Charles bit his lip to keep from laughing as he watched Bulmer almost drop his glass and begin to stutter. "I… well… I don't really know—"

Sylvia turned to Charles and looked him squarely in the eyes. Her gaze was intense. "Charles, why don't you show Virginia and Adelle around the ground floor. You know it almost as well as I do."

Charles resented the twinge of jealousy that stabbed through him. "Sure, Love," he said as nonchalantly as he could. "Be glad to."

As he guided the two women away, he noticed Bulmer's wife looking over her shoulder with a puzzled expression as Sylvia linked an arm through her husband's and led him up the wide, winding stairway.

Charles watched, too.

There was something going on between those two, but bloody-damned if he could figure it out just yet.

Does she fancy him, I wonder?

Alan felt like a lamb led to slaughter. If she had been sly and sneaky about getting him up here he would have backed straight out, no problem. But she had been so open about it, dragging him away right in front of Ginny. What could he do?

She led him down the hall as she had Tuesday night, but this time they passed Jeffy's room and traveled farther on, farther away from the party downstairs. And tonight she wasn't swathed chin to toe in flannel. She wore a filmy black something that exposed the nearly flawless skin of her back and shoulders just inches away from him.

A turn of a corner and they were in her bedroom. Thank God it wasn't dark—there was a light on in the corner. A nice bedroom, stylishly furnished with a king-size bed flanked by sleek, low night tables, long satiny curtains framing the windows. Feminine without being too frilly. And no Japanese erotica on the walls. Just mirrors. Lots of mirrors. At one point in the room, the mirrors reflected each other back and forth, and he saw an infinite number of Alans standing next to an endless line of Sylvias in an infinity of bedrooms.

She went over to a dresser and picked up a Lucite-framed eight-by-ten color photo. She said nothing as she handed it to him.

There was Ba—a much younger Ba—in a jungle setting, standing next to a shorter, redheaded American soldier. Both were in fatigues, each with an arm around the other's shoulder, and grinning from ear to ear. Obviously somebody had said, "Smile!" and they were complying with a vengeance. Ba's teeth were indeed yellow. And very crooked. Small wonder he didn't smile.

"Who's the soldier?"

"The late Gregory Nash. That was taken in 1969, somewhere outside Saigon."

"Sorry. Never knew him."

"Don't apologize." She took the picture from his hands, gave it a lingering look, then replaced it on the dresser.

Alan wondered if she thought of him often.

"And I didn't realize they had known each other. I mean, Ba—"

"Right. Ba didn't arrive until four years after Greg died. It turned out to be pure chance. I happened to be watching the evening news one night years back when they were doing all those stories on the continuous flow of Boat People from Nam. They showed some film from the Philippines about this fellow who had just piloted a fishing boat full of his friends and neighbors across the South China Sea. I recognized him at once. It was Ba."

"You brought them back here?"

"Sure," she said offhandedly. "They said his wife was ill. I flew out there and got them. I figured what good was Greg's blood money if I couldn't use it to help out one of his friends? You know the rest… about Nhung Thi and all that."

Alan knew about Ba's wife. She had been sicker than anyone had guessed. He wanted to move the conversation to a lighter level. He glanced out the window into the floodlit yard and saw two trees in full blossom.

"Are those new?"

Sylvia moved up close behind him. "Only one—the one on the right."

Alan was surprised. "I would have guessed this one here— that other one has so many more blossoms."

"Some secret root food Ba is trying. Whatever it is, the new tree is really responding to it."

She was so close. Too close. Her perfume was making him giddy. Without saying anything more, Alan eased out into the hall and waited for Sylvia there. She caught up and they strolled back toward the party. She was more subdued than he could ever remember.

At Jeffy's door he stopped and waited in the hall while she tiptoed in to check on him.

"All's well?" he said as she returned.

She nodded and smiled. "Sleeping like a baby."

They walked on and stopped at the banister overlooking the front foyer. A glittering crowd swirled in conflicting, intermingling currents below, eddying into side pools of conversation in its ceaseless flow from one room to another. He recognized the bulky form of one of the Jets' better-known defensive backs as he passed through. The familiar face of a longtime New York TV weatherman was there, and Alan swore he recognized the voice of his favorite morning disk jockey but couldn't find the face.

That friend of Sylvia's, Charles Axford, passed through below. He wondered what Axford was to Sylvia. Her current lover, no doubt. She probably had a lot of lovers.

Then he saw a face he recognized from the newspapers.

"Isn't that Andrew Cunningham?"

"Right. I told you there'd be a few politicos here. Congressman Switzer is somewhere around, too."

"You know Mike?"

"I contributed to his campaign last year. I hope he won't be too disappointed when he doesn't get any money from me this time around."

Alan smiled. "Was he a bad boy in Washington?"

"I wouldn't know. But I have a rule: I never support incumbents." Her eyes narrowed. "Once they get comfortable, they get dangerous. I like to keep them off balance."

Alan sensed that he was seeing a hint of the anger Tony had mentioned last night.

"Why?"

Her features were taut as she spoke. "Comfortable incumbents sent Greg off to Vietnam, and he came back thinking he could handle anything. It got him killed."

Alan recalled the story. It had happened before he came to Monroe, but people were still talking about Gregory Nash's murder back then. Apparently the Vietnam vet had been waiting on line in the local 7-11 when someone pulled a gun on the clerk and told her to empty the cash register. According to witnesses, Nash stepped in and neatly disarmed the robber. But he hadn't known about the man's accomplice, who shot him in the back of the head. He was DOA at the hospital.

He looked down again at Cunningham, and thought of Mike Switzer, and suddenly remembered their feud.

"God, Sylvia! When Switzer and Cunningham run into each other tonight, all hell could break loose!"

Sylvia's hand darted to her mouth. "Oh, my! I never thought of that!"

Sylvia wanted to get away from the subject of politicians and onto the subject of Alan. She had known him all these years and had never had a chance to ask him about himself. Now that she had him all to herself, she wanted to make the most of the opportunity.

She put her hand on his arm and felt him flinch. Did she make him that nervous? Her heart stumbled over a beat. Could he possibly feel… ? No, that would be too much to ask.

"You know, I've always wanted to ask you how come you aren't a pediatrician? You have a way with kids."

"For the same reason I didn't specialize in any other area: I need variety. In my practice I can see a five-day-old infant with colic and a hundred-and-two-year-old man with prostate trouble back to back. Keeps me on my toes. But as for pediatrics, I had a more specific reason for not going into that. I rotated through the peds ward in my senior year of medical school and that cured me of a career in that field." A look of pain passed over his face. "Too many terminally ill kids. A few years of that and I knew I'd be an emotional basket case. And anyway, with the type of training I had, it was hard to go into anything but family practice."