Eric was disappointed. Everything was so normal.

The outer doors of the hospital had opened into a wide, clean reception room, its tile floor mopped and shiny. To one side was a Formica workstation which faced the front entrance; from behind it a middle-aged Spanish woman had welcomed him in English. Across from this was a small comfortable-looking seating area.

His request to see Dr. Talmidge had been received as a commonplace event; a phone call was made, and a young man dressed as an orderly had arrived to escort him through an ordinary hospital corridor to this small anteroom where he now sat waiting, a cup of strong black coffee in front of him. He’d placed the string bag of oranges on a low table to one side, wondering what benighted impulse had made him bring them along.

A solid oak door was set in the wall in front of him. Eric studied it. It was closed, probably locked. Unless Talmidge was inside. He got up and tried the door. It was locked. He sat down again, thinking what a stupid move that had been.

There were no pictures or certificates on the walls, no magazines on the coffee table, no windows to look out of. Eric found to his surprise that he was bored. So he did what he’d done in boring situations ever since medical school. He chose a surgical procedure at random and mentally reviewed the steps. Eric’s low boredom threshold had been partly responsible for his successful academic career.

He was just starting to close after a rather messy perforation of the duodenum when he became aware of a presence behind him. The presence spoke. “Oranges!” it said.

Eric turned. A friendly round-faced man of about fifty with pale, thinning hair and a smattering of freckles was beaming in his direction.

“I love oranges,” the man said brightly. “Are they for me?”

When Eric failed to respond, the man smiled apologetically and offered his hand. “Sorry,” he said. “Thought you knew. I’m Ben Talmidge.”

Eric found himself smiling back. This wasn’t at all the way he’d pictured Talmidge. Or the hospital. This was all very nice. Very clean, very friendly. Talmidge even liked oranges. It was all so terrific it made Eric feel extremely nervous.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m Eric Rose. I’m a doctor.”

I’m also an idiot.

But Talmidge didn’t seem to think so. “A doctor? Where did you train?” Then, “Look, let’s go into my office.” Briefly he fumbled at something to one side of the door, his body shielding it from Eric’s view. Then, pushing the door open, he led Eric into a high, cool room with a tall window overlooking the side lawns. Seating himself behind the oak trestle table which served as a desk, Talmidge motioned Eric into the high-backed chair across from him and reached for an orange.

“It’s not often I get visitors up here,” he said, cutting away the peel with a small pocketknife. He looked over at Eric expectantly.

“I’m not just a visitor,” said Eric. “I’m with New York General. That is, I was, until Dr. Harris, John Harris, fired me.”

“John Harris.”

“Yes. He told me about you, about what you, uh, might be doing here. He wanted to know if I thought it was possible. He didn’t like the answer.”

“What answer did you give him?”

“I told him it was possible. And exciting. I told him if I was right, you were revolutionizing a lot more than transplant techniques. I said I thought it was terrific, and I wanted to learn more. I guess I told him more than he wanted to know.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, we had some . . . uh, disagreements.”

Talmidge ate an orange section. His bright blue eyes watched Eric intently.

“Harris had a problem with the ethics, the morality of what I said you were doing here.”

“And you didn’t?”

Careful.

“Actually, I did have some doubts at first. But the more I thought about it, the more ethical it seemed. I mean, cloning organs from tissue samples lets you heal people more effectively, and that’s what we’re here for.”

“And John didn’t see it that way.”

“Well, he might have, I guess, if I hadn’t told him about the other applications of such a technique. That’s when he got angry.”

“Yes?”

“He thought it was immoral. I thought it was great medicine. I mean, if you can make a heart from a tissue sample, why not something . . . bigger?”

Talmidge’s eyes glittered, but he shook his head and smiled gently. “It’s not that easy, Eric. I may call you Eric, yes? We work on a small scale here, nothing big, nothing dramatic. But we help people, people who perhaps would not be helped otherwise.” He paused. “So Harris fired you? You must have been quite vociferous.”

“Well, I had strong feelings about it. I still do.” Eric took a deep breath. “Dr. Talmidge, throughout the history of medicine, there have been the dreamers, the discoverers. And there have been the spoilers - people too stupid or jealous to understand the truly great scientific leaps. Or maybe too scared. I’m not stupid, Dr. Talmidge. I was top of my class at P&S, and New York General had offered me an appointment to the surgical staff before Harris butted in. I’m young, but I’m good. And I’m not scared.”

