"I will dazzle one and all with my sartorial elegance," Payne said.

"If you don't show up for the rehearsal, Daffy's mother will have hysterics."

That was, Matt Payne realized, less a figure of speech than a statement of fact. Mrs. Soames T. Browne was prone to emotional outbursts. Matt still had a clear memory of her shrieking "You dirty little boy" at him the day she discovered him playing doctor with Daphne at age five. And he knew that nothing that had happened since had really changed her opinion of his character. He knew, too, that she had tried to have Chad pick someone else to serve as his best man.

"Okay," Matt Payne had said, giving in. "The rehearsal, the bachelor dinner, and the wedding. But that's it. Deal?"

"Deal," Lieutenant Nesbitt had said, shaking his hand and smiling, then adding, "You rotten son of a bitch."

Matt Payne had been waiting inside the vestibule of St. Mark's Protestant Episcopal Church on Locust Street, between Rittenhouse Square and South Broad Street in central Philadelphia, when the rehearsal party arrived in a convoy of three station wagons, two Mercurys, and a Buick.

Mrs. Soames T. Browne, who was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a flowing light blue silk dress briefly offered Matt Payne a hand covered in an elbow-length glove.

"Hello, Matthew. How nice to see you. Be sure to give my love to your mother and father."

"I'll do that, Mrs. Browne," Matt said. "Thank you."

She did not introduce him to the blonde with Daffy.

"Come along, girls," Mrs. Browne said, snatching back her hand and sweeping quickly through the vestibule into the church.

"I'm Matt Payne," Matt said to the blonde, "since Daffy apparently isn't going to introduce us."

"Sorry," Daffy said. "Amanda, Matt. Don't be nice to him; he's being a real prick."

"Who is Daffy Browne and why is she saying all those terrible things about me?"

"You know damn well why," Daffy said.

"Haven't the foggiest," Matt said.

"Well, for one thing, Matt, Amanda won't have a date for the cocktail party after the rehearsal."

"I thought I was going to be her date."

"Chad said you flatly refused," Daffy said.

"He must have been pulling your chain again," Matt said. "He has a strange sense of humor."

"He does not," Daffy said loyally.

"He was suspended from pool privileges at Rose Tree for a year for dropping Tootsie Rolls in the swimming pool," Matt said. "That isn't strange?"

It took Amanda a moment to form in her mind the mental image of Tootsie Rolls floating around a swimming pool, and then she bit her lip to keep from smiling.

"Is that true?" Amanda asked.

"Goddamn you, Matt!" Daffy said, making it clear it was true.

"The mother of the bride made one of her famous running dives into the pool," Matt went on. "Somewhere beneath the surface she opened her eyes and saw one of the Tootsie Rolls. She came out of the pool like a missile from a submarine."

Amanda laughed, a hearty, deep belly laugh. Matt liked it.

"My father wanted to award her a loving cup," Matt said, " inscribed 'to the first Rose Tree matron who has really walked on water,' but my mother wouldn't let him."

"I absolutely refuse to believe that," Daffy Browne said. "Matt, you're disgusting!"

Mrs. Soames T. Browne reappeared.

"Darling, the rector would like a word with you," she said, and led her into the church.

Amanda smiled at Matt Payne.

"You are going to the cocktail party?" she asked.

He nodded. "And the dinner. As a matter of fact, Amanda, whither thou goest, there also shall Payne go. That's from the Song of Solomon, in case you're a heathen and don't know your Bible."

She chuckled and put her hand on his arm. "I'm glad," she said.

"Pay close attention inside," Matt said. "You and I may well be going through some barbarian ritual like this ourselves in the very near future."

She met his eyes for a moment, appraisingly.

"Chad tells me that you've taken a job with the city," she said, smoothly changing the subject.

"Is that what he told you?" Matt asked dryly.

"Was he pulling my chain too?"

"No."

"What do you do?"

"Street cleaning."

"Street cleaning?"

"Right now I'm in training," Matt said. "Studying the theory and history, you see. But one day soon I hope to have my own broom and garbage can on wheels."

"City Sanitation, in other words? Aren't you ever serious? "

"I was serious a moment ago, when I said you should pay close attention to the barbaric ritual."

The only thing that hadn't been just fine with Amanda in the time since he'd met her in the vestibule at St. Mark's was that he hadn't been able to get her alone. There had always been other people around and no way to separate from the group.

Hehad managed to kiss her, twice. The night before last he had tried to kiss her at the Merion Cricket Club, before Madame Browne had hauled her off in the station wagon. She had turned her face at the last second and all he got was a cheek. A very nice cheek, to be sure, but just a cheek. Last night she had not turned her face as she prepared to enter what he thought of as the Barque of the Vestal Virgins to be hauled off from the Rose Tree Hunt Club to the Browne place in Merion.

It had not been a kiss that would go down in the history books to rank with the one Delilah gave Samson before she gave him the haircut, but it had been on the lips, and they were sweet lips indeed, and his heart had jumped startlingly.

Tonight they would be alone. The Brownes were entertaining, especially their out-of-town guests, at cocktails and dinner at the Union League in downtown Philadelphia. It was tacitly admitted to be an old-folks' affair, and the young people could leave after dinner. Amanda liked jazz, another character trait he found appealing. So, they would go listen to jazz. With a little luck the lights would be dim. She probably would let him hold her hand, and possibly permit even other manifestations of affection.

If the gods favored him, after they left the jazz joint she would accept his invitation to see his apartment. There, he wasn't sure what he would do. On one hand, he would cheerfully sacrifice one nut and both ears to get into Amanda's pants, but on the other, she was clearly not the sort of girl from whom one could expect a quick piece of tail. Amanda Spencer was the kind of girl one marched before an altar and promised to be faithful to until death did you part.

Matt Payne was very much aware that he could fuck up the whole relationship by making a crude pass at her. He didn't want to do that.

God only knows what that goddamn Daffy has told her about me. Going back to me talking her out of her pants when we were five.

The residence of Mr. and Mrs. Soames T. Browne in Merion was an adaptation, circa 1890, of an English manor house, circa 1600. The essential differences were that the interior dimensions were larger and there was inside plumbing. But everything else was there: a forest of chimneys, a cobblestone courtyard, enormous stone building blocks, turret like protrusions, leaded windows, ancient oaks, formal gardens, and an entrance that always reminded Matt of a movie he'd seen starring Errol Flynn as Robin Hood. In the movie, when the heavy oak door had swung slowly open, Errol Flynn had run the door opener through with a sword.

The heavy oak door swung open and an elderly black man in a gray cotton jacket stood there.

"I'm very glad to see you, Matt," the Brownes' butler said.

"Why do you say that, Mr. Ward?" Matt asked. He had known the Brownes' butler, and his wife, all of his life.

"Because the consensus was that you wouldn't show and I'd wind up driving Daffy's friend into town," Ward said. "They're all gone."