h, no,” Tess said, and went to look through the remains of the door.

Nick grabbed her arm to stop her. “Let me go first.”

The neighbor across the hall opened his door, clutching his beer can with one hand and scratching the strip of belly his T-shirt couldn’t stretch to cover with his other. “Your apartment got hit,” he said to Tess with a total lack of interest. “Last night. I called the police. You’re supposed to call ‘em.”

“Thank you very much.” Nick pushed past Tess to stand in the doorway. “That’s very helpful.”

Tess said, “Thank you, Stanley,” a little dazedly, and then followed Nick to peer in behind him.

The place had been tossed and trashed. Drawers were upended, furniture overturned, and all the furniture cushions were slashed and bleeding stuffing on the floor.

“Oh, no,” Tess said again, her voice little more than a sigh.

“You have any enemies?” Nick asked.

Tess shook her head. “It’s not personal. This has happened before to other people in the building. It’s not me.”

“It’s happened before and you didn’t tell me?”

“We weren’t speaking,” Tess flared. “And I was handling it. I reported the landlord.”

Nick surveyed the ruined door. “Oh, yeah, you were handling it.” He shook his head. “Well, from now on, I’m handling it.”

“Excuse me, I don’t think so—” Tess began.

“They did the same thing to the apartment one floor down last week,” Stanley volunteered. “Just kids looking for cash.”

“Just kids,” Nick said. “Little rascals.” He turned to Tess. “Pack up anything you want to keep. You’re coming home with me. No arguments.”

Tess set her jaw, prepared to fight. “I thought you couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”

“Well, yes, but I meant out of my life, not out of life in general,” Nick said, ignoring her to peer through the door. “You are not staying here. If you’d rather stay with Gina, fine, but you’re not staying here.”

“Gina has one room, an efficiency,” Tess said. “She couldn’t squeeze Angela in, let alone me.” She stopped suddenly.

“Fine,” Nick said, oblivious to her silence. “Then you’re staying at my place. There’s a guest bedroom. Your virtue is safe.” He turned and saw her face, white with fear. “What’s wrong?”

“Angela,” Tess said, and bit her lip. “I don’t see Angela.”

Nick moved to put his arms around her, and she leaned against him gratefully. “Angela is not a stupid cat,” he said into her hair. “When the Brady Bunch showed up, she probably went out the window.” He tightened his arms around her and then said, “Come on. Let’s get your stuff and go.”

Tess nodded, and Nick moved cautiously ahead of her into the apartment. He checked her bedroom before she could, to make sure Angela wasn’t bleeding into the bedspread. Not only was there no Angela, there was no bedspread. The bedroom was as ransacked as the rest of the apartment. He turned back to Tess. “Pack.”

She opened her mouth to argue, and he overrode her. “Look, you want to find a new place tomorrow, no problem. But you can’t stay here. Not ever again. I’d never sleep again waiting for these guys to come back and do to you what they did to the couch.”

“Okay,” Tess said. “All right.”

Nick watched her rescue what she could from the place, brushing off her mismatched sofa pillows and picking up odds and ends of God knew what. And while he watched, he tried a little deep breathing to calm the fear and rage that were making him insane. If he hadn’t dragged her off to Kentucky, she could have been here, in this dump. Pure luck of the draw. The thought of losing her in any way made him cold, but losing her like this would have been—

“I’m all right,” Tess said, and he looked up to see her standing in the doorway with a laundry basket full of clothes. “I know you’re upset, but I’m all right and I’m leaving with you and I’m not coming back. I promise.”

“Thank you,” Nick said. “Is there anything you want in the kitchen?”

“Yes,” Tess said. “But I don’t suppose it’s in one piece anymore. Did you look in there?”

“It’s not good,” Nick said. “Come on. I’ll help.”

They managed to rescue a few odd pieces of china and glassware.

“Was this stuff your mother’s?” Nick asked, and Tess looked at him oddly.

“Elise doesn’t have stuff,” she said. “This is just stuff I found in thrift stores that I liked.” She gazed at it sadly. “Maybe I liked it because it’s the kind of stuff that mothers are supposed to give to their daughters. That’s pathetic.” She stood up, leaving the china on the floor. “I don’t want it. All I want is Angela.”

