrets, like a
scattering of tiny, unopened buds.

However, be that as it may, he had to admit that there had never been
such a formidable team in the history of pre auction publicity as Tessa
and Maggie, air-lifted in the past months from one center of wealth to
another.  How, he wondered, did that fellow, Webster, feel about having
his wife jaunting about, from Tokyo to Lugano, in her present
condition?  And who was the guy, anyway?  A devastating biker chap,
according to Aunt Liz, who'd been at the wedding.  Rode a Ducati,
apparently.  Must be some sort of playboy.

Well, whoever he was, he hadn't waited long to get his wife pregnant,
had he?  Not even until the nuptials.  Face it, old chap, Andy told
himself, as he forced himself to turn his yearning eyes away from
Maggie, she'd been a pushover.

Polly Guildenstern, dressed in her one concession to the 1990s, a dark
green, high-necked velvet dress that was starkly modern in cut, sat
breathlessly attentive, waiting for the auction to start, one row in
front of Fiona and Roddy.

She was in a fluster, Polly realized.  She hated the East Side of
Manhattan, garish, loud, and horribly nouveau.  She chose to spend her
time alone in her high, peaceful studio, cooking and working on the few
commissions for miniatures that came her way, just enough to provide a
frugal but decent living.  In her free time, hand in hand with Jane,
she enjoyed occasionally dipping into the predictable confines of their
own, discerningly chosen, bars and discos.

But this place!  She hardly knew what to make of this overwhelming mass
of exuberantly perfumed, gossiping, kiss-blowing, overdressed
femaleness, punctuated by the dark blue and dark gray suits of their
escorts.

Was it like a harem or opening night at La Scala or a gypsy encampment
or the Carnival in Rio without music?  All of them put together, she
decided, since the thought of any one of those particular events made
her feel nervous.  The only thing that calmed her was her paddle, which
gave her an entitlement she felt she otherwise lacked.

On the other hand, Polly thought, sitting up straighter, her
capricious, spicy smile brightening her face, just who here knew as
much as she?  Who here could put the entire picture together, who here
knew why this auction was happening, who here had made this auction
happen?  Unknown to anyone in this crowd, tonight, she was the Auction
Goddess.

Tessa and Maggie knew, of course, but they were only two parts of a
whole that she had been inspired to create.  Sam Conway?  She didn't
know if he knew, nor did she know if Barney knew.  It wasn't the kind
of thing you could ask somebody, Polly told herself, with the
complacent delight of a confirmed secret keeper.  Either you knew and
didn't say anything, or you simply didn't know there was anything to
know.  A tiny, self-satisfied expression settled on her face, and her
charming face was illuminated as she looked benevolently over the
room.

"Excuse me, may I ask you a question?"  Polly's neighbor in the row, an
older woman with gray hair, wearing a noble amount of rubies with her
silver brocade suit, turned toward her.

"Oh!"  Polly said, startled out of her reverie.  "Certainly."

"That miniature you're wearing fascinates me.  I wonder if I could
possibly look at it more closely?"

"Here, I'll take it off so you can get a really good look," Polly said,
unknotting the velvet ribbon from around her neck.  She was
particularly proud of the tiny object, which had been fit into an oval
of old gold.

It was a portrait of Jane against a dramatic, solid blue background,
wearing an old-fashioned man's white linen shirt trimmed with lace,
under a soft black leather vest, of which just one silver button was
undone.

"Oh, how extraordinary!  My goodness gracious, I don't think I've ever
seen anything so utterly lovely.  The details, my dear, the details!  I
feel as if he must have been exactly like that, down to the last hair
on his head."

"Yes, she is.  It's rather a good likeness," Polly said demurely.

"You mean, the model's alive?  A woman?  I thought it was a man because
of the clothes.  But you can't mean this is contemporary?"

"I finished painting it last week," Polly purred.

"Good grief!  I thought it must be seventeenth century!  Isaac Oliver
probably."

"Thank you.  I executed it in Oliver's style; in fact the background is
the same blue he used in the portrait of John Donne in Queen
Elizabeth's collection."

"Oh, I'm all chills!  I can't believe it!  I saw that collection just
last year.  The Donne was dated sixteen sixteen.  Uncanny!

Uncanny.

My dear, you don't, by any chance, accept commissions?"

"I only work on commission," Polly answered, her nose quivering with
the pride of craftsmanship.

"How perfect!  I've been thinking about next year's Christmas presents,
such a problem when you have four daughters and they all have little
ones, so I start early.  Now, do you think you could possibly find the
time to squeeze in miniatures of each of their children?

