"Listen, kid, I'm going to Vegas," Helen said. She was wearing a pink-checked sundress with white cuffs and collar. She looked like a Boy Scout's mother, taking a break from making cookies. "I figure if old P. J. ever decides he's angry at me, even New Jersey's too close and too small. Anyway, I've got friends in Vegas. I'll have a good time."

"Well, good luck," Catherine said.

"Do you know, honey," Helen said, "we've been through all this together and I don't even know your last name?"

Catherine was silent a moment, thinking. Then she smiled. "That's right," she said in what she hoped was an inoffensive tone.

Helen looked at her. She whistled. "Kid, you've got bra.s.s b.a.l.l.s."

a.s.suming that was a compliment, Catherine smiled and said, "Helen, so do you."

Then she got out of the blue Ford and went back into the bus station and bought a ticket to New York. Helen Norton didn't come in to see her off. Catherine didn't stand at the window watching the blue Ford pull away. They didn't wave good-bye. They had changed each other's lives completely, and they never saw each other again.

That night Catherine couldn't sleep. She paced the floor, drank warm milk, tried listening to music. Nothing calmed her. Now that the blackmail was successfully completed, the dread and excitement of action had evaporated, leaving an aftertaste of guilt that filled her mouth and stomach with nausea. She had deliberately chosen to commit a crime; by the laws of man she had made herself guilty. Yet she also felt triumphant-victorious. P. J. Willington was guilty of physically abusing Helen Norton, and in their own outlaw way, they had extracted a reparation from him that could never have come from any court.

She forced herself to lie in bed, but the air was stifling. She went into the living room and curled up on the sofa. She was exhausted, but she couldn't sleep. Tossing and turning, she thought of herself now as a female Robin Hood, and now as a criminal.

The next morning Catherine found Piet in the shop bas.e.m.e.nt. It was early September, but as sultry as the hottest August day. Piet was on a ladder, stretching to replace a light bulb. Because of the heat, Piet had already removed his shirt, and now she could see the long undulations of muscles beneath his smooth skin, the sweat beading along his shoulders and sliding down his back so that the beltline of his jeans was darkened by the moisture.

She'd seen Piet without a shirt before, but there was something about his body, an urgency just under his skin, that shocked her each time she looked at him. It was not just the black hair on his chest and the way it grew swirling around his nipples, or the way his jeans hung low on his narrow hips, threatening with each movement to succ.u.mb to gravity. Sometimes she saw bruises on his neck or the inside of his arm. Then she'd be overcome by a sudden image of a woman lying with Piet, clutching, kissing, biting his arm, while he did to the woman the things that made her bruise him in return.

Piet came down the ladder. Catherine caught her breath. Her presence never seemed to interfere with his breathing. They were standing very close, but still she whispered.

"Here's your share-a little over thirty thousand dollars." She handed him a manila envelope. "Helen's already left for Las Vegas."

"Great," Piet said. He folded the envelope and stuffed it inside the work shirt he'd thrown on a chair. "Thanks. Here." He put a box of containers in her arms. "Would you take these up? We'll need them today."

Arms weighted, Catherine stood staring at him. "Don't you want to talk about it at all?"

"I think the less we discuss it, the better for all of us."

"But-Piet. I'm still in shock-I guess I can't believe we really did what we did. And you're the only one I can talk to about it."

"You think talking about it will make you feel better?"

"I guess I do think that."

"All right. Listen. You and I both know that old Willington got his money from a father who did much worse things than we did, and who did them every day. You and I know Willington's not going to miss the money. And we can be pretty certain no one will find out."

"I know all that. But I still can't believe I did it. A girl like me, coming from the background I've come from. Can you believe I did it? Aren't you even a little surprised?"

Piet grinned. "I don't know about your background. What about it? Are you the child of a pair of nuns?" Before Catherine could reply, he reached forward in a surge of energy and swooped up several boxes of containers. "The shop's got a busy day ahead. What's done is done. Talking about it won't change anything." He went up the stairs, leaving Catherine in the bas.e.m.e.nt, her arms aching from the heavy containers. There was nothing for her to do but follow Piet up and, once on the main floor, obey Mr. Vanderveld's frantic orders, which drove other thoughts out of her mind.

And she had to admit, it was a relief to have so much money. She knew her father was in the city, meeting with realtors and appraisers, so when she was through with work that day, she ran down to her parents' Park Avenue apartment. In her father's dark den, she handed him enough cash to pay for Sh.e.l.ly's last year at prep school and for another year for Ann at Miss Brill's and stood at her father's side while he wrote tuition checks and signed the late forms. She took them from her father, addressed and stamped the envelopes, and told her father she'd mail them herself that evening. Her father tried to smile graciously and act as if this weren't a humiliating experience for him.