“I’ll work on it,” Nick said. “Get your things together, and I’ll take the first load down to the car.”

He took the laundry basket out on the landing and knocked on the door across the hall. The neighbor looked out. “Yeah?”

“You know that big black cat that belongs to Tess?” Nick said.

“Yeah?”

“I’ll give you a hundred bucks if I can pick up that cat tomorrow.”

“How the hell am I supposed to get that cat back?” Stanley whined.

“Well, if I were you, I’d buy about ten cans of cat food and sit over there until the cat comes back,” Nick said.

“That could be hours.”

“That’s what I’m paying for,” Nick said, handing over his business card. “Take it or leave it.”

Tess came to the door carrying her duffel bag and Nick’s suitcase. “This is everything.”

“Great,” Nick said. “Let’s go.”

Tess sat lost in thought on the way to Nick’s, grateful for the silence he gave her, trying to figure out why she felt so torn. It wasn’t that she loved her apartment; she hated it. Nothing ever worked right, and the street was noisy, full of shouting and squealing brakes, and even now and then a gunshot. But it had been hers, and now she was going to Nick’s, and she was pretty sure that wherever Nick’s was, there wouldn’t be screams or shots or cockroaches or broken anything. She was pretty sure it would be clean and safe and expensive and tempting as hell.

Then Nick turned off the road into his driveway, and it was worse than she suspected.

The house wasn’t large, but it was beautiful, an architect’s miniature masterpiece of white planes and angles bisected by gleaming glass that reflected the moonlight. She’d been prepared to resist clapboard colonial or petite plantation or even pseudo-cedar Frank Lloyd Wright, but this was such a work of art that only a person blinded by prejudice could find it anything but lovely.

“Do you like it?” Nick asked when he’d cut the engine.

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” Tess said, and she felt him relax next to her. “When you brought me out here before it was finished, I never dreamed it would look like this. Who designed it? You?”

“Not exactly.” Nick eased down in his seat a little, surveying the house. “When I was in law school, a buddy of mine got in trouble. I helped him out, did all the legal legwork and saved his butt. He was a senior in architecture, and he took me out for a beer, and after a few, we started talking about the perfect house, and a month later he gave me the plans for this. So I saved up and bought the land, then I saved some more and built the house. It took me a while.”

Tess watched his face as he looked at his house, seeing the pride and love there.

“The builders were the best,” he said, “and the irony is, my buddy’s a big name now. Preston Delaney. People come by and photograph it because it’s an early, pure Delaney. I’ve only been in it a couple of weeks, and somebody’s already offered me twice what it cost to build it.”

Tess rolled her eyes. “Another investment.”

Nick shook his head. “Nope, it’s more than that. Wait until you see inside. It’s perfect. It was done a month after you left.” His grin faded. “That was one of the biggest disappointments about your dumping me. You never got to see it.” He turned to her in the moonlight. “I know we’re finished with each other, but I’m glad you’re here to see it.”

Tess bit her lip. “Thank you for inviting me to stay. I’ll try not to get it dirty.”

Nick patted her knee and then got out to open the car door for her while she stared at the house with fear and longing.

The interior left her speechless. The ground floor was one big room bisected by black lacquered folding doors with a staircase winding up the middle of it. To her right, through partially opened doors, Tess could see a massive ebony Parsons dining table and black lacquered chairs. To the left, huge overstuffed couches faced each other across thick rya rugs, flanking a cavernous white brick fireplace on one wall and a built-in wide-screen TV on another. The back wall was all glass looking out on an angular pool that reflected the moonlight like marcasite.

Except for the dining-room furniture, every single thing in the place was white. Tess felt very small and very dingy. She moved to one of the couches, touching it and then jerking her hand away.

“What’s the matter?” Nick asked.

“This couch is suede,” Tess said.

“I know.”

“Real suede?” Tess asked, knowing it was a dumb question. If it was Nick’s, it was real.

“Of course it’s real suede.”