The hell I’m not.

Eric paused. Talmidge finished his orange and calmly wiped his hands on a white linen handkerchief. The silence hung in the air between them, palpable and tense.

Finally, Eric spoke again. “Let me work for you. Let me learn from you.”

Talmidge was silent again, and Eric feared he’d laid it on too thickly. But although Talmidge’s mind was indeed teeming with questions, Eric’s worshipful attitude seemed perfectly natural to him. His suspicions lay elsewhere.

How convenient. Talmidge was thinking, that you should suddenly arrive, supportive and skilled, just when I need you. On the other hand, although you understand better than most people the larger implications of my discovery, you’re ready to believe that only organs are involved. That’s convenient. And if you get too curious, my boy, well, I’ve handled that sort of thing before.

He smiled to himself. Hiring Eric Rose would certainly be one in the eye for that sanctimonious bastard John Harris. And what a joy it would be to deal with an enthusiastic professional instead of another creep like the late, unlamented Haddad. He decided to probe further.

“How do you happen to be in Spain?” he asked pleasantly.

“I came here to see you.”

“When did you arrive?”

“Ten days ago. I stayed in Barcelona for a while then I drove up and down the coast. I didn’t know how to approach you, or if you’d even talk to me.” Rose smiled. “Besides, I needed some rest. It’s been one hell of a year.”

“Does John Harris know you’re here?”

“Nobody knows I’m here. Oh, friends know I’ve gone to Spain, but no one knows why.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone, your friends perhaps?”

“What if you turned me down? I’d look like a fool.”

Again silence descended. Faintly Eric could hear the chirp of birds as the sun dropped toward the hilly landscape beyond the hospital grounds. At last Talmidge spoke.

“Take a room in San Lorenzo. You know the town?”

“I stopped there for lunch. And, uh, shopping.”

“Stay the night - the restaurant on the main square rents rooms upstairs, Come back tomorrow at” - he checked his watch - “eight in the evening. I’ll give you an answer then.”

Eric stood and reached out to shake Talmidge’s hand.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be here.”

He turned toward the door, then detoured back for his oranges. “Whatever you decide,” he told Talmidge, “it was, well, incredible to meet you.”

Ass-kisser.

“Hey, would you like some more oranges for later?” And he swung the bag out toward Talmidge. The webbing gave way and oranges bounced and rolled onto the desk, the floor, Talmidge’s lap.

“Shit!”

He scrambled to retrieve the fruit, banging his head on the overhang of the trestle table, dropping oranges and picking them up again, lunging after the ones which threatened to roll out of sight. When at last he got to his feet, arms full of oranges, he saw to his consternation that Ben Talmidge was laughing. Great guffaws rocked him, and his eyes were growing teary.

Come on, it isn’t that funny, Eric thought testily. But Talmidge, beyond speech, was waving him toward the door, where the same young man who had brought him in now stood to escort him back to the lobby.

“Uh, see you tomorrow,” said Eric weakly, feeling that his exit lacked dignity.

Goddamn stupid oranges.

“Take some,” he told the youth as they made their way down the corridor. “Take them all.”

“Gracias,” the boy said, choosing three oranges with care. “Me gustan mucho las naranjas.”

“Yeah,” said Eric. “They’re real icebreakers.”

He threw an orange at a tree beyond the parking lot, dumped the rest onto the back seat of his car, and drove down the mountain to San Lorenzo.

Talmidge would check him out with New York General. He’d even call John Harris and crow a bit. But unbeknownst to Eric, it was the naivete, the clumsiness, the openness which Talmidge would read into the incident with the oranges, that would convince him to break his rule about not hiring “mainstream” doctors and to welcome Eric to the Reproduction Institute.

Vivienne upended the bottle and watched the last quarter-inch of clear liquid flow into her glass. It’s a good thing you’re not a drinking woman, she told herself sardonically as she sipped the now-tepid Evian water. Two days had passed since the fateful dinner party she’d given, and although she’d come back from Dr. Arnold’s office yesterday to find two dozen roses and a card that said “I love fruitcake!”, Charles hadn’t telephoned.

Suddenly she went cold: God, I hope Arnold doesn’t tell him about my visit; Charles’ll kill me! But remembering Arnold fondling her, she felt instinctively that he wouldn’t.