That would take care of all the girls and be such a load off my mind.

I always give them very special gifts, but obviously the prices here
tonight are going to be ridiculous.  Miniatures of my grandchildren
would be much more sentimental and meaningful than anything of Tessa
Kent's, mad as my girls are about her."

"It all depends," Polly said, her brain working madly.  "How many
children are there?"

"Eleven, so far; counting the babies, and I couldn't leave them out,
could I?"

"Eleven.  Hmm.  That's a lot of children."

"Oh, dear; are there too many?  You'd have until next December.  That's
almost nine months.  You could leave out the babies if it were
absolutely necessary."

"Well, I suppose I might, just, be able to manage, if I put all my
other commissions on hold, and worked like a demon," Polly said with a
thoughtful frown.  "But the problem is that it would mean disappointing
a lot of people.  However... since children are only young once... yes,
I could certainly consider it, but only because of the sentimental
value."

"Oh, my dear, if only you'd agree, I'd be the happiest woman in the
world!  How much are they, by the way."

"They're not inexpensive," Polly warned.

"I should think not," her neighbor said indignantly.

"I ask five thousand dollars each, no matter the age of the sitter.

Babies are particularly difficult.  They haven't developed the optimum
amount of facial detail, so it's a triumph to do them justice."

"How exceedingly well put.  Indeed, I'd never realized that.  Oh, could
you please say yes and book your dance card solid for the rest of the
year?  You can work from photos, can't you?  Otherwise it wouldn't be a
surprise."

"I've often done that, particularly with children.  They do wriggle."

"Perfect.  Now, here's my card.  If you'll write down your name and
address, I'll have my accountant make all the necessary financial
arrangements tomorrow.  You tell him what you want.  A certified check,
or whatever you require to give up your other commissions.

Oh, but you haven't agreed yet.  Do say yes!  Yes?  Oh, what a
relief!

Now I can sit back and enjoy this auction without even thinking if I
should bid or not."

"I'm not going to worry about it either."  Polly agreed heartily.

"There's only one thing...

Yes...?"

"Well, you see, many of my friends will want to come to you too, once
they see the miniatures.  Not just for children, either.

It'll become a rage, I'm afraid, so I'd appreciate it deeply if you
called me before accepting their commissions... I don't want to be
copied left and right by just anybody until my girls have had at least
a year to be original."

"A whole year?"  Polly shook her head dubiously.

"Oh, well, if you insist, make it six months.  Would that be too much
to ask?"

"I suppose it's only fair," Polly nodded slowly.  She'd just multiplied
her price ten times and ensured work for years to come.

Yes, it seemed fair enough.  There was a reason for the Auction Goddess
to ride forth from her West Side dominions once in a great while, after
all, she told herself, in high good humor; as she tied the portrait of
Jane back around her neck.  You met a richer class of people.

41

Sam sat next to Tessa in the comfortable chairs that were arranged in
the upstairs owners' lounge.  Tonight they were alone with the
panoramic view of the heads of everyone in the room, and binoculars
were provided so that Hamilton Scott, at the podium, seemed only feet
away.  Although they couldn't see the numbers on the bidders' paddles,
they could hear perfectly through the loudspeaker in the lounge.  It
was, thought Sam, something like those special skyboxes at sports
events whose distant, elite placement took a lot of the sweat and
reality out of the game.

People were still being seated as Sam restlessly readjusted his pair of
binoculars.  He and Tessa had been sitting here for almost an hour;
with floaters popping in every now and then to ask if they wanted
anything to eat or drink.  They'd been smuggled in early through the
employees' entrance so that Tessa wouldn't have to run the gamut of the
huge crowd outside of S & S, attracted by the arriving parade of the
invited society figures and celebrities.  The mob outside was further
enlarged by the presence of mobile television trucks from all three
networks and CNN, who would be reporting on the auction as soon as it
was over; when they could finally interview executives from S & S as
well as the departing bidders.

Would this hellish auction ever start?  Christ, he couldn't wait for it
to be over; couldn't wait until Tessa could finally put an end to the
infernal round of travel interviews, photographs, and more travel.  He
knew that if she had said, at any point in the past month, "enough,"
she could have returned to private life and let the auction take place
under its own steam.  No one at S & S would have complained or thought
that she was giving less than she should have.

But somehow, once she'd started on the publicity, Tessa hadn't been
able to cut it short by one minute.  It used up a merciless,
profligate, reckless amount of time, time Tessa didn't have, although
that wasn't his judgment to make.