“You have white suede couches,” Tess said and closed her eyes. “Do you live here? Does anybody live here?”

“Don’t you like it?”

“It’s incredible. But I am definitely going to get it dirty.”

“That’s why a cleaning woman comes in twice a week,” Nick said.

“Well, that’s a relief.” Tess turned to the stairs. “Bedroom up here?”

“Three,” Nick said. “Take your pick.”

“Which one are you in?”

“ ‘The one at the back. Big bed. Black satin spread. The guest room is at the front.”

“Black,” Tess said. “You know, I don’t mean to criticize, but this place could use some color.”

“I like it this way. It looks expensive.” Nick started up the stairs with the duffel and the suitcase. “Where do you want this stuff?”

“Guest room.” Tess said, and followed him with the laundry basket.

Tess lay awake that night, listening for the screams and the shouts that weren’t there, trying not to worry about Angela and feeling guilty because she was so safe. The other tenants didn’t have rich, depraved conservative lawyers to sweep them off into sinful luxury. And then there was Gina, looking at Park with puppy-dog eyes. And the Foundation kids, now that she’d shot herself in the foot with the Sigler woman. And Lanny. The other problems were more pressing, but Lanny was the one she owed the most. Lanny had been there for her when she was eight; now she was going to be there for him.

She tossed and turned for another hour, shuffling her worries like a deck of cards. When she finally couldn’t stand it any longer, she slipped out of bed and tiptoed down the stairs, careful not to wake Nick, and went out to the pool. She stripped off her T-shirt and underpants, dove into the water and began to swim laps to exorcise her demons.

One lap for the apartment-house tenants and their unlocked doors.

One lap for Gina and her doomed love life and her job search.

One lap for the kids at the Foundation and their imperiled futures.

One lap for Lanny and his trashed vision.

One lap for Nick and his infuriating double personality.

Only one lap didn’t do it. Once she started to think about Nick warm in that damn black bed upstairs, she swam faster, but it didn’t help. All the images of him she’d ever tortured herself with came back—Nick laughing at her at the touch football game that had started it all, Nick’s arms in that rag of a sweatshirt as he teased her about her laundry, Nick beautiful in evening clothes—but now she had new memories, memories of Nick hot and naked, his body moving over hers, and she got dizzy just thinking about it, so dizzy that at the end of the last lap, she clung to the edge of the pool and gasped for breath.

“You okay?” she heard Nick say, and she looked up to see him standing there, in black silk boxers, his hair tousled from his pillow.

He looked wonderful.

Tess groaned and let herself slip under the water.

She felt Nick’s hand grab her arm and drag her ruthlessly to the surface.

“I know you’re depressed, dummy,” Nick said, holding on to her. “But don’t drown yourself in my pool. My insurance rates will go up. Not to mention I’ll never get another date again if it gets out that being with me makes women suicidal.”

“I’m not suicidal,” Tess said, and then realized he was never going to make love to her again. “Well, maybe I am.”

“Actually what you are is naked.” Nick sounded distracted, but he didn’t let go of her arm.

“It’s a private pool.” Tess was too depressed to argue with any enthusiasm. “It’s not illegal.”

“No, but it’s probably immoral,” Nick said. “Whatever it is, I like it. Let’s go back to my bed and discuss it.”

Tess blinked up at him, treading water a little faster. “I thought we were finished.”

“Well, we were until your apartment got trashed and I thought about losing you, and then you ended up naked in my pool,” Nick said. “I remember being sure I never wanted to see you again. I just don’t remember why at the moment.”

Tess sighed. “It was probably something about your career. Everything with you is.”

“What career?”

“Really?” Tess said, her voice suddenly bright with hope.

“I’m thinking about becoming a pool boy,” Nick said. “You meet such naked people.”

Tess jerked the arm he was holding and yanked him into the pool.

“Hey,” he sputtered when he surfaced, but by then she’d wrapped herself around him and found his mouth with hers, and they slipped under the water as she kissed him.

Nick kicked them both to the surface again and held her tight against him as he tried to get his breath back. Tess trailed kisses down his neck, licking the water from his skin with her tongue, loving the feel of the muscle against her mouth.