"Where did you get so much money, Pudding?" her father asked.

"I borrowed it from a friend."

Her father smiled wistfully. "That's the perfect way to lose a friend, you know." He hesitated, then said, "I don't suppose you could loan me a few thousand more? Just for a month. I'm about to sell some paintings your grandmother brought over from England as a bride. When I get that money, we'll be able to keep this apartment."

"All right, Dad. I'll lend it to you, but it's only a loan. I have plans for my money. I'll need it back in a month."

"You'll have it." Her father clapped his hands together and rose with his old take-charge, let's-lead-the-teams-onto-the-field sort of air.

"Well, time for a drink, don't you think? To celebrate."

Chapter 6.

New York, 1964 "Piet," Catherine said one afternoon in late September, "come have coffee with me."

She studied Piet as they settled into a booth and ordered coffee. She had worked with this man for three years. She had committed a crime with him! But she knew nothing about him. What did he want in life? What did he care about?

He was invaluable to the shop, that much was certain. He was strong and energetic, and he dealt with the flower wholesalers down on Sixth Avenue and Twenty-eighth better than she ever could. All those delicate feminine blooms being handled by tough, gruff, callused bruisers always seemed ironic to her. It took brute strength to haul ice-weighted boxes of hundreds of fresh blooms shipped in from Long Island or New Jersey or Florida. These men who brought the cartons of flowers from truck to wholesale house had to be strong. Often they were men new to this country, working at manual jobs until they perfected their English. Catherine, who spoke only English and French, couldn't understand most of them.

But Piet could talk to them, in Portuguese or Italian, complete with universal male gestures. If he tried to bargain with them for better prices, they laughed and joked and hit his arm. When Catherine tried to bargain for a lower price, they only chewed on their toothpicks or cigars and let their eyelids droop down over their eyes, their lips curling upward in that age-old superior smile of the stronger s.e.x. Piet, on the other hand, was always polite to Catherine. Sometimes maddeningly polite.

Their coffee, in thick white mugs, was set before them. Piet looked at Catherine, waiting.

"Piet. I want to buy the shop."

His expression did not change.

"I've been thinking about it constantly since we-got-the money. Your aunt and uncle are tired. They need to rest. They're running the shop into the ground. But you and I could do wonders with it. Piet, do you want to buy the shop with me? Be my partner, at any percentage?"

"Thank you, Catherine, but no," Piet said unhesitatingly, as if he were refusing a piece of pie. He met her eyes. "I have other plans for my money."

"What?"

Piet shrugged.

"Jesus, Piet, we've known each other for three years now! Think what we've done together! Can't we at least talk to each other?"

Piet remained silent, unruffled. She might as well talk to a tree.

"All right. At least tell me this much. If I do manage to buy the shop, would you stay on? You know I'd need you."

"Yes. I'd stay on. For a while."

"Oh, Piet, I have so many ideas! If this all works out ... well, there's so much I want to do, and-" She stopped. "I'm forgetting it is your aunt and uncle involved here. No matter what sorts of changes I make, they will be hurt. Offended." She held her hands out, palms up. "Piet, I don't know what to do."

"Look, Catherine," Piet said. "My aunt and uncle are decent, hardworking people. I love them. They have been wonderful to me. But I can still see their errors. They are running this shop into the ground. They're afraid to try anything new. They're old. Not in years, but in mind. You should buy the shop. It would be best for everyone."

Catherine stared at Piet. His words were so sensible. That they had come from such a sensual mouth was amazing. She would have thrown her arms around him and kissed him in grat.i.tude if he had been anyone else.

Instead, "Thanks, Piet," she said quietly. "Well, we'll see what I can do."

Catherine had often overheard the Vandervelds discuss selling the shop with each other, and from time to time Mrs. Vanderveld confided her worries to Catherine. They were only barely making a profit. Now that they were older, the work was becoming more difficult and tiring. It took a good amount of physical energy and stamina to create even the most ethereal floral display. Piet and Catherine did all the heavy work, but even so the Vandervelds were exhausted at the end of the day.

Every night in September Catherine sat in her room making lists. Planning. On Wednesday, her day off, she called carpenters and painters, getting estimates. She kept an appointment she had made with a lawyer, a man who knew her father well enough to appreciate her background, but not so well that he was aware of the financial difficulties her father had gotten himself into. Not so well that he would ask her where on earth she had managed to find enough money to buy the flower shop.