But what would he have done if he'd had the same diagnosis?

Sam asked himself.  Wouldn't he have continued to teach and write, no
matter that his new book would never be finished, even if his courses
didn't make any lasting mark on the world?

Did some people who were faced with Tessa's knowledge suddenly embark
on an entirely different way of life?  he wondered.

Were there people who sailed a small boat from one tropical island to
another; spent every penny they had left on drink and drugs, moved to
Paris, bought an island off the coast of Maine and took up lobster
fishing, divorced their spouses and ran off with someone else's wife,
embarked on a cruise ship and never got off?  Pulled a Paul Gauguin?

No, damn it, there probably weren't.  People didn't, as a rule, start
something new without an initial period of difficulty and resistance.

It took training to sail small boats; a certain aptitude and an
indifference to hangovers to go to hell with yourself, and as for
divorce, who would want to spend the end of a life in a wrangle with
lawyers?  Lobster fishing was cold, hard, backbreaking work; living in
Paris was dank under any circumstances and lonely if you didn't speak
French.  The essence of a cruise was that it ended.  Even becoming a
ski bum took the ability to ski or fake it.  Gauguin was all very well,
but he'd run away to exercise his already formed genius, with most of
his life ahead of him.

Tessa had accomplished the one great single shining thing she had set
out to do: become a mother to Maggie.  It had meant spending more time
than he had imagined possible when she first told him about her plans,
but every minute that she worked and traveled with Maggie was a minute
of motherhood reclaimed from all the years that had been lost.

Even if he had known about her cancer; when she'd first told him about
the auction, he wouldn't have said a word to influence her against the
idea.  He didn't have the right, nor did anyone else, Sam thought,
watching Tessa scanning the room, exclaiming excitedly when she caught
sight of someone she knew, laughing at the sight of Fiona and Roddy
deep in conversation, her binoculars constantly returning to Maggie,
unable to repress her pride as she watched her most noticeably pregnant
daughter move slowly through the ranks of journalists, stopping here
and there to distribute chosen morsels of information.

"Darling," Tessa said, turning to Sam.  "Immediately after the auction,
Maggie's going to join us here and lead us out the way we came in.

She's coming back to the Carlyle with us.  There's something special I
want to ask her.  Would you mind if she and I had a drink at the bar
and talked while you go on upstairs?"

"Of course not.  I'll be knocked out.  That's what watching people
spend tons of money in public does to me.  The only time I went to Las
Vegas I fell asleep under the blackjack table."

"Ah, but tonight it's in a good cause."  Tessa smiled at him, a
strangely mysterious smile on her passionately formed lips, with such a
loving look glowing in her eyes that he had to clench his fists not to
cry out.  Had she ever looked so vividly alive?  Had her face ever been
so deeply expressive?  She looked as if she were waiting, with gentle
patience, for a deep-throated bell to sound.

Sam knew that today, for the first time, she'd used a pain patch on her
torso.  He'd felt it under her blouse when he'd held her in his arms
before leaving for class.  She'd told him that it was called
Narto-Duragesic and that it lasted for three days.

"It's pain relief for someone who isn't watching the clock," she'd
explained, almost gleeful at the advances of medicine.

"Beats anything you can get over the counter.

"What does the pain feel like?"  he'd asked, his need to know
outweighing any other consideration.

"It's so hard to describe ... it's not sharp, not something that comes
in waves, it's sort of like a stomachache that goes through to my
backbone, but just a mild stomachache, sweetheart, nothing to get
alarmed about, I promise."

"How long have you had it?"

"Only for a few days.  Funny, I felt a real need to live with it for a
while, to get to know it, to recognize it, before I used the patch.

I'm not sure why.  Now that I've put the patch on, I feel it going
away."

"Will you promise me to eat a good lunch?"

"I won't have a choice, I'm eating with Maggie and she watches me
consume every bite.  Yesterday she invented the most caloric, most
expensive lunch in the city, two avocado halves, slightly hollowed out
and piled high with Beluga."

"Don't tell me she ordered that too?"

"Of course not, way too much salt and too much fat for her.

She ordered broiled fish and cheered me on.  I couldn't finish it all,
nobody could have, so she polished it off.  I guess you can only gorge
when you shouldn't-when you should, you don't want to.  That seems to
be some sort of universal law... I loathe every bloody universal law.

I've never heard of a single one I liked.  Don't you agree?"

