Catherine told them she would deliver something original and spectacular. She asked only that she and her crew work without interruption.

It was two hours before the party. The caterers were setting up their tables. Catherine was surveying her work.

She had bought eight mannequins, four of each s.e.x, removed their heads, and painted them eight striking colors: magenta, chartreuse, acid yellow, carmine, ink black, raw umber, peac.o.c.k blue, and emerald. She had shaped sphagnum moss into heads and wired them onto the torsos. Ivy trailed like pre-Raphaelite tresses over some heads, some were bald, some had dark or daisy or gra.s.s hair. Different flowers-carnations, mums, roses, bachelor b.u.t.tons-had been stuck into the moss faces as eyes, noses, mouths, and ears. The result was humorously eerie.

Catherine knocked on the door leading to the hall, bedrooms, and den. Mr. and Mrs. Simon appeared in a flash. They hurried into the middle of their living area, stood still, and looked around. They approached each of the mannequins and inspected them closely.

"Oh," the wife said in her high little drawl. "These are certainly ... unusual."

"Yes," echoed her husband in his great big drawl. "They are definitely ... unusual."

Catherine took a gulp of Scotch to keep herself from screaming: "Okay, let's have it! Do you like them? Hate them? What?"

The husband looked at the wife.

The wife looked at the husband.

"Well, we'd better get dressed, darlin'," the wife said.

Mr. Simon turned to Catherine. "Thank you, Miss Eliot," he said formally. "If you'll excuse us, we'd better get dressed."

"Thank you, Miss Eliot," the wife called from the hall doorway. She fluttered her hand good-bye.

They don't know if they like the arrangements or not! Catherine realized. She had seen this happen before. Not until the guests came and either were enraptured or disgusted would the hosts know what to think.

The next morning the phone rang at Blooms.

"Miss Eliot, I just want to thank you again," Mrs. Simon cooed. "Everyone just went wild about those flower people. Some photographers took some shots, and one man told me he's putting a story in Chic about the flowers and us. You are just so clever. Oh! My husband wants you to know he's sending an extra little something to y'all in grat.i.tude."

Now the paralysis that had frozen Catherine's lungs evaporated. She hung up the phone and took a deep breath. She was alone in her office, trying to hide her fear from her employees. At times like this she remembered she was only twenty-five. At times like this she remembered she was only pretending to know what she was doing.

Fortunately everyone else seemed to think she knew exactly what she was doing. In three short years she had made Blooms a prosperous company and herself a moderately wealthy and well-known young woman.

Accordingly, she had changed her look. These days she could afford to have her hair done. Her hairdresser scissored it short in a gamine cut. Her makeup consultant praised Catherine's vivid coloring instead of despairing of it as Marjorie had. Now Catherine smugly wore the brilliant tones that paler women couldn't carry.

Catherine lined her dark eyes with deep seal brown liner. She painted her lips scarlet. She had her ears pierced in spite of the fact that her mother insisted only wh.o.r.es and gypsies had holes in their ears, and she bought herself half-carat diamond ear studs. More and more she spent money on clothes for herself, because her mother's expensive outfits were too simple and restrained for the look Catherine liked. The boldest women wore pantsuits these days. Catherine looked wonderful in slacks.

With the help of Mr. Giles and a money manager he recommended, she invested most of her money. Her major investment had been buying herself an apartment, the second floor of a dove gray stone building on Seventy-fifth Street just off Park. It had a fireplace in the living room, a balcony off the bedroom overlooking a tiny walled-in garden, high ceilings, ornate moldings, shining dark wood floors. Best of all, it was near Blooms.

She didn't spend much time furnishing the apartment. She chose everything one afternoon in Bloomingdale's. It was all good-quality, comfortable, dark mahogany contrasting with bright floral prints. It was satisfactory, and she was in a hurry.

Besides, she seldom had anyone in her home. If she entertained, she took people out for dinner or drinks or held small c.o.c.ktail parties in the lusciously decorated consulting room at Blooms. She concerned herself with every detail of Blooms and with her own person as an adjunct of Blooms. Her own apartment was merely a convenience and a retreat.