“A bed,” Nick gasped. “I have this great bed—”

“Here,” Tess said, and kissed him. She felt him relax into her as he pulled her hips tight against his, and she wrapped her legs around him again, feeling the slick wet silk of his shorts against her thighs. “Those have got to go,” she told him, and began to slide her fingers under the waistband to yank them down.

“Wait a minute,” Nick said, grabbing her hand, still trying to keep them afloat. “About my bed—”

“Here,” Tess said, tugging downward on his shorts.

“The neighbors—” Nick said, tugging upward.

“Here,” Tess said tugging harder.

“I really think my bed—” Nick tried again, prying her fingers from his waistband.

Tess gave a scream of fury and pushed him away. “Forget it,” she said. “Just forget it.”

“Look, is this the romantic thing again?” Nick groped through the water for her again. “Because I don’t see what’s so romantic about a damn pool.”

“It’s not just romantic,” Tess said, kicking backward to get away from him. “It’s spontaneous. It’s sexy. It doesn’t feel like a damn career move!” She was so mad she dove underwater to get away from him, and when she surfaced he was gone.

Well, good. The hell with him. If she’d given in, she’d have ended up having sex in bedrooms for the rest of her life. Which of course, wouldn’t have been an entirely bad thing since it would have been with Nick. It was actually pretty cosmic when she thought about it. But she wasn’t going to think about it because he was the most unspontaneous, conservative, let’s-plan-every-move man she’d ever met. Which did, of course, often lead to great sex since he made sure...

Oh, hell.

Tess dove for the bottom again and swam across it, only to swallow half the pool when somebody grabbed her ankle.

Nick hauled her to the surface, patting her on the back while she choked.

“Don’t do that!” she said when she could talk. “I almost drowned.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” Nick said, and kissed her.

“I thought you left,” she said when she came up for air. “Is this come-up-to-my-bed, part two, because if so...” She stopped, distracted by the realization that he wasn’t wearing his shorts.

“No,” Nick said, pulling her against him. “This is the-hell-with-the-neighbors-but-I-had-to-get-a-condom, part one. Do you know if chlorine has any effect on latex?”

“No idea.” Tess locked her legs around him, not caring what chlorine did to latex.

“Well, let’s find out,” Nick said, and then they almost did drown.

When Tess woke up the next morning, there was a note on the black silk pillow beside her with a twenty-dollar bill and a key.

She looked at the ceiling in exasperation and then picked up the note. “Dear Tess,” it read. “The twenty bucks is for cab fare so you can get out of the house today, so stop scowling at the ceiling. I took some swimming-pool water with me to the office so I can snort the chlorine and think of you all day. I’ll bring dinner with me when I get home at six. I’m glad your apartment got trashed. Love, Nick.”

She cocked an eyebrow at the note and smiled. It wasn’t “How do I love thee, let me count the ways,” but it wasn’t bad at all.

She snuggled back down under the comforter and thought about her day ahead. She had to go back to the apartment to find Angela. She had to go to the police station to fill out forms on the break-in. She had to call Alan Sigler to tell him that she definitely wanted the job at Decker even if his wife did hate her. She had to stop by the Foundation and catch up on her tutoring. She had to call her mother and ask about Lanny. And then there was Gina...

She reached out for the white phone beside Nick’s bed and dialed Gina’s number, but there was no answer, so she crawled out of bed and went to get dressed. The police station wasn’t a problem, but Alan Sigler...

She spread her clothes out on the white bed in the guest room and stared at them in dismay. They were fine for the police, fine for the Foundation, fine for protesting, fine for going out for pizza, but for making an impression on Alan Sigler?

Okay, she could get by with her blue skirt. Nobody ever looked at skirts, anyway. But she had to have something classy on top. People looked at stuff like shirts and jackets and...

She put on her skirt and went back to Nick’s bedroom and opened his closet.

It was just as she expected. Racks of beautiful shirts, gorgeous jackets. Of course, they were all white and black, but robbers couldn’t be choosers. She pulled a white shirt off a hanger and read the label: Armani. “Figures,” she said, and then stopped, remembering that Angela wasn’t around to talk to. She’d go back to the apartment to look for Angela first.