"You know I do."  That oblique remark was as far as she'd ventured, Sam
reflected, in discussing her condition, since that first night when
she'd told him.  She'd never gone for that second opinion and he'd
never mentioned it again, he thought, rubbing the bone he'd broken in
his hand that was still not completely healed.

Mutely they'd reached an understanding that they had time, plenty of
time, for whatever Tessa wanted to talk about, whenever she felt like
it.

Or if not, not.  It was up to her.

All Sam knew was that he was on board for the whole trip, he'd be there
for her; unequivocally, every step of the way.  He loved her more
extravagantly each day and they both knew that.  All he could do was to
hide, as well as he could, the bleak, blank intuition of a future
without her that drilled him through and through by day and by night.

The loud crack of Hamilton Scott's hammer brought the buzz below to an
abrupt halt.  "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," he announced in his
rich, extravagance-inspiring voice.  "Welcome to the Scott and Scott
Building, and to our historic sale of magnificent jewelry from the
collection of Miss Tessa Kent."

As Tessa and Maggie entered the Cafe Carlyle, to the sound of Bobby
Short singing 'A Foggy Day in London Town," a burst of cheering and
applause broke out as Tessa was recognized.  The news of the results of
the auction had traveled all over the world the instant it finished,
and in Manhattan, radio, television, and word of mouth had spread the
story in less time than it had taken them to drive back from S & S to
the hotel.

One hundred sixty-two million dollars had been attained, more than three
times as much as the largest single-owner sale of all time, that of the
Duchess of Windsor in 1987.  Not a single jewel had gone for less than
five or six times its high estimate, and every record ever made for
every catagory of gem had been broken.

Tessa waved and smiled to the startled, congratulatory crowd as the
headwaiter led them to the secluded table she'd reserved earlier in the
day.  The champagne she'd ordered was poured immediately and she
relaxed against the banquette, sighing with relief and trying not to
hum along.

"Let's not try that auction caper again," Tessa said, laughing, after
the set was finished, Bobby Short had left the room, and conversation
resumed all around them, creating an intimate place in which they could
talk.

"Not unless you've been holding out on me and that was only some of
what you've got stashed away.

"The only things left are the pearls and my ring, and a few cameos I
keep upstairs.  I don't care if I never see another jewel again.

Enough!  It feels as good as cleaning out your closets and getting rid
of everything you haven't worn in two years.

"I've heard that theory," Maggie said.  "But I wear everything I have
until it falls apart and if I threw out one of Barney's four shirts,
he'd have a fit.  But you know, there actually is one of them he never
wears."

"Don't touch it, take it from me.  He needs it.  I know more about men
than you ever will, little girl."

"Oh, I don't know about that, but never mind the gory details," Maggie
replied.  "Why do I have the feeling that I'm here for a reason known
only to you?  Why am I suspicious because Sam insisted that he was too
sleepy to join us?  He looked deeply thirsty to me, and wide awake."

"He developed a bad case of auction fever."  Tessa laughed.  "I've
never heard a man get so excited, it was ten times worse than when he
watched the Super Bowl.  What he needs is to take a tranquilizer and go
to bed."

"Was he surprised that you had so many jewels?"

"He'd seen the catalog, just flipped through it once or twice to admire
the Penn photos and whistle at the pictures of me, but he never
bothered to read any of the descriptions, so I don't think it sank in
until tonight.  Then, when the action began and he actually saw and
heard an emerald necklace being sold in a few brisk minutes for eleven
million dollars... he was knocked for a loop.  Even I was stunned."

That was the only time during the auction that she'd had to fight back
tears, Tessa thought.  The memory of that magical night in Ere with
Luke, the perfume of the lavender, the warm wind of Provence, that
marvelous white Dior dress she'd worn for the first time... oh, had it
really happened a million years ago and was it possible that there'd
never be another night like that again for her?

Never, ever?  No, never.  Never.  Nevermore.  But then would she ever
be twenty again or on her honeymoon, even if she were guaranteed to
live to be a hundred?  What's more, there wasn't a woman in the room
who didn't have some similiar memory, she'd told herself, and she'd
stopped the silly tears before they spilled from her eyes.

"So was I, and I'm used to auctions," Maggie admitted.  "I'd worked
myself into a state where all the publicity we did was a
self-sustaining fantasy, publicity for the sake of publicity, but
tonight the fantasy turned into a huge, very real sum of money.  Those
people went crazy!  They just had to have a piece of you at any
price.

You or your legend; I guess they're indivisible.  It's hard to wrap my
mind around it."

"I bet Liz and Hamilton aren't having any trouble getting their minds
around their ten percent commission."