The lawyer, Mr. Giles, did express a gentle skepticism at her abilities to run a business. He was an older man, portly, white-haired, restrained. It was with exquisite politeness that he pointed out to her that she had little experience in business and no education in accounting.

Catherine bristled. Seated before him in her green linen suit and high heels, her legs primly crossed at the ankles as she had been taught at school, she was aware of how young she appeared. She wanted to toss her head and stalk dramatically from the room, offended, but as Mr. Giles continued to speak, softly, logically, she realized he was trying to be helpful, not patronizing.

"Bookkeeping is an art in itself," he said. "No matter how successful the rest of the enterprise is, the bookkeeping can make or break it."

"Perhaps I should hire someone to do that," Catherine said. "I admit it's not my strong point. I intend to do the design work and the marketing, the selling."

"Of course. And of course you should hire a bookkeeper. But may I suggest that you take a course in accounting yourself? As soon as possible. You must learn to read the books. You must be able to check the figures. You must be prepared to understand this part of your business. Unless you have a partner in mind whom you trust completely, not only with your finances, but also to live a long life and to work for you forever and to keep all information to himself."

Catherine stared at Mr. Giles. "This is more complicated than I thought," she said. "Very well. I'll take a course in accounting. The fall semester hasn't started yet. I'll be able to get in somewhere."

Mr. Giles smiled. "Good for you, young lady," he said. "I know how hard it is to take advice. I was young once myself. I think you just might manage to be as successful as you'd like, since you can obviously summon up some coolheaded reason to balance out your pa.s.sion for this business."

"Your pa.s.sion for this business." An odd phrase from such a temperate man. Not until Catherine had met Mr. Giles would she have thought to put the words pa.s.sion and business in the same sentence. She did not think she had a "pa.s.sion" for this business. She had had a pa.s.sion for Kit. She still did. What she had for this business was something less fiery. But perhaps better: what she felt for this business was certainty.

One day in late September, Mr. Vanderveld fell on the wooden stairs to the bas.e.m.e.nt and broke his ankle. Catherine and Piet, one on each side, carried him to the shop van. Piet drove him to the hospital. The old man had been white-faced with pain and embarra.s.sment.

During the three years Catherine had worked in the shop, Mrs. V and Catherine had been friendly, but it was with Mr. Vanderveld that Catherine felt a real bond. He was her teacher, her mentor, her elder. He was also a man from the old world, and along with his charming Dutch accent, he retained a fierce old-world masculine pride. He was the owner. He was the artist. He was, above all, the man. He might have been proud when Catherine learned quickly and well, but he was also perversely vexed, perhaps threatened. Catherine would have preferred a closer relationship, one in which they could touch, or joke, or praise each other. If Jan Vanderveld ever wished the same, he never indicated it. Certainly he hated having Catherine and Piet see him in the humbling dependence forced by pain.

Catherine knew that it was Mrs. Vanderveld she had to approach about buying the store. Only Mrs. V could make her husband listen. And now was the time. The next day, when Mr. Vanderveld was home with his ankle in a cast, she told Mrs. Vanderveld she would like to buy the shop from them.

Mrs. Vanderveld stared at her, speechless with shock.

"Oh," she said. "Oh."

Catherine could almost hear the other woman's thoughts arranging themselves: "I forgot, this little errand girl and help is from a moneyed background. Well, well."

"I think this could be a possibility, Catherine," Mrs. Vanderveld responded at last, speaking as slowly as if learning a new language. "It would be lovely to have you instead of a stranger taking over our shop. I've always regretted that we have no children of our own to pa.s.s it on to. But you are almost like our child to us. Oh, this is interesting! Let me talk it over with Jan tonight. We'll talk more in the morning."

The next morning, eyes shining with happiness, Mrs. Vanderveld made her proposal: Catherine wouldn't have to buy the shop. The Vandervelds would let her become a partner. That way Catherine would be a.s.sured of Mr. Vanderveld's artistic abilities and Mrs. Vanderveld's accounting skills. Catherine's money could give the business the shot in the arm it needed while they continued to provide the skill.

Catherine hurried back to Mr. Giles. But his blunt words echoed her own doubts: under Mrs. V's proposal, Catherine would be contributing much needed capital to the Vandervelds without receiving any power or control in exchange. Did Catherine think the Vandervelds would accept her as an equal? That they would let her implement any changes or let her decide any policies? Could she make any of the improvements she'd been planning with Mr. and Mrs. Vanderveld scrutinizing and approving every move?

Catherine went back to the Vandervelds. Mr. V was seated on a stool, his bandaged ankle resting on a box, furiously arranging mums and carnations into a fall bouquet. Mrs. V was making bows from ribbons; she stopped working when Catherine entered.