She shrugged the shirt on without thinking any more about it, rolling the cuffs several times. When she looked in the mirror, the shirt was beautiful but a little too big. She went back to the closet and pulled out one of Nick’s black vests and put it on. Better. Now she looked like Annie Hall with legs. If she put on earrings, she’d look feminine enough to get away with it.

She grabbed the twenty off the bed and went to call a cab and Gina one more time.

“You’re late,” Christine said to Nick as he breezed through the outer office and into his own. “Park left you the Welch file.”

“Christine, I’m the boss.” Nick dropped into his desk chair and pushed the Welch file to one side. “I’m never late. Your world revolves around me.”

“Mr. Patterson called,” Christine said. “He wants to have lunch with you.”

“Not today,” Nick said.

“You’re kidding,” Christine said, and Nick looked up at the expression in her voice.

“No, I’m not kidding. I’m busy. Call Annalise Donaldson and make an early lunch date for today at The Levee. Call Alan Sigler and make a dinner date for tomorrow at The Levee. Find out who the landlord is at this apartment house—” he handed her a card “—and get him on the phone immediately. Then get me Thom Nordhausen at the Charles Theater for racquetball at two. That’ll get me out of a long lunch with Annalise. Reserve a court.” He stared at his desk for a moment. “What am I forgetting?”

“The law firm?” Christine said.

Nick frowned up at her. “Do you know what effect chlorine has on latex?”

“Not good,” Christine said. “Don’t do that again.”

“Remind me to have my pool drained,” Nick said. “Now go. I want those people yesterday.”

She was gone before he finished the last word.

He leaned back in his chair and looked at the Welch file.

Plagiarism.

Nick closed his eyes and thought. If it wasn’t for the partnership, he’d be running as fast as he could away from Welch. If Tess was right about the earlier story—and Tess was invariably right about injustice, because she had an instinct for injustice—then this was going to be a huge tangle.

But it might get him partner.

Hell, he’d handled huge tangles before. It wouldn’t kill him to undo another one. He thought about it for a few more minutes and then hit the intercom button. “Christine, I need to set up a dinner later this week with Norbert Welch. Get him for me, please, but I’ll talk to him.”

“You’re on for lunch with Donaldson and racquetball with Nordhausen at three,” Christine said. “I’m working on the Siglers. Ray Briggs is on line two.”

“Who the hell is Ray Briggs?”

“Landlord.”

“Christine, you are a wonder.”

“I need a raise,” she said.

Tess spent the entire morning at the police station, a lonely lunch hour in her old apartment waiting for Angela to come back and an hour in the afternoon with Alan Sigler in his paneled office, talking about education, the Decker Academy and the board.

“It’s really up to the board now,” he’d told her as he walked her to the door at the end of the meeting. “I’ll give you my highest recommendation, but it’s the board’s decision. And they can’t act until the end of the month. One of the old board members resigned, and we’re still screening replacements, so we won’t handle the staffing problems until the next meeting. Keep your fingers crossed.”

“Thank you,” Tess said, shaking his hand. “I really want to work at Decker.”

“I know,” Sigler said, clearly puzzled. “I’m not sure why, though. You don’t seem the type to be impressed by prestige and money.”

“I just want to teach,” Tess said, omitting to tell him she just wanted to teach at the Foundation.

It wasn’t really being dishonest. It was being tactful.

Maybe Nick was starting to rub off on her, after all.

She left the Foundation early to catch the bus home, and it dropped her off at the end of Nick’s street at four-thirty. As she walked home, she absentmindedly computed how long it would be until he got home. An hour and a half at least. Maybe two. Not too long.

She let herself into the house and changed into her sweats, relieved to be out of hose and heels. Then she wandered about the house, afraid to touch anything, missing Angela and trying not to miss Nick. It wasn’t a big house, but it was extremely white and it echoed and it seemed cold although the thermostat said seventy.

Not the kind of place Lanny would have built.