"It's an easier sum to swallow.  Almost bite-size.  Now, Tessa, tell me
why I'm here and you're not upstairs with Sam."

"You don't miss much."

"I try not to."

"Actually, darling, I'd like to offer you a job."

"What?"  Maggie exclaimed, almost choking on the Sprite she'd ordered
instead of champagne.  "I've just finished the biggest piece of work in
my life and you want to offer me a job?  What exquisite timing.

Ma, don't you think I need a vacation?  Don't you think I deserve
one?"

"Yes, I've decided that suits you.  Only when we're alone, of course.

"I love it.  I feel like a Ma.  Now, Maggie, pay attention.  The new
foundation will start out funded by the hammer price of everything sold
tonight and the profits on a half-million catalogs.  That's a lot of
money.  I started to make my will today and I left most of Luke's money
to the foundation as well."

And more than enough to Maggie, Tessa thought, so that she and her
children would never be dependent on any man, no matter how much she
loved him; but she'd find that out later; when she couldn't protest.

And her Tiffany cultured pearls and earrings, which Maggie would
actually wear; as well as the glorious three-strand necklace of
perfectly matched natural pearls, which she'd probably only wear when
she'd grown into them; and the heart-shaped diamond and any amount of
odds and ends, including the farmhouse outside of Ere -Village she'd
never been able to bring herself to sell.

What's more, Maggie would even rediscover a large Irish family, all the
great aunts and uncles and cousins Agnes Horvath had fled from, for
each of them had been tracked down and left bequests.

There was time enough for her to know all about that.  Later.

Much, much later.

"Holy Mother!"

"Exactly.  There will be, eventually, a great deal more... several
billion dollars for the foundation to work with, with additional funds
coming in every year.  This foundation needs someone I trust to run
it.

I don't want to have to count on strangers.  I'd like you to consider
becoming the head of the foundation."

"Billions!  My God, Tessa, I don't know anything about running a
billion-dollar foundation!"

"Of course you don't.  But you're a quick study, you're smart, you're
enormously well organized, Maggie mine, and accustomed to working with
all sorts of people, and getting them to work with each other.  That's
the uniquely important thing.  For the rest, you'd be able to hire
professionals to teach you how a foundation works and pay consulting
fees to the best oncologists in the world to guide you in the right
directions.  It boils down to the basic question of whether you'd
rather be doing that or something else."

"But what about the baby, Ma, your grandchild-to-be?"

"That's the chief thing on my mind.  Were you planning to go back to S
and S after the baby was born?"

"No, I don't want a full-time job and they expect time-and-a-half
minimum from their wage slaves.  I want to stay home for two or three
years and find something I can do part-time.  Barney's doing amazingly
well-there're ten bikers born every minute-we can easily afford a
housekeeper and I can take care of the baby and do other work
besides."

"You could run the foundation from home," Tessa said quietly.

"How could I possibly?  A foundation that size?"

"It's not like running a billion-dollar business.  Of course someone
could turn it into a full-time job, with a large office at a fancy
address, a top-heavy board of big-name directors and staff all over the
place.  That would be a serious temptation to almost anybody I could
hire, and who would fire that person?  Foundations tend to dig in and
spend a lot of money on themselves.  I'm wary of the kind of person
who'd want to run it just for the prestige it would necessarily
bring."

"No staff?"  Maggie asked with a sniff.

"Of course staff.  As much staff as you need.  And very good salaries,
for you and for them.  And an office, to put the staff in, to have a
place to meet with the professionals you hire and consult with.  But
you don't actually have to go to an office to learn and think and ask
questions and gradually arrive at the point of making decisions, these
days, do you?  As far as the money is concerned, it would be
administered by the same people who administer Luke's estate for me
now, so you wouldn't have to worry about that.  And it's not as if
you'd have to snap right into it.  That money wouldn't go anywhere
until you felt sure of what you were doing.  You'd take little steps
and then bigger steps, you probably wouldn't be ready to take giant
steps until the baby was in kindergarten-" "Would I be pregnant again
by then?"

"How would I know?"  Tessa asked, astonished.

"You know I'm going to run the foundation, I thought you might know
that too."

"Oh, Maggie!  Really?  Truly?  You'll really do it?  You can't have any
idea how marvelously happy that makes me.  Oh, darling!"

"How could I resist?  The more you talked about it, the more I realized
I'd resent having anybody else do it.  It's your foundation, Ma, the
Tessa Kent Foundation, and who else has a better right to make sure
it's run on a shipshape basis than your daughter?"