"I've been thinking," Catherine said without preamble, "I want to buy the shop. I don't want a partnership-I want to be the sole owner." She had trouble keeping her voice even as she spoke, knowing this would upset them.

Mr. V tried to act as if he hadn't heard her, but his mouth compressed so completely that his chin and cheeks bulged out around it and his face went red.

Mrs. V twisted her hands in front of her. Her hair began to slip from its bun. "Oh, dear, oh, dear," she blithered, turning toward the ribbons as if for help, then back toward Catherine. "This does present a problem. We don't really want to sell the shop entirely. We just need a little financial boost-"

"Well, think about it," Catherine said. "I'd better get back to work."

It was a wonder that all the flowers in the shop didn't die that week, wilt from the troubled air that hung in the shop like a plague. Mr. Vanderveld was insulted (as Mrs. Vanderveld told Catherine privately, when he was at home one afternoon resting his ankle) that Catherine did not jump at the opportunity to be partners with him. After all, he had the talent. She had only the money. Mrs. Vanderveld approached Catherine as a friend, almost a loving relative. Catherine should not forget that they had taken her in untrained and taught her everything.

"If Jan were freed up from financial worries, he could really let his creative energies flourish!" Mrs. Vanderveld said. "He would make arrangements that would be wonders! He would be famous. The shop would make more money!"

"Then let me buy the shop. You'll have lots of money, and I'll pay Mr. Vanderveld to work as my main floral designer," Catherine said.

Mrs. Vanderveld shook her head. "No, you do not understand. Jan could not work for you. A young lady for his boss? No."

Catherine held fast. On her lunch breaks she raced to the coffee shop to call Mr. Giles from a pay phone for moral support, like a boxer turning to the coach. With each hour that she steadfastly refused to become a partner, the atmosphere of the shop darkened proportionately.

"After all, Jan is sixty," Mrs. Vanderveld said one morning. "A talented man, who should not be thrown on the dustbin. You must know, Catherine, that when older people retire, they lose their reason for living, and die, poof, for no reason at all. Statistics prove this. What would Jan do without his shop? He would have no reason to live."

"The two of you have worked so hard all your lives," Catherine countered sweetly. "Isn't it time you enjoyed yourselves? Just think, with the money you'd get, you could take cruises together. You could visit your relatives in Amsterdam. Mr. Vanderveld shouldn't have to work so hard. At your age, neither should you. Isn't it time to be selfish and take some pleasure from life after all these years of working?"

"Humph!" Mrs. V replied, bustling off.

Now Catherine dreaded coming to work, because the Vandervelds no longer greeted her cheerfully but merely nodded tersely. There were no more gossip sessions about the latest celebrity scandal over coffee. There was no more joking around. Orders were barked, replies bitten off. It was dreary. If she had not wanted to buy the shop, she would have quit.

Catherine's refuge and pleasure came when she sat over her desk at night, planning, sketching, figuring. She enrolled in the bookkeeping course at Hunter College. She studied hard. If she was tempted to think of Kit-or even of Ned-she pushed those thoughts of love away. She forced herself to concentrate on the business she wanted to have. Her mind clicked and spun like an efficient machine. Her heart dangled inside her like a crystal, transparent, empty, cold.

Catherine was cleaning fresh, bud-tight, long-stemmed roses and putting their stems into water tubes for a casket piece. Florists almost always filled out funeral wreaths and arrangements with their old dying flowers that couldn't last another day. It was a waste to put fresh, tightly budded flowers on a grave. The Vandervelds spoke of florists they knew who, if forced to provide fresh flowers in top condition for a funeral, often went to the graveyard that night and stole the flowers back in order to sell them again. But this particular casket piece was for an important man whose casket would be on view in a funeral home for three days. The flowers had to last.

The front door bell tinkled. Mrs. Vanderveld came through the curtain with two sinister-looking smarmy little men.

The taller man, chewing on a toothpick, slouched down the aisle between the tables, eyeing the shop, eyeing Catherine. He grinned.

"She come with the shop, too?" he said nastily, jerking his head toward Catherine as if she were a thing that could not see or hear.

His cohort laughed vulgarly.

"Miss Eliot works for us, yes," Mrs. Vanderveld said. "Whether she stayed on to work for you would depend on whatever agreement you worked out with her, I suppose. She does have three years of training with us."

Catherine dropped the flowers on the table. She looked at the two men-slimy hoods, they wouldn't know a pansy from a peony! She looked at Mrs. Vanderveld. Mrs. Vanderveld raised her trembling chin in defiance and stared back.