It wasn't only that she wanted to spend every waking moment and every ounce of her energy on Blooms. It was now also that she had to.

With each pa.s.sing day, Mr. and Mrs. Vanderveld grew less helpful and more troublesome. With Mr. Vanderveld it was the sad fact of aging that caused him to slow down, but Catherine was not sure whether Mrs. V was losing her mind or employing a cunningly destructive one.

Catherine had to spend all day helping Mr. V with the flower arrangements; he was still an artist, but a weak and trembling one. Upstairs in the business office, Mrs. V, who had never been very efficient at her best, was now turning muddle into chaos.

Every night Catherine went over the account books as Mr. Giles had advised her, and she was glad she'd learned bookkeeping because more and more, Mrs. V was making disastrous mistakes. Her addition and subtraction were wrong. She entered credits in the debit column. She forgot to mark accounts paid and billed important customers several times even after their checks had cleared.

What was worse was that whenever Catherine confronted Mrs. V with her mistakes, Mrs. V reacted with vehement denial.

"You silly girl! How can you say such a thing! I would never do such a thing!"

"Mrs. Vanderveld-"

"Shame on you! You should be ashamed of yourself!"

One night Catherine went into Mrs. V's office to find that the account books had disappeared. The next morning when Mr. and Mrs. V arrived for work, Catherine saw them in Mrs. V's arms, clutched to her breast.

"I'm taking them home with me every night from now on. You go into my office at night and mess them up. You write mistakes in them. Now you don't get the chance to."

"Mrs. V, I cannot allow you to take the books home," Catherine began calmly.

"Who are you to tell me what I can and cannot do!"

Mrs. V's voice was shrill. Her hair, now almost totally white, exploded from her bun as she shook her head in anger. Catherine was both angry at the woman and frightened for her.

"I've been keeping books for more years than you are being alive! I-"

"Henny." The one word in Mr. V's iron voice brought his wife's shrieking to a dead stop. "You forget Miss Eliot is our employer. You must do what she says."

Mrs. V's face went crimson. She turned abruptly and hurried up the stairs.

Mr. V gave Catherine a look that said clearly, "See what you have done?" then turned away, shoulders bent, and went back to his work.

Catherine was torn. She wanted to fire both the V's and start over with young, willing, pleasant employees. Yet did she not have some kind of duty to this aging pair? At the least she wanted to prevent their relationship, which had once been affectionate, from ending in bitter antagonism.

Before she could decide what to do, another element entered the brew-Jason LaFleur.

Even in New York in the sixties, Jason LaFleur was an unusual sight. An extremely tall, handsome, affected young black man, he arrived at Blooms one afternoon wearing a pink suit with a lavender cravat. Nervously smoking pastel cigarettes in a long holder, he displayed his portfolio for Catherine: photographs of flower arrangements he had done and sketches of designs he would like to do. Catherine was immediately enchanted with his work. It was modern, fresh, fanciful. She hired him on the spot.

For one horrifying moment, when she introduced him to Mr. V, it looked as if Mr. V were going to have a heart attack and die. His face turned as red as the roses he was arranging.

"We do not need another florist!" Mr. V shouted.

"Mr. Vanderveld, he is here to help you. He is here to make things easier for you. He'll a.s.sist you. He-"

But Mr. Vanderveld turned his back on Catherine before she could finish her sentence. Puffing so heavily he sounded like a radiator exploding, he hurried up the stairs to his wife's office.

Jason and Catherine were left alone at the back of the shop. Explosive phrases in Dutch filtered down to their ears.

Catherine ran to the top of the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs.

"Piet!" she called. "Please come up and help!"

Piet came at once and listened while Catherine explained. He hurried up the stairs to calm his uncle and aunt.

But when Piet returned, alone, he said, "They are packing their things. They are leaving for good."