She picked up the telephone bill, scanned it, and wrote a check. She sealed the envelope. She stuck on a stamp. She reached for another bill.

Was solving the mystery of the Institute really worth losing Charles over? Maybe I should call him and apologize, she thought remorsefully. Maybe I am obsessing. Why not just give it up, promise him I’ll forget the whole thing, be a good little fiancée? Then she thought, Hell no! I have a right to ask questions if I want to. I have a right to know the truth. Fruitcake, indeed!

But everybody else seems to live with it all quite comfortably, she reflected. Why does it bother me so much?

Maybe because I know more about it . . . or suspect more . . . than most people.

But that was just it; she had nothing but suspicions.

Not true, she argued with herself. I saw Daniel’s letter. And Charles won’t talk about it. And Brian Arnold lied to me. If there were nothing funny about the Institute, there would have been no reason for Charles to clam up. Or for Arnold to lie.

How do you know he was lying?

Oh, come on!

She wrote another check, sealed another envelope.

I’d love to have a look inside that file cabinet, she thought. But the idea of going anywhere near Arnold made her shiver. Was there anyone else she could talk to? Someone else who might know about the Institute? It couldn’t be someone who’d sent a sample there; they’d be as closemouthed as Charles had warned her to be.

So who could have had dealings with it, but not have had a blueprint made? Concentrate.

She leaned back in her chair and reviewed what she knew. One: you send the Institute a blood sample . . . maybe a little flesh, too: her inner elbow was still slightly scabbed. Two: the institute made you a genetic blueprint. Three: if you need a part, you can use it.

How? she wondered. Do you order it and they send it to you? ‘Hello, I’d like to order a liver, please. Could you FedEx it by tomorrow?’ She smiled at the idea, and took a sip of water, then stopped with the glass in midair. Why not? she thought. That’s probably exactly what you do! So a doctor who does transplants might know about the institute. Dr. Mitchell’s a cardiologist, but maybe he doesn’t do heart transplants. That kind of surgery must be highly specialized.

She went and got the heavy Manhattan phone directory and paged through to the M’s. Then she reached for the phone.

His secretary didn’t recognize her name, but Dr. Mitchell did. He was polite but obviously busy. “A referral to a transplant doctor? You still worried about that ghost story your boyfriend told you?”

Vivienne let him humor her; just give me a referral, she thought.

“We don’t do much in that line at Park Hill,” he told her. “But New York General does. Dr. John Harris is your man.”

“Do you know him? Can I use your name?”

There was a brief silence. Mitchell was obviously reluctant to have his name linked with a gullible hysteric, but felt funny refusing her. “Actually, I’ve never met him,” Mitchell said truthfully. “But if you think it will help, tell him I gave you his name, by all means. Afraid I haven’t got his phone number. Try information.”

Vivienne thanked him, hung up, and turned back to the directory. If this doesn’t work, she thought, I’ll have to get back into Arnold’s office somehow. God, I hope this works!

She called Harris’s private office number. A rather severe-sounding woman answered on the second ring: Mrs. Riley, on the job as usual.

“Referred by Dr. Mitchell of Park Hill? I’m afraid the doctor’s at the hospital all day. Did you want to make an appointment for a consultation?”

“Uh, yes . . . I guess so.”

“Just a moment, please . . .” Mrs. Riley paged through the filled appointment calendar. “I have something two weeks from now . . . Wednesday the fourteenth.”

“Nothing before that?”

“Is this an emergency?”

“Well, no, but . . .”

“Wednesday the fourteenth is the best I can do.”

Vivienne sighed. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll take it.”

“Your name?”

“Vivienne La . . . uh, Lester,” she said, marveling at her instinctive lie. Charles and Arnold both knew about the institute; maybe they knew Harris too. And if Harris told Arnold and Arnold told Charles . . .

Mrs, Riley carefully wrote down the name. “And your phone number?” she asked.

“It’s . . . look, do you ever get cancellations?”

“Rarely. May I take down a little background on the patient?”

“It’s, uh, I’m not a patient, exactly. I want to talk to him about the Reproduction Institute.”

The what? Oh, that place in Spain?”

Bingo! Vivienne thought triumphantly. “Yes, that’s right,” she said. “Well, I’ll see you on the fourteenth, then.”

“And your phone number?”