Now that’s ridiculous, she told herself. This was not about Lanny. This was about...

Lanny. Lanny and the manuscript.

She kicked off her flats and went to the phone.

“Elise?” she said when her mother answered. “It’s me.”

“Tessie?” Elise’s voice came over the wire, enthusiastic and vague as always, as if she was really glad to hear from Tess but couldn’t quite remember who she was.

“Right, Tess, your daughter,” Tess said. “How’s Daniel?”

“Just fine, darling,” Elise said. “He’s out in the garden now. It’s almost past canning season, but you know your father—he keeps going until the ground is bare. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, but I need your help. Listen closely to this because it’s important—do you remember Lanny?”

“Who?”

Tess was patient from long practice. “Lanny. Remember at the Yellow Springs commune the man who told the CinderTess story?”

“Well,” Elise began doubtfully, “yes, maybe...”

“Big guy, brown hair, brown beard, one summer in Yellow Springs. After he left, you used to read it to me at night, remember?” Tess urged her. “It was on notebook paper. In turquoise fountain pen.”

“A fairy tale?” Elise said. “With princes and speeches?”

“Right! Great. Do you still have the manuscript?”

“Of course not, darling.” Elise said. “That was almost thirty years ago. Why would I still have—”

“Who would have it?” Tess asked. “This is important, love. Think.”

“Well, I suppose somebody from the commune might. But really, Tess, you’re making a big thing out of a fairy tale.”

Tess pulled Nick’s phone directory off the shelf under the phone and flipped to the blank lines on the back page. “I need names and numbers,” she told her mother. “Anybody who might know something about Lanny and the manuscript.”

“Oh, Tess, I don’t know,” Elise said. “That was a long time ago, and we’re all over everywhere by now.”

“All right. Start with the names you remember, and if you know where they are now, tell me.”

Half an hour later, Tess had seventeen names and three numbers and a promise from her mother to try harder to remember the manuscript. “Although I don’t see why, dear,” her mother said. “It seems like a lot of trouble to go to for nostalgia. Especially when there are so many things that need fixing in the present. How did the censorship protest go?”

“Fine.” Tess briefly contemplated telling her mother about Welch’s plagiarism and then discarded the thought. Elise and Daniel would immediately organize a public protest, and as much as she’d like to see it happen, she had to admit Nick had a point. They had nothing to go on yet but her memories. She needed more people who remembered the story. And she really needed the manuscript. Which meant calling everyone on Elise’s list and asking them if they knew anyone, and then asking those anyones if they knew anyone...

Nick was going to have some phone bill.

“I’ll write soon,” Elise was saying. “I want to send you some of Daniel’s jam. It’s really—”

“Oh, I’ve moved,” Tess said. “My apartment was robbed, and it was too dangerous to stay there. I’m rooming with a friend until I find another place, but you can send anything to this address and I’ll get it.” Tess gave her mother the address and phone number. “I’ll probably be here another week or two at least.”

“Is this your friend Gina?”

“No,” Tess said. “This is my friend Nick. The Republican. But it’s okay. I’m not letting him corrupt me.”

“Ooh, yes. I remember your talking about him. Are you sleeping with him?”

“Yes,” Tess said.

“Is he good?”

Tess rolled her eyes, not really surprised. “Elise, that is no question to ask your daughter.”

“Of course it is,” Elise said. “Don’t let conventional morality blind you to what’s important in life. A satisfying sex life can be the foundation of a good relationship, and every mother wants her daughter in a good relationship.”

“With a Republican?”

“Well, that depends on the man, dear. I met some very enthusiastic Republicans in my youth.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“Is he any good?”

“The earth moves nightly,” Tess said.

“Well, then, I won’t worry.”

Five minutes later, Tess extricated herself from her mother’s distracted conversation and called Gina.

“Hey, where were you this morning?” Tess said when Gina picked up the phone. “I called twice.”

“I got it!” Gina said.

“Got what?”

“The job at the Charles Theater. And it’s not a typing job. It’s a good job. I’m a liaison! I didn’t even know what that meant an hour ago, but Mr. Nordhausen explained it, and I’m going to be talking to people about the theater and making sure stuff gets done. It’s wild! I’ve got a real job!”

