He looked tired and worried.

After giving me a quick kiss on the neck, Martin unzipped his pants and sat on the bed to untie his shoes.

"Hey, sailor, how about it?" I asked, in my best Mae West voice. Martin flashed me a smile. He glanced at the bedside clock. "Afraid we don't have time," he said regretfully. "I have to shower. Two people in the meeting smoked."

Martin hates the smell of smoke clinging to his hair and clothes. "You could have asked them not to," I said mildly. Martin's asking might as well be called telling: He was the boss.

"They're going to retire at the new year," he said. "If that weren't the case, I would have kicked their asses out in the hall. As of January one, I'm going to make the entire plant a smoke-free zone."

We talked about how many smokers Pan-Am Agra employed, and mulled over other mundane topics as Martin stripped, showered, and re-dressed. Martin is almost thirteen years my senior, but he looks absolutely great without his clothes on, and he's just as attractive dressed. He has snowy white hair, but his eyebrows are still black, and his eyes are a light, light brown. He lifts weights and his racquetball games are endurance tests for the younger members of the management staff.

"Didn't you say you had your physical today?" Looking at Martin's physique had prompted another train of thought.

"Yes," he said rather shortly. My wifely antennae perked, tuned in to what he wasn't saying.

"Wasn't everything all right?" Martin had never had a bad physical. In fact, he was usually boastful after his annual checkup, required by the plant. "Zelman wants me to have a full battery of tests. Just because I'm getting older," Martin added hastily, before I could even fully develop my concerned expression.

"Did he find anything?" I asked, in the voice that said he better let me know everything.

"He said I was stressed. He just wants to run some more tests." Martin was standing in front of his closet picking out his clothes for the evening. I understood from his tone that the subject was closed. "We'll schedule those right away," I suggested. "Sure, I'll get Mrs. Sands to do it tomorrow. Did I tell you she's going to be a grandmother?"

"Is she happy about it?"

"Oh, yes, she's already named the baby and picked out a preschool. Not that her daughter knows about that..."

All this chatter was a delaying tactic of Martin's, while he thought over whatever Regina had told him.

"What'd Regina say?" I asked, as he used his electric razor. "Not much," he admitted, sticking out his chin to shave under it. I was sitting on the toilet lid. Not for the first time, it occurred to me how much I enjoyed being married, just sitting in the bathroom with a man while he shaved, and all the little intimacies that entailed. "I don't think she's going to tell us why she's here until she's ready." He stretched his upper lip down over his front teeth. "I hope nothing's happened to Craig."

"If he'd been in a wreck or been ill, surely she'd let us know," I said hesitantly, aware I wasn't on Martin's wavelength. "I was thinking more of Craig being in trouble," he said, pulling on a fresh shirt and tucking it in. "Do you have your lipstick on yet?" "No," I said, surprised.

Martin pulled me to him and gave me one of those wonderful kisses that makes my pulse jump around like a drop of oil in a hot skillet. I responded enthusiastically, and let my fingers do the walking. "Whoa! Whoa!" he said, gasping, holding me away. "Oh, later! After we come home!"

"That better be a promise," I said lightly, giving him a final pat and sitting at my vanity to twist the tube to apply Mad Rubies. "Take it as sworn to," he told me.

We should have taken twenty extra minutes and been late to the Lowrys‘.

Catledge Lowry met us at the door, his wide happy smile fixed in place. Catledge was a politician through and through. He had a good-sounding set of goals, he had a good campaign manager, and he'd done some worthwhile things. I didn't trust him as far as I could throw him, and given Catledge's six-foot-four frame, that wasn't an inch. I just enjoyed Catledge for what he was. "Hey, good lookin‘!" he cried. "If your husband would just turn his back a minute, I'd give you a kiss to curl your toes, you beautiful thing!" "This beautiful thing would rather have a glass of wine, Catledge," I said, smiling. "Besides, I don't think you can bend down far enough." I'm four-eleven. "Honey, I'd amputate my legs for the chance," Catledge said dramatically, and I laughed.

"Ellen might not care for that," I said, handing him my coat. Martin reached past me to shake hands, and in a moment the men were deep in conversation about some yahoo's chance in the Georgia governor's race. I expected a flushed and harried Ellen to rush from the kitchen, but instead I saw her strolling through the garage door holding a brown paper bag containing, from its shape, a bottle of wine. She was groomed to a tee and in no great hurry, either. I had a moment of surprise and then Ellen was bending down to peck my cheek, and I was reconnecting with the bundle of nerves that was Ellen Dawson Lowry.

Ellen was maybe five-ten, as tall as Martin, and thin as a rail. She dressed beautifully, used minimal makeup, would be an unobtrusive blonde for the next twenty years with a little help, and had graduated with honors from Sophie Newcomb. She'd intended to be a CPA. Then she'd married Gatledge, and all her mild ambition had been consumed in Catledge's flashy brilliance. Ellen had told me she'd been happy when their sons had been young, and happy when she worked at the bank for a few years while the boys were in high school; but Catledge had wanted her to quit when he'd been elected mayor, and she had. At one time, when we'd had to work together on the board of a charity, we'd felt rather close. But after our year on the board was up, it had seemed harder and harder for us to meet, and our brief closeness faded. "Roe, you just get prettier and prettier!" Ellen gushed.

"Oh, Ellen," I mumbled, embarrassed at her strange manner. Ellen's eyes had a glaze to them, and her hands moved nervously up and down the skirt of the dark blue-and-gold dress. The colors were becoming, but Ellen had lost even more weight and looked almost painfully thin. "What do you hear from your boys?" I asked.

"Jefferson's tenth in the senior class at Georgia Tech, and Tally is ... working on a special study in Tennessee." Despite her hesitation over nineteen-year-old Tally's current occupation, Ellen was like most mothers in her pleasure in talking about her children, and my questions kept our conversation rolling along until Mrs. Esther came in to announce dinner. Martin and I exchanged discreet glances.

Lucinda Esther is a notable personality in Lawrenceton, and the fact that the Lowrys had hired her to produce this meal surprised us. This was not a dinner on which some important deal depended; this was not a crucial social event. Hiring Mrs. Esther always signaled that the meal was significant, perhaps when the parents of the bride entertained the parents of the groom for the first time, or when an important newcomer was welcomed into an affluent home. Maybe, in this instance, it meant the hostess was not capable of producing a suitable meal.

Standing with massive dignity in a starched gray uniform with a white apron, Mrs. Esther said, "Dinner is served." She did not meet our eyes or wait for a reaction, but strode back into the kitchen, her dark face still impassive, her chin proudly up. The heavy gold hoops in her pierced ears swayed as she walked. Mrs. Esther didn't serve. She placed the food ready on the table and remained in the kitchen until it was time to clean up. And she almost always prepared a menu she'd decided on herself. Tonight she'd picked chicken baked in a white sauce, green beans, homemade rolls, sweet potato casserole, and a tossed salad. Calories and cholesterol were not considerations in Mrs. Esther's catering business.