"Oh, no. Piet-"

Mr. and Mrs. Vanderveld came clumping heavily down the stairs.

"We are leaving. If we find we have left something personal here, our nephew Piet will bring it to us." Mr. Vanderveld did not look at Catherine as he spoke.

"Mr. Vanderveld. Mrs. Vanderveld. Don't leave this way. There's no need for-"

But the older couple ignored her. They bustled, heads high, toward the door. Catherine was shaken. It was as if yet one more set of parents were saying: Enough. We've had enough of you.

"Please," Catherine begged. "Don't let our relationship end like this. Piet-what can I do?"

"Let them go," Piet said softly. "It's time."

"Time, perhaps, but surely not the right way for them to go."

"Catherine. For them there may be no other way."

"What about a retirement party? Gold watches, champagne, words of thanks-"

"I don't think they want to admit they are old enough to retire. They don't want to admit that they've slowed down or lost their capacity for work. This way they are leaving not because they are old, but because you are so difficult to work with."

"But that's not fair! I'm not too difficult to work with!"

"Catherine. If you care for them, let them have their pride."

"Yes, but-don't they care for me? What are they giving me?"

"The shop."

"I bought the shop! It's legally mine. Rightfully mine."

"Now it is totally yours."

Then the phone rang, breaking the tension. Piet went back to the bas.e.m.e.nt while Catherine showed Jason around the workroom. Only when she was alone at home did she let herself dissolve in tears of self-pity. It would have meant so much to her if the Vandervelds had pa.s.sed their shop on to her with love and respect, knowing they were leaving it in capable hands. She had thought they were all a sort of family; but she had been wrong.

She spent the next few days interviewing prospective bookkeepers; she settled finally on Sandra Klein. Sandra, in her late thirties, was plump, pleasant, and sane. She told Catherine that she "enjoyed working with numbers," and she meant it. She had two daughters in high school and was married to an accountant who dropped her off at Blooms every morning and picked her up every night. During her lunch hour she read paperback romance novels, which she kept in her desk drawer. What she lacked in humor or style she made up for in reliability, and Jason had enough style for the entire workforce.

Jason had hands like Mr. V's; they flew among the flowers with utter certainty. At first he angered the tough young men who did the heavy work in the shop by casually calling all of them "sweetie." "Hey, sweetie, bring that bucket of glads over here to me, would ya, darlin'?" They'd obey, but not without muttering under their breath.

He called Piet "gorgeous." Yet once the workers saw that this didn't annoy Piet, that he even teased Jason back, they relaxed.

Jason called Catherine "boss baby" and "queen honey."

"Boss baby," Jason would say with his hands on his hips, "why don't you just let me try it my way for once? I guarantee your little ladies will be enchanted!"

These were the first endearments lavished on Catherine in years, and Jason was the first person who had been nurturing and maternal toward her. She loved it.

Before long, Blooms became Catherine's real home. Jason teased and flattered her. Sandra organized the books and helped make the office into a place of comfort and simplicity. Once, when Catherine came down with the flu, Sandra sent her home and showed up after work with chicken soup, 7-Up, aspirin, and one of her romantic novels. After Maria fainted one day, then threw up all over the minicarnations the next afternoon, Catherine called Manuel into her office for a little talk. Soon after that, she was a guest at Maria and Manuel's wedding, and she promised Maria that when their baby was old enough to leave with a sitter, Maria could have her job back. At last, in a way, Catherine had a family.

Catherine got into the habit of eating out with Jason at least once a week. They always had plans and fresh ideas to discuss, and they enjoyed discovering new restaurants and nightclubs. They needed to keep up with whatever was hot to keep one step ahead of their clientele.

They loved making an entrance together. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner had just been nominated for an Oscar, but a white woman with a black escort was not yet a common sight even in New York. Jason and Catherine played it for all it was worth. Jason would drop his foppish mannerisms and act like an amorous Cary Grant. Catherine wore Katharine Hepburn-ish pants. Both tall, they strode behind the maitre d' with bored looks on their faces as all eyes turned to stare. Once seated they leaned against each other, making kissy mouths, eyes laughing.