But Vivienne had already hung up. She shrugged on a denim jacket and headed out the door. She was scheduled to review the photos for her new composite in an hour, and somehow she suddenly felt like a little fresh air.

Later that day John Harris, excited by this apparently new source of information about the institute, would try to phone Vivienne “Lester” to schedule an immediate appointment. But there was no such person listed in the Manhattan directory. And directory inquiries had never heard of her.

“Morning, Luisa.”

“Morning, Viv. They’re in the conference room.”

“Thanks.”

Vivienne went through the reception room, adorned with framed magazine covers featuring famous faces represented by Lens, her own included, and down the carpeted hallway to the art-deco meeting room. The model agency was housed in what had once been a small loft building, now converted to office space. The decorators had made the most of its high ceilings, exposed pipes, and unusual angles.

“Viv! You look super, sweetie!”

Marcella, Lens’s illustrious owner, rose to greet her with a peck on the cheek. Marcella was a legend: sophisticated and chic, with a great sense of style, she had risen above her own spectacular ugliness and achieved a look - and a fortune - completely her own. She was bone-thin and aggressively blond, with bold, strong features and uneven teeth which she refused to have capped. Her instinct was correct: her teeth gave a certain vulnerability to her otherwise unrelenting visage. But then, Marcella’s instincts were always correct.

“Bert Maylor says you were a major hit the other day,” she told Vivienne. “Well done!”

“Bert makes it easy,” Vivienne said. And thank you, Bert, for not mentioning how long it took to make me a hit.

“Well, the clients were ecstatic! Now, have a look at these,” Marcella instructed, gesturing toward the large marble table in the center of the room. “Belinda, get Viv some mineral water. I thought we might use this head shot for the front.” She tapped on the photograph with a long red lacquered nail.

“Yes,” Vivienne agreed. “I love that shot.”

“Good. And then” - Marcella pulled five photos from the twenty or so spread out across the table - “three on the reverse. A bathing suit of course; is this one too sexy? And maybe something romantic . . .”

Like most models, Vivienne put together an updated photo composite each year, a printed page with a variety of photos - reproductions of magazine covers and ads she’d appeared in - as well as her name and measurements, and Lens’s name, address, and phone number. The agency sent copies of the composite to advertising agencies and photographers when they were casting a commercial or a print ad. And Viv always took five or six to every assignment; clients often asked for one.

Lens insisted on being involved in the choosing of photos for the composite, and that suited Vivienne just fine. They’d done very well by her so far, and she trusted Marcella’s taste and business instincts.

Now Marcella began lining up her choices and alternates in order on the table, and she and her assistant, Belinda, discussed the selections dispassionately. Viv felt she looked a little old in this one; Belinda liked her eyes in that. Everyone spoke openly and honestly. It was a business, after all.

Choices made, Marcella studied Vivienne critically. She’d told Viv she looked super when she’d arrived, but close up, Marcella could see the tension and strain.

“You’re looking a little tired, sweetie,” she said. “Everything OK?” Ever since Angela had taken Marcella into her confidence, Marcella had begun to see symptoms of ill health everywhere.

“Never better,” said Vivienne with energy. “Really.” She smiled confidently at Marcella, who smiled back and patted her hand.

“Good!” she said. “You working today?”

“No,” Vivienne replied. “But I’ve got a callback for that Revlon thing at four.”

“Today? That was fast,” Marcella commented. Revlon had begun its search for a “trademark” face for a secret new cosmetic product only a week earlier. “Knock ‘em dead, sweetie!” But Marcella had her doubts. Vivienne was looking rather frazzled. She hoped it wasn’t drug-related; Viv had always been one of the sane ones. And the agency had enough of that kind of trouble with May-Ann. Poor May-Ann, thought Marcella. Such potential. Such a waste.

The intercom buzzed, and a voice spoke. “Marcella, pick up for Lloyd Rogers, Estée Lauder.”

Marcella’s eyes flicked toward the phone as Vivienne thanked her and Belinda for their help and started out. But Marcella ignored the flashing phone light and followed her to the door. Putting a hand on her shoulder, she looked steadily into Vivienne’s eyes. “Just remember,” she said. “If I can help, I will.”

She held the look for a beat, then turned to Belinda. “Call Viv when the proof comes in, right?” she ordered, then went to the phone.

“Lloyd dearest,” she cooed, “who was that gorgeous creature I saw you with at Aureole last night . . .?”