"That's the other thing..."

"Tessa?  What other thing!  Do you have more plans for me that I don't
know about?"

"Not plans exactly... a question.  Now, when I go back to my lawyer to
finish drawing my will, do you want me to say that the foundation is
going to be run by my daughter-or my sister?"

"Oh, hell, hell, hell.  That's a big one and I never thought of it.

Hell!"  Maggie sat absolutely still for minutes, chewing her lip.

Finally, she started to speak.

"You can't set up such a huge foundation without making news.

It's literally impossible to keep the details out of the press.  If you
say your 'daughter,' it becomes a major news story and it will never
die.

Even when the regular press is finished with it, the tabloids will be
bringing it up for years... remember, they're still convinced that
Elvis lives.  If you say your 'sister,' that's just a truth that's been
around for a long time ... every girl who went to school with me knows
it, all your Hollywood friends, anyone who goes back to when I was
born.

It's not news, it's normal."

"I want it to be your decision entirely," Tessa said.  "You're the

one who'll have to live with it."

"Oh, God, I don't know what to say," Maggie cried.  "I want people to
know I'm your daughter!  But I desperately don't want to spend the rest
of my life having to explain---" "-why I didn't say so sooner."

"Yes."

"Do you want time to think about it?  I'll change my lawyer's
appointment.  You can talk to Barney, mull it over..."

"Or talk to Polly."

"Polly knows!"  Tessa exclaimed.

"Oh, she knew first.  She's deep, is Polly."

"Polly, Barney, Sam, you, and I... we all know," Tessa said
reflectively, "and nobody's said anything to anyone."  And Mimi, she
thought, Mimi could really keep a secret.

"You told Sam?"

"Of course.  I couldn't lie to him, too."

"Well, outside of the five of us, when you get right down to it,
there's nobody else I care about so much that I feel a burning need to
tell them.  Since we all know, that's enough for me.  Tell the lawyer
to write 'sister'-oh, my God, Doctor Roberto!"  Maggie clapped her hand
over her mouth.

"He was convinced that I was too young to be your mother," Tessa said
with a wicked laugh.  "If he ever reads about it, he'll think I
pretended to be your mother to get his full attention.  He thought that
anyway."

"As if you needed to try.  That tango... was that all it was?"

"Maggie!  You know how I feel about Sam."

"But it was in Brazil..  people make exceptions in Brazil."

"I don't know where I ever got a daughter with a mind like yours."

"Don't forget my father, whatever his name was."

"I don't remember," Tessa said with dignity.

"Neither do I."

42

The first week in June 1994, not long before Maggie's twenty-fourth
birthday, her baby was born, a daughter she and Barney named Teresa
Marguerite.  They ~ called her Daisy from the minute she was placed
in

Maggie's arms.

Now, on a honeyed Sunday in early September, glazed with topaz light
that unmistakably trembled on the verge of autumn, Daisy was a little
more than three months old.  All of her short life had been spent in a
restored farmhouse in Fairfield County, Connecticut, surrounded by her
court of Maggie, Tessa, and Sam.

Only Barney went to the city each day, riding his bike back and forth,
and even he took three-day weekends.

After the March auction, Tessa had kept herself busy househunting in
the countryside for weeks, until she'd discovered this old farmhouse
with its forty overgrown but flourishing acres, its wealth of noble
trees surrounded by low stone walls.  She'd known at once that it was
destined to be hers, and then Maggie and Barney's.  She bought it
overnight and quickly made it totally habitable by giving

Mark Hampton carte blanche if he guaranteed to finish in two

months.  Barney and Maggie hadn't found a larger apartment yet, and
Tessa wanted to give them the house so that they could move into it as
soon as the baby was born.

It was a home place; it had been a home place for more than two hundred
years, and its last owner had been careful to restore the plumbing and
add a new kitchen without disturbing its old-fashioned charm, a charm
of nooks and corners and dormers and wide porches and cool,
low-ceilinged rooms with wide floorboards and huge fireplaces.

It was both a rambling and an embracing house, easily large enough for
a big family, an unplanned masterpiece of sheltering calm, casually
done in an informal style that offered deep comfort and gaiety, and an
abiding sense of repose.

It was, Tessa knew, more than a bit of a grand gesture, to give a young
couple a newly done-up country house, but she had made a pact with
herself to do absolutely everything she wanted most to do, and not ask
permission of anyone.