“Gina, that’s wonderful!” Tess sank onto the suede couch, oblivious to the furniture in her relief. “Let’s celebrate. We’ll go out and—”

“I can’t,” Gina said, her voice growing even more effervescent. “Park’s taking me out! I called him and told him and he was really happy, and he said we should go out and celebrate. We’re even going out tomorrow, too, so I can tell him about my job after the first day!” Her voice dropped a notch. “I probably shouldn’t have called him but—”

“You called Park already?”

“I know, I’m pushing it, but I wanted him to know,” Gina said. “We talked about it all weekend, and he told me what to do in the interview and what to wear and everything. I wanted him to know, and he was real happy and said we should go out. And we’re going out!”

The happiness in Gina’s voice was so blatant that Tess lost her breath. Don’t fall for him, she thought, but all she said was, “That’s wonderful, Gina. When do you start?”

“Tomorrow!” Gina said. “Can you believe it? Mr. Nordhausen was late at first because he’d been playing racquetball, and he came in all tired. I could tell he wasn’t very keen on me at first, but then we started talking and I actually knew a lot of the theater people he kept mentioning, and by the end of the interview he said he wanted me to start right away—that I was just what the Charles Theater needed, after all.”

“After all?”

“Yeah, I thought that was strange, too, but what the hell, I got the job.” Gina’s voice rose even higher. “I did the interview and he liked me and I got the job!”

Tess laughed at Gina’s enthusiasm. “And you are going to be great at it. You’re the best thing that ever happened to Nordstrom.”

“Nordhausen,” Gina said. “Hey, where are you? I called your apartment, but the phone company says your phone is dead.”

“My whole apartment is dead,” Tess said. “It got vandalized. I’m staying with Nick.”

“Oh,” Gina said. “How’s Nick?”

“Nick’s fine. The house is a little...well, I guess it’s just not really my kind of house.”

“Don’t tell me. Let me guess. It’s too expensive and successful-looking. Come on, Tess. Enjoy it.”

“It’s not that,” Tess said, looking around. “I think you have to see this place to understand. To start with, it’s totally black and white.”

“No color?”

“None. I swear, I’m going to dig my old sofa pillows out of my duffel and put them on these couches just so I know I’m not color blind.” With a start she realized she was sitting on the couch and slid to the floor. “Not that I’m ever going to actually sit on the couches.”

“Why wouldn’t you sit on the couches?”

“They’re white suede.”

“You are kidding me.” Gina hooted with laughter. “This I gotta see. Okay, he’s got suede couches. What else is wrong?”

“Well, nothing. I mean, he’s darling to me, and he makes love like a god, and I’m safe and warm...” She looked around the icy splendor of Nick’s living room. “Well, fairly warm.”

“You don’t sound sure,” Gina said. “If he was the right guy, you’d be sure.” Her voice sounded sure, and that made Tess’s heart sink. Not Park, she thought. Please, not Park.

“So let’s get serious about this,” Gina said. “I want you to be happy, too. What are you looking for in a man? And why hasn’t Nick got it?”

Tess stopped to think. “Actually I’m not really looking, but if I was...” She smiled to herself a little wistfully. “Well, with the manuscript and everything I’ve been thinking a lot, and I guess I want somebody like Lanny.”

There was a long silence before Gina said, “Did you ever think that maybe not even Lanny would be Lanny today? Maybe he’d be Nick.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Tess said. “Lanny would be...” What? She couldn’t imagine Lanny in the nineties. He was permanently preserved in the golden sunlight of the sixties, like a fly in amber. “You know my life was a lot easier when everything was black and white,” she told Gina.

“Maybe that’s why Nick decorates like you think,” Gina said. “Listen, I gotta go start getting ready. Park’s not picking me up till late, he has to work or something, but I want to look spectacular!”

“You already look spectacular,” Tess said, but she felt numb as she listened to Gina’s ecstatic goodbye. Please don’t let her get hurt, she prayed, but she knew it was a forlorn hope.