Vivienne closed the door softly behind her, then stood rooted there. She couldn’t believe it - she was shaking, physically shaking. Why? Marcella had been so nice. And the composite was going to be beautiful. The shakes got worse. Her career was going well. She was going to marry a wonderful man. Shake, shake. Charles loved her so much he’d even arranged for the Reproduction Institute to make a . . . Shake, shake, shake, shake!

She breathed deeply, then followed the corridor around to the right until it dead-ended at the bullpen, a circular room with a central console around which sat the agency’s bookers. By the time she got there, she felt a little better.

Along the walls were mounted the scheduling sheets, huge plastic-coated blowups of calendar pages divided into weeks, days, and times. Bookers wrote hold dates and bookings on these sheets with erasable colored marking pens, in letters large enough to be read from anywhere in the room. As usual, the phones were ringing, and everyone was talking at once, the baffles separating each workstation only just tempering the noise.

Angela was at work in the middle of the chaos, a phone in one hand and a sandwich in the other. Vivienne thought she looked thinner. And her hair!

“I like it,” she said to Angela’s back. “It’s different, but it’s fun.”

Angela turned around, surprised, then waved a hello with her sandwich. “Tuesday the 20th at three,” she said. “No makeup, hair in rollers. Two hours firm with a one-hour bump. You got it.”

She hung up, and hurried across the room to a scheduling sheet and wrote down the information boldly in green. “Do you really like it?” she asked, returning to the console where Vivienne was now perched.

“It’s cute,” said Vivienne.

“Yeah, short and sweet,” Angela replied. “I’ve already lost a lot of my own hair. I figured it was time to stop scaring the children. Hey, don’t look so down,” she added, seeing Vivienne’s expression change. “I’m gonna live. It’s gonna grow back eventually. And guess what!”

“What?”

“One of the girls told me about this wigmaker, and he cut my hair short before it started coming out, and he saved it to make this. So it’s really still my hair.”

“You’re being disgustingly cheerful about all this,” said Vivienne fondly.

“I am, I am.” Angela eyed the remains of her sandwich. “And I’m not very hungry these days. Look! Cheekbones!”

Angela really is thinner, Vivienne thought. It looks good on her but isn’t it funny how it took something awful to make her care about her appearance. And it took something a lot of people seem to think is just great to make me screw up my life.

“How about you, chickie?” Angela asked. “Only a friend would tell you, but you look like shit.”

“If you think this is shit, you should have seen me yesterday.”

“I heard you did great yesterday.”

“You didn’t hear what I did after I did great yesterday.”

“What?”

“Well, let’s see,” said Vivienne. “I got makeup all over a priceless sample blouse, I tried to get a snake named Brian Arnold to tell me about the Institute and ended up letting him pinch my boob, I called Charles to tell him he was an unfeeling monster for making me a genetic-blueprint thingy - fortunately he wasn’t home . . . Shall I go on?”

“Christ,” said Angela, She looked at her friend with concern. “Look, don’t get mad at me for saying this, but . . . do you think maybe you’re going a little overboard about this Institute business?”

Vivienne shook her head. “No,” she said, “I’ve thought about it, and I don’t think it’s just my imagination. I . . . I read some papers in Charles’s study . . .”

“You what??”

“Charles’s father wrote a letter to Elizabeth. I read only part of it, but . . . Angie, the letter didn’t really say anything, but . . . I have a hunch about what they’re doing at the institute.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to say until I’m sure.”

“Oh, that’s helpful!” said Angela.

“OK, OK! I think they use your blood to make zombies! Zombies, Angela!”

Several of the bookers looked around, curious. “Sounds like a great movie,” Angela said loudly. “I must see it! Where did you say it’s playing?” And grabbing her handbag and Vivienne’s arm, she marched her out of the bullpen and down the corridor to the ladies’ room.

“Loose lips sink careers,” she told Vivienne. “You want them to think you’re drugging or something?” She looked closely at her friend. “Do you know you’re shaking?”

Vivienne nodded. “I think it’s stress.”

Opening the door of a stall, Angela pushed Vivienne inside. “I’ll stand guard,” she told her through the closed door. “Get yourself together.”

Another booker came in, and Angela began washing her hands. She washed her hands until the booker left.

For a while after that, all was silence. “You OK in there?” Angela asked.

“Yeah,” said Vivienne. “Only there’s more. Charles is talking about postponing our wedding.”