Once the auction was over, Tessa felt recklessly free and rambunctious,
as if she'd been let out of school after a long, difficult day of
detention.  She arranged for the bills for the future upkeep of the
house to be paid by her estate, and made no apology for the sheer
amount of pleasure it gave her to be able to think of her family
spending summers and weekends and long Christmas and Easter vacations
here for decades-even generations-to come.  After a ll, who could
question the right of a grandmother to celebrate the birth of her first
grandchild?

Every morning and afternoon, for three-quarters of an hour, at what had
been identified as Prime Daisy Time, after her need for sleep had been
satisfied and before she grew hungry again, Tessa and

Daisy were left alone together, communing with each other on a wide
porch swing heaped with pillows.  Daisy alternated between lying on a
baby seat that supported her back and held up her head so she could
recline at ease and look out regally at the world, and a place in the
curve of Tessa's arm, where she snuggled, nuzzled, chuckled, slavered,
and cuddled contentedly, until she felt the need to exercise her limbs
and grab anything of interest-Tessa's hair, Tessa's pearls, Tessa's
fingers, Tessa's eyelashes, Tessa's clothes, and, lately, Tessa's green
diamond ring, which she had taken to sucking avidly.

"Don't you wish it weren't September, Daisy?"  Tessa inquired in the
low, intimate voice she always used with the baby.  "Don't you have the
feeling that the summer has come and gone in a flash, that swift,
splendid July, that basking, brilliant August-over already?

I can hardly believe it.  I wish I could tell what's going on in your
mind, you preserve a fascinating mystery by not speaking, Daisy; it's
the old

Garbo ploy, isn't it?  I realize you're not old enough yet to measure
time in any conventional way.  Perhaps a month is but an hour to you,
perhaps a lifetime, but I'm convinced that you know more than anybody
gives you credit for.  If you keep this up the boys are going to say
that Daisy Webster's wise beyond her years, are you prepared for
that?"

Daisy, in her chariot, held out her arms to Tessa with a little cry.

Carefully Tessa undid her tiny seat belt, lifted her up, and tucked her
into the cradle of her arm.  The baby immediately snatched Tessa's
finger and put the ring in her mouth.

"I do believe you must be teething, Daisy," Tessa told her in
admiration.  "So young to start, or are you right on schedule?  And
just why do you look at me like that?  Why is there an ever-so-faint
indication of indignation in your gaze?  No one has questioned your
immense dignity... no one would dare.  I don't know anything about
infant development, my blue-eyed girl, but I wish I understood why you
have so many questions in your unblinking eyes.  Is it because there's
so much to learn, or could it be that I interest you?  If you're about
to have a tooth, shouldn't your hair be longer?  Not that I'm
complaining, but the women of this family rather pride themselves on
their fine heads of hair.  Aha, so that's what you wanted to hear, so
that's what inspires your smile?  A compliment in advance of
performance-I can't say I'm surprised."

She'd see Daisy sit up, Tessa thought, as she returned the baby's smile
and let her play tug-of-war with her finger.  She was a strong child.

At the rate at which Daisy was growing, she'd certainly be sitting up
on her own sometime in the next few months.

She'd see Daisy crawl.  But would she see her struggle to her feet
holding onto a piece of furniture?  Or take her first step?

Or totter from one piece of furniture to another?  Tessa willfully
blinded herself to all but one conviction: It was not impossible.

She'd recently graduated, if you could use such a word, Tessa mused,
from the simple pain patch to M.S. Contin, a form of time-release
morphine sulfate that lasted from eight to twelve hours.

Between the two she kept herself pain-free and she'd adapted her
schedule so that she felt most alert between Prime Daisy Time and that
precise moment in the afternoon when the infant started to fret and it
was time to let Maggie whisk her away.

Baby time suited her as well as Daisy, Tessa reflected.  Naps had
become a frequent refuge for her, even if they didn't have the effect
they had on the tiny girl, for whom a nap meant a total
transformation.

Daisy had two distinct personalities, divided by sleep: divine and
horrible.  She was privileged to enjoy only the divine.

If only she were one-tenth as hungry as this baby!  Maggie was
breast-feeding Daisy six times a day, and her appetite was a
never-ending astonishment.  Sometimes Tessa stretched out in an old
wicker chair and watched companionably as Maggie nursed Daisy on the
porch, but at other times, when it was more convenient for Maggie to
nurse her in the big, cozy kitchen, she drifted away, unobtrusively.

