Qwilleran forgot his morning irritation with the publicity-seeking potter. "Here, let me help you," he offered.

Dan looked at Qwilleran warily, and his mouth dropped open. "Sorry if I said anything to get you riled up. I didn't know Maus would go blabbing it around."

"No harm done."

"It's your money. It's your business what you do with it, I guess."

"Forget it."

"Got a postcard today," Dan said. "Mailed from Cincinnati."

Qwilleran gulped twice before answering. "From your wife? How's everything?" He tried to speak casually. "Will she be back for the champagne party?"

"Guess not. She wants me to mail her summer duds to her in Miami."

"Miami!"

"Yep. Guess she's going to soak up some sunshine before she comes home. Do her some good. Give her a chance to think things over."

"No bad feeling; then?"

Dan scratched his head. "Husband and wife have to keep their identity, especially when they're artists. She'll get rid of that fuzzy feeling and come back, sassy as ever. We have our blowups; what couple doesn't?" He smiled his twisted smile, so much an imitation of Joy's smile that Qwilleran felt his flesh crawl. It was grotesque.

"It's a funny thing," Dan went on. "I used to ride her all the time about shedding hair all over the place. If it wasn't cat hairs floating around, it was her own — long ones — turning up in the clay and everywhere else. But you wanta know something? I kinda miss those aggravations when she's away. You ever been married?"

"I had a go at it once."

"Why don't you come up for a drink tomorrow night? Come on up to the loft."

"Thanks. I'll do that."

"Might give you a sneak preview of the exhibition. Don't mind telling you I've come up with some dandies that'll rock 'em back on their heels. When you see your art critic, put a bug in his ear, if you know what I mean."

Qwilleran went up to Number Six, massaging his mustache as he climbed the stairs. The cats were alert and waiting for him.

"Well, what do you think of that development, Koko?" he said. "She's off to Miami."

"Yow!" Koko replied — ambiguously, Qwilleran thought.

"She hates Florida! She told us so, didn't she? And she's always been allergic to sunlight."

And then Qwilleran had a second thought. Perhaps his $750 check had financed a vacation with that food buyer — Fish, Ham, or whatever his name was — in the Sunshine State! Once again Qwilleran felt like a fool.

When Qwilleran's alarm went off on Saturday morning, it was still dark and chill, and he debated whether to fulfill his intentions to forget about the farmers' market and go back to sleep. Curiosity and a newsman's relish for an unfamiliar situation convinced him to get up.

He showered and dressed hastily and diced round steak for the cats, who were asleep in the big chair, stretched out in do-not-disturb postures.

By six-thirty Qwilleran was downstairs in the kitchen, where Robert Maus was breaking eggs into a bowl. "Hope you don't mind," Qwilleran said. "I've invited myself to go the farmers' market with you."

"Consider yourself more than welcome, to be sure," the attorney said. "Please be good enough to help yourself to orange juice and coffee. I am preparing . . . an omelet."

"Where's William?"

Maus took a deep breath before replying. "With William, I regret to say, it is a point of honor to be late for any and all occasions."

He poured the beaten eggs into the omelet pan, shook it vigorously, stirred with a fork, folded the shimmering yellow creation, flipped it onto a warm plate, grated some white pepper over the top, and glazed it with butter.

It was the best omelet Qwilleran had ever tasted. With each tender, creamy mouthful he recalled the dry, brown, leathery imitations he had eaten in second-class restaurants. Maus prepared another omelet for himself and sat down at the table.

"I hate to see our friend William missing this good breakfast," said Qwilleran. "Maybe he overslept. Maybe I should hammer on his door."

He found William's room at the end of the kitchen corridor and knocked once, twice, then louder, without getting any response. He turned the knob gently and opened the door an inch or two. "William!" he shouted. "It's after six-thirty!" There was no sound from within. He peered into the room. The built-in bunk was empty, and the bedspread was neatly tucked under the mattress.

Qwilleran glanced around the room. The bath- room door stood open. He tried another door, which proved to be a small, untidy closet. The entire place was in mild disorder, with clothes and magazines scattered in all the wrong places.

He returned to the breakfast table. "Not there. His bed looks as if he hasn't slept in it, and the alarm clock hasn't been set. I took him out to dinner last night, and he was going to his mother's house afterward. Do you suppose he stayed there?"

"Basing an opinion on what I know about the relationship between William and his mother," said Maus, "I would. . . deem it more likely that he spent the night with the young lady to whom he appears to be . . . engaged. I suggest you wear boots this morning, Mr. Qwilleran. The market manufactures an exclusive brand of . . . mud, composed of wilted cabbage leaves, rotted tomatoes, crushed grapes, and an unidentifiable liquid that binds them together in a slimy black. . . amalgam."

The men started for the market in the attorney's old Mercedes, and as they circled the driveway, Qwilleran thought he saw the enormous tail fins of William's limousine protruding from the carport on the other side of the house.

"I think William's car is there," he remarked. "If he didn't come home last night, how did his car get back?"

"The ways of the young," said Maus, "are incomprehensible. I have ceased all attempts to understand their behavior."

It was true about the mud. A black ooze filled the gutters and splashed up over the sidewalks of the open-air market. There were several square blocks of open sheds where farmers and other vendors sold directly from their trucks. Rich and poor streamed through the cluttered aisles, carrying shopping bags, pushing baby buggies loaded with pots of geraniums, pulling red express wagons filled with produce, or maneuvering chrome-plated, rubber-tired shopping carts through the crowded aisles.

A pickpocket's heaven, Qwilleran thought. There were women with rollers in their hair, children riding piggyback, distinguished old men in velvet-collared coats, Indian girls with tweed jackets over their filmy saris, teenagers wearing earphones, suburban housewives swaddled in fun furs, and more than the average number of immensely fat women.

Maus led the way between mountains of rhubarb and acres of fresh eggs, past the gallon jugs of honey, the whole pigs, bunches of sassafras, pillows filled with chicken feathers, carrots as big as baseball bats, white doves in cages, and purple cauliflower.

It was a nippy morning, and the vendors stamped their feet and warmed their hands over coke fires burning in oil drums. The smoke mingled with the aromas of apples, livestock, lilacs, and market mud. Qwilleran noticed a blind man with a white cane standing near the lilacs, sniffing and smiling.

Maus bought mushrooms, fern shoots, scallions, Florida corn, and California strawberries. It amazed the newsman to hear him haggling over the price of a turnip. "My dear woman, if you can afford to sell a dozen for three dollars, how can you — in all decency — ask thirty cents for one?" asked the man who served a ten-dollar bottle of wine with the jellied clams.

At one stall Maus selected a skinned rabbit, and Qwilleran turned away while the farmer wrapped the red, stiffened carcass in a sheet of newspaper and the white-furred relatives of the deceased looked on with reproach.