Angela pulled open the stall door. “He’s breaking it off? Bastard!”

“No, no, just putting it off until after the first of the year, to give me time to . . . uh, get straightened out, he said. Actually, I’m kind of relieved. Isn’t that funny?”

Behind them, the door from the corridor swung open again.

“Maybe I don’t really want to marry him, after all,” Vivienne continued thoughtfully. “Especially if he approves of making zombies. I mean, I’m not sure they’re making zombies, but . . .”

Angela quickly swung the stall door closed and turned again to the sink. “Great plot line,” she said over her shoulder in the direction of Vivienne’s cubicle. “I must see it. Oh, hi, Belinda!” She and Belinda made small talk while Belinda rinsed out the office coffee pot and refilled it with fresh water. Angela washed her hands as slowly as she could. At last Belinda left.

Angela pulled open the stall door and looked at Vivienne suspiciously. “You’re sure you’re not just saying you’re relieved because he’s breaking it off?”

Vivienne shook her head. “He’s not breaking it off,” she said. “He’s just giving us both some breathing space.”

“He’s breathing; you’re hyperventilating. OK, let me think.” Angela began pacing the few feet between the tiny air-shaft window and the sinks. Vivienne went and leaned against one of the sinks with a bemused smile.

“Road trip,” Angela said at last. “A change of scene. Don’t tell Marcella I suggested it, or she’ll kill me. It’s not a cover or much money, so she’d rather you stayed in town. But . . .”

Again the door from the corridor swung open, and both women turned to the sinks, exchanging greetings with Luisa, who began to wash an apple for lunch. Vivienne started to repair her makeup, and Angela, heartily sick of washing, did the same.

“Since when do you wear eye makeup?” Luisa asked.

Vivienne looked over, curious. She hadn’t noticed it in the bullpen, but Angie was indeed wearing a soft brown eye shadow, and now she was applying a little liner beneath her lower lashes. She was surprised to see how well Angie was doing it.

“It’s good for morale,” Angela said.

Luisa looked embarrassed, but Angie winked at her. “It’s okay, kid,” she said. “Hey, I meant to ask you, what’s the name of that lipstick you’re wearing? Would it work on me?”

“Cinnamon Soup,” said Luisa. “It’s in my bag. Come out to reception if you want to try it.”

“What do you think, Viv?”

Vivienne smiled; Angie reminded her of herself at fourteen, having just discovered cosmetics. “Sure,” she said. “It’ll probably look great.”

Luisa left with her apple, and Vivienne now studied Angie carefully. Her skirt hung slightly around her waist, but her eyes, now enlarged and emphasized, sparkled. And yes, you could see the beginnings of cheekbones. What surprised her was not that Angela could look good; she’d seen that the night she’d recruited Angie as a date for Charles’s political buddy. No, what amazed her was that Angie now cared enough to actually create this transformation herself.

Angela finished fluffing her short curly hairdo and turned back from the mirror, leaning against one of the sinks.

“So. Road trip?”

“I don’t know, Angie . . .”

“Do you good to get away. Take your mind off things. Make Charles miss you. Pazula’s doing a big promotion for Bloomie’s, shooting in Burgundy. Grapes and wine and stuff. Guess what the big color is for fall!”

“Did he ask for me?”

“He hasn’t asked for anybody yet. I heard about it from Sean - that’s his new assistant - about five minutes ago, when they booked Rachel’s hands. Supposed to be a secret. Interested?”

Perhaps it would be good to get away, Vivienne thought. Location shoots could be a lot of fun. And being away from Charles for a while might be good for both of them.

“I shot with Pazula last year,” she said. “We got along fine, and he liked the work. One of the shots is going into my new composite, now I think about it.” She was suddenly feeling much better.

“I could tell Sean to tell Pazula that you’d be interested. I’d have to swear you both to secrecy. If Marcella found out . . .”

“France. Yes, I’d like to go to France,” said Vivienne. “It might be just what I need to do.”

“Let me work on it,” said Angela. “Now, let’s get out of the john before they start transferring my calls in here.”

“Sure,” said Vivienne. “And thanks, thanks a lot. Uh, Angie . . .” She hesitated, knowing how Angie hated compliments. “I just want to tell you, you look pretty. Really pretty.”

Surprisingly, Angie smiled. “Yeah, I do, don’t I? Will wonders never cease!”