Kitchen smells, even those that had once been most delicious, had grown
intolerable.  She kept a supply of vanilla ice cream loaded with
butterfat in the freezer, and if she allowed small spoonfuls to melt on
her tongue, one after another, until she could hold no more, it was the
easiest way to absorb nourishment.  Carue, the cook who did for them
all, along with a local woman who came in to clean four days a week,
had a way of making a chicken sandwich that was almost as easy to eat
as ice cream, concocted of poached chicken breasts sliced thin, on
triangles of delicate white bread without crusts, thickly layered with
mayonnaise.  She'd also developed a flawless vichyssoise, rich with
heavy cream.  White food, almost odorless food, that Tessa made herself
eat in spite of a powerful disinclination.

Although she refused to climb on a scale, or look at herself naked in a
mirror, Tessa knew by the way her clothes fit that she'd lost an
enormous amount of weight.  Months ago she'd taken to wearing her full
linen shirts outside of trousers, tightly belted so that they wouldn't
fall off her hips.  Her clothes floated around her, hiding her
outline.

Every day she made sure to get enough sun to maintain a glowing tan.

She used the brightest red lipstick she could find, and she let her
dark hair float in its deep, shining waves without restraint.

A girl of summer, she mocked herself, as she looked quickly in the
mirror and then looked away.  She had the same lack of interest in the
still-undiminished beauty of her face as she had in the pile of scripts
that lay, growing daily, on the porch near her swing.  She hadn't told
Fiona the truth, hadn't told Roddy, hadn't told Aaron, hadn't told
Mimi, with whom she'd never lost touch.  They all thought it was her
refusal to be separated from Sam, by a year of location filming, that
had made her decide not to play Cassie.

Better that than their shock, their solicitude, their pity, and their
inevitable phone calls, Tessa thought, jealously hoarding her energy
for the people she loved the most.

As July and August had passed, a general agreement had been reached,
almost without discussion, that they wouldn't move back to

New York this year.  Sam worked on his new book for hours every day.

Maggie spent some of her time, while Daisy napped, communicating by fax
with Dune Maddox, whom she had easily lured away from

S & S to work as her primary assistant on the start-up of the
foundation.  Only Barney commuted to New York to attend to business.

What bliss it was, Tessa realized, to look at the old trees that
surrounded the house, already showering a lazy leaf from minute to
minute, and know that she didn't have to leave this place just because
the wheel of the year was about to turn.  They'd settle into the
seasons, Tessa thought dreamily as she delicately smoothed the wisps of
dark hair on Daisy's head.  Soon they'd be in the middle of the slowly
exploding fireworks of a New England autumn... then the snug, snowy,
easeful, firelit winter... the delights of spring lay ahead... too far
ahead to bother to anticipate... today was enough;

each second was enough.

Sam, who had grown up in the country, had already ordered a vast supply
of firewood and a snowblower for the driveway.  Maggie had bought extra
blankets and a wardrobe of larger, warm baby clothes, even a tiny
snowsuit.  Carue, who had so recently finished with their Labor Day
celebration, was already looking forward to Thanksgiving.  Barney had
become an instant captive to the big vegetable garden he'd created on a
whim from well-grown seedlings a few months earlier.  Now he'd sent for
a dozen seed catalogs and commandeered Sam's services for the harvest,
and he checked his pumpkin patch for signs of growth every morning.

Daisy's head moved restlessly and Tessa looked down to see the baby's
vivid blue eyes with their long dark lashes fixed on her with
extraordinary concentration.

"If you were a man, Daisy, I'd say you must be in love with me, but
that seems unlikely, given your gender and your tender age."

Daisy reached for her finger and began to gnaw vigorously again on the
diamond.

"But when you're older, and you ask your mother about her mother-and
you will-Maggie can show you the auction catalog instead of some faded
photo album... it's all in there, Daisy, at least the part I wanted the
public to know.  Your mother can tell you the rest, the part I wanted
her to know.  Then there are the things a woman never tells, but if
you're so smart, you'll figure that out for yourself.  Will my life be
something you can't imagine leading, Daisy?

There are so many moments now when it seems like that to me.

Strange... it didn't truly begin, you know, until one afternoon in

1971, when I danced a polka with Roddy and everything changed in an
instant.  It was twenty-three years ago... that wasn't so terribly far
away, was it, Daisy?  And yet... and yet... it was forever..

.forever..."

Daisy looked up suddenly, turning her head alertly, and Tessa wiped a
little drool from her chin.  "What a sense of timing you have," Tessa
said admiringly, as she watched the small figures of

Maggie, Sam, and Barney hurry across the bright lawn, each of them
carrying a basket of newly picked vegetables.

"Yes, Daisy, yes, they're all coming, just as fast as they can."