For the first time in her grown-up life, Catherine had someone to have fun with. As different as they were from each other, Catherine and Jason shared a common bond: they were both outsiders in their world. But rather than being cowed by this, Jason gave her the courage to play it to the hilt.

Piet remained a puzzle and a stranger. He was always there when Catherine needed him, always willing to do anything she asked. But he never needed anything in return. He took his paycheck and the raises and bonuses she gave him and asked for nothing more. It was as if he were willing to befriend her without desiring her friendship in return, which in a way was an insult.

Certainly he had plenty of friends of his own. One day a perplexed delivery man, after walking back and forth in front of the shop several times, entered to deliver a box of a dozen red roses from another florist's shop to Piet.

"You got a Piet Vanderveld here? I feel like I'm delivering sand to a beach," the man said, winding his way through the flower-filled shop.

"Piet, why would someone send you flowers?" Catherine asked. The smile on his face embarra.s.sed her. "I mean, it seems odd to send flowers to a florist."

"She doesn't know what kind of work I do."

"My, my, gorgeous, aren't you a prize!" Jason giggled.

Sometimes women came by the shop looking for Piet. Usually they were blond. Often they spoke only broken English. Always they were stunningly beautiful. Piet handled them all with delicate aloofness, steering them out of the shop and down to Nini's to talk.

Catherine envied the women. They knew more than she did about Piet. Piet kept his private life so hidden from Catherine that it was as if he always came and went into darkness. That frightened her ... and aroused her. Many nights she dreamed of Piet, and every day his presence incited a confusing pleasure deep within her.

One bright spring morning, Catherine opened the New York Times to the society page. She read: Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Hilton of New York and Palm Beach announced the engagement of their daughter Haley to Mr. Christopher Bemish II, son of Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Bemish of Boston and Camden, Maine. The wedding will take place June 7 at St. James Episcopal Church in New York. The bride is a graduate of Ethel Walker's School for Girls and Smith College. The groom is a graduate of ...

Catherine put down the paper. She was alone in her office. She rose and locked her door. But when she returned to her seat to give way to tears, nothing happened. She could only feel that same old ice-cold prism heart of hers, hard and chilled, impervious to sorrow. She put her hand over her breast, which felt warm. How could so much cold exist within a living body?

She wished she could talk to someone. Leslie was still her closest friend. They wrote each other every month, telling all, and they'd always vowed to be there in a time of need.

But this was not a crisis. Not really. Catherine had always known this was going to happen. Yet every day now for almost four years she had thought of Kit, and not without some small seed of hope in her heart. She couldn't believe that what had been between them wasn't lasting.

What a fool she'd been. Savagely she stuffed the newspaper in the wastebasket. She unlocked the door, straightened her shoulders, and went down to the main floor of her shop to work.

Easter weekend Catherine was invited to her parents' Park Avenue home for Sunday dinner. Ann came down from her senior year at Miss Brill's, Sh.e.l.ly was on spring break from Chapel Hill. Catherine had driven out to Everly in the Blooms van to pick up her grandmother; she'd spend the night there when she took Kathryn home. She brought a sumptuous arrangement of iris, tulips, daisies, and hyacinths for her parents' dining room table. Her mother's eyes flicked over it when she sat down, but she said nothing.

"Pretty flowers, Cath," Ann said.

"Nicely arranged," Kathryn added, and Catherine smiled.

Marjorie and Drew were in unusually fine moods. They'd just returned from three weeks as guests at a friend's home in St. Lucia, so they were relaxed, tanned, full of good gossip. Sh.e.l.ly was exuberant.

"I can't wait till school gets out," he said, slathering mint jelly on his lamb. "Todd's got a VW camper, and he and Matthew and I are going to spend the summer driving across the country."

"How nice," Drew said, sipping his wine. "Will you see the Grand Canyon? Mt. Rushmore?"